Selling and Buying

We have decided to chronicle our next big project using this blog. It will hopefully be a great way to track the progress and tribulations of renovating a rowhouse that is 200 years old.

While we absolutely love our house - our first house - here on Forrester, the time has come to move up and take on a new challenge. We have learned so much about caring for a home and are looking forward to taking that knowledge and building upon it with the rowhouse on S. Exeter.

Performing a renovation project on a home of this age will certainly teach lessons, affirm limitations and try emotions. Although, I truly hope that the buying and selling phase - where we are right now - proves to be the most stressful. It has been a relatively quick process that has been filled with highs and lows. Ultimately, we have been very fortunate despite a mediocre real estate market.

The current owner of the rowhouse quickly accepted our first offer and has been very helpful throughout the process. Our house was listed and we received two offers within seven days! We are getting just under the asking price for our house and we are buying the rowhouse for about $35,000 less than the original listing! Needless to say, we are quite pleased.

The settlement date is tentatively scheduled for June 4, 2008 - assuming no more surprises. We are sort of expecting a few more surprises, but our fingers are crossed. For the time being, we will be packing, getting our house ready for the home inspection and letting our imaginations run wild with ideas - more on that later.

Molagushyam & Parikkai thayir pachadi

Molagushyam is a simple and easy to make gravy to serve with rice. With pepper as the main spice and protien rich moong dal, makes it more healthy. My paati (Mom's mother) prepares this delicious molagushyam without adding dal. It is also referred as Kari molgaushyam, perhaps due to the color of the kootan due to the addition of pepper. (Kari indicates black color). It tastes wonderful with salted whole lemon. Whole lemon is pierced with a skewer and pickled in salt. Nothing else. After pickling for more than 6 months, the lemons will be gooey and melted salt mixed with lime juice will be dripping like honey. How I miss that. I don't bother to pickle lemons this way, since I am the only person who likes that. When I ever I visit my paati, I never miss to taste the salted lime. For my molagushyam, I prepared bitter gourd thayir pachadi as side.

Molagushyam
Vegetables are cut into cubes.
elephant foot yam (chenai) - 1 cup
raw banana - 1 cup
ash gourd (elavan/vellai poozhinikkai) - 1/2 cup (optional)
moong dal - 1/2 cup
turmeric - 1/2 tspn
pepper powder - 1 tspn (Adjust to your taste)
salt
Coconut oil
curry leaves

Wash the vegetables and transfer to a bowl to cook in pressure cooker.
Add 2 cups of water. Adjust the water according to how much you would like the vegetables to be cooked. It taste good if the veggies turn mushy also.
Add turmeric,salt, pepper powder.
Pressure cook for 3 whistles and cook for another 5 minutes on low flame.
Open the cooker after 15 minutes.
Lightly mash the cooked gravy by the ladle. Add water to adjust the consistency. If you are adding water, then boil on stove stop .
Garnish with a teaspoon of coconut oil and few curry leaves.

Parikkai thayir pachadi (Bittergourd Raitha)
Bitter gourd - 1 nos
Coconut - 2 tblspn
Green chilly - 2mustard powder - 1/2 tspn
Curd - 1 cup
salt
Seasoning
oil
mustard seeds

Method
Select BG which are less bitter. We get fluorescent green colored ones which are less bitter.
Slice the bitter gourd in to rings. Remove the seeds.
Shallow fry them till it turns brown.
What I do is MW for 3 minutes wihtout covering.
Take a pan, add a tablespoon of oil. Add some sugar and the half cooked BG. This way it gets fried easily.

Grind together coocnut, green chilly and mustard powder to a smooth paste adding little water.
Add the grinded paste to curd and whip. Do the seasoning using mustard seeds.
Just before serving, add the fried BGs to the pachadi, to have them crisp.

The pachadi is going to Pooja's VOW-Bittergourd event.

Meeting a fellow blogger

Even though its quite sometime since I have started blogging, I have been active since 5 months or so. In that period, I had come across Aparna's blog and knowing she has her ancestral roots to my place, caught my attention. She even mentioned that she visits my place occasionally. I looked forward to her visiting Palakkad.

I received a mail informing her visit to Palakkad during the Easter weekend. I was more than happy to meet Aparna and her family and we decided to meet at my place. It was a nice experience to meet a faceless friend. When she called to find if the time was convenient for me, she asked about a landmark very near my house. I thought her relatives whom she was visiting must given that info. But still I was puzzled about her asking that particular one since she did not have my address. Later I got to know from her that wikimapia has helped her and I have my house marked in it. She did not call me, even once, to help locate my house. Reminds me, world is small. With friends, we used to discuss, there will be a time (which is not too far), when we will be giving links from wikimapia for our address.
We chatted for a couple of hours as though we know each other for a long time. She has a very lovely and bubbly daughter, Akshaya. She is smart when she says she has met 3 bloggers (includes her mom too), while her mom's count is only 2.

I got a chance to devour Aparna's cookies. Incidentally, I had tried the same cookies from her blog. Tasting hers, helped me evaluate mine.

When her husband joined in, I thought we will end up as relatives. Anyway,no relation was arrived at, which usually happens among Palakkad Iyers. But we will remain as friends for ever.