Journey to Motherhood

Soham will be 8 months coming Tuesday. I wanted to jot down my journey for past one and a half year. Its been long since I have posted anything on my blog. I came to know that I am expecting in Dec 2008. I was so excited. Our first appointment was so joyful.

Week 8- 12

In the 8th week we had our first appointment with our doctor. We heard the first heartbeat of our child and it was an amazing feeling that there is another life inside you. First three months were awful. I was so lazy and tired. I couldn't cook or clean. I spent most of the time resting or sleeping. By end of 12th week things started to get better.

week 13 - week 25
Then came the happy time when I could eat anything I wanted. I still had a preference of Indian food. Sudip was bored of the Indian food, but he always got Indian food for me. I could walk and do any type of exercises. I made a plan to walk as much as I can. The only difficulty I had was I was out of breath after sometime. And i couldn't do multi tasking. No talking while walking. Beside pregnancy there were other things that were going on. We started looking for a house. After looking almost 20 houses we ended up buying a beautiful house with wooden floor and lot of light. We started looking for house furniture. We were lucky to have all our furniture ready by the time we moved in. It was scary too. Then my job roles and responsibilities were changing. I am very lucky to have a lot of team support. I couldn't realize that I moved from one team to another.

Week 25 - Week 36.

I am very thankful to my Friends and colleagues for throwing me a baby shower. The only thing I would remember is that our hosts were very good and the lights went out for almost 4 hours. So we celebrated in dark.:). July 25th was one of the happiest moment of my life. My mom was visiting me in US. We went to Airport to pick up my mom. She was excited too. After a week Soham was born. I would say he is a very strong baby. His breathing was constant throughout the delivery. After seeing him for the first time I was so mesmerized. He was so small and cute. From here begins taking care of Soham.

A few things to note during pregnancy are:

1.Whatever you do.. you will get stretch marks. Think of it as a reward of making a baby. Apply coconut oil or vitamin e oil everyday. It helps to reduce them.
2.Don't try any new makeup or lotion on your face. Due to hormonal change you are prone to have sensitive skin. it may overreact.
3.Have as much fun as possible as after having a baby you will not get time to spend with your hubby..

Happy Parenting!!

Punjabi Chole

Punjabi Chole is one of the best delicacies of North Indian food. This was a food of heaven during our student life. We used make this on special occasion(when you are a student you are new to cooking and these are the best to try at that time). Now being familiar with cooking I try making with various changes. the below recipe is one them as this turned out really good.

Serves: 4
Preparation time: 60 mins.

Ingredients
2 Cans of Garbanzo beans Or 11/2 cup of chole(soaked overnight)
1 inch piece of ginger(peeled and grated)
1 Large onion (chopped in food processor)
2 Large tomatoes(puried in a mixture)
3 tspn oil
1 tspn red chili powder
1 green chili (finally chopped)
1 tspn chana masala
1 tspn cumin powder
1 tbspn dhania powder (coriander powder)
salt (to taste)
Whole Garam Masala:
1 inch piece dalchini or cassia bark
1 tspn black peppercorns
3-4 badi elaichi (black cardamom)
2 t cumin seeds
1 tejpatta (Bayleaf)
11/2 cup water

To garnish
Cilantro, 1 tpn Kasuri methi powder and lemon.

Method:

1. If you are using cans then wash them thoroughly. And if you are taking soaked once then Put them in a pressure cooker with water an inch above the chole level. If you want that dark look for chole like you see in restaurants then add 2 tea bags in the pressure cooker. Cook for two Whistles.
2. Till your chole are cooking on the other stove you start preparing the Masala.
3. heat oil in pan. Add cumin and let it splutter. Now add Whole garam masala and fry it for few seconds(you will start getting a nice aroma of the masala's)
4. Now Add Ginger and fry for few secs. Once the ginger is little brown colour add Onions. Fry onions till they are golden brown.
Then add the red chili,dhania powder,chana masala and cumin powder. You can little water to prevent masala from burning.
5. Now add puried tomatoes and fry till the masala starts leaving oil(this will take alot of time maybe half an hour). You will see small droplets of oil forming on top of the masala.
6. Now add the chole + water(based on the consistency you need) and shimmer it for 20 mins.
7. Once its done put the stove off garnish it with Kasuri methi and Cilantro. You can cut lemon into quater sizes use them while eating chole.

You can server this with zeera rice,roti or naan. It can be even eaten with bread.

Enjoy your dish!!

Weekend Fun!!!!!!!!!

This weekend we had a group of friends at our place. It was awesome to have all of them. Kunjal and Nirja came all the way from Houston, Deepak and Sandhya from Seattle, Amrita and Jaideep, Sudip and I (last four of us are from Dallas). Deepak was already here in Dallas for moving and visiting his wife Sandhya. They were at our home on Friday evening and we were all eagerly waiting for K & N. K & N were in Korea and now they are here in US. We sat on Friday night till 2 pm to chit chat. We all shared our stories of how we met our husbands and how great were our experience. It was great fun.

On Saturday we got up early, had tea and breakfast. We got ready to leave to have lunch at Genghis Khan Restaurant. Being a weekend it was very crowded but the food was excellent. They had Mongolian style BBQ. They let you select all the ingredients like different types of meat, veggies, sauces and spices with rice or noodles. Then they cook it on the grill and it’s ready to eat. After we were done eating, everyone had to run some errands so we all decided to meet at our place in the evening for dinner.



In the evening after a lot of discussion we decided to have food at home and watch some movies. Well thanks to Nirja it was an excellent idea. The guys went to get food and drinks from Maharaja Indian Restaurant. Till then the gals were gossiping about our future jobs ,babies, house, our family and the terrifying one, our in-laws...:). When we told our husbands that we were discussing about our in-laws, they weren't quite happy. The food from Maharaja was good. But everyone one was impressed by Sudip's curd making skills. After we finished our dinner, we had few drinks and we all danced on some rocking numbers from Dostana, Welcome and the song "Billo Rani". We were so tired from dancing so we decided to take a break. The next activity involved telling something good about our life partners. After hearing everyone's testimony I feel that everyone was perfect for each other. It was Rab ne bana di correct jodi..:)). We played some more fun games and watched a Hindi movie "Oye Lucky Lucky Oye" which wasn't good contrary to the reviews. The movie didn't have a strong story line. It was more of a bunty aur bubli sort of movie with bubli missing in the movie. Abhay Deol is a very good actor and his movies are generally very different. So I was kind of disappointed. But that's ok. We will wait for a good movie from him. Half of the Junta slept off during the movie and there were only three people awake watching the movie (Amrita, Jaideep and Sudip). Hats off to these guys on completing the movie.



On Sunday morning we all went to Amrita's house and had excellent allo ke paranthe and celebrated Deepak's birthday. Sudip missed this all since he was pulled in to some urgent office work. Later on we wished farewell to everyone.

Overall it was an awesome weekend.

Dostana Movie Review

Finally this Sunday we got time to watch Dostana. Its a good and funny movie and you can watch it if you want plain entertainment. Don't go if you think that you can't handle the gay thing. I liked priyanka chorpa and John Abraham. They both have worked really hard to look hot and sexy in this movie. The first half of the movie is very funny and the second half is ok.I didn't like the part where they start using a child to get a girl..that's ridiculous.I am not sure why its should title "Dostana" they haven't shown much about freindship. Anyways its a good one time watch Movie.

TriColor on Moon

At 8:31PM on Nov 14 India has proved that for India Sky is not the limit anymore. India space vehicle has reached moon. India is the fourth country to reach on moon.
The around 35-kg MIP hurtled towards the lunar surface detaching from India's first unamanned lunar spacecraft Chandrayaan-1.The vehicle(MPI) then landed on moon after detaching from chadrayaan-1. The MIP was coloured with Indian flag from all the sides.