Prabha Manda's Blog

Delusion, god

admin — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:49:53 +0000

Having just watched a clip of Bill O Idiot, sorry Bill O Reilly, prompted me to write this , though I am running behind on my more needed duties. In this he talks to Richard Dawkins about his new book, but in between says, isn’t God, or myths or what he calls reality constraints on human behaviour, yes they are, they constraint human behaviour by instilling a deep sense of fear in your mind, which is thoroughly impractical. You cannot make a person act well by letting him/her know that a non existent being or non being, also commonly known as God will punish you. Thorough bullshit, if you excuse me, I say.

You wake up in the morning…..

admin — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:42:53 +0000

And you don’t know what to do …so you brush your teeth!, no no, am not writing about Raffi’s kids songs. Just wanted to blog about how today ( just like many other days), one nice south indian filter coffee is not good enough to wake me up, having another and it doesnt’ even taste good ( must be due to y’days decoction). Some days it seems part of you is awake while part of you is somewhere behind still sleeping thereby giving you heavy feeling in the head.
Speaking of coffee, never blogged about Starbucks’ Via – their cold coffee version, I made a close to the Gloria jeans frappuchino version with it. It was pretty good. Not their recipe mind you, it needs other things in it ofcourse.
Well thats about it for the first blog from my ipad 2. Should try blogging more from this, once I master the art of spacing out words, for some reason I seem to miss out on spaces while typing fast on the iPad. Once I get used to it, I might be ready for my next carpal tunnel surgery I think!

Tata, Ciao!

3 year old admonishing mom!

admin — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 01:39:19 +0000

My little one was playing chef and wanted a fork, so I emptied out her bin of vessels and fished out what she wanted. Half an hour later, she says to me , Amma [means mommy], you made a mess, now I have to clean it up!!! Talk about helping out a 3 yr old.

Human vs Animals – Food

admin — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:13:57 +0000

When I read posts, blogs, articles related to people eating meat, its fine, but when they “tom tom” such, it is not only disgusting but prompts my thinking of what stops these people from eating human meat? Mostly people seem to prefer bacon over anything like a topping , crumbled over such and such, blah blah, what is so victorious is killing a pig, slicing it and then making thin slices of it and then crumbling it and pompously saying of it tastes so good, disgusting. Downright yucky. Just read about people roasted a 180 pound bear, this is called humanity?
Seriously people – meat eater you need to think about alternate ways of getting nutrition.

Pumpkin Bread

admin — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 14:36:04 +0000

Its not too terribly interesting but my recent flop with pumpkin muffins makes this an achievement. I have to add a story, when I made the pumpkin muffins, they rose when I checked , but when they were done, they had craters in them!!!, so I called the mini mount mazamas floppins and presented them to my daughter.I told her these are floppins and they are different from muffins in that they have flopped in the middle and are gooier, and, she said yummy and she did eat them. She actually asked for more the day they got over!!! So I then revealed the secret that they were muffins that flopped. The reason they did were, if you saw curious george episodes, was that with baking you have to be precise, with the muffins that I made, I just used my pumpkin puree, leftover cranberry sauce and bisquick, the consistency wasn’t right and of course that resulted in the “floppins”.

Anyway the bread I made is a sweet bread and I made it in the breadmaker. The breadmaker manual has a recipe for Zucchini bread, I substituted pumpkin for zucchini and I didn’t have baking powder so I substituted baking soda + buttermilk for that [some amount of research into that was done before hand], and ground flax for eggs. When I turned it on and the dough was being formed it didn’t look right so I added breadflour and a dollop of butter, so with all these variables the chances of a huge floppin was high, but, thanks to my timely interventions it turned out good.

I have a baking book that I had bought in Borders a while ago and it has good recipes to make tea breads, but I find not so many interesting recipes for tea breads for bread-machines. If someone reading this blog has any, please send me some. I have a ‘flop’py record with sweet breads in bread-machines.

The Southern Illinoisan – Hey get up , you are a newspaper, not a kids school paper.

admin — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 15:47:55 +0000

I have been a resident of Southern Illinois for the past 10 years. I have noticed that somehow Southern makes a big front page thing out of things like “Letters to Santa”, “Rocket Stolen ” [in reference to an old personal property rocket that is up on the Giant City Road]. The actual news like, China’s fast trains, experiments on the Big Bang theory, Recycling never make it to the front page, it is hidden , tucked away somewhere. I don’t need a course in Journalism to say that this paper needs better management/judgement to publish a good paper.

Pulliam Clock tower issue.

admin — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 15:27:05 +0000

This is about yesterday’s post in Facebook by The Southern about “Looks like Southern Illinois University Carbondale won’t be chiming Christmas carols from Pulliam Clock Tower any longer out of concern it may make non-Christians on campus uncomfortable. Sensible move or political correctness run amuck?”

When you read the comments people have passed, you realize how close minded the almost the whole community is. There are a few who think and write, but mostly everyone is constantly endorsing Jesus, God, Christianity. If religion did not give them the power to love and live and accept everything in their stride what exactly are they trying to convey or what are they doing by “following ” their religion ? It just shows how this area in general is. Most of the people I bet haven’t stepped out of this place and have no idea what the world is. I am so very surprised that people can comment and say things like if you don’t like it go back to your country, this is a the bible belt???? I thought USA was a country of immigrants, it proclaims itself to be secular, although I feel 90% of its actions show how Christian it is in its attitude. The only advantage is that I can sit and write a blog like this fearlessly. Wake up people, everyday and every season is there to celebrate, we can rejoice in life every single moment, we don’t have to wait for carols to chime or a particular season to drop in. If people are so concerned about their face, their clothes and want it up to date, how come traditions cannot be up to date? Why does that have to remain the same? Traditions remain or will continue only when they absorb changes, not when there is a struggle to keep it the same old. It again comes to the same old topic of mine, why do people follow religion when it holds them back and is like a harness on them? Why don’t people question their own actions? I end my blog entry with this.

About Fall and Food etc.

admin — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:42:10 +0000

The climate in the place I live is fabulous in the fall. Of course this year there have been days where the temperature has gone above average more than a couple of times. And, as usual, as everyone does, I forget if it happened so much last year. Anyhow, it is funny how I have this idea in my head that fall is associated with cinnamon, pumpkins, pies, pastries, and hot coffee. I am sure it is a new state of mind having living in the US for about 12 years now and of course been brainwashed by the ads, coffee shops and the general atmosphere around that , that is how it should be. In India the summer was associated with warm days , cool evenings, the smell of grass in the parks, fresh bhel in the roadside stalls. There was a time when I worked in Kalyani software which is non-existent right now, we all used to go to the roadside pani puri stall and have a good time eating those. Don’t ever remember having an upset stomach because of that. Anyway speaking of more food, I need to go get ready to get some butter braid pastry that will arrive in my daughter’s school! Though these fundraisers are good for the purpose are the butter braids good for you? They certainly taste good!
Have a good fall – ROFL how does that sound? Have a good fall season, much better eh?
Ciao!

Frontier/Midwest Airlines

admin — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 22:31:49 +0000

Thought I’d write about it before it gets too late. We returned from Seattle yesterday and we flew on Frontier/Midwest Airlines. One of the Air Hosts was joking right from the beginning and because of that the second leg of our journey seemed kind of boring cos the hosts as well as the pilot did only the routine announcements. Some of the jokes he made were, we [the crew] would not mind any appreciation in the form of cash, jewelry, or chocolates but no spouses or children. Another one was we have arrived 15 minutes early so remember the next time you are 10 minutes late on a Frontier flight! The pilot made a bumpy landing so he said, please remain seated while out pilot veers just left to the gate and comes to a screeching halt. One was you can use your seats as a flotation device, just put your arms through and paddle madly to the shore! When he introduced the air hostesses he said, my wife, ex-wife and girlfriend. LOL, I don’t remember any other flight I have laughed so much [partially because I have a glum face thinking about my motion sickness, I hate flying:)]

Concumer Care at McNeil

admin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 02:08:08 +0000

This is to say I am impressed! After the recent recalls of Tylenol and other related products, we dilly dallied doing something about the recalls having other things to do around the house. Last week I finally went on-line to see what I could do to get a refund. I saw a simple form on-line and filled it up – it was pretty simple to fill it up too. I asked my husband about how it could be as simple as filling out a form for the refund and he said they’d maybe call to confirm or something. But I was checking my mail [postal] right now and in the pile of mail that had come a few days ago, there was a check in the mail for the refund for the recalled medicines. This is very fast. I cannot believe that anything can be processed so soon.
Wish government institutions could be as fast in processing important things just as this!