Tomato Chutney- The super cookovengers- by Ashwal

There was a boy named Max. One day, his parents told him that they were going out for a day.

After his parents left, he felt he was starving. He waited for hours for them to return. He did not know what to eat. He thought of making tomato chutney, but he didn’t know how to make it.

So Max went to his friend’s house. He said, “Hey, Harry! Can you come with me to buy ingredients to make tomato chutney?” Harry said, “No, I can send Percy Jackson if you want.” So Percy and Max went to Greenland. They needed 2 tbsp split Bengal gram, 1 chopped onion, 3 curry leaves, 4 red chillies, some turmeric powder, some asafetida, 1 cup of chopped tomatoes, 2 tbsp oil, some mustard seeds and salt to taste. They went back to Harry’s house and cooked the chutney. They ate the chutney.

Then Harry came. He asked, “Why didn’t you give me any tomato chutney?” Max said, “Because you said you wouldn't come with me. Since Percy came with me, only we both ate it.”

Chilli paneer- Cooking wonders- by Srihitha

One day, my friend and I were playing. My mother called us and said, “Children, practise for your cooking test”. We started to read our recipe books. We found only few books in my house.

We went to the market to search for more books. We searched in so many places but we found only one book in one place. We also had to buy ingredients for practice. We needed 2 cups paneer cubes, 2 tbsp cornflour, 4 green chilli cut into strips lengthwise, 5 cloves garlic, 1 tbsp grated ginger, 1 tsp vinegar and ½ cup of thinly sliced spring onion whites, salt and oil. We went home and cooked our paneer chilli.

With that, we won the competition.

Witch Pasta? - By Advait

One day my sister and I were alone at home and our tummies were rumbling. When we were thinking that nothing would happen till our mom came back home, my sister got an idea, “Why don’t we try the pasta recipe we got from Confident living?” When I asked her “which recipe” she understood it as “WITCH recipe”!        “Wow, that’s a great idea”, she said. “Let’s dress up as witch and wizard and work on it”.

My sister and I dressed up fast and started collecting the ingredients. We picked up a giant pot, which looked like a chamber. When the water started to boil, we added the pasta pieces one by one.  The pasta looked to us like the remains of a skeleton! Then we put a big pan on the fire and added a big chunk of butter...into it went all the cubed veggies. Tossed them in the pan as though they we were frying beetles & worms. Then let the veggies swam in the white potion (milk & cornflour). Added the half cooked skeleton pieces, some mayonnaise and shredded cheese. Mixed it with a spatula and chanted “ABRA CA DABRA”. The magic worked & the Witch pasta was ready. After all the fun cooking the pasta, we setup the table and sat down to eat. When we started eating, we laughed at each other because we were turning green. It also seemed like we were puffing up into a balloon! We inflated so much that our backs touched the ceiling. We were stuck for an hour till our mom came home. We saw our mom run around for a safety pin trying to deflate and turn us back to normal. But before she could do anything, I screamed and realized that it was a nightmare!After this scary afternoon nap, I went to have lunch and saw that it was pasta that my mother had prepared for us. As my mother served it to me, I got up and fled before I inflated and got popped with a pin!             

                                    

The Pasta Journey- By Anushka

I’ve just finished my exams and to freshen up my mood, I’ve decided to cook pasta. But the point is that human beings will never understand the feelings of these independent veggies and these are some of the unlucky veggies included in the pasta recipe.

It starts with the most important ingredient, the Macaroni Pasta, in ½ cup; pity the whole/drum wheat. The next veggie is super healthy for humans but not pretty much for the mixed vegetables such as broccoli. Now who has broccoli in pasta?? Anyways, capsicum, onion, zucchini and sweet corn all of them are jealous of the next ingredient, a cup of milk, as it is obtained from farm animals and is required in very small quantity. Then suddenly a teaspoon of ragi/bajra flour and even corn flour is desperate to join the family of pasta. And what is a pasta recipe without cheese or mayonnaise? Though only ½ cup, it is still necessary. Now why humans want to add things like salt, pepper and sugar for taste? Does this mean that all the other are veggies completely tasteless? To make the pasta dish pleasant, oregano and basil leaves are added for seasoning. These veggies make the human brain tempted to eat the pasta dish. Also pasta paste, luckily optional, might make its way into the pasta dish. Last but not the least, we cannot miss butter!

Now for the worst part of the dish.. its time for the veggies to ‘suffer’. “Suffer” literally means torture for veggies. The tortures are of many types. Most importantly, veggies are boiled with water. The uncooked pasta is not on its way to death but to get tortured. This is proved as this uncooked pasta is not cooked 100% but only 80%. It has also been strained and its mood keeps on changing as it is first boiled and then rinsed through cold water. The next step is very juicy. The butter melts, followed by vegetables and sauce. Since the dish till now is very smooth, it is added to thick flour and it is mixed to balance it. Pasta paste, though in small quantity, is important at this very stage. If you are a fan of smooth mixture of pasta dish, you can add cheese/mayonnaise. Food should also be pleasant/tempting to look. This, it is garnished with basil leaves. Every person gets bored eating the same food regularly, even if it is your favourite dish. Thus, a whole wheat garlic bread has been added to the dish to freshen up our taste buds.

  

Book Covers- For books in mother tongue

We wanted the kids to understand how cover pages are done. We taught them to go for either the theme or the climax of the story.

We also wanted them to feel a story in their mother tongue. So we asked them to read a book in their mother tongue and make a cover page for it. It was a tough task, considering that many kids didn't know how to read in their mother tongue and that we didn't have the collection in few of the Indian languages. It was tough, but we managed to do it. Here are the cover pages:

 Advait: Enth Pati Ende Nila Puvina (Malayalam)

Ritvika: Radio Mariyu Thathaiya Chepa (Telugu)

Tanya: Garma Garam Chai Chahiye (Hindi)

Ariyan (Tamil)

 Tia: Masala Chai (Hindi)

Saagarika: Kivuda Kappe (Kannada)

Rishi: (Malayalam)

Ashwal: Bala Ramayanam (Telugu)

Happy with love

Recently we had an activity with children where they had to think about ‘love’. They had to share what love meant to them. After a lot of discussions, arguments, explanations, introspections, tears and outbursts, they came up with a few points:

Before you read any further:

This is not an article written by one person. One person was just kind enough to collate all the thoughts, points, shared by kids (5-12 years) on different days in different batches. It’s mostly written verbatim.

1.    Love is about care: When we love someone, we care for them. We look after their needs, their feelings. Like we give them a glass of water when they look tired.

2.    Love is to feel safe: We feel safe with our loved ones. We feel they can protect us from all dangers. In fact, we don’t even get to know about a danger many times, because they avert it before it harms us.

3.    Love is to trust: We can trust the person we love. We trust that they will do all that is good for us, that they will never harm us. Like we drink the glass of milk given to us without any worry. We may hate milk, but we don’t mistrust the mother who is giving it. If there is no trust, there is no love.

4.    We give in love: We become a giver when we love. We like to give. Love means not holding ourselves back from giving. We do expect our loved ones to love us back. But not getting does not lead to not giving. Not getting may just make us feel sad. When we expect give and take all the time, it’s called trading, not love.

5.    Love is to respect: When we love someone we respect their choices, likes, dislikes. We may disagree with what they want, but we don’t scoff at them for that. We respect their personalities and we don’t want them to become a clone of us.

6.    Love is to support: We support our loved ones when they need us, whether they say it or not. Even if they are in trouble because of their silly mistake for which we had warned/cautioned them enough earlier, we support them in their crisis and help them through it. We don’t say, “I told you so! Now do what you want”

7.    There is honesty in love: We may lie a little to hide our surprise gifts, but we don’t manipulate our dear ones. We don’t hide important stuff. We don’t become brutally honest and hurt their feelings either. So if our loved one is not looking very nice in the new dress, we don’t ‘honestly’ call them ugly. Neither do we call them gorgeous and let them buy that dress. We need to decide such things on the spot. But we try to be honest all the time.

8.    Love makes us kinder: People in love are kind. Not all the time though. May be they are kind to their loved ones. But they are definitely not kind to those who hurt their loved ones. Like a mumma tigress fiercely protects her cubs from predators. She is kind to her cubs but not to the predators. But yes, when we love, we feel kind and gentle.

9.    Love helps us understand: It brings empathy. It’s different from sympathy and way different from apathy. You feel what your loved ones feel. You understand why they feel in a certain way.

10.Love brings joy: Love means being happy with each other. It means we want to spend time with each other. That’s why we make birthday cards, mother’s day cards & father’s day cards. That’s why we hug, kiss and say “I love you” many times. Big kids stop doing all this. But they should do it too. it’s not embarrassing.

(A note from the person who collated the data: Kids have a fair understanding of love. They are a lot more sensible and sensitive than we think they are. I think we can learn a lot about love from them)