Phenyle Scare

It was 6:20am and I had just finished sweeping the floor, wad filling the bucket with water to start moping. I decided to use the new phenyle (what? you don't like shopping for phenyle?!) I'd bought yesterday. When I opened the cap I found it had those pesky inner transparent cap that you need to pull (with God knows what), I placed the bottle on the counter, took out my knife and in Ninja style cut open that cap. Except a true Ninja would have kept the bottle away from his face, unlike me who had the cap aimed right towards my face. The next thing I knew along with the cap flew 2 tablespoon (see the amount of cooking I do ladies, I can even measure flying liquids) of phenyle  into my left eye. I washed the eye with water and I was 99% sure I would go blind. I didn't wake up the husband cos really, what can the man do except pour more water into my eye. I washed some more and prayed -
a) pls pls pls pls God let me not go blind, I've to be there for my boy
b) let the boy not wake up-definitely not a good time
c) let there be water in the tank

I sat with a bag of frozen peas on my eyes (still praying), Jay walked in handed me some ice in a hanky. Then asked if I could see ok (now you know why I didn't bother waking him up), I would have answered his intelligent question, if only I could open my bloody eye! Finally after 3 hours the pain and itching subsided and I could see, Hallelujah! I've cut myself a million times, burnt my fingers (on the stove and oven) 33 times, thought I was pipetting water and instead pipetted NaOH into my mouth in 12th std., could not find the rubber bulb so decided to use my mouth to pipette ~hold your breath~ phenol (if you are a science student, yeah I know you want to choke me) spilt it on my hand and table, having done all those this was probably the worst scare ever.

Moral of the story,
1) You are not a Ninja.
2) Use common sense, if you have very little of that (nope, not me) borrow someone else's.
3) If you are a jabber mouth like me, don't talk while opening the bottle Ninja style (or should I say un-Ninja style?!)
Last but not least (even though I hate hate being serious, I will quickly say it and end this post), live is precious..... ............get a maid :D

Ridge Gourd Dosa/ Heerekai Chatti

This dosa is common in South Canara homes and is usually made as a side dish for rice-rasam, but I make only the dosas as we find the rice-rasam-dosa combination too heavy. The batter needs no fermenting yaay! and you need no grinder yaay yaay!! and you can make it with ridge gourd or plantain or cabbage or any type of greens yaay yaay yaay!!!

Heerekai Chatti:
- Soak 1C raw rice, 2Tbsp channa dal and 10-15 dry red chillies for 2-3 hours.
- Drain the rice, dal and dry red chillies and grind to a paste along with 1Tbsp coriander seeds, 1tsp cumin seeds, 1/4C grated coconut, salt, 2-3Tbsp tamarind paste and 1Tbsp jaggery.Taste the batter, the spice, tang and sweet all should be on the higher side otherwise the dosa will taste bland. The consistency should be that of thick buttermilk, like so-

                     

- Peel (save the peels for make chutney) and thinly slice 1 ridge gourd (get tender ones, the gigantic ones taste awful and sometimes bitter).



- Heat pan with little oil. Put a handful of the cut gourd into the batter, dip the slices in the batter and place them on the hot pan. Continue to do so until you cover the entire surface of the pan. You need to do this quickly otherwise the ridge gourd at the centre will get burnt while the ones on the outside will be still be raw. Also, since the batter is a thin consistency keep it near the pan that way you just dip and drop the gourd slices on the pan. If you keep the batter a mile away from the pan, the batter would have dripped away from the gourd by the time it hits the pan.



- Drizzle little oil and cover. Flip the dosa drizzle little oil and let it cook.
- Remove and serve.

It needs no podi, chutney or sambhar tastes fantastic on its own (make sure the batter is sweet-sour-spicy) but even better with butter.