Apple Streusel Cake and Apple Crumble Pie

Followed her recipes till the last detail!

Do try out Apple Streusel Cake and Apple Crumble Pie if you love the flavor of Apples. If you don't, I am sure you will start loving it with just one of these recipes! :-)

And Joy of Baking is an awesome website!

p.s: Thank you Joy of Baking for giving me the real joy of baking! :-)

Beginning in the End

Preparation time is something we all know as a term. We see it around us in every form. Even a school going kid is well versed with it. To give that one hour examination, a student spends at least a few weeks studying for the subjects every day. Dancers spend hours on rehearsals for that one show. Athletes spend a year long training sessions for that one competition. And the list of how much preparation influences the final performance is endless.

But do we really use this in our daily lives? The chances of a negative response is higher because many of us may not have even thought about it. Don't worry, when it comes to our daily lives, we do preps without even knowing that we are doing it. That is good and bad at the same time. Good because we are preparing, yet bad, because there may not be any structure to it making us lose time. The idea behind having a structure is exactly what we learnt while preparing for school exams. If you want to pass or achieve good grades, you have to study (read prepare for the exams). I guess the problem lies in the exams, because the moment we are done with school, we want rid of everything related to the bad experiences, and most of the times they are exams! And with that, the importance of preparation goes down the drain. What a pity! But I digress!

So coming back to the preparation, I wish to share my rule of thumb which saves a lot of time! To be precise, it is cut short to half of what it usually takes. And welcome "Beginning in the End"! What it simply means is to prepare for the next day while ending today. For eg. while emptying today's school bag, fill it up for the next day! While changing into pajamas at night, hook up your clothes for the next day! While winding up at work, update your tomorrow's to dos or schedules. So on and so forth.

Why it works? While ending, you are already doing more than half of the beginning activities. So it is an advantage to do the beginning at that time, as half of the things are already in place! Also you go to bed feeling accomplished and start the next day on a good note as you are already prepared! The over whelming feeling during those rush hours where little things take up insufferable time is bad. And it is the best recipe to ruin a perfectly beautiful day ahead. The feeling of peaceful mind where everything works well is by all means addictive! And it can't be achieved without these preps!

So to all those who feel the pressure in the mornings, try this and you will have saved a lot of pain already! And for those who have the peace of mind, do you follow the same rule? If not, do share with me yours to try! :-)

Self-sufficiency

Self-sufficiency is defined as "needing no outside help in satisfying one's basic needs". Basic needs, as in very basic needs of humans - food, water, shelter and clothing. Now with the modern context it is also extended to sanitation, education and healthcare. And yet, we find more and more educated people not understanding this term!

Understanding or rather misunderstanding is seen because, the implied meaning of self-sufficiency changes with the gender. It is considered inferior when it is a boy and an ambition when it is a girl! Surprisingly, both are ridiculed for entirely different reasons when they are just self sufficient!

A lot would change if self-sufficiency is taught as a basic hygiene factor for a balanced life without gender bias! A self-sufficient person is more sorted than someone who lives off or shows off someone else's earned money! You learn to appreciate self-sustained lives instead of judging, because you know what it takes to get what you have. 

The ability to earn your own life is utterly priceless! It is that thin line between living your life your way and earning your life your way! The first one is a privilege, the second one, a reward.

either... or...

"You either have results or reasons, it can never be both!"What followed after I heard this could be summarized like, 'my mind wandered at a different place and only this sentence kept repeating in front of my eyes'. It was as if one of my favorite songs was being played in a loop for hours together, yet I wanted to hear it just one more time! I got influenced with this logic so much so that I saw almost everything in either-or form, since that day! It was very assuring and gave a different perspective to my out look! To name a few examples - you are either pregnant or not, your cake is either baked or not, you are either fit or not, you either know the truth or not! Are you getting what I am trying to say? There can't be a little pregnant or a half baked or a semi-fit or a partial truth you can go on with! It doesn't do any good to anybody, because it doesn't exist! Do we consider a work in progress as a finished good and use it? Hell no! It doesn't exist in exactly that way!

But as humans we are gifted with making things complicated! We get comfortable with the "maybe" instead of identifying the "either-or", and then wonder why our mind feels burdened later. We will ignore what is clearly seen because what we hear does not correspond to it. It is easier to negotiate with oneself, even get convinced of the maybe. But to confront the truth, we have all the reasons to not do it, while all we really need is that one result, that is, to set us free!

But in the struggle of choice between comfort and freedom, looks like the former often wins the game! As this logic goes, your can either have comfort or freedom, it can really never be both! Alas, truth is not to comfort you, but to set you free! 

Destiny

Destiny of the word "Destiny" is very unfortunate. It is always destiny's fault when things go wrong. It was already written and hence life went out of control. If something has to happen, it will happen no matter what. Poor Destiny, always becomes the scapegoat.

In Destiny's defense, I'd like to specify that we can only fool others by blaming it on destiny. You can even try to run away from the consequences of your wrong choices. But the truth is, one often meets his or her destiny on the path taken to avoid it. For we shape our destiny during the time we make our decisions. The consequences of our choices are the elements of our own destiny. If something goes wrong, it's not the destiny but the moment when the unworthy choice was made. If it was already written, it was written at the same time you made that wrong decision.

There's a saying in Hindi "नसीब गांडू तो क्या करेगा पांडू? (Naseeb gandu to kya karega Pandu?)" Roughly translated in English it means "You are doomed, if your destiny is screwed up." I'd really like to alter it to "अगर पांडू है गांडू तो क्या करेगा नसीब? (Agar Pandu hai gandu to kya karega Naseeb?)" which means, "If you screw up your life, your destiny is doomed!" (Lost in translation! Both the statements are intended to be extremely humorous!)

Personally, I'd like to live a life of "I am responsible" than "you (destiny) are responsible!"

Life Partner

Dating getting evolved into marriage is incredibly scary now a days! I cannot even begin to explain the fear associated with married life I see around me. You see more and more couples delaying the big question in spite of having dated for years together. You also see a majority choosing short term hook ups because they are not willing to commit. Or the best of all, friends with benefits which is nothing but a hoax in my honest opinion! Simply because you are abusing both the relationships in this context - that of a lover and that of a friend. You can never cherry pick things, and may be that is why they land up alone in spite of having multiple relationships or feel inexplicably insecure in spite of prolonged dating. But there has to be more to it! If I ponder a bit on this I feel it lies in the lack of efforts to make things happen for you.

When you choose a life partner, you're choosing a lot more and very important things. This decision will define your life for the next 30-40 years at least. That person is going to share your bed, bathroom, kitchen and home. His or her habits are going to influence your sleep, hygiene, nutrition and leisure time. This person will significantly impact your relationships with your family and friends along with being a major part of your support system and a co-parent to your children. When you will have ups and downs in your career, this person will be your anchor who sticks through all thick and thin with you. When you want to take that break, he or she will be your companion who will make that break worth while! And when you will have wrinkles and slow down, this is the same person who will look up to you and feel that growing old together was a fulfilling experience! And if either of the above is something you are not okay with, can you imagine the rut you will render yourself into? This reality is much more intense than they can imagine!

I have my own doubts if such people can digest this intensity to begin with! They want a life partner who is all of the above but don't want to take efforts to become someone like it. I don't even think that they would ask these questions to themselves after a date, forget about while selecting a date! Then when it is too late, they will give into social pressures, get married and land up frustrated. If that doesn't happen, they will remain single and keep cursing the unreasonable expectations marriage brings in. The same people will have a list of things to say against marriage when it doesn't happen to them or breaks off pretty soon into it. Honestly, when you get into it for all the wrong reasons and when you look for all the irrelevant things in your partner, you can't really blame it on the marriage, you know!

What you see is not what you have

Click to enlarge. Pictures are really interesting! (No selfies involved! :-D)

The twenties of today are facing a new challenge to walk on the path of self discovery. Just a generation senior, but it seems unbelievably different from us! We were taught to look within ourselves, value of introspection must have been imbibed in us when we were barely out of diapers, and most importantly, we were made responsible for our lives way before we became self sufficient! There was never any scope to indulge in the blame game when something went wrong! What is more, if we complained of something, a clear response was - you can never complain about something you permit! In a nut shell, answers lie within oneself.

With the compulsive display of one's life on public forum, the current twenties seem to be trapped in this virtual world! They will rather spend time in making their online profiles look outstanding than actually invest time in building their personalities. They will compare others updates, picture perfect photos and judge themselves based on how others lives are panning out. Little do they realize that public forums have no scope for honesty. No one will ever share a post on failed projects, photos of a broken relationship or for that matter how their lives are empty with only images to exhibit the supposed perfect life in selfies! In addition to that, it is used in a very effective way to vomit all the frustrations in a sympathy seeking manner and just a little later complain that there is no privacy. It is also very commonly seen that in order to portray a very fancy lifestyle some share a little too much and then blame others of being judgmental! Some even show the courage to have personal arguments and then claim that people interfere a lot.

Public display of affection - parents, lovers, friends and so on; such a sorry sight really! I wonder if they invest even half of the time to meet their parents or have a deep conversation with their lovers or spend meaningful moments with their friends! Just imagine how different their lives would be if they gave as much thought to their careers as they give to their updates and profile details. If they spent more time pondering on why their best friends keep changing with every picture, or why their parents appear more on their updates and less in their lives, or wonder why they broke off from a seemingly serious relationship or why they get frustrated with their jobs in a few months into it, they would see it clearly! Just with a little more thought there will be real answers to their real problems.

Most importantly, they will find answers within themselves! No more sympathy seeking, good bye to judgmental interfering people and welcome privacy! Parents and family will be reinstated as support systems. Fake friends will not like this change, true friends will be there forever, they always are! Their jobs (even if they are in the wrong one) will give them work satisfaction and let them find their passion to follow in the future. The possibility of finding a serious relationship will be more because they will have figured out the type of companionship they are looking for. And the best of all, they will be happy with themselves and not their online lives!