Contemplations and Ruminations

I don't know if its just me or if you guys have noticed it too, but there seems to be a dearth of good tv shows out there. The only show I follow these days is The Good Wife (a legal drama), its kinda like The Practice... with a lot more power games and political drama thrown in. I think people seem to prefer different things nowadays ... like obscene crass humour as is evident in Two and a Half men, or shows that are deemed funny based on the personality of that one crazy character who livens up the show - Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang Theory or Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother (take away Barney and Sheldon and both these shows will bite the dust). Then you have something like Glee, which is a huge success due to its happy song and dance routine, but hasn't got anything else worth talking about. Anyway here's a post in memory of all those good times spent with family and friends... laughing, crying and learning from all the beloved characters of some of the bes...

Everybody in my family loves this cake, its my grandmother's recipe and it can be tweaked during the holiday season to form a delicious Christmas fruit cake. The ingredients are simple to remember, you just need equal  quantities of flour, sugar and butter and the cake is guaranteed to come out great. Ingredients 400 grams maida or all purpose flour 400 grams sugar 400 grams butter 8 eggs 3 teaspoons vanilla essence 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda dried fruits and nuts  brandy or rum (optional) I've taken 400 grams of butter, sugar and flour cause I wanted to make a large cake for Christmas. You can scale the quantities down to half and make a medium sized cake. Let's start with caramelizing the sugar, from the 400 grams of sugar that you have set aside for this cake, take bout a quarter of that (100 grams) and start heating it in a dry vessel. I usually drop in another handful (bout 50 gms) of sugar to get more of the gooey caramel when I plan on ...

A few pictures pertaining to my previous post about a small town Christmas....all these pictures were taken in my hometown during the last few days.  Stars of all shapes and kinds adorn houses...  A beautifully lit house... Serial lights at a major junction...  A lone star glitters...  A tastefully decorated house...  The windows in coordinated serial lights...  The star, crib and the tree...  more lights...  A street with stars everywhere...  The red and green lights of Christmas...  More lights...  An array of stars...  The tree all lit up...  Another street...     Another house...  An elaborate crib I saw en route to Tonio's grandmom's house. Looked like they built the whole city of Bethlehem and they had all these miniature figurines inside... t'was really nice, I think it would have looked even better in the evening with all the lights. Don't ask me what the giraffe is doing though... The Holy Family...