Forget the cake...eat bread

I finally made a perfect loaf of bread...it's a labour of love. Worked on and fermented for hours, just to yield one normal sized loaf. Baking a cake is 6th standard biology compared to bread making's understanding Grey's Anatomy. Cake batter is simple. You mix everything togther and bake it. Even if you did not do the sugar and butter creaming first, or added the eggs without separating the yellows and the whites, cake still tastes like cake.


Bread dough is so fickle.
The salt should not be directly added to the yeast+warm water mixture. the sugar should. too much flour, and your bread tastes like cardboards' cousin.
You have to knead and knead for ten solid minutes for proper gluten strands development.
Then it has to rise to double its size in the perfect temperature with good, living yeast of the exact right amount.
Then after the first time the dough rises,(it might not rise at all, if any one parameter is screwd up, old yeast, water not warm enough, water too hot that kills yeast,too much yeast it makes dough rise too fast and collapse, etc etc) you got to punch it down and shape it.
If you punch it down a little too much, your bread is flat and tastes a little of the alcohol that couldnt escape. If you dont punch enough, your dough will overrise and collapse.
After punching down and shaping it, it has to rise again.
Then you bake it in the oven at the exact right temparature, a small deviation could cause the crust to form too soon too thick that it cannot be broken through without a hammer.

So, after overcoming all the odds( many imperfect loafs later), yesterday I made the perfect loaf. Properly crusted outside, soft and spongy bread with good air-holes and slicing it was a peice of cake :)
Am thinking that now that I have troubleshooted and found out what I was doing wrong (it was the second rise, it just wouldnt rise, tuns out i was kneading again, when all i should have done was press the dough down softly a couple of times and carefully shaped it without pulling it too much) and perfected bread making, I should turn my attention to making croissants, which are much tougher, because of the many layers it has, that require folding and folding the dough over a rectangle of butter.

Did you know that money is called dough because of bread dough???? din't realise that before :) Too many conotations about bread being directly equalled to money in western idioms....bread and butter, which side bread is buttered on, put bread on the table bla bla....

To crossiants!!!!

And the verdict is

I am not made for dating more than one guy at a time.....I feel like I am cheating on the other two...and thus ends my career as a Playa!!!!

I am going to date one guy ...and one guy only at a time...

In other news, the novel I am working on ( Oh yeah, 'she's trying to be a writer' - as one of my cynical writer friends, who has seen plenty of society men and women in Bombay say that they are writing a book, would say. It is the 'in' thing these days for jobless people to work on a novel in a desultory fashion, like writing a chapter a year and boast about it at parties. But this book has been in my head for almost five years now. ) is progressing quite well, am done with the first half of it. Have put it away for a few days in the hope that I will get some perspective as to the direction in which it is going to go.

I also need to get back to baking a few 'countless calorie' desserts and get indulging...all the dieting I have been sticking on to makes me bad tempered and mean before breakfast...am not Kareena Kapoor after all and do not need to get into a size zero dress.

AV

Of dating three men at the same time

Technically, it is two boys and one man....and when I say dating, I am talking about exactly that. Pleasant conversation, food, and the occasional movie. I have not slept with any of the three of them and I do not plan to, at least not in the near future...

I have realised that the axe will fall shortly...and I will stick my head into the "mangalsutra' noose very soon...and am exercising my right to choose, before my parents do it for me.

So I am considering my options....and meeting men who ask me out...being set up at times, if you will...and all the boys/men I meet seem pleasant enough. But is this one the one? Is he worth spending time with? are the questions I am plagued with...

As the risk of thinking corny...I think of the 'So, when do you know its love?' tag line of jaane tu ya jaane na'...except I have no lofty ideals of love....but the line doesnt sound as effective when you substitute 'love' with 'true companionship' does it ?

Choices, choices!

S.E.X

We, as in my friends (this particular group is made of girls, primarily) and I, make it a point to talk about sex loudly in public places. And when I say loud, I mean LOUD.

Why? Maybe because we have always been told not to talk about it loudly, and never in public places. Call it the typical teenage rebellion. But we are no longer teenagers. It did begin in our teens. When whoever overheard our whispered talks told us to be quieter about it; and we just talked louder. And the habit has kind of stuck. And now that we are older we talk details , nasty details too and laugh louder when the mallipoo( jasmine) clad maami (generic word for aunty) ( who probably cannot understand the specifics that her husband is glaring at, but has caught the one word she does, SEX) shoots us death darts for being so uncultured and in a public place too.

It might have been cultured not to talk about it, when you get married at 16, even before you begin thinking about this thing that has been denied to us. But, no one gets married at 16 any more. (At least not the educated middle -class, where I belong). When social and financial pressure has increased the age where marriage become appropriate, but the age of attaining sexual maturity decreased, it is kind of sadistic to tell people, “not only must you not do it, but you shouldn't be heard talking about it as well.”

Plus, it is not that young men and women are not indulging in premarital sex, it is just that it is hidden and done secretly. Even telling friends is considered dangerous, coz who knows who will spill the info to whom as the years go by, and how drastic if one's saintly mother has to hear that her angelic daughter was not a virgin when she got married!!!!!

So, talking to a prominent city gynaecologist about the occurrence of pre-marital sex in our virtuous Chennai ( I was researching for an article in my journo days ) was I glad to hear that more than 50% (which was her conservative estimate). of middle and higher income group youngsters indulging in pre-marital Doing IT. Oh yes, I was. (Based on those who come to her and her colleagues for prescription contraceptives and for D&Cs, the latter is a whole other sad story) ….

Now, that I have meandered on and on randomly about one of my pet subjects,
Till next time.

To act or not to Act

A fellow blogger wrote sometime ago that in India, everyone has an opinion about what another should do. What is right and what is wrong. And if their advice is not followed, they take it as a personal injury to their ego and sulk for ages, till you are forced to apologise for not listening to them. And if your plan of action did not work, you have to contend with gloating expressions and actual - 'I told you so's .

To act or not to act

Women actors are sluts. There are no two sides to this equation in Tamil Nadu apparently, as I am learning from my mother. So vehement is this opinion that we have now been fighting two days non- stop. As a model (sounds weird referring to me thus, since I dont really feel like a model. Models are leggy lasses who look like a million bucks at all time and come on TV wearing flashy clothes. Me, I have only done a couple of ads and I dont have the mandatory washboard stomach.) I was warned that I would be offered movies all the time. What I did not anticipate was that the onslaught would begin even before I become prominent or before a few dozen ads. I have been offered three films to date. One as a second heroine and two as a primary female lead. And yesterday, I was asked to appear in a couple of scenes in a movie. And it led to fighting again. Forget the fact that there would be no skin exposure involved or any romance with any male actors. (great banner and awesome actor by the way. ) Apparently actresses are considred sluts here. And however decent your behavior is, or the fact that you dont sleep around for either roles or for money doesnt matter. Hugging and romancing men on screen makes you a slut. For what Nalla Tamizh Ponnu (good tamil girl) will willingly involve herself in a profession where she would have to be physically close to different men and hug and kiss multiple men ? How will a "slut" like that find a "good" boy for marriage???

And no compromise can be reached. I am not aspiring to be a Vrisha or a Navanthara or a Gammana. I cant bear to even watch Commercial masala crap that is churned out in Chennai. And I abslutely would not agree to dance around trees with Jayam Tavi or a Vimbhu or a Jhanush. Or be fake abducted by a Bhasish Vidyarthi or a Payaji Phinde and cry for the hero to come and save me. Nope. Cant do such puke inducing stuff.

But I have great respect for a certain filmmakers. Mani Ratnam, his asst. Priya, Rajiv and Gautham menon, in the off chance that I might get noticed by them and asked to act in their movies . But even they are a no-no for my mother. No movies. Period.

Limit-less lies

You know what pains me most? The way women lie to get the men they want. Not just any lie. I believe mostly that the end justifies the means (plus a few white lies are un-avoidable in any relationship in this day and age). But never that particular pregnancy lie.
Because, it is the ultimate lie to get a decent guy, however squeamish he is about commitment, to commit. Even the decent guy with a thick 'jerk' coating, will fall at the pregnancy lie.

But, what is the point of having the guy, if the thing that made him commit to, is not you, but as much as you love it, the baby? Maybe some women can live that kind of a lie. But every time I see one of those scenes or read this same cliche'd plot in a 'self-pity-mode-mills-and-boon-reading-phase', I just want to puke. The sensation is actually physical, the need to puke, I mean.

Why the sudden move to talking about 'I am pregnant with your child' so you-cant-escape-me-now-expression? (carefully expressed, with a mixture of the sad-guilty and the doe-eyed
"Im so sorry I got pregnant, but you love me so you will be with me" look, that is gaurenteed to work a 100 %? ) Urgh....vomit-territory.
Anyway, I am a serious Grey's Anatomy fan, (watch every episode, follow all the actors' live carefully on US WEEKLY) and the plot line has the Rebecca Pope character cheating Alex Karev into believeing that she is pregnant, so that he finally give a s*** about her. And I got carried away ranting about it :)

Later.

The great look-alike mystery: Javier and Jeffrey

Jeffrey Dean Morgan is the hottie from Grey's Anatomy. I have been (and so have other Grey's fans) lusting after this dude ever since he began appearing as the doomed poor-heart character in the series. Awesome eye-candy. And when I saw the same face in the promos of No Country for Old Men, I assumed it was him till someone told me that the actor in the movie was a Spanish actor named Javier Bardem. And seeing Jeff Dean Morgan in PS I Love You, reinforced my strong opinion that these two dudes are somehow related, if they are not twins seperated at birth ( like in a cheesy predictable flick plot line). Some ancestor somewhere has given them the same jaw and the same delectabe, dimple-showing smile. If Jeff was made to wear dark contacts, there would be no telling them apart, I think.

And you know another thing, where they are related are not, God - Well done! for producing not one, but two such fine specimens for us poor women to drool at :)