Hey Jude!!!

“Hey Jude, don't make it bad

Take a sad song and make it better

Remember to let her into your heart

Then you can start to make it better

Hey Jude, don't be afraid

You were made to go out and get her

The minute you let her under your skin

Then you begin to make it better”

.. sang The Beatles in a song that was written for (or allegedly written for) John Lennon’s son, Julian Lennon, as he coped with his fathers separation from his mother, and his relationship with Yoko Ono, helping him cope with the entire situation. In some way this song speaks to us in our current situation, as we try to stay positive, try to sane, while being indoor and safe but is actually very difficult to do.

It’s very difficult to keep a positive outlook when you’re quarantined, which seems to go on and on, although you know it is for the best to combat the virus. But you struggle with yourself, with your mind and body. Though you try to block out the negativity, things still have a way of getting to you.

In a situation where there’s nothing much to do, it’s difficult to maintain a positive outlook of life when there’s a lot going on your mind. There’s so much going on in your mind that you fear it will overheat and explode. You fear for the safety of your family, the ones you love, the ones who matter, your friends and colleagues. You worry about the future, what is to be once this situation passes (and it will pass, eventually). Your worry about your job security, how would you fend for yourself. You think about the people infected, the lives lost, the ones in the frontline, and it sends a shiver down your spine as you fear for them.

And then you struggle with yourself, your mind, your sanity. You struggle to let nothing get to you but in the end, even the little things triggers you off. You try not to be vain but you worry about your health and fitness, about you putting on weight. Your insecurities keep getting the best of you especially when others are busy and you are sitting on your fat lazy ass, when others seem to be doing workout but you find it a struggle to find the motivation. 

This all turns you irritable, with even the slightest thing ticking you off, when things don’t go your way. You end up taking it on others, the ones quarantined with you, never considering they too are going through the same thing, or even worse. 

You want to do so much, write, read, learn new things, put your life in order, but you can’t quite get yourself to do it at all. And when your health fluctuates, you find yourself riding the lows, down in the dumps. That’s when you really start to social distance because you start to push people away from your life, isolating yourself. This can actually end up taking a toll on your head.

But then as Paul McCartney sang, we need to take a sad song, and in our case, a situation, and try to make it better, not letting it get under your skin. So the key to getting to the other side same is to not let things get under your skin. There are things we can’t help, we have no control on. So we need to accept it and move on and learn to live with it, at least for the moment. There’s nothing much you can do about it so why don’t you make the most of it.

We can always use the time not just getting closer to family and friends, but also to get closer to ourselves, the one that’s buried under all the piles of stress and worries. Use this time to go on a self discovery. Cliched as it may sound, use this time for yourself, and ease yourself into doing the things you like, doing things you need to do (but have alway put off), doing things that will help you improve, that will keep you sane, that will make you the better version of you. And hey you don’t have to go at this alone, you will always have someone who will lend a helping hand, if you just reach out and take it.

So in the end, when you don’t let it get under your skin, you can make it better, cause you can always take a sad song and make it better. You just have to go out and get her. What do you say Jude!

Say Cheese... Cake

Cheesy as it may sound, or is it actually cheesy to say it out loud, or should I just say CHEESE? Are you getting the gist what I am trying to get at? I guess you’ll eventually get it, but for now I guess I am deviating from the topic, or I am actually speaking random gibberish?

Ok, so to get to the point, baking has been quiet therapeutic especially during this lockdown situation, when find yourself quarantined in your house, though you still make trips to put together household essentials. So after you have baked buns, chocolate ganache tarts, biscuits, the natural thing is to try your hand at baking a cake. But why go with a normal cake, how about baking a cheesecake?

Your first step is to find a recipe that you can follow. Once the recipe has been zeroed in, you read and re-read to make sure you are aware of the list of ingredients and have memorised the steps to prepare your cake (even though you will spend time referring to it during the duration of your bake).

So you make a couple of trips down (and here you were supposed to be quarantined) to put together the ingredients. After standing in a line for almost an hour, or what felt like an hour (cause time doesn’t go fast when you’re not having fun) only find out that they don’t have cream cheese, your core ingredient, which ends up getting your panties in a bunch (was I even wearing one 😉). But since you are hell bent on baking, you pick up the next best thing you think you can substitute for the ingredient. 

When you reach home, all tired and sweaty, you google ways to make cream cheese, and you figure out you can make it home. So off you go (so much for being quarantined) to get milk and vinegar. Once back you set yourself to the task of splitting the milk and trying to make some cream cheese (which suspiciously tasted a bit like a better version of paneer). And you stir and stir and stir, till the milk splits. After draining the water (which mom insisted on storing, as it could be used as butter milk) and letting leftover content cool and then putting it through the food processor (read mixer) to prepare you very own homemade creamy cheese (how cheesy of you). So problem solved, and the cheesecake’s back on the plate (at least the idea of baking it).

Now that the problem of the cream cheese was solved it was time to prepare base from Oreo cookies and butter, and me desperately fighting the urge of consuming some of the cookies. Putting together the ingredients for the base brought up another problem, I didn’t have tray to bake a cake and the pie dish I thought I would bake it in turned out to be too big. So in the end had to use my tart trays instead. 

Once the base was ready it was time to let it cool in the fridge (in this heat I would love to be the one cooling in the fridge). While the base rested (and I didn’t), it was time to get the filling together. So taking the freshly made and cooled cream cheese (which was lesser than what the recipe called for but still decided to go ahead with the bake anyway), and the other ingredients, you prepare your filling. You then take out the bases from the fridge and you pour the filling into the trays only for you to realise that you  didn’t have sufficient base for your filling. So after you fill the trays to the brim (another of your silly mistakes) you let the rest go down the hatch (read, into your mouth, down your throat and into your tummy).

While the trays were being filled, the oven was getting warmed up (or in baking lingo, preheated) and the water for the water-bath was getting ready (cause apparently the cake cooks well in a water bath). Once all the stars aligned together, it was time to bake. Ok there was nothing to do with the stars aligning together. Once everything was ready it was time to bake.

I tried hard to be steady and not let the filling leak out into the bath water and water spill on the floor and in the overnight. But no matter how hard you try you’ll still have some spill over, thanks to your unsteadiness. Finally you manage to get it in the oven and set the timer and let it bake. 

While your cheesecakes are baking in the oven (you have two those), you go about doing the time pass you do. You keep an eye on the cakes as they bake while going about your daily chores. After an hour of baking, you set the timer for another thirty minutes cause you oven doesn’t have a 90 minutes timer and that how long you need the cake to bake. You let them bake a little longer till the filling turns brown.

Once the 90 minutes are up (where exactly did time go), you let the trays be in the oven for sometime (read an hour). After an hour, you take them from the over and keep it on the rack till it cools down to room temperature. When they are cooled you transfer them to the fridge to let them cool down further (they seem to be getting more rest than you).

After a good four hours of refrigeration you remove one of trays from the fridge because let’s face it what use is baking if you can’t click and post it as part of your lockdown diaries. As you try to get the cake out of the mould, you try and do this as gently as possible. But then the cake won’t leave the mould without a fight and threatens to crack under pressure. But somehow you manage to get it off the mould, with a little part still sticking to it. Once off the mould, it was time to say Cheese... Cake, and then enjoy the labour of love for baking.

I’ll Rise Up

I’ll rise up

Just like the day

I’ll rise from the aches and pains

I’ll rise up

Cause I’ve done it once 

And I’ll do it again

I’ll rise up 

From the dark and fear

I’ll rise up 

To the light of day

Though I’ve fallen a thousand times

But I’ll rise again

I’ll rise up

From my doubts and fears

I’ll rise up 

And wipe away those tears

I’ve done it a thousand times

But  I’ll rise again

I’ll rise up

To face another day

I’ll rise up

And be grateful to be alive

I’ll keep rising

Cause rising is the only thing I know

I’ll rise up 

Not just on my own

I’ll rise up

And lift others on the way

Cause we will rise up once again

We will rise up

Higher than the wave

We will rise up

And let our spirit soar again

Cause rising from every fall

Makes us stronger again

We will rise up

From the strength that we gain

We will rise up 

From the love that overcomes the pain

We will rise up

Cause rising up is what we will do again

We will rise up 

To see another day

We will rise up

And fight till the very end

Cause rising is all we have learned 

We will rise up

We will rise up

We will rise up

Together again!

Bonding over Tarts

How strange it is that quarantine makes you, make that forces you, to spend time with the ones you love. We are so caught up in our lives, our works , our troubles, our cares, in our own world, that we fail to connect with the ones who matter, our families. We fail to give each other the time they require, the time we need. We are so constantly working hard for the money. Cause we believe the notion that man can’t live on love and fresh air, only.

Baking the tart was supposed to be my thing, to remove the edge you feel, the anxious feeling, to keep you sane. It was supposed be my baking therapy. But then she became my sous chef despite being the head chef in the kitchen, and trying more hijack my bake.

So she cut the bars of chocolate compounds while I prepared the dough. And while my dough rested she prepared the rotis as I cleaned the so called roasted peanuts. And when she was done with the rotis she oiled the pie pans as I tried to roll out the dough for my pastry, well make that our pastries. When the dough was kind of breaking after being rolled out, she patted dough into disks and I lined the pie trays with them, pressing it so that there wouldn’t be bubbles.

While the pie trays rested in the fridge, she quickly swept the house (despite my protest of waiting till the trays were baking in the oven). She got the sauce pans ready for preparing the chocolate ganache while I burnt my finger preparing the peanut brittle, and kept it for cooling. She was my lookout while I preheated the oven, panicking when smoke began to come out of it, only to find that the residue of the buns was causing it.

When the trays went into the oven, she washed the utensils (much to my protest) as I prepared the chocolate ganache. And when the pastries were finally ready, she went for a bath while they cooled. Once cooled, I added the ganache and the brittle and once again into the fridge they went, for setting. But before that she helped me make space in the fridge.

The outcome, a beautiful (for me it was perfect) chocolate ganache tart. And finally when I was taking pics and posting our creation, she constantly pestered me to go for a bath and have my dinner. 

Even though those pictures captured the beauty of the tarts, the mind captured a memory that will forever remain with me about the time when I bonded with my mumma over baking tarts!

Buns in the Oven

.. no no I am not pregnant. If I could I would. But I can’t, so I shan’t. Cause face it, I don’t have the eggs for it, just the sperms for it.

So after deviating from the topic let’s get back on track, focus Roddie focus (and this coming from a highly distracted mind). I meant to bake these buns for Good Friday (much like I wanted to write this last week but my lazy quarantined mind refused to do so), but with the lack of yeast and then time, had to postpone it by a day. So that meant I had my buns in the oven a day late (and once again I am not pregnant, and neither could I get my buns in the oven... get that head out of the gutter, will you!)

So after spending time to put together the ingredients, which meant a couple of trips to the grocery store. I know, I know, I shouldn’t have been doing this in the time of quarantine, but then my baking keeda got a better of the quarantined me. So read and re-read the recipe before I went to bed because it was baking day the next day.

Waking up early, I once again read the recipe, well not before before finishing my morning duty. Thank God for the weighing scales and measuring cups I didn’t have to figure out conversions. The first batch of yeast didn’t froth as the recipe said it should, so that had to be dispensed off, and another one had to be made in its place.

So now it was time to mix all ingredients together to make a dough. And boy was it sticky and icky, and to add to it the yeast mixture didn’t smell so pleasant. So after some much needed kneading the dough came together, but it wasn’t as smooth as the recipe said it should be (which I realised a little later, cause you see I was following the recipe to the tee). So the the dough was set aside to rest, with a hope that it would rise on Holy Saturday and not wait till Easter Sunday to rise with the Lord. 

While the dough was resting and rising, I decided to get myself a quick workout, cause face it this lazy ass butt needs to be active or it would turn into a slob. So as I worked out I kept my eye on the dough, which to my delight was doubling, much like our days in quarantine (and not like our other dough).

After waiting for the sufficient time for the dough to rest and rise, it was time to add the plums to it, and to let it rest for an hour longer. Damn this was one lazy dough, it had already rested for over two hours and this poor pseudo baker was still slaving away.

Once the dough was sufficiently rested, it was time to roll it into logs and make your buns and let it rest once again (not again, this poor baker needed to rest more than these buns). But now came the tricky, sticky part. The dough was still pretty sticky, and icky, sticking to the poor thala, needing to kneaded with both hands and the knees to hold it down, which only caused the thala to lift off every time you needed to turn the dough. So in the end every part your body ended up taking part in the kneading exercise. Due to their stickiness, they didn’t roll well and formed uneven loaves.

So finally the loaves of buns were made, and blessed with the cross, the oven had to be preheated for the buns to go in. Once the oven was hot enough, much like the temperature outside, in went the buns. As the buns baked this pseudo chef kept an excited eye on them baking, ok an excited pair of eyes on them, taking in the whiff, the aroma as the buns slowly baked, and turned somewhat a golden brown. Once they were finally baked, after the designated time, and then some more, took them out off the oven and let them cool down, applying a bit of, ok make that a generous spread of jam on it.

So yipeee the buns were finally done. They weren’t too pretty to looks at, but were pretty good for me. So I looked at my buns with great pride (the baked ones and not the back ones, though I proud of those too) .

Now since I don’t have any daughter, nor do I have a son, my mother gave it to her son (no guessing who it was). Though it was bit dense and not as light as it should be, it was not bad attempt. And it tasted, well all I can say it was edible. So I can say I was successful at baking some decent hot cross buns!

.. Under the Moonlit Sky

They met under a moonlit sky

As the world lay fast a sleep

With just  a few stars out 

And the moon a witness to their meet

The world enveloped in darkness

With just the moon lighting up the night

They sat there on the bench

Side by side, hand in hand

Head on shoulder, arms around shoulder

With each other for company 

Listening to the rhythm of their heartbeat

As it beat in unison

As the world snored away

Lulled to sleep 

By the sound of the crickets chirp

And under that moonlit sky

Their love blossomed 

And in the dark, away from the prying eyes

The found each other

They needed no one or anything

Other than each other 

And the light of the moon

To bear witness to their love

They sat there, staring at the moon

Admiring how beautiful it looked 

Along with its blemishes 

A beautiful bindi adorning the head of the sky

Like the moon they knew they were perfectly imperfect 

Two beautiful souls drawn to each other

Like the moon affecting the tide

They felt drawn to each other

Touching each other’s lives

Affecting each other’s lives

And under the moonlit sky

Far from the prying eyes, they kissed 

With all the passion burning within them 

Sealing the love they felt for each other

With just the moon as their witness

They needed no one at all

The moon looked on

And she smiled seeing them

Witnessing their love

Not once wanting to move her eyes from them

Not because she was a voyeur 

But she wanted to be light in their life

She smiled to see their love blossomed into something beautiful 

So she shone brightly on them 

As they fell in love under the moonlight

A Rendezvous in the Moonlight

The baking had taken longer than he has expected it to. He knew that he would be late for their meeting. He could have either postponed their meeting and carried on with his baking, or he could have postponed his baking and gone and met him. But he wanted to do both, after all he was doing one for the other. So he continued to bake. 

As soon as it was baked, he left it too cool on the rack and hurried to get ready for their meeting. Once it had cooled down, he boxed it, got on to his bike and off he went. All along the ride he wondered if his effort would be appreciated, would be liked. He was excited, not because of their meeting but what he was getting to their meeting, something that was made specifically, not for the occasion, but for someone specific.

So he rode down as fast as he could, as fast as the speed limit permitted him, as fast as his two-wheeler took him. He didn’t want to upset the content of the box, so he made sure he rode carefully. Although cautious he felt excited and could feel the butterflies fluttering in his system. He had this strange nervous excitement in him.

As he reached his destination he could make out his silhouette in the moonlight. Seeing him, he ran towards him and gave him a tight hug, hoping that the warmth he felt, on seeing him,  could be transferred to him. So he embraced him tightly, never wanting to let go, never bothered of what would the world say.

Slowly he wriggled out of the embrace and took him by the hand and led him back to his two-wheeler. This wasn’t where they were supposed to be, their rendezvous point, but since he was going to be late (like really late) he decided it would be best to pick him up from somewhere near his place and head to where they were to meet.

So they got on to the bike and rode to their destination. As he rode he could feel a cool breeze on his face but at the same time he could feel the warmth of his breath at the back of his neck. As they drove he could feel the warmth of his embrace as he held on to him tightly. He could feel his head on his back as they slowly made their way to their destination.

He didn’t want the moment to end. He wanted to stay there and live in the moment forever, never wanting to come out of it. But he could hear the ocean calling, the sound of the waves running towards the shore. He knew their destination was near. Reaching, he stopped at the designated parking lot and parked his two-wheeler there. He took him by the hand and lead him to the beach. 

Reaching the there they kicked off their shoes, because he wanted to feel the coolness of the  sand between their feet, and also they didn’t want to get sand in their shoes. They walked for a while, strolling hand in hand down the beach in the moonlight. 

At last they came to a familiar spot, one they had been to many times before. He sat down on the sand and with it pulling him down towards him. He removed the content of the box and stared at it. Be then took a small bite of it, slowly trying to savour it, take in the taste of the chocolate that had thankfully not melted.

He stared at his face trying to gauge his reaction. He took another bite and then slowly closed his eyes, as if to let the taste sink in. He just looked at him admiring the way he relished the chocolate ganache tart which he has specifically baked for him.

When the content of the box was completed, he leaned over and gently kissed him on his cheek, and put his had hands around his arms. He in turn put his hands across his shoulders, pulled him closer, as he rested his head on it. They sat there under the starry skies, with just the moonlight to illuminate the night, staring at the inky black ocean, letting their bodies and their love to keep each other warm. They let the waves play a symphony, serenading them, as they made the most of their rendezvous under the bright moonlight.