Gourmet Indulgence with Four Seasons Wine at Spaghetti Kitchen

A few days ago, I went with Magali to a lovely lunch at Spaghetti Kitchen, an Italian restaurant as part of the Gourmet Indulgence food & wine fiesta. It comprised of a three course meal paired with Four Season Wine. It was a set menu with quite a few choices. All of the food was not on the regular menu & was designed to go with the wine (either Sauvignon Blanc or Barrique Reserve Shiraz).

The starter - Pollo Polpettine, chicken with porcini sauce & crispy bacon.

Main course - Pan seared red snapper with baked lobster polenta on a horseradish & tomato cream.

Dessert - Flourless chocolate cake with espresso gelato & gianduja sauce.

It was a lovely meal & of course everything is better with wine! The main course was my favorite. I love seafood & the red snapper was just perfect. I also enjoyed the lovely décor & the restaurant & the presentation.

Love,

Sheila

An evening with Belvedere at Wink.

About a month ago I acccompanied Magali to a bartending masterclass with the global Ambassador of Belvedere Vodka Allison Dedianko at Wink.

She showed us how to make cocktails and then we were asked to taste and choose the cocktail we loved the most and make the cocktail ourselves. I am not much of a cocktail person,since I prefer beer or wine.

But of all the cocktails she prepared I liked the taste of the clove sour and prepared it for myself.

Clove Sour
50 ml Belvedere Vodka
25 ml clove infused simple syrup
25 ml lemon juice
2 dashes Bitters.

Shake with ice and strain over fresh ice into a rocks glass.
Garnish with a slice of lemon.


Since the bar was dimly lit Magali could not get good photographs. But you can see all the recipes on her blog here. Hope some of you try the Cocktail recipes and enjoy yourselves with your family or friends.

Love,
Sheila

Why I hate Holi - The Festival of Colours & Hooligans

Holi, the festival of colours celebrated by Hindus all over the world.

When I was a child I loved Holi as I would get the chance to play with water balloons and colours with all my friends.

As I grew up I began to hate the festival as I found that it gave the lecherous men a chance to touch and paw the females and generally misbehave.

In 1983 when my sister, her 4 month daughter and I were walking along J.P.Road Andheri (west)

a group of rowdy children started flinging water balloons on us. I was carrying my niece and a balloon hit my hand and burst.I was thankful that nothing hit my niece as it would have hurt her.

The rowdy children were in a group aged about 12-18 years and I happened to know some of them as they were studying in the same college as I was.There were still 7 days for Holi and the children had begun their celebrations so early.

In 1989 I was in Delhi along with my 4 friends and we were guests at a family friends home. To our bad luck it happened to be during Holi .

Photo by James Khoo.

As our host knew that we would not be able to go out, we were relaxing at home.Around 9 am a group of young men known to the host knowing that there were 5 female guests were visiting from Mumbai, came over and applied colours on our face and drenched us in water and were basically very excited that they managed to mess up our faces and hair with colour. Though our host was not very happy he was not rude to them as Holi is celebrated in a big way in Delhi.

We had to wait till evening to have a bath because Delhi was having a water shortage and the water came only once a day in the evenings. There was enough water stored for cooking and any emergency requirements otherwise.

In 1992 when I was pregnant with Magali and was going to the Doctor for a check up some small boy flung a balloon on my back and ran way.I was in the 8th month of my pregnancy. The most irritating thing is this happened when there were 8 days for Holi.

Parents should teach the children not to throw anything (balloons, plastic bags filled with water) on anyone as it could hurt them.

Just this morning I happened to read of one train commuter dying & several being seriously injured after some foreign substance entered their eyes. Slum dwellers throw everything from stones to chilli powder or other harmful / toxic substances at moving trains & buses.

Have A happy and safe Holi everyone and enjoy yourselves.

Love,

Sheila

Love Marriage or Arranged Marriage : My Story

This is a debate that can go on forever depending on the people involved and their thoughts and views about marriage.

When I got married 22 years ago it was an arranged marriage as my parents wanted me to marry some Goan boy who belonged to the same caste that we did. Well, Ezy (my husband) proposed to me, so it was  an arranged union but partly love marriage too, at least on his side.

I had two paternal Uncles who were Priests and my father did not want them to say that we had not done the right thing. He always told us from when we were young that he would have to answer for the wrong that we did and so we siblings were even frightened to talk to the opposite sex as we were worried that Dad would take it wrongly. Three of us married the partners chosen by our parents while one brother married a girl of his choice but luckily she belonged to the same community so Dad had no problem with that.

Arranged marriages are good for two people who are willing to make the  marriage work even though they may not know each other very well before marriage.

Ezy and I had a lot of problems at the beginning adjusting to lot of things and all the interference from people from both the families. But we decided that we wanted our marriage to work and we sorted our problems and are still together. We have arguments now and then and Magali is the referee many a times.

Many a times I have seen arranged marriages break up because of the meddling by family members and also because the couple do not really bother to try to make a go of the marriage. When there are children involved it is difficult for them to see the parents separating and  they are mentally scarred.

In my opinion I would say that even if a couple gets into an arranged marriage they should be given enough of time to go on dates and get to know each other before the D-Day. I got engaged to Ezy in June 1989 and though we went out sometimes we both were shy to ask each other questions and so there were a lot of questions left unanswered. He joined a ship soon after and there were a few letters exchanged and  a few calls between us. He came home end December 1989 and we got married on 20th January 1990.

We joined a ship together in May 1990 and sailed for 13 months where we got to know each other and had time to ourselves when he was not working.The other Officers used to tease us that Ezy was spending all his time in the Cabin and not coming to the Smoke Room to watch movies or play carrom or Table Tennis.

So ending the arranged marriage debate I would say that Life is Good when you Make it Good. Marriage is between two individuals who should work together to make it a success.

In the present times I think that the children should be given a chance to find their own partner and hence Ezy and I have told Magali that she will have to find her own partner and we will not be forcing our choice on  her.

The couple should  always be ready to make adjustments and nor bicker about small things. There should be no name calling and no physical violence at any time during the relationship. Both the partners should make an attempt to keep each other happy by doing small things that the partner would  love.

In the end I would like to say that Arranged or Love Marriage it is the Couple who have to live through it and do it with LOVE.

May God Bless all the couples with Love, Joy and Lots of  Happy Years Together.

Sheila

Stayfree Indiblogger Meet

A week ago Magali and I attended the Stayfree Women's  Indiblogger Meet at Trident Hotel, BKC.

This was the second meet that we attended.

Stayfree has teamed up with UNICEF to educate 5,00,000 adolescent children from two districts each of Jharkhand and Bihar.

Mr Clement, a french man from UNICEF (working in India for the past few years) spoke very well and made the bloggers understand the need to educate the children as the girl child from these areas are not given a chance to even complete their education in schools let alone going to a college. He also gave statistics that one in every two women were anaemic and that many girl children in villages were married by the time they were 16 years old.

We being born and brought up in a city like Mumbai do not really experience the hardships as these girl children but we can help by making our house help understand about hygiene and also about being clean. We should also make them understand that a woman does not become unclean when she is menstruating and that it is only a normal occurence in a female from the first time until she has her menopause.

I still remember very clearly the first time I menstruated before my fourteenth birthday and was wondering if I was sick because of the blood stain I found on my panties. I did not  know exactly what was happening because though we were given a sex education class in the ninth grade by a priest during religion class no mention was made about menstruation. Though an older friend had hinted about menstruation I was completely unaware of this happening in a girl's life. Also my Mother had not explained anything to me so I was very afraid. I then told my mother who replied very casually that it is normal and that it would be happening every month from then until I would have menopause. I was so relieved that I was not sick and that menstruation was a normal occurrence.

I did not make the mistake with Magali. She was a smart and inquisitive child and I remember her asking me as how children come out from their Mothers tummies. I told her that the Doctors make a slit on the stomach and take out the baby but she very smartly replied that she could not have come out from my tummy as I did not have a scar and that her uncle had a scar even though he was operated over 8 years before she was born. I did not tell her right then but when when she was nine I explained to her about menstruation and it was good that I did that because she started menstruating quite early.

When I was young I used Carefree Sanitary napkins that were completely different from today's ones, they were 'belted' & very uncomfortable. But nowadays there are really good Stayfree napkins by Johnson and Johnson which make life more comfortable for those few days in a month in a girls/ladies life. Also they are donating a bit of the proceeds from every pack sold to the UNICEF to help make the rural Indian girl's life a bit better.

I was happy to meet some other great women bloggers too. I really enjoyed the meet. {Here is a picture of Magali & me at the meet, tweeted by the Stayfree team}

Thank You Indiblogger & Stayfree for arranging this meet.

Love to all,

Sheila