Quick Corn Chaat-- and Legos are for all

This post is going to be about a quick and easy Corn Chaat for you to serve as a side with all the  barbecuing you might be doing, but more importantly about Legos and my rant. So, bear with me.

A few weeks back I was at LS's school(kindergarten) for some show that they had put up. As expected there were other Moms there, most of whom I had never met, and pleasantries were exchanged.

In lieu of these conversations a mother of a little boy asked me, "Does LS play with Legos?". Her voice bordered just that little bit on curiosity and disbelief.

I was a little taken aback by the question. A big box of Lego is very much a part of our play room. It has been so for years now, since Big Sis was born. Many years ago, my previous workplace was donating boxes of basic Lego bricks after a lego competition and I had lugged a huge box home anticipating a future where I would not have to buy any other toys, because of course there were Legos. These were the basic Lego bricks, in red, blue, green, yellow and white, all the exact same size.

When BigSis was around two, I bought her another Lego box, this one too just had the bricks but they were at least in various sizes. And since this huge pile of Lego takes a prime spot in the playroom, it was only natural that LS got introduced to it.

So, I wasn't really sure what this lady wanted to know and I said, "Yes, LS does play with Legos. But she plays all kinds of things with them".

Which is in fact true. LS uses Legos to make food for her kitchen, she uses them to make cake, to make cell phones and even wrapped cereal bars !!! She even devises complex games, like shown above where one player has to throw legos down a chute and the other has to guess the color, to play with them.

Chhanar Dalna | Chanar Dalna -- Bengali Cottage cheese cubes in gravy

Chhanar Dalna | Chanar Dalna -- Bengali Cottage cheese cubes in gravy

Chanar Dalna a Bengali delicacy | Chhanar Dalna

Chanar Dalna or Bengali Paneer Curry is usually made with homemade chhana/paneer in a light sweetish curry with potatoes and spiced lightly with garam masala.

Summer vacation starts today in my part of the world. More than two months of long, languorous, warm days stretch ahead. Last week Big Sis's school had a small ceremony marking their moving up to sixth grade which is middle school. She and her friends were pretty upset to bid good bye to their teacher and there were much tears and hugging. Come September we will be adjusting to a whole different school routine, attitude and hormones. Little Sis also moves to first grade and there will be another school and routine for her too. Hopefully no hormones there. But we will think of all that later. For now, we will only think of long lazy days.

I love summer vacations, even when they are not mine and my daughters'.

Now, as I have said many times, BigSis loves Paneer. This is probably the one thing in food, toward which her loyalty has not wavered over the years. Paneer in Chanar/Chhanar Dalna , Butter Paneer or Palak Paneer. She loves them all.

Bengali Chhanar Dalna

In most other case, her food choices have changed, taking its own shape, gently molding the menu I try to set. While as a child she used to love her "Chicken Jholu Bhatu" these days she does her best to avoid all kinds of meat. She is no longer fond of fish and eats egg just to get by. I have no idea where she gets here vegetarian traits from but her love for aloo posto, tauk er dal and kadhi sure comes from me. And yes, her love for Paneer is an almost exact replica of my love for Chhanar Dalna.

Chhanar Dalna and Posto would be a staple in our home on Fridays. It would also pop up twice or sometimes thrice in the course of the week but if it was Friday then it was almost sure that Chhanar Dalna was on the menu. There was a reason behind this. On Fridays, my Mother kept a fast and therefore did not cook any meat or fish on that day. For some reason unknown to me, she felt that one day of not having any protein would render us weak and feeble. Trust me, there was not a sign in my health to make her believe such. But she steadfastly did. And according to Bengalis that protein can never ever come from a "dal" or lentils.

So, my Mother made Chhana. Dilligently. Week after week. She boiled whole milk and squeezed lime juice in it until the milk had a rent and tore apart to form blobs of white cotton like milk solids suspended in a greenish whey. She then drained the whey out on a piece of starched white cloth, usually cut from one of one of her old saris and washed and dried to act as a cheesecloth. That paneer or chhana then rested under the weight of our black stone nora until all the water was squeezed out.

Chocolate Lava Cake -- for Father's Day

Yesterday, Big Sis made Chocolate Lava Cake. For Father's Day. LS was supposed to help her make it but she didn't. The day before she had done the grocery run with me getting the supplies so probably she felt she had done her part.

Thankfully, though it was Daddy's Day, BS made four lava cakes, one for each of us.

I wouldn't have helped her otherwise.I love cakes with soft gooey chocolate-y centers.

And if I had not helped her, those Lava cakes would have been perfect. But then who is perfect ? Not me atleast.

In my usual "not-glancing-at-inconsequential-details" nature I put the oven temperature at the regular temp for all cakes. Only when the cakes looked ah-well a little under-cooked did we realize that Lava Cakes require a higher temperature of around 425F. That helps to cook the exterior fast while the inside is still soft and gooey. Yeah, basic science.

So, anyway we raised the oven temp and let the cakes bake for few minutes more. This time they came out perfect. Almost. I mean they would have had a more gooey center had I not acted "oven-temp-know-all" in the first place.