Stop the presses - Margarine crisis averted!

It seems Rod has not been overly quiet on the taxing issue of the non-spreadability of butter. One of his work colleagues, Pankaj, presented him with two tubs of margarine yesterday. 500g of Meadow Lea, and 200g of an Indian margarine called "Nutralite Healthier than Butter Table Spread"(note the lack of the clue word, margarine, in the title). The Nutralite isn't exactly margarine as we know it, it's denser and quite hard straight from the fridge, but a couple of minutes on the counter, while the fabulous toaster which toasts the whole slice of bread the same shade of brown every time does its job, and it's good enough, for government work and Rod.

Before you think Rod must be overpaying his employees, if they can afford two tubs of margarine at a time, the Nutralite cost 39 rupees, or 50p. The Meadow Lea was only 145 rupees, so either the Flora I bought the other day has Swarovski crystals imbedded in it and I didn't notice, or I was fleeced. I kinda hope I was fleeced, because knowing my luck, Keir would swallow the crystals! Better still, I know where Pankaj bought the Meadow Lea, so I can go back and purchase some more (once we've used up the three tubs in the fridge, of course). It's the Steak House at Joh Bagh Market, obviously...

the monkeys are back...

and there's gonna be some trouble!
It's midmorning, and the maid is washing down the balcony. She has an animated conversation with Teresa on the next balcony across, and then opens the sliding door and calls to me
"monkey-ya". She's right, there are two small monkeys hanging off the side of the building, and a gaggle of security guards standing on Teresa's balcony looking at them. She tells me, in broken english/hindi/mime, that big monkey (that would be the one in the photo), taken through Teresa house, with collar on, down lift. At least I think that's what she said.

A short while later there's a loud bang. And then another. I go out onto the balcony to investigate, and see an even larger gaggle of men, security guards and drivers. And some of the security guards have guns, rifles, and they're pointing them at Teresa's balcony. So I decide while that crossing MG Road in Gurgaon would still be riskier, standing on my balcony is probably not too clever, and go back inside. The bangs continue. It's a one sided affair, because the monkeys didn't appear to have much firepower behind them. I was a little troubled by these men shooting at the monkeys. I then decided they were using tranquilizer bullets, because that made me feel better. I then remembered I last saw the monkeys hanging off the side of the building 15 stories up...

The shooting continued on and off for a couple of hours. I'm hoping they were only trying to scare the monkeys away and not actually harm them. One because that appeals to my western sensibilities, and two, because if they weren't, they're really lousy shots!

It's margarine, but not as we know it...

One of the things Rod has missed the most for his entire six months in India is margarine. Okay, he missed the family, but margarine came a close second. There are many products on supermarket shelves here that look like margarine, but after purchase, when he opens the container at home, they aren't margarine. Generally they're some kind of cheese spread, and some of these have been quite nice in their own right, but they're not margarine. Sometimes even upon opening the container, he has been no more enlightened on the contents. Obviously the packages state on the outside what they are, sometimes not in a language he understands (so not English), and sometimes in English that he doesn't understand. What is "Amul Lite Bread Spread Low Fat Low Cholesterol"? Don't know, but it's not margarine. So he took the path of least resistance and bought butter. This was an easy option because it actually used the word butter on the cardboard box. However, butter is impossible to spread from the fridge, and butter kept at Indian room temperature isn't butter for very long. To get the butter at its optimum spreading temperature required planning ahead. Anyone who knows Rod and his cooking ability would understand that this is harder than it sounds.

The British School's Welcome Booklet for the year had listed a couple of supermarkets used to supplying the diplomatic and expatriate communities, so yesterday I went shopping at Basant Lok in Vasant Vihar. It was definitely a "quality not quantity" shopping experience. Prices were high (by local and by Tesco standards), but these were imported foods that would comfort us on our low days. Heinz Baked Beans, Ravioli and Cream of Tomato Soup. Fruit Winders. Scottish Cheddar. And Flora.

Rod was ecstatic when I told him I had found some Flora, and a little bemused when I told him I was hoping someone would show us the local substitute, something that was really margarine that would spread from the fridge. After all, if I knew where to buy Flora, why would I bother with a local margarine? Because the Flora had cost 458 rupees. That's £5.64 or $12.13 AUD.

Gadget Girl

Last week we acquired a few more gadgets - a microwave oven and a blender. The microwave was prompted by the last floods in Gurgaon when Rod took hours to get home and his dutiful wife (that would be me) had no easy way of keeping his dinner warm for him. I put it in the oven on low, but as it turned out, that's not the best way to ensure basil marinated chicken had any mosture left in it at all by the time moisture sodden husband returned from wading down Golf Course Road.

The microwave has a grill feature, so I decided to follow the instructions in the manual (I am a girl, I read instruction manuals) and make myself a toasted sandwich for lunch one day. You press these buttons, it says, place the sandwich on the low rack and turn it over when the machine beeps. I can do this, I think and press the buttons. The display comes up and suggests it will need 11 and a half minutes to toast my sandwich. That can't be right I think, and I was correct. It only needed 9 and a half minutes. Thankfully we packed our George Foreman Lean Mean Grilling Machine in the crates, because the sandwich wasn't really worth waiting that long for!

The blender, however, was an inspired choice. The kids haven't been consuming as much dairy produce since they arrived, what with the milk being different (in taste and not homogenised, so it separates), yoghurt they recognise is expensive, and the cheese is also different. Imported cheese is pricy and local cheese is ...different. Cheese slices come wrapped in plastic, and they can taste less plasticy (obviously that's a real word AND spelled correctly) than some of the cheese not wrapped in plastic. So for the sake of their bones, I decided we would make milkshakes! A glass of milk, some Indian icecream (think the stuff you'd give the kids not the stuff you'd eat yourself) , assorted flavouring and the blender. Hey presto! Mum's a star!

Early morning visitors

The kids had left for school (the bus picks them up outside the guard house at 0635!) and Rod and I had gone back to bed. We were awoken around 8am by a knocking sound coming from outside our apartment. It wasn't the front door, and we're on the 15th floor, so we assumed it was someone doing some building work somewhere nearby. What we didn't assume was that two monkeys were trying to get inside our flat!

Can I say we were just a little surprised when we opened the living room curtains and saw what was on the balcony? Only a few choice words were uttered!

Our next door neighbour, Teresa, was not so lucky. They managed to get into her apartment, and helped themselves to her fruitbowl. She didn't hear a thing, and when she got up, was wondering what had gone on in her place. After all, her husband Chris is housetrained. When we showed her the pictures she was thankful she didn't get up early!

Lost in Translation

I've decided I'm going to have to put more effort into learning Hindi. Every day, our driver, Raju, teaches me a couple of words, generally the things we see as we drive along. Car, motorbike, bus and tractor are the same in both languages. I’ve learnt tree, road, house, temple and overpass, but that doesn’t really help inside my home!

This morning the maid had to translate what the gas repairman was trying to tell me, and she hardly speaks English at all! He wanted two hundred rupees, she could tell me that using words. She could also tell me by the look she gave me that he was overcharging because he didn't actually fix the problem. I could tell that because before he tried to fix it, the gas flame was much higher on the right hand side of the ring. After he fixed it, the gas flame was much higher on the left hand side!

Man cannot live on Chocolate and Red Bull alone...

but Rod was willing to test the theory.

I decided it had come time to tackle the fridge. The vegetable crisper contained chocolate (but no vegetables). The shelves had a tray of chocolates, a tin of chocolates, two multipacks of Red Bull. There was also butter, cheese slices wrapped in plastic (Rod says everything dries out really quickly once opened), a packet of what was once Philadelphia but was now possibly only useful to Alexander Fleming, eggs, milk, fruit juice and lots of bottled water. So not all bad...

I moved on to the cupboards. It seems Rod was never trying to live on Chocolate and Red Bull alone, he had biscuits too! In every cupboard, except for the one he kept the cleaning products in, I found at least one packet of biscuits (cookies). When I asked, he claimed to be afraid of running out. There's a greater chance of Alexander Fleming coming back and asking for the "once Philadelphia" than of that happening! So now everything's rearranged , and I can start again. If only I knew what some of the stuff in the shops was, and how to cook it!