...Anugraha

As some of you know, I am on a current hiatus from all things curd (thayir) related. This means, no more kuzhambu, no dahi anything, no thayir vadai and no thayiru saadham. Yes, you read right, NO THAYIRU SAADHAM...sob. For those unfamiliar, originating with the concept of paal saadham (milk rice), thayiru saadham (curd rice) has represented the southern cuisine for a long time. A lot of people tend to disregard this as a common food or as something bland and I am ashamed to say I was the same for a very long time. The eye-opener was none other than a very exhilarating plane ride to India. My mother had made some thayiru saadham to bring with on the ride. I argued with her saying we are paying for their food and the airline company has to give us food and such precautions were absolutely unnecessary. My mother, as usual, disregarded my arguments and packed 2 containers full of thayiru saadham with delicious mavadu oorga (unripe mango pickle...yeah sounds better in Tamil :P ). ...

Is there magic in Nature?! The right answer, the one that everyone expects would be a loud, resounding, YES! However, my answer would be dependent on what we are talking about and whom we are seeing it with. I am not a nature person. Sure, I love planting a garden or taking a walk and spotting animals just as much as the next person, but just staring at flowers, or just looking at trees is not something that I would do. My family, and two other families, decided to plan a trip to a place called Ironwood in Michigan. Now, the total count was 10 people so we ended up booking a van. Now I would like you to imagine a nice windowed 11 seater mini bus, however the truth is sadly not that. We, and I kid you not, had a white van...not just any white van...THE WHITE VAN. Yup, the one that they use in all those kidnapping scenes in movies and TV shows. Joy. Not only was the van structured that way, it was also a haul to get in and out. The height was so much, we literally had to do pull ups...