Stir Crazy

My inlaws are visiting from India for the first time in 12 years and are therefore staying for a slightly extended period of time (~6 months). They do threaten to leave every couple of weeks, but so far that doesn't seem to have happened. Mind you, I am not complaining. I actually like having them around for the most part; they are great with the little boy and help out around the house a bit. However, my mother-in-law has a health problem that severely restricts mobility (hence no trip in the last 12 years) which means that we've been stuck in the city since mid-April. It is the first summer that we haven't taken a trip (and probably won't take a trip) anywhere. I do like the peace and quiet in the city during the long weekends (Memorial Day, today), but am beginning to feel a bit stir-crazy. The heat, the crowds, the steam from the subway vents, the increasing number of homeless people on my street, the noise - it's all getting under my skin a bit.

Anyway, Happy Fourth of July everyone!

Press on!

Apparently, I've been living under a rock. I had assumed Wordpress was for blogs only, but boy was I mistaken! Their super-nifty themes can be used to put up a website in a matter of minutes (sans content of course, which takes a few hundred years at the rate at which I write). So, I'm breaking up with iWeb and migrating to Wordpress instead for designing my website. Hoping to be up and running with a skeletal version in a couple of weeks.

In other news, one of my good friends from Stern came down from Westchester today to hang out with me and li'l Chikoo in Manhattan. She has been jobless since graduation (3 years now!) partly by choice (don't ask! she claims the stress of work makes her a crazy person, which I can see, but she is the kind who manages to find something to get stressed out about even when nothing's going on...) and I was very happy to hear that she is starting to look for a fulltime job finally. Anyway, she is very smart (Ivy undergrad and all that) and was giving me some good ideas and things to consider with respect to my website. Some of it is really obvious stuff that I should absolutely be thinking about - market research, how big is my target audience, when will i start to look into advertising, what is my marketing strategy beyond Facebook etc. It made me realize I really must take a more disciplined approach to the whole thing and try to apply some of my b-school strategy and marketing lessons to the new "venture" (which it is SO NOT). So far, I've simply been winging it - hey, I have a fulltime job taking care of my kid and can devote all of 30min a day to the website, so even the winging it strategy seems to be a reach some days.

Lastly, what is with this HBO show "Game of Thrones"? I mean, what's up with the gratuitous nudity? I haven't been watching, but Lamboo seems to be watching it on HBO on Demand at the rate of one episode a week (or sometimes, a month) and I usually sit with him and space out on the interweb (this is all past Chikoo's bedtime so we feel like our old selves again for a bit till Chikoo decides we've watched enough TV for the day and should be entertained by him instead). Anyway, I occasionally catch glimpses of the show and am shocked by the amount of nudity and sex. I'm hardly a prude, but is this much sex and nudity particularly necessary to further the plot? I doubt it. The show seems interesting and complex enough without it. One scene in particular bothered me about the episode we're watching tonight - a 12-year old boy feeding from his mother's breast! I am all for breast-feeding, but this is just cree.pee. I know it's probably a 'stunt boob' (yeah, I had to google it, so the next time someone starts type "st" on my google search, it is going to bring that up as the first suggestion), but isn't there some law protecting child actors from this sort of thing? He may be sucking on plastic, but doesn't the act of sucking on a boob-like object at the age of 12 scar you psychologically somehow? Not sure what directing that scene must have entailed. Or maybe there's more cgi at play and the kid is actually sucking on something not resembling a breast at all in reality. I hope.

Creating a website

My friend T and I have decided to create a website.

Sounds easy yeah?

That's what I thought too until I launched into the actual process of doing it. Sweet Holy Moly! Who'd have thunk that there are a gazillion different choices every step of the way? I'm a bit overwhelmed. And I'm embarrassed to admit that despite having been a techie, I still feel fairly clueless about the whole process. Maybe I've been a non-techie for too long (5 years now!)

The way I see it, here are the broad steps I need to accomplish:

0) Concept - Work in Progress

1) Register domain - Done!

I did all of 5 minutes of research and finally went with GoDaddy (perhaps it was those Superbowl ads! I'm quite impressionable). I have registered the domain name for 5 years at only $3.99 a year! I think that's a pretty nice deal. Not sure if I should have taken 10 years since the incremental is only $20.

2) Site hosting - Done!

Perhaps I should have done a bit more research on this, but I figured I would try out GoDaddy's basic hosting plan (on Linux) for a year and if that isn't adequate, I will switch with the benefit of knowledge gained over the next year. It cost me just $48, so I'm pretty sure that switch will happen at some point, maybe even sooner than I plan.

3) Content - Work in Progress

We have had one fairly productive brainstorming session so far which has yielded a broad outline of topics and content we intend to include on the site. It's going to be interesting to see how we are able to generate content with both of us working on this just a few hours a week.

4) Design look and feel - TBD

T is an executive producer at a media firm, so we're hoping she can rope in one of her creative friends to do some free graphics for us and help us out with the look and feel.

5) Implement - TBD

The implementation is the most challenging part. Back in my techie avatar, I mostly used MS Visual Studio on Windows to do all my programming, most of which was middle and back-end coding. Unfortunately, I currently don't own any copies of Visual Studio and even if I did, I am tripped up by the fact that my husband is an Apple-head and has Mac'ified our entire apartment. So, I'm currently researching the following:

(a) Software that runs on the Mac that can be used for building websites. I have been playing around with iWeb which does a damn decent job, but I'm not sure how well it will hold out for creating more robust functionality

(b) We intend to host a message board on our website, and would like to license third party software to run on our server, but honestly I have no clue how.

(c) I have been using Classic FTP to upload files to the host, but not very happy with it so far. It hangs too frequently and takes way too long to sync files unless I do them directory-by-directory. Looking back at the link above, I wonder why I didn't read the reviews before downloading. It seems obvious that it's a sh*tty product.

Laying out these steps on paper (!) feels good even though I'm pretty clear about it in my head. I'm very excited about this venture! It gives me something intellectually challenging to do - much as a love my son, there are moments when I miss the brain-workout and adult-interaction aspects of my job. More importantly, I love it that I'm doing this with T who is one of my closest friends and really fun to work with.

I will aim to detail our progress as we move through the process. Any helpful tips are greatly appreciated (am not sure why I end all my posts soliciting feedback when I am pretty sure I have 0 readers right now :-)).

Food

Have I mentioned I love cooking? I used to love the calming effect it has after a crazy hectic day dealing with all the insanity at work. And I still love it even though my life is not quite that insane anymore (at least till the little one becomes more mobile and subsequently starts getting into all sorts of trouble). Something about the numbing monotony of washing and cutting, firing up the stove, the familiar yet exciting anticipation of the hiss as the ingredients hit the hot oil, the velvety feeling of spice on your fingers as you color your dish with them, even the seemingly-endless uncover/check/stir/cover cycle until finally you see and simply KNOW without a doubt that dish is complete. And the immense satisfaction of having created something tangible (and hopefully delicious, though we all have our days). And I'm not even talking about trying out new, exciting stuff; I feel this way even about your basic rice, dal and subzi. So, you can only imagine the kind of euphoria I feel and the kind of incessant nag I become when I try something new ("so, was it good? what did you think? did it need more paprika? should i have grilled it instead of broiling"... ad nauseum).

I love eating too. I've been extremely lucky on this front since (a) I have a mom who is an absolutely amazing, phenomenal cook (the kind who can taste a dish, figure out all the ingredients in it, and then do a pretty damn good job recreating it - a skill that has sadly eluded me); (b) I live in New York, a foodie mecca; and (c) I have a husband who enjoys cooking and eating as much (maybe even more) than I do.

One of my weekend (and occasionally weekday) pleasures is visiting the Union Square Greenmarket. Normally I'm not particularly adventurous with the produce - I pick up basic stuff like tomatoes, potatoes, onions, carrots, beets etc. However, yesterday I was in a mood to make something a bit different, so I picked up some delectable-looking spring baby veggies - baby carrots, baby zucchini, yellow and orange baby bell-peppers, spring onions and some asparagus. Guess I still have "baby brain" 7 months post partum!

Anyway, I decided to KISS* and go with a salad. I also had some pearl red onions lying around from having made sambar recently, so decided to add those for a little bit of bite.

Here's the super-simple recipe (don't get thrown off by the steps; I just like super-detailed recipes, that's all).

Desigal's "Oh Baby" Salad:

For salad:

Baby carrots - 1 bunch (6 or 7)

Baby zucchini - 6

Baby bell-peppers - 6

Pearl (baby) onions (Red) - 10. Alternatively, use 1/4 of a medium red onion

Asparagus - 10

Fresh goat cheese (optional)

Parsley (optional)

For vinaigrette:

1 tbsp good quality balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1/2 tsp dijon mustard

1 spring onion (or shallot)

EVOO for drizzling

Sea salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Steps:

0) Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

1) Wash the veggies and trim ends off the carrots and zucchini

2) Peel the pearl onions (soak them in water for about 15min and the skin comes off quite easily)

3) Cut the zucchini and bell peppers lengthwise in half. Cut the asparagus on a bias to match the length of the zucchini and carrots. If using regular red onion instead of pearl onions, cut the onion into half or quarter rings (such that the onion pieces/strands match the length of the other veggies)

4) Cover a baking pan with aluminum foil, spread the veggies on it, drizzle with a little EVOO and sea salt (or kosher salt) and pepper. Toss with hands to mix in oil, salt and pepper.

5) Bake for 10-15 minutes (depending on how soft you want the veggies).

For the vinaigrette:

1) Mince the spring onion (or shallot).

2) Mix together vinegar, oil, mustard and spring onion. Whisk to incorporate

Finally, combine veggies and vinaigrette. I like throwing the whole thing into a tupperware container, shaking vigorously to mix, and then sticking the container in the fridge to let the vegetables marinate a bit in the vinaigrette.

To serve, spoon the salad onto plates, add a dollop of goat cheese, season with a sprig of parsley and serve with a piece of crusty baguette.

Much to my delight, even my in-laws - who are very very desi and set in their ways and whose idea of salad is slices of cucumber and nothing more - enjoyed this salad, as did my very carnivorous husband.

Hope someone tries this! If you do, be sure to post your feedback!

Desi Mom

Wow, it's been a really long time, needless to say.

What have I been upto? Let's see - I got a job in finance at a large multinational financial institution, worked as an associate for 18mos, got promoted to VP (yay!), worked another year, had a kid, went back part-time, couldn't stand it, and have now decided to take a break from work till the end of the year (or at least the end of summer).

OK, now that we're all caught up, let's chat.

Can I say how patronizing some people are about Stay At Home Moms (SAHMs)? I recently went on a 5K run with a friend from my ex-job and she made a very disparaging comment about my current situation (i.e. being a SAHM for a while). It's not really worth getting into the specifics, but suffice it to say that I was quite hurt. The comment made it sound like being a full-time mother is somehow "less" than being a working woman. Now, my friend is 36 and single and quite career focused, so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised by the attitude. But come on people - show a little empathy. And a little respect. You have no idea the kind of patience, resilience and smarts you need when bringing up a child.

In any case, I don't want to make this a ramble about working moms vs stay at home moms. It's a personal choice (or sometimes not a choice at all but a necessity) and having experienced both of those things albeit for short periods, I'll say both are equally difficult and each has its tradeoffs. What is terrible is single people or folks without kids somehow adding a value judgement to either situation. Also - single friends of mine - next time we meet, ask me how my kid is at least once in the course of a 2 hour hangout. I have to listen to you go on and on about your new role at work ad nauseum, but you don't have the decency to ask me about my KID?? Seriously??!