I hope we win.
Can you believe this article? Nobody locally was willing to sponsor them??!
It’s horrendous.

Or maybe quite believable. I wasn’t paying much attention and didn’t know we were playing until I woke up one morning and mom and dad were like look we’re playing. If you know me, when I wake up, I’m not quite lucid (very far from it) so I was a bit shocked. (Of course dad knew long time…and claims he told mom who forgot).

Anywayz…Happy Divali to all celebrating.
I’m sure I heard something fall on my roof! ;-)

You know you’re really desperate for a new computer when the ones at PriceSmart are starting to look good.
Talk about instant gratification.

My powerbook isn’t quite dead yeat but it has vertical red lines running through it from start-up and then when (if) it loads the GUI there’s a box of vertical hashes following the mouse pointer along and when (if) it loads the console lots of the output is fuzzy.

Sometime during start-up it halts for five minutes and then recommences. I checked the dmesg (I think that’s what I check) and I think that’s just before or just after it starts doing things to the graphics card/video adapter (I forget precisely). And then 5 minutes later it continues in the log. I figure if it’s the graphics adapter and not say the display or whatever then it’s toast regardless.

I really need a new computer.
Now.
But I wasn’t ready for my powerbook to die.
*sob*

*sigh*

Well, I’ve never even made puffs before.

I burnt 1/4.

Furthermore, next time, we only make one of the recipe, maybe twice…five? you got to be kidding me.

On a happy note, mom’s layered chicken biryani tasted great. Usually chicken biryani is…well…you know so-so…okay…but can’t compete with lamb, goat or maybe even beef…
This chicken biryani tasted just as good so yay!

And as to the rest of the menu, we’re going by my cousin/aunt etc probably with our hands swinging because the non-burned gougères are going to the masjid…

Why didn’t I just bake a cake??
*sniffle*
Would’ve been less stress and less wares too.
Why oh why.
I guess it wouldn’t be ‘Id if I didn’t overdo it in some small way.

And, on that note,

‘Id Mubarak!!!!!!

26 out of 29 … way better than last year!

Someone was coming to help mom make “traditional” sweets (eg barfi, gulab jamoon, kurma, rasgullah, laddoo, halwah etc) this year. Initially our plan was one traditional, one fried thing, one other sweet and one savoury.

When a villager volunteered to come help, I enthusiastically said yes (because I know, as much as mom always says yes we’ll make rasgullah this year…it’ll never happen…it’s been delayed once again…) This meant mom wouldn’t feel obligated to make some of them and then she can make one fry thing and I can make one sweet thing.

But of course, things being as they are, mom was too tired for us to have them over.

But they made it at home anyway and brought it to us. Yay!

I am very grateful.

Granted, it’s not my mother’s recipe but who cares. We have Eid sweets!!!

They brought us kurma, gulab jamoon and coconut barfi.
Mom may or may not make accra on ‘Id day. I told her we’re bound to get at least one taste of something fried at the masjid so she doesn’t have to. She can make it the next day or during the week. Or I could try?
I’m going to make gougères (like 4 or 5 times the recipe and carry some to othe masjid).

I had dreams of making mamoul (date stuffed pastries) or a date cake or almond crescent biscuits and even a nice semi-frozen lime chiffon pie. I will make these things…just later…(like when we make rasgullah…you know).

For food, we’re making kibbe and chicken biryani and purple and white coleslaw.

I wonder if I should bother try to convince mom to just let me make lasagne instead of kibbe because you know who makes the kibbe and the biryani. At least I can make the lasagne ALL BY MYSELF!

What else would I like?

Accra.

And my sisters have many menus planned for different guests. One is stew chicken, fry rice, macaroni pie, potato salad…and for some reason I feel like drooling.

And who knows *when* ‘Id is. Sunday or Monday? Monday is the public holiday…if Sunday is ‘Id we will make accra on Monday. If Monday is ‘Id when will we make the chicken biryani? Saturday or Sunday? We like to make it the day before so we have something special to eat that last day. Maybe I can make the lasagne on Saturday?

*sigh*

Well, at least I have something to wear…I didn’t go crazy shopping during Hajj but I did get some stuff.

PS I have this dream of making blueberry pancakes on Eid morning before we go to the masjid. What time would I have to wake up for that???!!

Ramadan started last night with the sighting of the moon and then the first Tarawih.

And thus today is the first day of fasting. I’m hoping this year, Insha Allah I can fast the whole month (or almost). We didn’t even discuss paying < a href="http://lilandra.com/blog/archives/2008/09/03/ramadan-2-suhur/">fidiya for me this year and so I am cautiously optimistic!

So I went downstairs tonight and had need of an egg. There are a couple eggs in the fridge that have little cracks in it so I took one of those out and figured I’d see if it was okay.

I cracked it open and it was kinda…
Well have you ever seen a frozen raw egg? Or a semi-frozen egg? you know like when the water bottle in the fridge has shards of ice floating in it. Well the yolk was like soft-frozen and the white was shard-y.

We keep lowering the fridge temperature but still we have frozen water and stuff. The freezer…hmmm…I am sometimes concerned about. I almost wonder if the motherboard got reverse hooked up.

Or…contrary to what my mother always claims, that having my brother and family home and us always opening the fridge makes the stuff in it not stay cold…we don’t open the fridge alot and stare.

But somehow…we cook, we buy food and we eat and we can’t find room in the fridge. Aside from it being one of those stupid fridge and freezer side by side models, somehow the food we make just doesn’t go away.

And silly me, when Chennette came for the weekend a week or so ago, on an EARLY MORNING flight, I offered to make fry aloo. Offered?? She insisted that we make breakfast for her and said I could make fry aloo (I kept offering to make it for her when I was in Guyana). So I dragged myself off the bed a bit early but late that morning and scrubbed and sliced and soaked the potatoes and made fry aloo. I couldn’t find either of the woks and decided the non-stick fry pans were too small and used the deeper one…which meant all the dark bits stuck to the bottom and it didn’t come out quite right but it taste like it should.

And you know what?
SHE DIDN’T EVEN EAT IT!
She didn’t even make the sada roti for it.
I have never made roti and my sister-in-law said her sada roti doesn’t come out so good so the agreement was I make the fry aloo and she whips up some roti. She didn’t make any the whole long weekend she was by us.

So this container of fry aloo has been sitting in the extra cold fridge for some time. I ate some when my sister-in-law brought some food from her mom and she had a piece of roti left.

Anyway a day or so ago I was like I could just mash it and make aloo pie. Then I was like NO! I’m not going to slave over a pot frying pies until kingdom come. Bake them. Make crust. And this was late at night by the way and I remembered we had two sets of pastry dough sitting in the freezer from before I went to Guyana, one was mom’s (short crust for similar potato pies) and the other mine for an apple pie (butter butter). Of course I found the butter one and stashed it in the fridge to soften.

And the next day, I microwaved the fry aloo, added geera (cumin, toasted, ground) and black pepper, mashed and rolled dough and made pies and baked them.

And you know what?
They tasted REALLY GOOD!
And now a day after the pies are done and there is one less container in the fridge.

Now…if only I could figure out where the cake flour is hiding…

That is all I have to say.

Yes. I know you know what I mean.
Shameful, huh?