Dilemma

Six months after our daughter was born, Father's day coincided with my hubby's birthday and that was very special to him. Six years down the lane, Father's day is again on his birthday. As usual I wanted to surprise him with something nice as it is a milestone b'day for him this year.

At work, I asked my colleagues if they had any good ideas on what I should gift him. Smith who is the oldest among us said a tablet will be a good gift. My response was, he already has it and I cannot think of a single gadget that I can gift him as he is very tech savvy and will immediately buy it for himself or pretend that he is buying it for family or our little girl if he wants something. So gifting him any gadgets is out of question. To this Ashish, an Indian who sits across from my table said "anyways the rule is please don't buy any gadgets for a man as he would love to do the shopping himself ". Luis, a Columbian who sits across from my table peeked out from behind his work station saying a vacation to a nice place might be a good idea. Since we have already planned a vacation in August, I ruled it out. Ashish who was now deep in some thought finally made a suggestion with a naughty wink "buy him a Glenlivet, single malt whiskey or a blue label". This was a good suggestion but I knew my husband usually re-fills his bar section himself and I wouldn't know where to go and what to buy.

In our 10 years of marriage, we have never formally gifted each other anything as such. When we go out shopping, he might pick something for me and say "this will be good for you" and I might do the same for him and eventually buy it. So it is really hard for either one of us to pick something for each other when the other half is not around. All these years, I usually used to cook something special for him on his b'day and he used to be very happy.

Ada Prathaman

One of his favorite dessert is  'Ada Prathaman', an authentic from kerala cuisine. Jee's mother is an expert in making this dish. Seeing me smile Smith asked me on msn chat (we use msn chat extensively at work to communicate with each other), Riji, I am sure you thought of something that you want to gift your husband as I can see you smiling.  I know it is weird but sometimes we use chat to talk to each other so that we don't disturb others. In reply I wrote, yeah Smith I have actually found something that I can gift and I am pretty sure he'll enjoy it with a smiley. I am planning to make his most favorite dessert.

Jaggery Blocks

Rice flakes (Ada)

Usually work has been very hectic for me since I joined this new job, but that day I was in standby as the application was in testing phase. So as there was nothing much for me to do at work I was passing my time by reading the blogs that I follow and news. Now that I had finalized the gift I needed to start planning. I knew that we had the ingredients as we bought 'sharkara' (jaggery) and 'ada'(rice wafers) from a famous Mallu store in Atlanta called Cherian's, with Jee saying. I remembered with a smile that Jee had said 'Chal yaar bana ke khilana' when I was picking it. After browsing for an hour or so I found this site, which interestingly has most of the Mallu recipes and with very simple steps, Marias Menu.  First thing I noticed as soon as I saw this site is a lot of my friends are ardently following this site and even adding comments. That made me confident and I decided to follow Maria's recipe for making 'Ada Prathaman'.

Spending most of the Saturday afternoon styling and designing my blog to give it a more pleasing look, I am all set to make the dessert. This reminds me of a promise I made to a very dear friend, a very talented Bengali girl, Shomdatta. I had once suggested her to write blogs after she showed me some of her poems and short stories, that I'll help her design her blog site some 2 years back. Shom, I have learned about how to design the blog site now so am all set to help you anytime! ;-)

Jee's B'day, 2006

Coming back to the B'day topic, of course our US born little six year old won't understand the authenticity of preparing a delicious 'nadan' meal for Daddy's day and B'day, so I'll have to sneak out of home to buy a small cake for a family b'day party.

****Some of the incidents and characters mentioned are pure works of imagination. Readers may sometimes find associating themselves or their acquaintances to a couple of situations. In those cases I  hope they would enjoy the journey through...