genetically coded love

Whats this?

Well it’s actually a liter of milk boiled think with a can of Milkmaid emptied in, along with lots of pistachios, almonds, a little saffron and some cardamoms.

But what does it mean?

It means a lot of love. It is a representation of love and deep rooted genetically codified desire to keep your loved ones stuffed with fat and feeling happy about it.

 When I was young, on a cold rainy day, my mom would heat up some milk, put in saffron and dry fruits and serve to us. Hot masala milk. It was nice. Good warm milk. In fact warm masala milk is my childhood version of chicken soup. I loved it and it brings back some amazing feelings. Now with happy commercialization, we have Anando Milk available in stores in Mumbai. Anando is the name of a store in Chowpatty. He made his millions selling masala milk at Girgaum Chowpatty. As kids we never had that milk as we were always afraid that having milk outside is highly suspect. So I missed out on that brand. But now he has successfully expanded and he puts visicoolers (fridges with glass doors) in restaurants and serves across outlets. You also have it malls, serving Masala and special masala milk in addition to strawberry and other flavors. Now as an adult, I love the milk! And I introduced it to Jispa. Jispa has also grown to love it. So yesterday she had it at a store and loved it when I mentioned that, I can make it at home for her.

So we got home and I made it. Normally it’s a slow laborious process where you keep heating the milk till it’s thicker, but Milkmaid shortens the process for us. As a parent I am genetically coded to stuff her with fat. So in the end, it turned out much sweeter and has a bit of an over dose of almonds. It tastes more like Soft kulfi than milk but… it’s divine! It was late when it was ready, so she will get to have it today. I tasted it today morning and I have left instructions for Jasmine to dilute it with a little more normal milk as well. We prefer it cold as opposed to hot so hopefully today evening will be a treat for Jispa.

Once, I remember my mom making this hot on a rainy day. It was a special thing in those days, to get mil with all those dry fruits and expensive spices like cardamom and Saffron in it, so it was served like a special thing. My mom even removed special silver glasses for us. Yes REAL SILVER glasses to have warm milk. It was first lesson on applying scientific principals in real life. When you take hot milk and serve in silver, in effect you are using the best conductor of heat to serve something piping hot. You can’t lift the glass without getting burnt. Forget sipping from it. Hahah Silver glasses for hot milk. What a duh thing to do in hindsight. That was one fun family moment.

But yes. For me making this milk more than anything else is an expressing of love.  I love you Jispa, and no matter how much I would love to see you shape up as an athlete with an eight pack ab and toned body, I will still derive the greatest satisfaction from seeing you stuffed with sugar and fat. There is some deep happy feeling that fat stuffing gives parents that a pack of chips cannot. Especially if you are adding the fat and sugar yourself. Wow.

just - here is an image of the product that started it all! Brands do count for a lot of emotional connects in our life :)

no fun robbing what you get on a platter

I have often said that my parenting rule is not to make the mistakes that I thought my parents did. Also at the same time I love remembering the stuff I enjoyed and I try to get the same thing done with Jispa. But I think I might rob her of some fun by being a little over enthusiastic parent.
Look at the picture below. Does it ring a bell? Does it evoke fond memories of raiding fridges and having it when no one was looking?



We often had an open can of milkmaid in the fridge. Milkmaid for uninitiated is sweetened condensed milk. Yummy. It is often used in Indian recipes like kheer or the sorts. So whenever mom made stuff like kheer or halwa we often had a half-finished can lying in the fridge. One of the things we kids loved to do, was raid the fridge. And an open milkmaid can was a really mouthwatering invitation. We dived in and put our finger in it and then ran out licking the finger. Of course we also used a spoon. I don’t think that was for reasons of hygiene. It was plain greed. A spoon carries much more than your finger.
Slowly but surely the half-finished can would become empty and mom would reach out and scream – who ate the milkmaid. Well, it was a pretty useless question. There are three kids in the house. Everyone knows that we all ate it, one spoon at a time. And during vacations it was one spoon at a time, three times a day – just like the doctor ordered :). That’s nine spoons a day. Enough to finish it in 4 to 5 days. But it was so yum. Nobody would own up and mom would simply get exasperated.
The condensed milk was bought just to make the delicacies and not to be consumed raw. It was a treat, not regular meals. But how can you explain that to three kids.
Recently I got Jasmine to buy condensed milk to make fruit salad. I was explaining to her how it’s done. We simply add half a can to a litre of milk and put in as many fruits you can think of. So obviously half a can was left to consume in whichever way we wish. I called Jispa. I was a bit surprised; she did not know what this was. She hadn’t tasted condensed milk yet. I guess it’s a cultural thing. My mom made a lot of stuff using condensed milk but Jasmine doesn’t use it a lot. She simply boils the milk for some time and makes her own. Hence while I loved it while growing up, jispa seems to have so far passed it by.
Not wanting her to miss out on this, I made her taste it. YUMMMY… she went. How can anyone pass up on think sweetened milk? It’s an instant like button. Then I put a spoon in it. See pic above and I told her, it’s in the fridge. You can have it any time. Just be careful not to drop it while eating it. It is quite gooey.
So I gave her the freedom to do something I loved doing, but I unwittingly took a crucial element out of it, which probably made it quite flat. I removed the forbidden from forbidden fruit. So while she will like it, she will never be able to write a blog on how she robbed a few spoons from the fridge. Whoops. I just sanitized her childhood.I even put it in the fridge with a spoon inside. :(
Jispa also doesn’t raid the fridge a lot. She seems content most of the time. Also most of the time, Jasmine is trying to get her to eat. And as she is a swimming kid, we try to get her to eat sweets, chocolates and the works. Why would you raid something that is forced down your throat?
Also another crucial thing is that she doesn’t have siblings. We were three of us. If something went missing, whom can you blame? It’s impossible to get to the root of the crime. Most of the time parents will run in circles trying to apportion blame. Here, Jispa will be the only person found at the scene of the crime. But a lot of times, I try and fill that gap. I irritate her and then she gets angry and complaints to mom and I tell her it’s futile, you will only make Jasmine irritated and you will get equal shit. Yet she complains and I make faces behind Jasmine. This time Jasmine saw me doing it the last time and I got a scolding from her and Jispa was pretty happy. Jasmine keeps saying – she has two kids in the house.

Hmmm. The curse of parenting – no matter what you try, you will always miss something. To not allow milkmaid is being mean, to allow is to remove the fun of raiding it.