Peas Paratha

Excitement abounds !!
Arpi mentioned a few days back that she is very keen on peas parathas, and we had a lot of atta left over after her parents' visit, so today I decided to make peas paratha. A bit of searching on the internet revealed a treasure trove of paratha info, the stuff that only grandmas would have a generation back. Armed with all this, I got down to business :)

I started making the dough by mixing the flour with the salt. Then slowly added some oil, mixing constantly, and then also added some curd and a buunch of cilantro leaves that I had cut up. After that, I slowly added the water, mixing constantly. The water is really important I learnt. If you have too little, then there will be flour left on your vessel, but if you have too much, then your dough will be too sticky. So be careful there. I left the dough covered for a hour or so.

For the stuffing, I microwaved the frozen peas, and we mashed them up. Then fried jeera in oil, added and sauteed some besan, and then added the peas and dhaniya powder and fried it all. The original recipe needed enough besan to make the thing into a paste, but I had too little by far, but it was okay anyway. Besan to taste, I guess is the conclusion :)

Then we just made balls of the dough, and stuffed them traditional style, and made the parathas. One more tip. If you paratha sticks to the tava, then the tava is too cold, but if it browns too fast, then the tava is too hot. I think we cooked each side twice, first without oil, then with oil. You can oil the top side before flipping.

It was great fun, and me rolling the parathas, and arpi cooking them worked out really well. I had not realised only how deeply I was interested in parathas. Really enthu to make a bunch more now. :D

Prostate Cancer

Man to Man by Michael Korda

Somehow I have been reading a lot about prostate cancer of late. Funny how things can be off your radar for ever, but suddenly it seems to be everywhere. Seems that prostate cancer is the male equivalent of breast cancer, but possibly targeting a somewhat older age group.

Being aware of some such stats, when I spotted this book, I picked it up right away. It is very engagingly written. The effect of Michael's experience as a book editor and writer is very apparent. It is the story of his being diagnosed with prostate cancer, the whole process of figuring out the treatment options, the actual surgery and the long recovery. The whole thing was just eye-opening, since for me it was also the first account I was reading about any kind of serious medical problem and its treatment.

The main take-away was that cancer needs to be taken really seriously, and that you need to become as aware about your disease as possible. Some of the quotes from the man-to-man discussion section really drove this point home. "You are not a cancer victim, you are a cancer survivor", "You are responsible for your own treatment, though you may employ a team of physicians for that".

Strongly recommended.

Psychotherapy

The patient who cured his therapist by Stanley Seigel

This was a really interesting book. Stanley presents a bunch of cases studies of patients / families he has worked with. The underlying thesis is that what appears to be a psychological problem at times is the patient's solution to a conflict or an issue in the patient's life or history. Which if you think about it, is a tremendously positive way to view a person's mental state, as opposed to starting from the assumption that there is a problem that needs to be fixed, which is kind of authoritarian and demotivating. Stanley's approaches and solutions are also surprisingly creative and insightful.

All the stories are nice, but I found Final Aids, Holocaused and Getting Crazy especially interesting.