silly silai

"You know, you're really getting into this whole pregnancy thing," said soon-to-be PP, "Did you, by any chance look up a manual with all the things that pregnant women feel and do, just to make sure you got them right? You don't have a checklist on you by any chance?"

Fine, he did have a point, even though it was stretched finer than my budget for maternity clothes (viz. nil) I just didn't see the point in shelling out a bomb for ugly oversized clothes which I wouldn't need after baby made the grand entry (hahahaha - I still laugh when I think about it. I punch the air every single time I manage to hold my breath and squeeze into formerly-loose, pre-pregnancy clothes for a second or so. And I once trapped myself for five whole minutes in a dress that I thought would fit. K found my acrobatics amusing and applauded - the brat!)

Anyway, to get back to the point, I was nesting like crazy. One fine day I woke up and demanded a sewing machine. The conversation went something like this.

A: You've always said that there is no such thing as women's work and men's work and that you'd be damned if you would sew buttons on my shirt just because we're married. And now, you want a sewing machine. Fine. Do you even know how to thread one?

Me (trying hard to reprise childhood memories and pretending I know all about it): Of course! See there are these round things called bobbins that are involved...

A: So what will you stitch? Do you know how to?

Me (lusting after visions of Peter Pan collars and an entirely imaginary domestic goddess image of myself)  I will make baby clothes. And sheets. And nappies.

A; Oh really? (while he envisioned a private hell)

And my brahmastra was launched: I'm pregnant! You have to keep me happy and do what I say.

And so he did. We scuttled off to a showroom (MIL was away and would have sensibly dissuaded me from a disastrous decision but well - she was away :) and I shortly became the proud owner of a spanking new Usha Janome Stitch Magic.

Luckily for me, there was a demo of sorts that the guy gave (which included threading the machine, which I obviously didn't know how to do) and demonstrated the bewildering array of feet (the machine's, not his) available and from then on I was on my own.

Suffice it to say, there were mistakes galore, BUT I did manage a couple of dozen nappies from an old sari, half a dozen sheets, a couple of light quilts and several clothes, most of which she has outgrown now that she is nearly five months old)

How? The internet is a great teacher and has loads of free patterns.

I even managed a couple of simple kurtas for the MIL; one for A (he actually wears it out) and a clutch of stuff for myself including two rather nice long divided skirts and a few simple tops, all of which are currently invaluable given my laziness in getting back into shape. More on that later...

give us this day...

Pregnancy changes everyone. I like to think it changed me into this domestic goddess who is patient and kind and a super mom and cooks and looks like a dream.

Of course, I'm dead wrong.

What it did do was give me this crazed but half-baked nesting instinct (more about that later) which drove me to try all kinds of things during my pregnancy. My only excuse is hormones frying my brains. Can you think of any other reason why I would (at 4 a.m.) look up an online craft store and order knitting needles in ALL the sizes they have available?

Anyway, one of the crazed experiments was bread. I must have waded through hundreds of recipes in my lust for the perfect home-made whole-wheat/ multigrain bread. And most of them added all-purpose flour to the recipe which I emphatically did not want. I did finally hit upon one that worked for me with the addition of some baking soda and baking powder.

Of late, I've been on a selective health kick to lose the pregnancy kilos. I eat chocolate and ice cream but make bread at home in the belief that it will keep me healthy.

So while I was doing the weekly loaf today, the yeast gave up the ghost. It just wouldn't foam. I tried adding more yeast, I tried more sugar, placed the bowl in the sunlight and even left the kitchen only to pop my head around the door suddenly to make sure it wasn't pulling a fast one on me. Didn't work.

I went ahead with the dough anyway and was grumbling away when (of course) it refused to rise. After tea with the MIL (blessedly free of breast milk - the tea, not the MIL) I was rummaging through the fridge and spied a pint of beer. All excited, I ran back to the MIL, "Mamma, beer is well, yeast and bubbles, isn't it? It ought to rise with beer." She gave me a jaundiced look and said, "Well, you like to add alcohol to EVERYTHING - your husband does it to mutton, you do it to apple stew, cake, and once, memorably to soup... so I don't see why you shouldn't try this, especially as it will mean a couple of sips from the bottle for you."

So I did, and realised, upon a quick Google search, that loads of people do make beer bread. Aha. And here it is... Not the best but 'twill do...  and we shall bring on the beer from the start next time.