Thursday, June 09, 2005

Degrees on the wall

I have always wondered why people frame their degrees and put them up on the wall.

I mean, I can understand if a doctor does it at his clinic. His patients would feel reassuared.

But why would a education counsellor want to put up a degree on the wall, that too in a field unrelated to the counselling. I guess the counsellor just wanted to let her clients know that she has "been there, done that".

Today, I actually found one such degree on the wall useful. We were changing a computer at the office and I had to take it to the lady who handles the computing resources of the department. I like to think that I know a lot about computers, after all, I am doing my Master's in Computer Engineering. I was wondering what would be the requirement to be a "Computing Consultant" in the office. Thankfully, the degree on the wall said "Bachelor of Science".

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Making Ghee

Since I came to Raleigh, I have been in the search of the dish I love. It is a simple preparation. Boiled rice with Dal, which in Marathi we call "Varan Bhaat". But there are two more critical ingredients. One is a few drops of lemon juice and the other is clarified butter (ghee in Hindi and toop in Marathi).

The ghee was and still is unavailable at the grocery stores near my house.

Finally, I decided that enough is enough and set out to make ghee myself.

I remembered that you need to get cream first to make ghee. I set out to do that, but had to give up half way when I remembered another fact that the cream had to be collected for over a month to yeild a substatial quantity of ghee. I needed my ghee immediately ...

I then did what I should have done earlier. I searced on the internet. I found many articles and what they said boiled down to this. Heat unsalted butter on low heat for an hour.

There is a jar of ghee sitting in my cupboard now.

Ah, the joy of being able to really enjoy Varan Bhaat as it is meant to be.