Do you all know what RSVP means?
As per wiki it is "Répondez s'il vous plaît", a French phrase that translates to "please respond".
During the last few months, Anita (my wife) and I had the honor of hosting a couple of events and we send out invitations with instructions to do RSVP in advance. However, the responses have been plain simple unexpected. There were few (very few) who promptly RSVP ed with a Yay or a Nay..then there were others who had to be called up to find out about their intentions and then there were others (the most number) who didn't RSVP ed at all but did show up at the events - with additional guests. We thought may be we did it all wrong - may be instead of impersonal online tools as evites , pinggs, mypunchbowl and facebook-events we should have used personal paper-card invitation. We did the same for one event. 70 people RSVP ed and 54 showed up!!
May be RSVP is to French for our guests...after all French was the language of the high society in the 19th century in the United States. May be its time to pick up the phone and make a quick call to the guests and make sure of their attendance (or absence). We will keep you posted for the next event :)
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Baignon ka Bhurta
Total Time: 30 minutes / Serves: 3 to 4 people
Ingredients
1 large eggplant
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 finely chopped onion
1 1/2 teaspoons ginger, grated
1 teaspoon garlic, grated
1 teaspoon finely chopped green chillies,
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder (haldi)
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1 tablespoon ghee
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt to taste
Garnish
2 tablespoons chopped coriander
How to Cook?
1. Grease the brinjal (eggplant) with olive oil, make small slits all over the surface and cook over an open flame till it is soft. You can microwave like I did for 10 minutes (dont just burn the hell out of it)
2. Cool and peel the skin. Mash the pulp thoroughly and keep aside.
3. Heat ghee and add the cumin seeds. When they crackle add the onions and sauté for a few minutes.
4. Add the ginger, garlic and green chillies and fry again for a few seconds.
5. Add turmeric powder and cook till the oil separates from the masala.
6. Add the mashed brinjal, garam masala and salt and mix well.
7. Serve hot garnished with the coriander.
How to serve?
Serve with Roti or hot rice and garnish with chopped coriander
Ingredients
1 large eggplant
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 finely chopped onion
1 1/2 teaspoons ginger, grated
1 teaspoon garlic, grated
1 teaspoon finely chopped green chillies,
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder (haldi)
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1 tablespoon ghee
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt to taste
Garnish
2 tablespoons chopped coriander
How to Cook?
1. Grease the brinjal (eggplant) with olive oil, make small slits all over the surface and cook over an open flame till it is soft. You can microwave like I did for 10 minutes (dont just burn the hell out of it)
2. Cool and peel the skin. Mash the pulp thoroughly and keep aside.
3. Heat ghee and add the cumin seeds. When they crackle add the onions and sauté for a few minutes.
4. Add the ginger, garlic and green chillies and fry again for a few seconds.
5. Add turmeric powder and cook till the oil separates from the masala.
6. Add the mashed brinjal, garam masala and salt and mix well.
7. Serve hot garnished with the coriander.
How to serve?
Serve with Roti or hot rice and garnish with chopped coriander
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Trends and point of views
I have been amazed at the trends emerging over the last few months in different social and business domains. I'm listing out few here..any comments and suggestions will be highly appreciated
1. Oprah trying to gain more news bytes than she already has by exploiting Rihanna's current emotional state
2. Easiness of publishing your writing on Kindle -- the Amazon DTP platform has made publishing a child's play. What will happen to conventional publishing?
3. Google Voice release. Unified voice communication management.
4. People being thoroughly pissed with larger than life personalities duping them (think Madoff)
5. Sudden flood of manage-your-finances types books, blogs, articles etc.
1. Oprah trying to gain more news bytes than she already has by exploiting Rihanna's current emotional state
2. Easiness of publishing your writing on Kindle -- the Amazon DTP platform has made publishing a child's play. What will happen to conventional publishing?
3. Google Voice release. Unified voice communication management.
4. People being thoroughly pissed with larger than life personalities duping them (think Madoff)
5. Sudden flood of manage-your-finances types books, blogs, articles etc.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Starbucks Milk Stealers
Yes, US is deep into recession and NY is probably the most worst hit metropolis (as per Time magazine, NYC is leading the job cuts number compared to other US metropolises). And the event that I witnessed kind of reminded me how tough the conditions are out there this winter.
I'm at lunch with my colleague in the concourse of the Rockefeller center. An Asian woman in late 50s walks into the Starbucks near our table and quickly pours whole milk from one of the many canisters into a mini Poland Spring bottle and makes her way out using the escalator. I was stunned at the audacity of the event happening in mid-day Manhattan and in a prime location. It reminded me of the sudden increase in bank robberies and subway snatchings in Manhattan. Five minutes have not passed by...this time its another lady (may be east european)with a small roll-on bag at her tow and she empties out the milk from the other canister into a Gatorade bottle and disappears into the usual lunch crowd.
Worse times awaits us in the near future. Comments?
I'm at lunch with my colleague in the concourse of the Rockefeller center. An Asian woman in late 50s walks into the Starbucks near our table and quickly pours whole milk from one of the many canisters into a mini Poland Spring bottle and makes her way out using the escalator. I was stunned at the audacity of the event happening in mid-day Manhattan and in a prime location. It reminded me of the sudden increase in bank robberies and subway snatchings in Manhattan. Five minutes have not passed by...this time its another lady (may be east european)with a small roll-on bag at her tow and she empties out the milk from the other canister into a Gatorade bottle and disappears into the usual lunch crowd.
Worse times awaits us in the near future. Comments?
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Time to write, et all
Of late, writing has been pretty erratic--life in general has been pretty busy and erratic sometime too. Well that's expected if you live in greater NY area and work in the big apple.
Anyways, the overnight snowfall dumped about 3-4 inches of thick yet loose snow all over central Jersey. So I wake up to find the stairs to the parking lot covered in deep snow with no foot prints yet (and no shovel). After a couple of minutes of precarious balancing to avoid the shoes from getting wet (as much as possible), I had to spend another 5 minutes cleaning up the dense layer of snow from the car (now obviously the shoes get wet-duhh).
Mine was the 6th car on the road which usually has about 60 on a normal day and the speed at which everyone is driving is less than 10mph. The breaks are still not holding good at the lights and creating this grrrrkkkhhh sound to let you know that the tires are thoroughly soaked in snow and ice-dirt. Thanks to the AWD though, I managed to safely reach the train station (One amazing thing about NJ transit train service; it runs late in summer however run almost on schedule during such wintry days) ---way to work. Lets see what snowy mix is waiting there :)
Anyways, the overnight snowfall dumped about 3-4 inches of thick yet loose snow all over central Jersey. So I wake up to find the stairs to the parking lot covered in deep snow with no foot prints yet (and no shovel). After a couple of minutes of precarious balancing to avoid the shoes from getting wet (as much as possible), I had to spend another 5 minutes cleaning up the dense layer of snow from the car (now obviously the shoes get wet-duhh).
Mine was the 6th car on the road which usually has about 60 on a normal day and the speed at which everyone is driving is less than 10mph. The breaks are still not holding good at the lights and creating this grrrrkkkhhh sound to let you know that the tires are thoroughly soaked in snow and ice-dirt. Thanks to the AWD though, I managed to safely reach the train station (One amazing thing about NJ transit train service; it runs late in summer however run almost on schedule during such wintry days) ---way to work. Lets see what snowy mix is waiting there :)
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