Breakfast

'Doing' a good breakfast is tough when you start college, and most adults still don't 'do' breakfast well into their 30s and 40s. After I moved out of Thurston, though (and into Ivory), I finally made it a point to eat breakfast every morning. Breakfast really gets your brain up in the morning and you really shouldn't do without it.

This might be a little strange, but growing up, I always looked forward to breakfast. It's the one meal my family would sit down for before going to work or school. Usually we'd come home too late for dinner together.

I'm not much of a picky eater, so I didn't mind having the same thing every morning (cereal, oatmeal, tofu), but sometimes when my mom was feeling generous, she would make me a cup of traditional Filipino (Spanish?) hot chocolate.


This stuff is not for the faint of heart. It's pure chocolate tablets mixed in boiling water. The chocolate isn't even sweet. Tough stuff that really got me awake in the morning (no joe for me) and kept my sweet tooth in line all day.

Coming to college really made me miss my cereal and hot chocolate, so I make it a point to always have some chocolate tablets and evaporated milk in my pantry.

Carol Says ,,,

Washington DC is an amazing city. I am touched by so many museums around. I am so immersing into the environment of culture and politics. Here, I had many first experience, like eating cupcakes, kayaking in Potomac river, watching fireworks, and visiting White House. For anyone who comes here soon, you never lose interests to the city.

Howtogetmarried.com

Well the title of the blog itself gives me goose bumps, as you read through it probably you feel those goose & geese bumps as well.

Let me start with a small story.
Jeet grew up with four friends, they woke up together, ate together, studied together and to end it all played cricket together and they are:
1) Vibhav Natu : Married ( Love Marriage) : Initially was opposed by the family but they relented and accepted it.
2) Kapil Panchal (Arranged Marriage) : I couldn't believe that any girl would say yes to this bugger(British slang), but he is getting married this November ( It will be live on skype for me to witness)
3) Kedar Nivate (Arranged Marriage): We decided to get married on the same stage, but social pressure is driving him nuts and he can't wait for me. ( I am writing this blog mainly because of this guy)
4) Jeet : ......................

Story End :) Happy Ending, except for the fact that the ending is blank with out me jumping into the so called matrimonial phase.

Well i remember my first days in US, my friends concern about my love life (guys do talk about love life) decided to hook me up with some females. Michelle & Jerry being my love gurus started doing my so called counselling. Disappointed by my speed they gave up, but i had to tell them that my wishes of marrying a girl of my choice would never be approved at all.

At this stage they were heartbroken like literally heartbroken. The super woman Michelle then asked me "Jeet, will you ever get married" and then i took my laptop out and smiled.

This is what i told them, and you can try doing it in your laptop as well, follow the steps listed so that this is interactive. This is the way literally thousands of Indians are getting married now a days and this thing really works. There are a whole lot of services and money being made by these sites by bringing together the working class Indians who don't have time for dating or who can not date due to family pressures.

Stage 1
The example today we are going to discuss is about your friend Jeet and this is how you are going to help him find a bride. Feel free to browse through other options if you like

1) Go to http://www.tamilmatrimony.com/
Notice the words TAMIL in the website, it is a language spoken in southern India, since there are 30 other languages there are 30 other sites. We are not going to bother about it. Being specific helps to narrow down the search results.

2) The second tab, is the search tab (home tab is on the left and register tab is on the right of it). Move your mouse over to search and select regular search.

3) Fill in the following information in the search page
     Select gender : Female
    Age : 23 to 27 ( acceptable age difference)
    Height: 5ft  to 5ft 9
    Martial Status: Unmarried
    Religion : Hindu
    Mother Tongue : By default it would be "Tamil" other wise chose the Tamil
    Caste: Add
    Country : For now lets keep it USA and then we can change to India later.
    Education : Bachelors Engineering / Computers & Masters Engineering /Computers
    Show Profile : With photos

Now click on Search, the result will show one female i guess ( that is what it showed me, and remember we clicked the country as united states if we would have changed the country to india there would have been more search results). Click on her and go through her profile. Everything about her is listed here, what she likes and what she dislikes and also what kind of person they are expecting for her. (Notice that the profile is being created by her parents and not her, screws me up even more because i don't know if my parents have created my profile)

All parents in India would spend some time of their busy life online on sites like this ( and not facebook).

Stage 2 : 
Once they think, that the girl satisfies their requirements, they would contact her parents and get her Horoscope. ( Horoscope are really really really important). The horoscope of the girl and the boy is read at the same time by a savant and he/she determines if they stars and the planets will protect the holy matrimonial.

Stage 3: 
The parents will break the news that they have found a girl and vice versa with her family. They will exchange pictures and ask for their advice ( since now a days everyone is educated). During the initial days in India the girl and boy never use to see each other before marriage, right at the moment when they are getting married they will see each other on the podium. Then it progressed to speed dating when the boy will go the girl house to meet her and get like 10 mins to decide if they want to get married or not. But thanks to Gtalk, Skype & Facebook the girl and the boy chat before they decide to meet up.

Step 4:
A background check is done on the family on both sides, its like the FBI thingy in depth information is collected on the side lines of the chat. This is a very important stage as well

Step 5: 
The boy's family will  ask for dowry ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowry). The boy literally becomes a millionaire right after marriage. Assuming that i am in US my dowry rates would be high as well. ( This is like bullsh%$ which i don't believe in but i say "I don't want it", they will think that "May be the boy is impotent, which is why out of desperation his family wants to marry him off"

Step 6: 
Get married, have kids in the first year(again social pressure) and have a happy life ahead.



The purpose of this blog was to show the complications involved in a marriage and yet the system which kind of works. Kapil's marriage is arranged and so is Kedar, he met his girl through a similar website.

I fear that if i go back to India they will start fixing me up with someone. ( One of the reasons to do my graduation was to escape home and avoid falling in the trap of marriage). The typical age for a guy to get married is 25 and for a girl is 23.

Well now that you know how to do it, find me someone. :) :) :) (blondes accepted)

P.S: While majority marriages are still arranged in India many do get married outside their caste, against their family wishes and are being accepted in the society. ( ray of hope for me :) )

    

Cuppa Joe

I'm one of those who "don't do" breakfast, at least not until I have been awake for a while. I'm just not ready to eat first thing in the morning and nothing is particularly appetizing. As a child I struggled in my family of breakfast eaters. I never liked traditional breakfast foods. Eggs, sausage and bacon are right out. I don't like really sweet things. Donuts, even plain cake donuts, and sweet pastries make my stomach cringe. I don't know how people can eat those things. I can't even stand the overly sweet smell. I shied away from pancakes, waffles and frech toast, because they were always served with syrup. It took a while before I realized I didn't have to have the syrup. Yes, I guess I was a little slow on the draw.

This of course distressed my mother, so she tried to feed me leftovers for breakfast


or make things like cheese toast. I really hated cheese toast, which perplexed her, because I love cheese and bread, but the slice of white bread with a slice of American cheese broiled for minute until the "cheese" melted was, quite frankly, icky.

When we moved to Germany I was introduced to a different tradition of breakfast. At home we still had a lot of the same things, although we had the benefit of having a bakery around the corner from us, which had the best breads.

We traveled a lot and I came to like the breakfasts that we were served in the hotels, except the eggs.

My preferred mornings now involve coffee

followed by some yogurt, fruit and nuts, but not until I've been up for a few hours, thank you!

~Kelly

My breakfast story

I never understood those people who say that they don’t “do” breakfast. After reading Kelly’s post, you wonder how it would be possible to pass up on those delicious American dishes. If you can’t tell, I LOVE breakfast. In fact, I love breakfast so much that I often have “breakfast-dinner,” which is the opposite of “dinner-breakfast.” While some people may heat up leftover pizza from the night before to start their day, I prolong breakfast into the evening. Pancakes at 7 am? Yes! Omelets or French toast at 7 pm? Of course! I’m a breakfast-food girl.

My fondest breakfast memories trace back to both of my grandfathers. My Mom’s dad would take my sister and me out for breakfast on Sunday mornings when we were little. Being a good Pennsylvania man, he always ordered 2 sides of scrapple. For an official description of what exactly constitutes scrapple, you can read Kelly’s post below. I for one prefer my Papa’s description. He told me that scrapple is made by the butcher, who takes all of the leftover bits that have fallen out of various animals, mashes them together, and then sells it to a restaurant, which fries it up in butter and oil and serves it to old men with few tastebuds. He would then do a little dance while he popped the scrapple in his mouth.

Needless to say, I never once sampled the scrapple off of his plate, although I loved our morning breakfast tradition.

Breakfast with my other grandfather was a completely different experience. He makes the best pancakes in the world. It’s a family recipe, and is so involved that step one of the pancake batter has to be started the night before. Now, my Dad makes the “Grandad Pancakes” on holidays, but the smell of them still reminds me of waking up at my grandparents house in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I would tell you the secret ingredients, but I was only recently entrusted with them, and I’m just not sure how secure this internet connection is J

I would like to close with a (breakfast) song. I take no credit for this…it was one of the tracks on our Raffi “kids sing-a-long” tape that played on repeat when I was a wee thing:

“Breakfast is great, it’s yummy in my tummy I can’t wait. There’s cereal, french toast, eggs and ham, pancakes and bacon, bagels and jam! I wish it were morning so I could seeeeeeeeeeeee breakfast for me!” (sung in a round) 

 --Sarah

America's Breakfast Buffet

Good Morning ISA's!

Since no one has touched on the American breakfast yet, I thought I'd give a brief overview. That way, if anyone wants to go into further detail about a specific breakfast option (hint hint, nudge nudge), that wonderful ISA is free to do so.

So, I come from Pennsylvania, the home of scrapple, which Wikipedia describes as "traditionally a mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and flour, often buckwheat flour, and spices. The mush is formed into a semi-solid congealed loaf, and slices of the scrapple are then panfried before serving."

But that's not what I want to talk about today.

In America, there are a lot of “classic” breakfast foods. If you go to any diner, you can probably find these “hearty” breakfast options:

French Toast

Belgian Waffles

Pancakes (or flapjacks, as some places call them)

Eggs (omelets, scrambled, over-easy, boiled, etc), usually with some sort of bacon or sausage, and starch/carbohydrate on the side.

Muffins / donuts / breakfast pastries

With most of these options, Maple syrup is a must. That sweet, sugary glaze can be used to top the fluffy dough of the pancakes or add sweetness to the salty crunch of bacon.

Pancakes or Waffles also often come with a dollop of whipped cream and maybe some sliced fruit.

To be honest, my family usually only made big breakfasts on special occasions. Sundays we'd often buy donuts or make cinnabons.

Christmas would be sausage-gravy and biscuits, French-toast casserole, lemon poppy seed bread, mini blueberry muffins, and fruit. Easter was often omelets my dad made to order. When we were younger, we’d often do "breakfast for dinner," and kids don’t complain about chocolate chip pancakes, no matter what time they’re eaten.Otherwise, on a normal morning, a “sit-down” breakfast was cereal, granola, oatmeal or a cup of Greek yogurt.The mornings of my eight-hour soccer practices, it was a bagel with peanut butter. My senior year of high school, I started my day with a chunk of Challah bread that I would dip into some Aztec Hot Chocolate (Spicy hot chocolate).

When I don’t have time to sit and eat, I usually take a breakfast bar or an instant smoothie to go. Even in college, freshman year breakfasts were often Starbucks Vivanno’s or Freshens Acai smoothies that I could take to class.

What I’m trying to say is, American breakfasts are quite varied, as I am sure breakfasts in most other countries are. We have the traditional breakfasts, and the fast food breakfasts (I recall the days of Sausage, egg, and cheese McMuffins), the on-the-go breakfasts, and the leftover dinner breakfasts (cold pizza, anyone?).

And, despite all the options and variations, there are certain foods that, no matter what time you eat them or how you prepare them, will always be considered “Breakfast.”

-Kelly M.

Jeet's Break the Fast : Kuli Paniyaram

Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India. Its covered by the Bay of Bengal in the east and the Indian ocean in the south. Errr, wait don’t I belong to city of Mumbai. Mumbai is in Maharashtra not Tamil Nadu.So in general when people from Tamil Nadu ask me, where are you from I say Mumbai and people of Mumbai ask me where am I from; I say Trichy in Tamil Nadu. A confused citizen :)

How does geography matter? Well the people of Tamil Nadu speak Tamil which is no way related to Marathi, the state language of Maharashtra but within Mumbai due to the conflux of so many citizens from various part of the country, they have their own slang “The Mumbaieah Bhashaa”. Bhashaa in Hindi means language. So you might ask why doesn’t everyone speak one language - the national language Hindi and that is where political compulsions set in. But the only thing that would always remain untouched & unopposed by politics is FOOD. But then...geography can dictate food. 

My Mom,hmmm.. I miss her. She has magic in her hands,..!!! She can cook North Indian, Mahrashtrian & South Indian Food and she knows how to make the delicious Chaat. Well that did make her popular amongst my friends who used to come home under the pretext of meeting me during lunch and dinner hours and end up on the table eating my food…!

Well I assumed my Mom knows everything until my uncle got married and my aunt arrived in our family, she introduced me to my all-time favorite food. “The Kuli Paniyaram” . Kuli in Tamil means Hole and Paniyaram means Food I guess. So that makes it “Hole-Food” J
Or it is the food that is made inside a container which has Holes in them. J

So the container looks like this and mostly it is placed on top of a cooking range.

                                                    

                                            

The ingredients are simple fermented rice batter, onions, chilies, coriander leaves, mustard seeds, split Bengal grams, split black grams and then off course lots of love…! J

The Kuli Paniyaram looks like this when complete

Yummy..!! Isn’t it..??!!

That greenish thing is known as chutney and is made of coconut and green chilies, coconuts are white but the more the chilies the more green they turn out to be, even for an Indian this might be hot, considering some even add  ginger in them to increase their spiciness.

But it’s not for the coconut chutney that I crave for. She knew how to make onion chutney which made me go gaga over her culinary skills. It’s also because no one in my family ever tried making it.

                                                 

                  So my typical breakfast in Tamil Nadu is always Kuli Paniyaram with Onion chutney. J

Wow..!! All this has already made me hungry again..!

Recipes J

Kuli Paniyaram

http://www.samai.in/recipes/breakfast/kuli-paniyaram-idly-batter-kuzhi-paniyaram-spicy-pancake-puff-unniappam

Onion Chutney

http://www.nandinisfood.com/2011/03/onion-chutney.html

Various types of Chutney’s

http://ammumohan.blogspot.com/2011/03/chutneys-roud-up.html

Healthy Breakfast with Boiled Fish Rice :)

              'Boiled fish rice' is one of my favorite breakfasts when I was in Bangkok, Thailand. My mom cooked it for me in the morning, and the smell was so good :) To start with boiled chicken or pork broth and then put the cooked Jasmine rice and stir until it looks softer. We can choose fish, chicken, pork, shrimp, or mushroom which one that you like and add 'Protein' to our breakfast. Next, we will season with sugar, salt, and soy sauce. Finally, we decorate with rendered garlic, Thai parsley, and white pepper. ENJOY!

Kicking off July ...

Hello again!

How are we all doing today?

Have we all recovered from the shock of Tasha’s departure?

No? Me neither. … But, as they say: you don’t get over it, but you get through it.

And for me, the World Cup has helped.

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I love Soccer. Or football, as most people call it.

I love the fitness and the skill.

Hope Solo (The US Women's Goalie) Training

I love the uniforms and the fans.

I love the players and their stories.

I love the drama and action of it all.

"Papers label French team a bunch of mutinous fools"

It is, simply, my favorite sport.

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But the world cup brings it to a whole new level. Club competitors become national teammates. Club teammates become international competitors.

Older players face the inevitability of younger stars taking their place. Rising stars get a humbling reality check from the more experienced players.

"Grings finally emerges from golden Prinz's Shadow"

There are always underdogs and surprises … both on the field and off.

Paul the Octopus correctly predicted the future outcomes.

During their first game, the Japanese team held up a big banner thanking the world for all of the support Japan received after the earthquake and tsunami. One of their players, Aya Miyama, has spent the past few years playing on various club teams in the US, but she was in Japan during the tsunami and went missing. All of her teammates, both past and present, called her and sent letters to her family until she was found. These are the same players who pull her shirt and tackle her legs and would gladly push her out of the way for a shot on goal.

What I’m trying to say, is that soccer/football is a game that captures humanity and puts it on a field. And, no matter where you’re from or what language you speak, you can learn something from playing and watching because this sport teaches in the language of the game. You learn to put aside differences and work together with your worst enemy or against your best friend. You learn to push yourself to your limit and beyond. You learn to see opportunities, no matter how small, and to face off against great odds and daunting numbers in order to get that one shot at success. And when you miss your shot, you learn to keep your composure, pick yourself up, and try again. Patience, communication, keeping your head up, and following through … these are all essential elements of a successful player … and person.

I could keep going, but I don’t want to bore you. I just want you to keep in mind how much of this ISA experience can relate to this sport. We are a team, and it is our individual strengths that make us great, and our drive and dedication that will make us successful.

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Now it's your turn: Do you have a favorite sport? Has it taught you any valuable life lessons? Are you a soccer/football fan like I am? Have you been watching the World Cup? Tell me! Tell me!