Quinoa khichadi

I recently heard about quinoa by reading the awesome Summer Tomato blog run by Darya Pino (make it a must-read if you want in-depth coverage of healthy food and healthy food habits and nutritional discussion).

I had already read about how whole grains are better than crushed or polished grains or flour and was also interesting in having more carbs in my breakfast and steadily reducing them through the rest of the day with all the other meals.

So I thought of making an easy Indian dish called khichadi which is not strictly a breakfast dish in northern India where it is more popular, but is cooked for breakfast sometimes in southern India (where I’m from). The ease of cooking was what I was going for.

So here’s what you need:

• 1 cup quinoa: rinsed (this removes residual bitterness) and soaked for 15 mins

• ½ cup masoor dal(a kind of Indian lentil - you get this at any Indian store) rinsed and soaked for 15 mins

• 1 cup frozen peas thawed (I microwave them in a bowl of water for a couple of minutes)

• 1 carrot peeled and chopped either into rings or sticks

• 1 garlic (chopped finely or crushed)

• 1/3 tspn cumin seeds

• 1 pinch turmeric

• 1 pinch hing (aka asafoetida)

• ½ tspn cumin powder (you get this at any Indian store)

• ½ tspn coriander powder (you get this at any Indian store)

• Salt and cayenne pepper/paprika/red pepper powder to taste (as per your tolerance)

• 2 tspn oil

• 4 and ½ cups of water

Method:

• Take a deep vessel that you can boil rice in (not a wok or a flat pan)

• Add 2 tspns oil

• Once oil is hot, add the garlic

• Once garlic starts to brown, add 1/3 tspn cumin seeds, pinch of hing and turmeric

• Let cumin seeds sizzle for a few seconds

• Immediately add peas (make sure to drain the water after thawing) and sliced carrots

• Stir fry for 2 or 3 minutes (upto you…decide how stir-fried versus boiled you want your veggies)

• Add 1 cup water

• Drain the quinoa of the water it is soaking in and add to the cooking vessel (make sure to drain water as otherwise it will throw off the measure of water)

• Drain the masoor dal of the water it is soaking in and add to the cooking vessel

• Once both quinoa and masoor dal are added, then add the remaining 3 and ½ cups of water (you can use some of this water to rinse out quinoa or masoor dal stuck to the bowls they were soaking in)

• Boil on medium without a cover for 15 to 20 mins (This depends on your vessel shape and size, stove heat levels etc. Makes sure to check frequently - when you dip a stirring ladle in, there should be no water at the bottom of the vessel, but the cooked quinoa should not start sticking to the vessel)

• Switch off flame and put a lid on it and let it sit for 5 mins (this will cook it a bit more in the steam, and absorb any residual water)

Done!

And here's how the finished dish is gonna look like:

Coconut Chutney

My wife and I recently made some coconut chutney to go with the idlis that we made for dinner, and upon tweeting about it, I got a request for the recipe. So here it is.

Ingredients:

Grated coconut (desired quantity)*
Salt (to taste)
Chopped fresh coriander/cilantro (1 or 2 sprigs should suffice)
Black mustard seeds - 1 teaspoon
Urad dal (split, dehusked white lentils raw) - 1 tablespoon
Dry red chillies - 1 or 2 (each broken in half or into 3 pieces)
Hing - 1 pinch
Curry leaves - 5 or 6 leaves (crushed or torn into pieces)
Oil - 2 or 3 tablespoons

*We get frozen packets of grated coconut from the Indian store. We found it to be the next best thing after fresh grated coconut. If you have fresh coconuts and a coconut grater, nothing beats fresh grated coconut!

Directions:

Part I:
- If from frozen packet, thaw chosen size slab of grated coconut in microwave (1 min on high should do it).
- Add the grated coconut and salt into the blender.
- Add a little bit of water in the blender to help liquify into paste (apparently milk+water can also be used, although we never tried it).
- Add chopped coriander into the blender.
- Blend until liquified into a uniform paste.
- Add a bit more water (or milk if using milk) and repeat until satisfied with consistency of the paste.
- Transfer to a serving bowl than can handle addition of hot oil.

Part II:
- In a small wok (the smallest one you can get your hands on), heat the oil
- When oil is hot, add mustard seeds (they should pop immediately - so add a few seeds at a time to gauge heat of oil until oil is hot enough).
- Add urad dal right after. Wait until urad dal starts turning brown before adding next ingredient.
- Add the red chillies, curry leaves and hing (each needs only a few seconds)
- Turn off the heat and empty contents from wok into the coconut paste in the serving bowl (Add near the center of the bowl, but the oil will spread on surface and touch the bowl - make sure bowl won't break under sudden heat).
- Mix the contents with a spoon so that flavor of spices spreads to the entire dish.

Part III:
- Enjoy.

And of course, here's a photograph to show how it looks:

From Culinary

And here's one more photo of a smaller quantity of it placed in the middle of a plate of idlis:

From Culinary

Meetup with Bora in NYC

Went by to NYC yesterday evening to the Old Town Bar where Bora had planned a meetup. Since I am so bad at blogging (my last post was on Feb 3rd!), I thought I'd jot down a few words about the evening while they're fresh in my memory.

I reached there a bit late (around 8:45 pm) and one person was already getting ready to leave as I approached the group. I didn't get a chance to say hello to her or find out who she was. The group at the table when I introduced myself to them were: Bora, Mrs.Coturnix, Jake Young, Arikia Millikan, Caryn Shechtman, Caryn's boyfriend Nikola Trbovic , Jacqueline Floyd, and Barry Hudson

Bora was exactly the way I imagined him to be from his photographs. Extremely energetic and as prolifically loquacious as he is prolific on blogs, facebook and twitter. He introduced me around as his twitter friend (I'm going to take that as a cue that I need to start blogging more). The surprise, though, was his accent. I didn't expect him to have such a "convent school English" accent. I associate that accent strongly with the way English is spoken by Indians I know who were educated in schools established by the British. If you've ever heard the Indian neuroscientist V.S.Ramachandran speak, you will know what accent I am talking about. I was under the impression Bora would have a strong European accent like a mad scientist from movies like Young Frankenstein or something.

I spoke very briefly with Mrs.Coturnix. She was at the other end of the table, and I didn't get much of a chance to socialize with her. In the brief time that I did speak with her, she struck me as a very smart and funny person. Her first question to me was "Do you blog?" I said "Not much." She went "Do you know the f-word?" In my head I was like wait, what? The others started cracking up. I said "Um...yes, I know the word." She goes "That's all you need to know to have your own blog." I think she likes to give someone new a little bit of a hard time and then get them to feel right at home. I don't know if she talks much normally or not, but whenever I happened to look in her direction, I saw her listening intently to the others talk with her chin on her palm .

Jake struck me as a very supportive kind of guy. Right off the bat, he asked me a couple of questions about what I do and when I said I was not in science his first response was "Hey, don't let that stop you from blogging about science. some of the best support we get is from laypeople with interest in science writing about science for laypeople." He had that mentor-ish vibe where he'd find something positive to say. And also be sincere about it, not just say something positive for the sake of it. I hadn't checked out his blog - pure pedantry - before. I had been a regular reader at scienceblogs from the start (having moved there following PZ from the old pharyngula site). But I had always read only the first crop of them and had not kept up with the additions as scienceblogs explodedexpanded. I've recently begun to correct this, and Jake's blog is going to get added to the list. His "about" section is pretty hilarious, so I'm guessing he'll be a very entertaining writer. Also, he's in NYRR. As a recent member of NYRR, running (or at least wanting to run in my case)is one other thing about him that I can relate to.

Arikia looked like she was just out of college. Young and energetic. I learnt she was not an intern anymore and is a full-fledged employee of scienceblogs. And that she also ran her own web design company. Pretty impressive. When Bora introduced me as his twitter friend, I told her that I had found her just that morning on twitter (referring to this tweet). She asked me "So are you following me yet?" I replied "Not yet, but I will as soon as I get back home." Which would not have sounded half as awful or stalker-ish if those bastards at twitter had used a better word than "follow". I had to fight the urge to reassure her that it won't be as bad as it sounded. The one thing I forgot to do was to ask her if I could take a photograph of the shoes she was wearing so that I could post a pic for that shoe nut Dr.Isis, who I'm sure would've enjoyed it.

I didn't speak that much with Caryn except towards the end. She said she had stared blogging at the nature blog network necently and is still getting used to the whole blogging thing. We talked about how we are our own worst critics, and how it is such a surprise when someone else praises what we write because we would have already critiqued it so much in our heads. She had a striking resemblance to an undergraduate student I knew in passing when I was a Teaching Assistant for a course several years ago. I kept getting a feeling of Deja Vu while she was talking.

Nikola was the person I chatted with the most. He was sitting right next to me at the table, and we got a chance to talk at length. He asked me a lot of questions about what I do in the software industry. In turn, I asked him about his area of research. I hadn't heard much about biophysics at all, and it was very fascinating. We also talked a bit about the funding situation, the state of the economy, sports, and a bunch of topics under the sun. He was quite a patient person who would listen at length to what I had to say and would also talk at length when he would elaborate on something. So it ended up being very easy to have a long conversation with him.

I spoke with Jacqueline a bit towards the end of the evening. She had a sharp look that reminded me a little bit of some of the programmers I worked with over the years. The impression I got was that she was the kind of person to whom you wouldn't need to elaborate too much. As soon as I would start talking, I would get the sense that she already got what I'm trying to say. I like interacting with such people because it saves me the effort of elaboration. I've found that such people always have a lot of knowledge on the same topic, and I end up learning quite a bit if I don't keep on talking. We started talking about web technologies and startups. I talked for a little bit about Paul Graham and Y Combinator. She talked about the differences between New York and the Silicon Valley when it comes to new technologies and social media, the relative strengths and weaknesses of the cities, and the startup scene in New York. Bora also changed places to come sit with us as she talked about newer sites like Tumblr (a start-up out of New York City). Bora got excited and started talking about friendfeed, and I kept listening as the two of them discussed pros and cons of different aggregation tools.

Barry and I talked briefly at the very beginning after I had just arrived there. After that, we didn't get too much of a chance to talk again. From his accent, I thought he was from Scotland. I knew a couple of folks from there over the years, and they had this habit of using the word "yeah?" at the end of a sentence instead of "no?" or "isn't it?" Barry also does that. Turns out he is from England, but from up north near the Scotland border. We ended up talking for a little bit about his area of research, about what he thinks of American culture, and somehow the two things got interconnected into a discussion on how science tells us harsh facts about our insignificance in the cosmic scheme of things and the lack of belief in evolution in a large percentage of Americans. The conversation went from there to the Dover trial and Evolution versus Intelligent Design. So although I didn't talk too long with him, the little that I did was pretty interesting.

Overall, I was really happy with the way the meetup turned out. I went there expecting a much larger crowd considering how popular Bora is. And yet, Bora was so gracious that he actually apologized for not being able to spend as much time because it was not a smaller crowd. I didn't know what he was apologizing for since I didn't feel at all like it was such a large crowd. I was also very happy with the quality of the interactions. Instead of just saying a few hellos and pleasantries, the people were actually talking in animated detail amidst drinks and laughter. A great time was had by all.

RU-4

Last week was pretty good, resolutions-wise. Perhaps it was the process of forcing myself to put down in words how badly I had done the week before that propelled me to do better.

-Running: I ran 5 times in the week. W00t! Ran on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The first three times, I ran for 24 minutes each time - 4 minutes of walking followed by 4 sets of 5 minute runs. Each 5 minute run was a 3 minute jog at 6 mph and a 2 minute walk at 4 mph to catch my breath for the next set. But on Thursday, my feet and calves and shins were hurting so bad that I had to ask myself the question that my friend Atracus asked in a comment on RU-2. Should I really set a pace goal this early on? After all, I was over 200 lbs and now that I'm in my 30s I should be more careful how I push my body. So after resting and giving running a break on Thursday, I ran again on Friday and Saturday. This time I ran for 28 minutes each time - 3 minutes of warmup walk followed by 5 sets of 5 minute runs. Each 5 minute run was a 3 minute jog at 5 mph (which was significantly easier on lungs and legs than the 6 mph pace) followed by a 2 minute walk at 4 mph. This week I want to make it 6 sets of 5 minutes each.

- Weight: I am down to 200 lbs. It was fluctuating between 199 lbs to 201 lbs on Saturday and Sunday. So I'm averaging here. A little progress, but a long way to go.

- Book: Read a couple of chapters. Around 50 pages. Now halfway through chapter 4 - natural selection. I'm gonna consider that progress, although anyone who is into reading books would laugh.

- Textbook: Did not touch it.

- Blog: Have written a post on the Sonoran, but then I had a deadline for it. So it probably doesn't count. I need to work on the ones without a deadline, sitting in draft status. Started a new one on Gandhi coz I was thinking about him on Jan 30th (the day of his assassination) and on how my opinions on him changed over the years.

- Comments: Found a ton of new blogs via carnival of the arid. So task of commenting may become slightly more difficult, although currently it is the easiest of the resolutions.

CotA

The first Carnival of the Arid is up!!

Read a couple of the drool-worthy entries already. But had to post this shoutout first.

Go check it out already!!

Sonoran

The first time I set foot in a desert in my life was in April 2004 when I went to Tucson. I remember the first feeling the landscape evoked. It was a feeling of sadness at how desolate it looked. I had only lived in regions of India and the US that would be called lush.

It was not like the reaction was a total surprise to me. I had seen deserts before in photographs and movies, whether it be the Thar desert or deserts of the middle east in Indian movies, or the deserts of the American southwest in cowboy movies. Each time, I remember having a milder version of the same reaction. The reaction was just much stronger in intensity when I was finally staring at a desert in real life. How could an area become so sandy, dusty and bereft of the kind of lush greenery that makes the human heart happy? How could the people who call such a region home not do something to make it better?

I know that my perception is a pretty common one that would probably be expressed by a large majority of people who look at the desert. However, the other thing I know today is that the only reason for this state is that ignorance is also a pretty common trait in a large majority of people. In my ignorance, I was looking at the landscape from a completely human-centric view. The only reason humans find lush topography more appealing is because of our arboreal roots. There is nothing intrinsically "better" about a tropical landscape when human preference is taken out of the equation. The mistake I think we humans make is that we think of the desert the same way we think of a concrete jungle. They both lack the kind of greenery that appeals to most humans. So we assume they are both barren areas, lacking the kind of diverse biological life that could be found in thick forests or woods.

It takes a closer look to realize that the desert is nothing like a concrete jungle. The desert is literally buzzing and teeming with life. I was fortunate enough in my life to have come to this realization. Yes, the scarcity of water may have driven this life to evolve in a direction that we humans need to take a second look to notice. But once you see it, it is everywhere. Saguaros, prickly pears, creosote bush, pinyon pines, cactii, agaves, palms, mesquites, cottontails, jackrabbits, bighorn sheep, rock squirrels, lizards, tortoises, rattlesnakes, spiders, scorpions, wrens, ravens, swallowtails, the list is endless.

It is the Sonoran desert that I need to thank for my realization. It happened very quietly and very slowly. In my several visits to Arizona, my eyes opened gradually to the beauty of the landscape. I can't even remember when it was that the rugged majesty of it all finally sunk in fully. Between April 2004 to December 2006, I flew to Tucson somewhere between 15 to 20 times. Two of those visits were monthlong vacations. I drove around a bit during all those visits, not just in the Sonoran desert in and around Tucson, but also around Arizona. I visited places like the Grand Canyon and the Petrified Forest. I took a detour through scenic Sedona rather than take the interstate to Flagstaff. I've come to love the geography of the entire state so much that it has become one of my favorite regions of the world.

Would I want to live there? I don't know. It is a very harsh environment for humans. We humans got very used to technology, and wouldn't survive too long in the wild. In case the technological infrastructure breaks down, the desert would be one of the least forgiving of the wild environs out there. There is also a second reason I hesitate. The tenacity displayed by life adapted to the desert may give one the false impression that the desert is a very resilient environment. In fact, deserts are very fragile ecosystems. Life does thrive in them amidst unbelievable odds, but it takes very little effort by humans to change that from unbelievable to insurmountable.
Not that humans can't do this or aren't doing this in other places. We do have the tenacity and will to destroy life wherever we find it. We would just have to work that much harder to destroy a rainforest, is all.

Also, the rainforests and the pandas of the world have a slight advantage when it comes to appealing to the human heart. Deserts, like reptiles or arachnids, are the ugly stepchildren. The people who look at the desert and see nothing but empty wasteland are everywhere. Just turn on the TV and have a look at any extreme sports channels. There may be some human powered options like snowboarding or skateboarding, but pretty soon you'll come across folks in heavily modified motorized vehicles either trying to set some speed record or careen down impossible grades. The most common places for such activities are either playas or canyonsides. Desert races like the Baja 1000 consider their courses to be relatively barren terrain. Barren? The desert?

This disdain for the desert has a long history that precedes the recent ORV craze. Most governments conduct their nuclear weapons testing and other military operations in deserts. Got a shitload of radioactive waste to dispose of? Why, there's all that desert! I am ashamed to think that at one point in my life, I have shared this view.

Not anymore. Today, I cannot see a desert in the world and not think it is beautiful. Yes, even Antarctica. I recently happened to watch some video footage of Rajasthan after a long time. I saw the dusty Thar desert against the Aravalli mountains in the background, and was struck by how stunningly beautiful it looked. An old friend who went to BITS Pilani for his undergraduate degree used to rave about the beauty of the Thar desert. I used to think he was a nut. Turns out I was right. It takes a special kind of nut to love the desert. But it feels good to be one.

RU-3

This week is either the nadir after which things will look up, or my resolutions will just peter away and there won't even be an update next week. Work continues to peak sporadically throwing a wrench in any attempt at a schedule. But I hope that writing this update down every week, however bad it looks, may actually help me.

- Running: Again, I ran just once in the middle of the week. I tried the alternating approach and ran for a total of 20 minutes, but the time I ran at 6 mph only ended up being 8 minutes! But it left me much less winded this way, So maybe I can push myself more easily next time and make it to 30 or 40 minutes first and then try to expand on the interval of time I run at the faster speed.

- Weight: Has gone up to 203.5 lbs. I have never crossed 201 lbs. This is a new high (low) for me! Death to munchies!!

- Book and textbook: Didn't touch either. I just have to make a start here. I know it is just a case of starting trouble. If I convince myself not to watch the Australian open or something or the other on TV after dinner, I will be able to do this!! Alternately, if the workload reduces in the coming weeks, I will be able to take advantage of the lull between meetings at work to get in some reading instead of surfing the internet. Just one hour a day. Baby steps. Don't know why this is even difficult. Reading books is something I enjoy. I blame the internet, although I love the internet. Damn you internet.

- Blog: I somehow convinced myself that writing a draft and modifying it over time is a good way to write good blog posts. I know there are people who do this. I know there are advantages to putting something away and looking at it with fresh eyes the next day. It is just not working for me, and I was wrong to think that I should try this. For me, it is out-of-sight out-of-mind. Moreover, there is a human tendency to get jaded by repeated exposure. What looks like a great line on first reading looks hackneyed on the third reading. This tendency may be what makes good art critics good at their work, but it totally sucks when reviewing your own work. I should stick to my own way of doing things. Hammering something out in a single sitting and letting it stay that way. I may look back and cringe later, but at least I got something out. Proofreading should be the extent of revision.

- Comments: I am getting better at this. Earlier, when I started commenting, I would have an obsessive desire to check back on the comments to see if anyone responded. Or when I post something on this blog, to check back to see if anyone commented. I have consciously let this habit go, and I can see it has helped. The last couple of comments others posted on this blog had been sitting in moderation for a few days. I had just not checked for comments every day. I have also stopped checking back on blog posts where I have made comments. The urge is just not there anymore to see if anyone responded, or to continue the comment discussion. This frees up some much needed time to actually compose a new post (although there is an unrelated problem of inertia and musal absence that complicates things a bit). When I set up this blog, I made a similar decision to not make the blog about traffic or comments. I did not set up any page visit counters or other analytics because I didn't want to obsess over them. I also set up the commenting scheme such that it is not easy to have a continous discussion between commentors on a single blog post. The only reason I have comments is so that others could comment here to correct any egregious errors in my post, and thus reduce the chance of any stray reader being misled by my faulty reasoning. It's not that comments are unwelcome, but I don't want to either actively seek them, or write stuff that makes it easier to get them.