Baby Shower Function

Two of my colleagues are expecting a baby soon, so we decided to throw a surprise baby shower function for their family. I was bit late for the function, but was there before the food got over (another instance to prove that I will be always on time for the food), the actual celebrations started after the food. We had some cute games for the couples expecting baby, thanks to Ramesh (my project mate) for thinking about the innovative games. Games started with the couples having a paper plate on their head and drawing a baby figure with a pencil, we got figures of everything execpt a baby. It set the tone for the next game, one of the couple is going to have their first baby, the game being changing the diaper for a baby doll and time clocked between husband and wife. The guy was turning the baby doll over for changing the diaper, it was so much fun seeing him doing that. The diaper change was followed by a quality testing session in which a mother of a gal evaluated the diaper changes, the guy diaper change for the baby doll will be leaky( we thought it was intentional since he did not change diapers for the baby later on). The same game was played for the other couple expecting a second baby, since they already have a baby and would have experience in changing diaper, rules were changed to change the diaper in single handJ. Wow the guy did that in less than 25 seconds. Quality testing session followed and the guy’s diaper change was evaluated to be too good. We then decided to play dumb chards with English movie names. One of my colleague got the movie name “Final Destination”, the way he emoted that was an ROFL, and he started with the numbers 1, 2 and was expecting his team mates to go to the word finalJ. We had some really complex movie names like “Carlitos Way” (starred by ALPacino), Escape from Alcarataz etc…, but we had so much fun for 2 ½ hrs. Finally winded up the party at 1 in the niteJ..The most funny part was watching the recorded events the next day with everyone around….We had whole lotta fun for 2 days..

Pongala Pongal

After being down for 2 ½ days with the food poison I was up on Jan 15th Tuesday.
I decided that I am going to make Chakkara Pongal (Sweet Pongal) and Sundal in the evening. Left home at 5 P.M from work and started with my pongal and sundal preparation at around 6 P.M (had to clean to the house also for pongal celebration :) ).

Woke up my mom in India at 5 A.M (there time) to ask on how to prepare pongal. Armed with the preparation technique from my mom I kept rice in the rice cooker and set up about breaking the jaggery( vellam). It took for me and my room mate 30 mins to break a piece of out of the jaggery bar. We virtually tried all possible combinations except jumping on the jaggery bar to break it. As usual when there is issue in production ( my samayal) called the production support( my mom) in India to ask on how to break the jaggery bar, experience speaks…she asked me to put the jaggery bar in hot water and boil it in low flames for 15 -20 mins. Wowww it started melting and I got the watery jaggery mix in correct stage( kambi pakuvam). In the mean time I finished my sundal preparation too , mixed jaggery ,rice and cashew fried in ghee and here I gooooo Pongala Pongal……….Pongal turned up ok for eating...the pics below looks yummy for eating rite……