The Pizzazzy

Sometimes we hate them, sometimes we love them but we do have them. I am talking about left over food. As Indians we always respect food and value them primarily because food was never in adundance or cheap. Infact it is believed that if food is wasted, we may not have enough to eat in the next life.

Interestingly even the Chinese believe the same and once me and my Chinese house agent were sitting for hours to finish the hopeless tasting KFC crisps.

As kids we were always taught to respect food and never to refuse any food items. So even though we had our favorites we ate everything from bitter gourd to brinjals. I hated pumpkins but never refused them.

So with all that respect for food the leftovers never went to waste and were repolished in the next meal. Its a great skill to manage the kitchen and specifically manage the left over food. The next great skill is to create something out of these left overs. In Indian kitchens one can always find some left over food nicely stored away in the fridge till the next meal. There are many recipes in Indian cuisines for turning the left over into something really tasty and mouth watering. Paav-Bhaji one such delicious dish made out of left over bhajis and curries, khichdi (a preparation of rice and left over dal) is another one, then we have phodni bhaat (Indian version of fried rice made out of left over rice), even left over chappatis can be efficiently turned into delicious sweet dish by grinding the chappatis with pure ghee and sugar.

Sometimes the left over curries taste better the next day. The taste and the flavour develops better with a night’s rest. Infact mom sometimes kept a part of the fish curries away for the next day deliberately. In Manipur where the climate is colder compared to other parts of the country, the fish curry allowed to stand overnight is a delicacy. With the colder climate the curries settles down into thick curries and the taste.. oohhh mouth watering. Mom recreates the magic using the refridgerator and we all simply love it.

A few times I have wasted food as I forget whats in my fridge. Especially if we have eaten out the previous night. And guiltily I let them go to the waste bin and everytime make a resolution to not repeat this and manage my kitchen in a more efficient way to get more mileage out of it. Its a long way to new year but my resolutions list has already found an item.

When one thinks recycle and reuse the first thing that occurs to you is Water. But reusing goes much further than water. When we were renting the condo we are staying in, we saw that there were quite a few pieces of tiny furnitures. Our landlord told us that you can keep whatever you want and simply leave the others near the security. There’s a guy who takes whatever is useful and disposes off the rest.

I took a look at the furnitures and kept all, basically because they were cute pieces namely two peg tables of very simple design and a green colored small computer table enough to hold my laptop. Now one of the peg table is used for my prayer corner and has our family goddess’ picture on it.

The other peg table is used as simply a peg table in the living room. The green table holds our piggy bank, the cordless and basically acts as a corner to dump bills etc. What I gathered from pur landlord was that this was left by Cathy the previous tenant.

The topic I am driving at is how one person’s trash can be useful for others. The Salvation Army head quartered in London is all about reusability. Donation in kind from individuals and companies are resold in affordable prices and the income is used for supporting Salvation Army’s social and community programmes.

You can find volunteers gathering around specific locations on holidays and collecting the donations. You can donate anything out of your closet or personal book collection or old furnitures. So before thinking disposing or dumping think Salvation Army. With a tagline of Heart to God Hand to Man this is just the concept that we need. Reuse and Recycle.

I believe that if you do not give away the old ones you cannot make room for new ones.

Okay before I sign off there is this interesting news item about how a lady found an abstract canvas painting disposed by someone as trash. This turned out to be lost masterpiece now worth $1 million. The article titled One Person’s trash is Another person’s lost Masterpiece makes really an interesting read.

Yesterday was a busy day in office. In the midst of all the piled up work I got a mail titled VRS (Voluntary Retirement Scheme) from one of my dear friend. The mail nicely declared that she is taking Voluntary retirement much early in her career to spend more time with her teenage daughter.

This created quite a ripple in the quite lives of many of my friends. And our group mail suddenly became active by everyone wishing or wanting to take a early retirement. In fact I had to steer another dear friend from the very idea by reminding her how she wants the best for her kid and how important it is for her to work and be able to provide that. Another friend added that it was important to have a career to have your identity and financial independence and also keeping in mind the inflation it is really neccessary for both the parents to work.

These facts and practicality got everyone on ground from the dreamland of retired life. But to be truly honest I have also nurtured a dream to be free of the work routine and be my own boss like my sister. I don’t think even if we retire we are away from work. After leaving an 8 hours job we would be totally into a 24 hours job for which no one will appreciate us.

We respect homemakers but society does not. But then if not for our moms who were truly homemakers we wouldn’t be where we are. What will it take to have that perfectly balanced life? Even after a hectic day at office you are expected to be there for your family. So, we still work 24 hours but the good part is that for the 8 hours out of these 24 we are paid and appreciated.

I feel the men should be grateful to women that we are so flexible. We are equally proficient at handling home affairs as well as professional life. And if need be we can very smoothly transition from a full time employee to a full time homemaker.  It’s a completely personal decision based on priorities in life and I respect my friend for being able to decide the best for herself and her family.

In all this talk I have to write about the new age husbands who understand the demands of a professional career and are caring and understanding in personal life. They appreciate the achievements and motivate to fight the hurdles. So, slowly we are looking at an age where we might be finally considered equal if not better.

Okay gals, too much of lecturing. Lets get down to business, now that my dear friend has already taken retirement as it was her last working day yesterday and also I have some friends who are full time mommies I did some googling and came up with this interesting retirement-forum. People have shared money matters, hobby ideas and some interesting talk related to retirement. Check it out. Others can look but don’t even think about it.