Thunbergia Haircut - Topic of Mid Night Comedy by two rouge teen age cows on their night out!

Ashrama Gardens has been quite a nightmare for the wandering cows these days as the lush green attracting them from a distance leaves them high and dry as the idiot who maintains the greens has shut them out by having no suitable plant for their palate. The disappointed cows leave the space in slow pace, only revenge they can take is to leave no cow shit behind for our garden use.

Yesterday night was special for the two teenager cows (could not check their gender), it looks like the night belonged to them, They went on a night out campaign, the cow shit they left behind at our gate is the proof that they got to eat some good healthy street food much before arriving here.  For a change, these teenagers decided to say no to the usual disappointment waiting for them at our fence and road side gardens. They decided to turn the situation into a mid night stand up comedy. They said, "let us carefully shave off this fellow's fence ornamentation with Thunbergia, and then let us shit all around, drink all the water kept for the pathetic street dogs, and also eat all that yummy glucose biscuits left for these lowly animals and make some merry, rest here for a while to digest and shit, and then slowly drag our feet to wherever next we need to go.

I was distracted with my own work and stayed late into the night, when I came out for the dinner dish out for the dogs before it is my time to sleep, I saw these two teenager guests resting right in front of my gate. Though they were bit startled by me, their siesta slumber laziness post fiesta did not have them quick, and my body language of carefully opening the gate and stretching my ugly legs around them sounded no threat to them, so they carried on their post comedy chillout party with their wildly wagging tongue.  Being busy with my own affairs and due to darkness, I had missed all their comedy and went to bed.

This morning I get up and come out to pick the morning news paper, my first surprise is the Thunbergia haircut on our gates.

 It was done craft-fully, the creepers as such were not pulled out from the gate, but all the leaves, old and new are almost gone. Looked very funny. Came out and saw that good amount of greenery on the fence too is gone. There is quite a mess on their stage, they shat all around as part of their stand up comedy.

The sign board on the compound wall which usually is obscured by the thunbergia,  not helping the hapless strangers looking for the name of the house while searching the address, is quite visible this morning, thanks to their comedy act.

Further funny thing was that the effect of their comedy persisted beyond their night. I was already filled with laughter looking at the funny looks of the gate and the fence with this surprise haircut, so meticulously done with no noise and permanent root damage to the Thunbergia scalp of our compound wall, appreciating their  stealthy stand-up comedy act as a fitting revenge to my unkindly and miserly act of leaving no food for their thoughts around our compound wall, I could not help splitting into loud laughter when I saw the dancing dog (who is very early this morning, meaning I got up quite late), and was very busy making a breakfast out of the comedy shit they had left behind on their stage upon rare performance, also no residual food from previous night's dish out was a major push for this dog to force into celebrating the joke much after the time it was delivered.

Drinking water left for the dogs is quite low here, meaning the cows got hungry and helped themselves with some water to digest the food.

I knew, the final laugh will be mine when we clean up the mess here and take all the shit into our garden games.  Left a huge pile of breakfast treat for the stray dogs, and crashed into the bed for some more sleep I deserved.

But the act of this mid night comedy lingered in my heart and mind, I could not sleep as a result, came out to take pictures, could not help noticing the  agony of this dog, wondering whether to enjoy the delicious glucose biscuits I had left for his kind, or give into the primal instinct of making merry with the cow shit left behind.

As I came in with my camera in hand, noticed that keeping up with the appearances took over on the primal, the same dog pulled the packet of biscuits to the other side, had its share for the morning and walked out.

The official dog food too I leave behind, was kept untouched as usual, as there street dogs, well fed, have become social eaters, so they help themselves for the more tasty but less healthy glucose biscuits, leaving the biscuits feeding bag empty in no time, asking for more. But this official dog food helps me in lowering my guilt, as the real hungry and hopeless dogs wandering for the whole day and accidentally hitting upon this spot with the help of food aroma, helps themselves with the meal of the day and vanish in no time before the territory owners could pounce upon them with loud barks.

Instead of cleaning the stage mess of this mid night comedy quickly, I allowed the disgusting street flies to have their merry with their comedy, as I decided to extend this to you all through this quick write up.

The cows mid night comedy had an useful message too to the eager gardening audience. It seems that even a hungry and adventurous teenage cow  does not want visually tempting Mexican Sunflower leaves as its food fetish for the lustful night.  This is good news for planting Mexican Sunflower by the roadside!

Look forward for more such comedies, day and night, around our urban jungle, Ashrama Gardens!  You will not miss a glimpse of such, will at least report them as an after event recount!


Thank You!

Finally broke the jinx against using commercial cooking oil at home

It is more than three years now since I learned that the commercial cooking oil we buy in the super market is quite adulterated, and it happens under the very nose of government oversight.

The logic is simple to confirm this, the cost of the oil is much less than the actual cost of the raw material (seeds) needed to extract the oil. There are two types of adulteration, the mild one is to add the low cost vegetable oil, but the more harmful one is to add the paraffin oil (the petrolium byproduct).

We use coconut oil and groundnut oil for cooking at present. We used to use the cheaper oil (like sunflower oil) before, but after this knowledge, the first reaction was to throw the cheap oil out, because now we know the source of this cheapness. So, upgraded the cooking oil for frying to groundnut oil (which costs at least 50% more), and there too stuck to one brand (Saffola - not that it is the best, at least the government agency needs to maintain some sanity in its adulteration).

There was no problem with the coconut oil, as I could continue to source the coconut oil from the mills at our native place, where the process is known to be cold pressed.  So, 80% of our oil consumption was unadulterated. I stopped buying commercial coconut oil off the shelf of supermarkets.

I also made virgin coconut oil at home, starting from the scratch. The results were very encouraging, but it is a laborious process and I could not commit time to repeat this process every 15 days.  My attempt to make virgin groundnut oil dint succeed as the oil extracted dint justify the cost economics.

2018 Jan - Dr. Mythri Shankar, one of our OTG friends had arranged a Sankranthi Get Together at her beautiful garden, my instincts told me not to miss. So, I attended. She had arranged a demo of oil extractor from Seed 2 Oil. Very effective demo. Very sleek device, but the asking price was Rs. 22K, felt it bit steep. Also, came up with a logic that the market should throw better options if I wait for another 6 months. So, decision was to wait out for 6 months.

Six months passed, nothing ground shaking changes emerged from the market. Therefore, I decided to use Amazon.in offering as the benchmark as here the customer satisfaction can be tracked. I started tracking, but could not come to any conclusion as there was no convincing review as such either on Amazon or Quora or elsewhere. As I could see, the consumer market around it  is still nascent, and therefore we will be forced to pay a premium to buy now.

I went back to kitchen, looked at our current oil supply, the supply said that you can procrastinate for another three months easily as we will take that much time easily to last. So, I decided to do so hoping for breakthroughs in the market for the right buy.

I had been browsing Amazon for the last four months, but nothing changed. One clarity emerged: there are three well known brands, two from Surat and one from Coimbatore. EPS and Vishwas are the Surat brands and Seed2Oil is the Coimbatore brand.  All had similar prices, but the Seed2Oil had more sophistication and sleek design. So, as a city slicker, the decision should have been with Seed2Oil.  But, I had a feeling, I may need to go against my first instincts here.  So, started working on the logic.

The first logic was how much sleek and automation I needed. Not much, as the sleekness in my kitchen will be stressful for me as I will be forced to redesign my kitchen to match this new crisp outlook. My mindset was similar to the HawkEye (Dr. Pierce) of the famed MASH series who had serious complaints against someone cleaning his swamp (living quarters), I have allowed my life style to come to appreciate this, not just as humor, but also as higher wisdom.

Second point was about the whole demo. The sales person started his story as a recovering individual from serious cancer, and he wanted to do something good for the humanity, and therefore now dedicating his life to promote this Seed2Oil. Sounded nice, but too cheesy. If someone is so impacted, one is likely to go for charity or social service. So, felt this is a perfect sales pitch, in fact, sounding too perfect to trust.  So, started questioning the other claims. 1. It is cold pressed. I notice that all offerings use similar technology, but other two vendors mum about cold press. I could see some weird logic that the heat is to extract the left overs smoothly, and as long as one is below 70 degree Celsius, one can claim to be cold pressed. I agreed with the logic, but decided to give the benefit of doubt to all vendors on this. In fact, I am not such a purist on this issue, I would say, as long as the oil does not reach the boiling point, we are good to go.  Then I looked at other two advantages of Seed2Oil, sophisticated automation and display, sleek design. I decided to write off these two advantages for two reasons: One the capacity of the Seed2Oil machine is bit less, so long term reliability is a question, also the points of failures to service are higher. Therefore, I said the benefits even out with the risks associated. Also, was bit miffed that Seed2Oil had lesser number of review comments when compared to others, while all the three vendors maintained a healthy four star rating of customer satisfaction. (Do not know whether other two vendors had more number supporters to submit positive review, as a conspiracy theory, this can happen you see, therefore, more the number of reviews is a critical measure for me, Seed2Oil came last on this, so this helped me against the guilt of not siding with Seed2Oil).

In the mean time, the market showed no clear polarization on pricing or clarity of objective review. So, I decided to open myself for the price competition. I knew, I had to wait for the sales dhamaka of Dassara or Deepawali, and I knew I will be buying it on Amazon for sure.

Yesterday, one particular brand popped with a discount of sudden 2k discount on the price. Over and above, Amazon threw in 1K cashback, and the SBI card threw its hat too with 10% cashback. Effectively now I have a window now to buy one oil extractor for Rs. 17K instead of 22K, this was good enough for me to close my long pending decision. I placed the order for an EPS 400W machine, quite an ugly and heavy beast (13KG), but my kitchen counter can take this monster.  Went to bed and had a deep good sleep.

Will write objectively after my experience with the machine that is coming in a few days. In the mean time, my cooking oil supply at home is sufficient for another two months. I hope, I will never have to buy oil for kitchen purpose again. Let us see!

I believed all along that all of us deserve an oil extractor in our kitchen for Rs. 8K investment, and I hoped the market would catch up to do so, it is still too early on such a development, I am glad my waiting helped me to save at least Rs. 5K, agree, it is more of a male ego satisfaction than anything else. For me, all capital investments are serious games to achieve best possible wins, I took 10 months to play this game towards closure, hope I will not be proved a jackass again on this investment!

Best regards