Thursday, December 27, 2007

Lion's Roar Outreach


No surprise to anyone that I'm a dog lover. And while I've adored big cats from afar I recently had the opportunity to get directly involved. My friend Laura Simms, storyteller, humanitarian and profound activist undertakes many projects to feed her substantial talents. Several years ago I heard of one that deeply moved me.

The project is called Lion's Roar a wildlife zoo located in Buhusi, Romania. This is how Laura describes it:

When I first saw the zoo in 2002, told about it by a Roma woman and Leslie Hawke, director of Ovidiu Rom, I was deeply distressed by the state of the animals. An uncanny silence hung over the Park, and as I walked, cage to cage, animals moved to the bars and stared out listlessly. I saw a little girl watching a large lion nearly the size of his concrete Enclosure. The misery on her face reflected the sadness of the lion. I thought, if someone improved the life of the animals, the children would be happy.
- Laura Simms


Laura and many volunteers worked diligently on behalf of the animals in this tiny zoo that is being shut down since it doesn't meet EU standards. Take a look at the some of the inhabitants; dingos, bears, baboons, dogs, cats and of course, Lions. The mighty felines pictured above are Gypsy and Romany, a couple who were badly malnourished as cubs which resulted in spinal deformities. The couple along with another lion named Bella will be killed if they are not moved to a sanctuary.

If you are interested in donating to Lion's Roar you can do so here. Please send the word along to any people or agencies you know that could assist this noble cause.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Rekha's 7 Layer Christmas Crack Cookies

In the 3rd grade, my best friend Denise Yaag gave me a recipe that I've used till this day. Actually, Denise gave me 2 recipes that I still use. The first was melted Swiss cheese atop toasted bread. Before you nourish thoughts of ridicule for my early culinary efforts let me tell you this. I cooked my first Indian meal, completely unaided, in the 3rd grade. It consisted of Keema curry with the traditional green peas served over hot rice. Did I follow a recipe? Was I supervised? Nope. I just hit the fridge and concocted the meal to surprise my parents for dinner on a school night. Mom and Dad gushed over my budding skills as they chowed on a hot Telugu meal. Thus my culinary precociousness was born.

Anyhoo. The other recipe Denise shared with me was a recipe she called 7 Layer Cookies. The first time I tasted them I knew I would arm-wrestle to the death to own it. Luckily Denise was not a stingy or possessive friend and gladly wrote the ingredients in her curvy, very feminine handwriting. The first time I made them was a culinary coup. They surpassed even my puerile curry attempts. After tasting the cookies (odd for a cookie, even to an Indian family like us whose only notion of cookies were shortbread biscuits so stony they had to be dipped in hot milk to consume) the family sat around the table and stared at the baking sheet. Could something this sublime be composed of chocolate, crumbs and milk? More importantly, my family acknowledged for the first time that smack-your-lips delicious food could come from a country other than India.

20 years later... ahem, I mean 30 years later I still make them every Christmas. The house smells like chocolate, butterscotch and oddly, sex. Or perhaps it's just my perception of how the cookies make me feel. For those of you who don't like chocolate (aghast!) or sustain allergies like my walnut-averse friend Sheila, please substitute at will.

Ingredients:

1 12 oz bag 60% Cacao Ghiradelli chocolate chips. Nestle's semi sweet chocolate can be substituted and indeed I used the old standby for decades until I got turned on to the superior depth of Ghiradelli. You can find these in most supermarkets these days for the same price.

1 10 oz bag Nestle Butterscotch chips.

1 stick salted butter melted

3 cups Graham crackers ground in a food processor.

1 can sweetened condensed milk. Either Eagle or Carnation is fine.

1 cup chopped walnuts. Pecans, almonds, pistachios or other nuts can be used as well. If you're an aficiendo of nuts, use more than a cup if desired.

Directions:

Pour melted butter in a 16 x 9 inch baking sheet with at least 1 inch raised edges. Distribute butter evenly. Scatter cracker crumbs evenly across sheet. Sprinkle Butterscotch chips in an even layer. Sprinkly chocolate chips in an even layer. Then scatter nuts evenly. Evenly pour condensed milk over entire confection slowly so that thick ribbons cascade over the layers. This is important as the milk must penetrate through all the layers or else the cookies will not stick together.

Bake in a preheated 325 degree oven for 25 minutes or until cookies are a light brown but not burnt at the edges.

If you're paying close attention you might notice I've only listed 6 ingredients. There is an additional layer and that is sweetened coconut. However I've always felt it pushed the limits of this sweet over the top and do not include it in my concoctions. So! as they say in the biz, the 7th ingredient is love. Awwwwww.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Winter wonderland my ass! or Damn my thin Indian blood

The hammock curves under the weight of an inch of ice frosted with hardened snow. The deck has become a skeetway of 3 inch ice, on top of which Duke and I both flail and skid. The sun umbrella broke at the base, listing atop the garden table like a macabre parasol. The dog steps gingerly through his yard, his playground now a obstacle course of jagged ice, frozen leaves and plunging icicles.

Neither of us love the winter. His excuse is purely physical - not so much playtime in frigid weather. His shearling coat doesn't allow optimal movement, his feet got cold fast. And yes, I have heard about dog shoes, or sled shoes as the huskies of the Iditarod use. However I was a bad dog mother and didn't order a pair in late November this year (which is when winter began) so Duke doesn't have footies to brave the cold streets of Passaic Park.

My dislike of winter could stem from my thin Indian blood. I mean I'm from the south of India, for God's sake, I never even saw ice until I lived in Poona. I remember the incident clearly. My parents filled a bucket with water one night and left it on the front porch. The next morning the bucket was frozen solid, baffling a country chickling like myself. However my cousin Suji, who was born in the same area of India LOVES the cold. Matter of fact she wants her ashes scattered over Everest when she passes. Who, pray tell, will scatter them I wonder?

Complicating matters is the theory that my blood has thinned not due to the deep Telugu blood flowing through it, but due to the vast quantities of vodka I consumed during my school years. Come off it! I was a young girl released from the chains of Christian church school, who wouldn't party it down on a campus as notorious as University of Maryland's? Earning me the rather amusing nickname of ahem, "Chedalavodka".

Either way you slice it. Thin blood. Thin blood.

Monday, December 17, 2007

Photorefractive Keratectomy

Been laying low the past few days due to eye surgery. PRK to be exact. While I was hoping for the more cutting edge (literally) procedure called Interlase , the curvature of my cornea prohibited this surgery so I opted for the less invasive PRK. Downside being the recuperation time which can last up to one week. That and the bile-tasting eye drops that drip from your eyes into your nasal cavity and mouth. Oh, and the not so chic wrap-around blue black glasses meant to diminish light.

So bear with me as my eyes become reacquainted with vision without the assistance of glasses or contacts. Something I'm quite looking forward to as I've been working the librarian look for the past month. Which, let me tell you sucks when you're watching the Hitman in a theater full of juiced up boys and girls. Or when you're attending an OK magazine party in the meat-packing district.

Soon, very soon I'll be blinking these brownies unimpeded.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Piglet Cubs

While I'm not thrilled with the CNN redesign some aspects I find valuable. For example, the featured videos appear to include more animal-centric stories. Like this one titled: Tiger befriends piglet in the zoo. Lot more to the story as you can guess. Apparently the death of cubs depressed a mother tiger named Sai Mai in a Thailand zoo. Her health flagged so the zoo keepers searched for surrogates. The only ones to be found were baby piglets so in a stroke of brilliance they dressed the wee pigs in tiger-striped outfits (look at the vide!) and presented them to Mama tiger. Apparently Sai Mai found them palatable (excuse the pun) and proceeded to nurse the tiger pigs.

Rhapsodize all you want of human intelligence. Nothing beats the majestic power of motherhood.

Monday, December 03, 2007

The God Within

The frigid temps, early snow and blustery wind had me huddling in my bed yesterday with a small dog seeking refuge under warm down covers. It was a day that my friend Lourdes and I agreed upon - melancholic. But sometimes you need to reach blue depths in order to sustain those flights into the stratosphere.

Reminds me of one of the inspiring lines from Elizabeth Gilbert's book - Eat, Pray, Love. In it she describes a simple mantra: Om Namah Shivaya which translates to "I honor the Divinity Within Me". What could be simpler or more powerful? Funny thing about meditation. The act itself of stilling the mind brings about the exact result that one is usually seeking. In my case, respite from the scatty, bratty thoughts roaming my mind. A cease fire or sorts that allows purity of focus. Ah, could there be such a thing? There could and is. It just requires the removal of mental detritus to get there. And to remove gunk you've got to be very still, very quiet. Banish thoughts of what to wear tomorrow. Rid thoughts of what to prepare for dinner. Forget the dentist appointment. And finally it's there.

Om Namah Shivaya - try it sometime.