Dollar is not everything!

Dear Mr.cheeniya,
Enjoyed reading your dosa experience which took me back to my days as a new bride,if you can call a young woman married for two years as a new bride.Ok,we were living in Hubli.My DH had told me that his boss’s son,boss was an American,ate nealy 16 masala dosas ,when they went to a restaurant.Iam telling the truth.That boy had a great liking for masal dosas I believe.

My dh invited some friends,including his boss and his son for dinner and asked me if I would be able to make masala dosas for them.I did not even bat an eyelid and said,’yes’ desire to impress the dh.Those days there was no electronic wet grinder at home and no fridge as well.I ground dosai atta plenty of it.Made masala for stuffing.My neighbour,an elderly lady offered to help me make dosas that evening.Well we were waiting for the gusts to arrive,but I gt a phone call from my dh saying that his boss and the group had arrived in Hubli,they were driving down from Goa,but they were too tired to change and come to our house.You can imagine how I must have felt.I told my dh,”Well,tomorrow you will have dosa for breakfast,lunch and dinner as well understand?”

He said,”Oh dear,tomorrow early morning I am driving down with them to Belgaum.Sorry,may be some other time,you can punish me like that.”


The next dosa experience of mine happened in Ethiopia,where I stayed with my husband for six months.A friend of my husband Mr.Gangwani and my husband were involved in getting ready a project report for the world bank.Gangwani loves , south Indian food and snacks and he would join us for lunch and tea time very often.One day ,the phone in our villa rang,I took the phone and said ,”hello”
Gangwani was on the line and he asked me,”Mythili,what snack are you going to make this evening?”

I said,”Shyam,Iam going to make rava dosa.”That’s all.It rained in the evening,but Gangwani who lived in the next street,drove down to our house,stopped the car outside,and having folded the down portion of his pants,he walked,jumping over the puddles of water,holding an umbrella in one hand.He came straight to the kitchen,sat very close to the cooking platform and said,”Please,Mythili,if the atta you have made is not sufficient for both lakshmi and me ,give him only toasts,ok?”So saying he demolished some seven or eight dosas with sambhar,curd,sugar and chutney powder as side dishes.This incident remains still green in my memory.


When I go to a restaurant with my dh what do we do?My husband studies the menu card and like you, he also peeps into other people’s plates to see what they are eating,but ultimately he orders only rava dosa.He eats rava dosas with the expression that says that God sent him down, with the specific purpose of eating rava dosa.

I?I know what I want.I don’t look here or there.It is always masala dosa for me.
Well,to each his own dosa!

love
mithila

 

Dear Sri,

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Go home and eat is it ? Good option.:rotfl

There is a south indian outlet here, of the olden times, u can see it has seen better days, a place where u can sit for hours with one cup of coffee.The place is called India Coffee House, a chain actally.

they have ione item i like, called Keema Dosa, keema means mutton.Swear i have not eat a keema dosa anywhere else. And also mutton cutlets, where u have to search for the mutton, but for the price not bad.

And one place in mumbai, they had dosas of a hundred varieties. like the Fruit dosa as u said, and gobi dosa, paneer dosa etc.it is just the veggie put inside the normal dosa, of curse the price not being normal.

In Spain, i had another problem.Went to a bar, and they had these small grills of many nonveg items, so i ordered one each, by sign language, and it was delcious, and i put the big note infront of him, and he returned the change, which i could not count.

But he never told me, Go to india and eat.:biglaugh

Good one Sri.Regards

kamal

 

Pranams Cheeniyaji,

A lovely post that I saw today. I had decided that today I will not go to my regular sections Snippets and Poems but read the other good things in IL. Because even in the gaming zone, some partners are not available and hence landed here.

Oh! Dosas are a favourite at home too. My DD says she would :bowdown any number of time s to the person who invented the Dosa!! Such has been her craze for Dosas even from the time she was a kid. During her earlier school days, unlike us, since children don't like to carry rice for their lunch boxes, only the idlis and dosas (probably staple food at homes!) came to rescue till the time they grew up to get a liking to phulkas.

So to induce her to have sufficient no. i used to make dosas in different forms - rabbit, apple, sometimes her name SUDHA and my son's HARISH, some stars, sun, moon and the like. And she used to happily show me empty boxes. To lure her into completing her lunch, I adopted this technique.

Probably that has left an impact or what I do not know, she is completing 18 next month. Still her passion for dosas has not subsided. As if making of dosas is a herculean task, whenever I serve her crispy dosas with a dash of ghee spread, sambar and chutney, she literally kisses me and says ` Amma nee dheivam ma"! I used to think oh! why is she like this. What is there in dosa. (She repeats these when I give her super soft phulkas with paneer subzi too). Later on I understood that just to avoid eating rice at night, she used these tricks with me!!!! (She can have rice only once during the day and not like olden times when for lunch and dinner we used to have rice, rice and only rice!!!)

Thanks for the opportunity to write on dosas!

 

A great piece Sri! The waiter really told you that or are you lying?

Of course, I being a dosa lover, I tend to believe that you have lied. My only problem is that, whenever I am in Chennai, I try to eat my dosa at Woodlands alone. It used to be the closest to Heaven joint that I had ever been transported to. Till last time, when my son's father in law screamed at me over the phone from Delhi that I ought to have kept him informed that I would be in Chennai. When I wanted to know why, he told me that he would arrange for me to eat in a good restaurant. May be he said restaurants and not A restaurant. I told him about Woodlands, but he was not listening. His sister met us in Woodlands the very next day where we had a delicious lunch, but given the brief from headquarters that she was carrying, her son and she took us away to yet another place for dinner. It was called something. Recall your "it"! I think the name started with an "SH", but can't be sure. Located somewhere near T-Nagar. Anyway, the food there was super from the point of view of the uninitiated at least. And the coffee was out of the world, assuming that ET's enjoy their coffee as much as you do in Chennai.

(Incidentally, I was much impressed by Ms. Nagalakshmi, the sister described above, when she visited my home a few months ago. She wouldn't enter my study without taking her chappals off!! This is where Saraswati resides, she told us, so no shoes allowed. Her approach made me feel somewhat guilty you know, since I do wear my slippers even in the Saraswati room. Since I spend almost the entire day in this room, I would have to give up wearing slippers altogether, or shoes for that matter, if her example had to be followed!)

Love they say is blind. What wouldn't you give up for the sake of love? Friendship, enmity, hobbies or, as your neighbour in the restaurant pointed out, even dollars probably? Well, the dollar bit doesn't apply to either you or me I guess. We never displayed too much inclination in that direction.

Dollar's not everything! Sure enough. But, assuming my love theory is correct, what is the nature of love that would make you renounce the rest of the universe? Love for a woman? Oh come on. Women are mortal, they grow old, lose their teeth and hair. This will happen to Kamalji's lady with the ipod too someday. Both of you are far too clever to lose yourselves for the sake of women.

But then Analtole is another question altogether. Amongst the many dishes his fame had spread far and wide for, one was called Ris de veau à la financière. Google tells me the following: Sweetbreads or ris are culinary namesfor the thymus (throat sweetbread) and the pancreas (heart or stomach sweetbread), especially of the calf (ris de veau) and lamb (ris d'agneau) (although beef and pork sweetbreads are also eaten)!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I imagine you are as much in love with Anatole as Bertie ever was. He kept us informed about the endlessly many battles of wits Jeeves had to engage in simply to ensure that Analtole remained confined to Bertie's chosen sub-forum, viz. Mrs. Dahlia Travers' kitchen. Of course, he had an earlier stint with Mrs. Bingo Little as you are doubtlessly aware. But Anatole is best identified with Aunt Dahlia.

My peripatetic mind has already started wondering you know. Although I have never been exposed to Anatole's culinary skills except in the world of my foolish imagination, I think I love him with no less an intensity than Bertie's. However, which way would YOUR love travel if you were to be ACTUALLY invited for dinner at Aunt Dahlia's table? I mean would you really be moved enough to partake of the mouth watering Ris de veau à la financière à la Anatole? Or will you cause him an ego problem by leaving the table? He was (is?) very touchy, remember? In my eyes at least, unlike women, he is immortal. You might even agree, who knows!

May be, just may be, you wouldn't disappoint Anatole after all, if he were to serve his delicacies at your Snippets forum. You might even have done everything within your power to steal him away from Aunt Dahlia and convert yourself to a non-veggie. Wrong? Right? Garbage?

And that leads me to yet another thought. It gives me cold feet to tell you frankly. What would have happened to Wodehouse himself vis-a-vis Cheeniya the Master, if the former were to start writing after Snippets came into existence? Would you make Wodehouse suffer from unrequieted love? I suspect alas that that's exactly what you would have done. Thank God though that Wodehouse produced his complete works before you built your nest in IL. Thank God indeed, for unlike Anatole, Wodehouse the man, not the name surely, succumbed when faced mortality questions.

And that brings me back to the waiter. You know what he meant by the word "home" don't you, when he helped you out with his advice?

Best wishes for your love, not to speak of you yourself.

Regards.

oj

 

Dear Cheeniya Sir,

When I saw the title I was quite unprepared for the content - Dosai!

I wasn't a great fan of the dosai till I got married and discovered that the way to get to everyone's heart ( husband, FIL, MIL, friends & children's friends included ) was through the dosai! There is always the batter in the fridge to make every kind.

Soft fat ones with chutney for FIL, crisp almost like appalam for MIL, just right for DH and then the phone rings,"Amma 6 of my friends are coming over from the hostel to watch football. Can they have dosai? Please don't say no" Even though it is like feed time in the zoo I dont refuse - you know why. Because they say" Fabulous dosas aunty. Best we have had" Well it happens everytime! It feels good to hear it even if it isn't really true.

Any wonder why I too have become a fan of the dosa.

Regards,
Usha.

PS . Just curiosity - what did you do when the waiter told you to go home and eat? Did you?