On The Ning Nang Nong

Discussion in 'Education & Personal Growth' started by Iravati, Apr 5, 2017.

  1. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

    Messages:
    2,430
    Likes Received:
    2,105
    Trophy Points:
    283
    Gender:
    Female
    Sweet corn and smoked haddock chowder

    After watching endless Keith Floyd and Fanny Cradock with langoustines and clams and halibut and haddock, I decided that aaj toh I will boil smoked haddock soup at home. I have never stirred a soup in my kitchen. I have no clue how Indian or Continental soups are bubbled. Looked up nine recipes on the haddock soup and no two recipes agree on how a simple haddock chowder should be made. Durrh!

    I noted down the common ingredients: leeks, celery, potatoes, onions, parsley. Why cream, butter, skimmed milk, and more butter. Instead I got thick jersey milk with cream and butter and everything in tact in it.

    Poach the smoked haddock in thick Jersey milk, flake it up. Use that milk as fish stock in the vegetable broth. Cool the broth, soften it with a blender. Add the corn and fish.

    What can I say about my piping soup. Sometimes I am amazed ki mere main itna megalomaniac talent hai that I have learnt today how to cook a common fish soup! Heh!

    upload_2018-7-16_19-50-47.png
     
  2. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

    Messages:
    2,430
    Likes Received:
    2,105
    Trophy Points:
    283
    Gender:
    Female
    Books read this week:


    upload_2018-7-16_20-5-8.png
     
  3. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

    Messages:
    2,430
    Likes Received:
    2,105
    Trophy Points:
    283
    Gender:
    Female
    Why do you write?

    A friend recently asked me: Why do you blog?
    I had to assure her that I am no serious writer or blogger, say, I jot, not write.
    She continued: Why do you jot?
    Because it helps me to remember. When I write up as in jot down about an observation from film, tv, book, print, it helps me to remember. The names, places, events, reflections, the write up/jot down aids me to remember.

    When I am amused with a comic strip, I jot down in Ning Nang. Caudal appendage? I would be one tail-growing lazy coot if I didn't organize my free-spirited observations. Such jotty endeavor fends off my incurable sloth.

    (Image source: Castle Waiting)

    upload_2018-7-16_20-14-45.png
     
  4. Rakhii

    Rakhii Moderator IL Hall of Fame

    Messages:
    7,299
    Likes Received:
    6,339
    Trophy Points:
    440
    Gender:
    Female
    that soup does look pretty appetising.
     
  5. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

    Messages:
    2,430
    Likes Received:
    2,105
    Trophy Points:
    283
    Gender:
    Female
    Now I have surplus leeks and celery in my fridge even after generous use in the fish soup. I need to search for another chunky and hearty soup.
     
    Last edited: Jul 18, 2018
  6. Endlesshope

    Endlesshope Platinum IL'ite

    Messages:
    657
    Likes Received:
    1,318
    Trophy Points:
    263
    Gender:
    Female
    My !! I have notes to take and posts to post .
    First thoughts - Ira must really like soup , and that chowder looks stupendelicious !!
    I wonder why Indian cuisine doesn’t have as many soups .
     
  7. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

    Messages:
    2,430
    Likes Received:
    2,105
    Trophy Points:
    283
    Gender:
    Female
    The Robert Frost in you stopped by the Ning Woods!

    Rasam is fashioned as soup in Dravidian cuisine. Is there another distinguishable and watery slurry like regional soup in South Indian cuisine? In the Mughlai North, shorbas, esp. chicken and mutton shorba are aromatic and rich. Today's modern shorba differs much from the ancient shorba. I am not aware of any native "Indian" soups. We grow rice and wheat. Not very soup-inspiring ingredients.
     
  8. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

    Messages:
    2,430
    Likes Received:
    2,105
    Trophy Points:
    283
    Gender:
    Female
    Natural Birth or Cesarian for older women?

    No rhetoric. Facts. Hard truth. A gritty article explaining the implications of delivering babies later in life. It is not just the baby who is at risk but the mother too and the dilemma associated with natural and cesarian birth. No glossing spiel: I know someone who had a baby in their 40s. What happened to them later? Does anyone know. Did they suffer from urinary incontinence or prolapse? Read the article with explanatory sketches and anecdotal voices of anatomical grievances.

    Link: Did having a baby leave you with a horrible, debilitating, embarrassing injury? You’re not alone.

    Collapsed summary:

    It’s hard to pinpoint the contribution of childbirth to pelvic floor disorders in part because most hospitals don’t track what happens to a new mother after she leaves. Newborns typically get excellent follow-up care—they see a pediatrician days after birth, again several weeks later, and then every few months for their first year. If a woman complains of pelvic symptoms to her regular doctor, good luck: A 2016 survey found that most primary care physicians didn’t screen for prolapse, and those who did believed it was “rare.”

    Haven’t women been pushing giant babies out through their tiny vaginas since time immemorial? Isn’t this what we’re designed for? Yet many of the obstetricians I spoke to say there’s been an uptick in traumatic births. That’s mainly because the mothers are older.

    Why is this? For one thing, explains Dietz, the Australian urogynecologist, the mechanisms that kick off labor don’t seem to work as well in older first-time moms, which can make them more likely to go past due—another risk factor. Older moms also tend to have less effective contractions, which can lead to longer labors and extended pushing—which is strongly linked to pelvic injuries.

    So what’s to be done? Certainly I’m not arguing that hospitals should start slicing open every pregnant lady who darkens their doorstep. They already tried that, basically, and it didn’t work. The challenge, instead, is to figure out which women have the highest chance of a vaginal childbirth going south, and—this is important—to tell them about it. Doctors can start by warning older women, overweight women, and those with chronic metabolic conditions. These are difficult conversations. “It’s politically incorrect to say something about how waiting till later in life to have your first baby will increase your risk of problems during delivery,” urogynecologist Dietz told me. “That’s a piece of news that no one wants to hear.”

    And then there’s this: Telling pregnant women the truth about their bodies just seems like the right thing to do. At the very least, it behooves us to ditch the magical thinking and stop pretending that natural childbirth is an amulet that protects women from harm. That goes for the entire birth community: the books, the midwives and doulas, the Lamaze classes, and most of all, the doctors. Because, quite simply, it’s an issue of control. If you don’t truly know what to expect when you’re having a baby, then you’re more likely to shut up and let the physician make the decisions. And then all of a sudden we’re back to the 1940s, putting women through hell and giving them a pill to make them forget it ever happened.

    Thinking twice about having a baby in later age then think four times about what your body goes through during pregnancy and birth for that age. Arm yourself with self-knowledge and mechanism and not falsified comfort and rhetoric. Then, make a decision.
     
  9. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

    Messages:
    2,430
    Likes Received:
    2,105
    Trophy Points:
    283
    Gender:
    Female
    On the Ning Nang Nong

    Last week a friend asked: Why do events and people happen only in your life? Why do you come across lively instances in your life. Where do you meet all these noisy socializers? What is it about you that you move through life with amusing experiences.

    I corrected her: These instances on their own could be traumatic or may be staid or may be very uneventful to others and even to the other people involved in the selfsame incident but in my mind's eye they come across as goofy and memorable. All setbacks, anxieties, swoons, confusion are ephemeral. They don't last long. Poof! Gone by the next day. However, the memory of that setback, anxiety, swoon, and confusion that lasts a life time is our own creation in identifying and relating to that incident. In my brain, these setbacks, anxieties, swoons, and confusions are filed under the label "hmm, interesting".

    There's something lurking on the horizon. There's someone snickering in the corner. I am excited that I am to meet him, next. I look forward to that event, the precise moment where I could startle him with 'I knew you would come in my life", didn't realize it would be so soon. I don't know why I am the chosen one to meet these people but I do sense that he is on his way to meet me and bore me with his mathematical acrobats and sciencey poems.

    Ning has been a great stimulus for introspection on how I feel about the inconsequential and fleeting concurrences. How I feel about morning breakfast, what potato to buy, how to draw a crooked line, which cartoon to watch, how to scrub a pan, which film to watch, what book to not read, why I gurgle, why I dance, why I write nonstop and many other trivial and personal recollections.

    Again in my mind's eye, this Ning stint in its 537 gibberish variations has been the most disciplined and secluded undertaking. I don't know if I would ever reproduce the spirit of Ning elsewhere but fluffy things, dotty events, quiet undertakings that appear uneventful to the rest are greatly fulfilling to the twitchy ghoul in me.

    I have a feeling, just a vague feeling, an uncanny feeling that the rest of 2018 will blow my mind away for that next lurking and snickering man is on his way to meet me with his leather-bound encyclopedias and psychoanalytical muses.

    upload_2018-7-21_10-31-25.png
     
    Last edited: Jul 21, 2018
  10. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

    Messages:
    2,430
    Likes Received:
    2,105
    Trophy Points:
    283
    Gender:
    Female
    Ephemeroptera
    (Part - I: The Meet)

    Freya trails the fluttering dragonfly that just swooped on the orchid and stoutly gazes at the fragile insect. Her gaze is disturbed by a nearby ruckus.

    "What are you doing?". She quizzes a man in his 30s wearing grey pants and checkered shirt submerged to his knees in a swamp clumsily holding a bird catching net.

    "Who me? My lady, I am just trying to catch this mayfly." He blinks startled at this woman in her cropped pants and ribbed blouse.

    "Mayfly? With a bird catching net and not an insect catching net."

    "Yes, mayfly. That zealous creature with plastic like wings that takes to skies only for a day in May to mate and die."

    "Don't patronize me. I know what a mayfly is. And mayflies mating in May is outdated because of the Gregorian-Julian calendar slip, in fact, they also mate in June now. And they don't live for a day."

    "Don't they?"

    "They don't. Mayfly has two adult stages, a sub-adult and an adult unlike other flies which transform directly from nymph to adult. Technically, they don't live for a day but they seemingly spend a day as a full adult. There you go."

    "Was your father an entomologist who used to take you around on his travels as a kid?". He cocks his head.

    "No, my dad is woeful scared of insects and birds and locked up even the disinfected and netted windows in the house."

    "So you were that enfant terrible whose curiosity on the forbidden practices drove you to madly chase them."

    "No, I just read about them in books. Even I am very scared of insects and birds like my dad. Your crystal ball isn't too bright. You may want to polish that dud a bit to infer the dark secrets of my family."

    He smiles. "What is a lady like you doing in this swamp?" He eyes her sharply.

    "Watching louts like you catch flies with their slippery maneuvers".

    "By the way this goof is otherwise called Siddhant. And you?"

    "I am Freya."

    "Freya, you must be born in that flashy generation in which parents flamboyantly made up names by adding superfluous letters like that French to Latin restoration dete becomes debt ...were you Reya before Freya? "

    "A depleted generation in which parents used up all the obscure and unpronounceable Indian mythological names, like Arhana and Akrutha, and purloined the neighboring Norse Mythology to name their late-born daughters. Freya is a Norse character! What's with your dhant as in tooth in Siddhant. Were you ever bullied in school as Toothy Kid?"

    "What a character 'Freya' must have been for your insect-terrified father to have selected her for you. Luckily, there were no bullies in school like you to mutilate my swooning name into a dental affliction. Look, I am staying in the cottage. I assume you too are a visitor staying in the nearby cottage. Want to catch up for dinner? You are strangely attractive. Meet me for dinner. We can resume our talk on ephemeral insects who live and die for a day."

    "Ephemeroptera! Those live-and-die creatures are called Ephemeroptera". She throws her head askance.

    "Okay, insect lady, a Ephemeroptera date. Meet me for dinner for a day."

    "What do you intend?. She grins.

    "I intend to flirt with you. Give me a day, a night, to just flirt with you."

    "You will lose."

    "I may be a clumsy insect catcher but not an amateur flirt."

    "As you wish Mister Toothy. I hope you put up a better show in your flirt. Meet me at eight at the Meadows Restaurant."

    "Thank you. I won't be late, and, I won't disappoint in charming you. Shall I walk you to your cottage?"

    Waving her slender hand whilst rebuffing his offer, she turns towards the woods and walks away. He flips his phone and checks his messages. He replies "She found me" to the message "Did you find her in the cottage?".
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2018
    Tamrakshar likes this.

Share This Page