Inactivity

I must beg pardon for my inactivity on this blog for almost 8 months. I have been posting regularly on Facebook, and keeping in touch with friends and relatives.

It was my 70th birthday this year. Jacob threw me a surprise party, which was such a wonderful occasion attended by many friends.

I was also able to take part in the reception to meet the Indian President His Excellency Pranab Mukherje  and his daughter, Sharmistha. 

83er Sharmistha is a Stephanian, like 63er Jacob, about 20 years his junior. She passed out in 1983, having done History. They are Facebook friends. She is an very competent Indian dancer. She has shared a few of her performances which she has choreographed herself.

She has just informed the public that she is going stand for the Delhi Assembly from Greater Kailash and wants suggestions how SHE can make a difference the lives of Indian women. She is practical and not building castles in the air. She wants suggestions on what she can do, and not things like bringing legislations,etc.

I do hope she will get elected, as she seems to know her priorities and may not be a chamcha to the Nehru-Gandhi family! 

Delhi is given the honour being called the most polluted city in the world. I can vouch for that. I hope she can do something to save this city, which is choking itself!

If Jacob and my reading is right, Sharmistha has the character and personality to become the next head the Indian Congress party, a fitting tribute to the work of her father! 

With young dedicated and competent leaders, the Congress party could rebuild itself after getting rid of people like the 7 Stephanians (68er Kapil Sibal, 72er Ashwini Kumar, 73er Salman Kurshid, 74er R. P.N. Singh, 76er Shashi Tharoor, 90er Joyti Scindia and 97er Sachin Pilot) who sat in the previous Manmohan Singh Government as YES men to Sonia and Rajiv Gandhi. They are the ones who have brought St.Stephen's College to disrepute, filling shoes they did not have the competence to fit!

In comparison, I have only Dr. Verghese Kurian of Anand and Amul fame, who used to do something and then tell indira Gandhi, the autocrat, what he had done. He knew going for approvals was a waste of time and money. The White Revolution was the result of his dedicated work starting at the grassroots level in Gujarat

It was nice to see the the day we flew from Delhi to Hyderabad, it was named as National Milk Day as tribute to Dr. Kurian, known to us a Jollychayan, who was married to Mollykochamma!

Jacob and Annikki standing behind Sharmistha at the Helsinki reception for Indian President His Excellency Pranab Mukerjee. Also seen are Indian Ambassador to Finland, His Excellency Ashok Kumar Sharma and Finnish Foreign Minister, Erkki Tuomioja.

I have been quite active otherwise. We have had the grandchildren,Samu, Daniel and Maria over for summer and Joanna, our younger daughter, brought the three of them also for Christmas.

We had a disastrous trip to India in November and December. Jacob and I are documenting it on our new web site, http://www.findians.com. The new book is being serialised on Jacob's Blog as "The Titanic called India". I did see the Taj Mahal and witness the making of the decorated inlaid marble. And I lived on the edge of a jungle just on the outskirts of Mumbai!

Several have asked why we callled it that, when the Indian greatness is being shouted by the Indian Ministers.

Believe it or not, Indians were flying around the planets many thousands of years ago, but sadly, today, they do not know how to design a simple road and pavement in India. Take a person in a wheelchair anywhere on a street in India, and you will know what we mean.

Maybe the Indian knowledge went along with those who designed those amazing flying machines! :-)

I have designed a few cakes, the last one being based on my discovery of the Agra Petha, a delicious Indian sweet made from Pumpkin. Granddaughter Maria I used it to decorate Joanna's mango Petha birthday cake a few days ago.

I have been crocheting in my spacetime. Jacob complains that I am cutting up his lungis. These lungis are over 25 years old and fall apart the minute you touch them. Does well as colourful crocheting material when I tear them to shreds! This was a my latest piece, a butterfly, but I have been making lots of cylindrical baskets to keep the various papers that Jacob keeps lying around as well his many spectacles which he keeps misplacing! (Earlier I had used Haldiram's Soan Papdi as cake decoration, and it was also a great material!)

Jacob wants me to sell them so he can afford to buy 110 count lungis from his old friend from Madurai, Mohammed Abubacker, the Chank brand lungis. I wonder if the Chank brand exists today as Jacob is talking about 1975!

We received news a few days ago of the passing of another family member, journalist B. G. Verghese.  He and his wife, Jamila were Stephanians, like Jacob, but about10 years senior to him.

I used to enjoy the writings of Bublichayan, as he is known in the family, as they were sharp and incisive!

There are many people that need to be thanked for the help and generosity in looking after us in India. Surya and Devi (Hyderabad), Raghu and Gayathri (Bangalore), Rajen and Prema, Chacko and Ammu (Kottayam), Bina (Cochin), Malathi, Amal. Joseph and Sam (Mumbai). Other names will be thanked by Jacob who kept a meticulous record of the trip!

You will also soon find this blog on our new web portal, http://www.findians.in. Hope you enjoy the re-emergence!:-)

How would you like to remember Nelson Mandela (Madiba)?

Those of you who have been watching the news yesterday must have been surprised how South Africans celebrated the passing of Madiba. 

It was full of song and music as they sent him triumphantly on to his after life.

Annikki and Jacob wanted to add to that by producing a book of the happiest moments of Nelson Mandela's life as he celebrated each birthday with cakes and cakes. 

Madiba had a sweet tooth and enjoyed all the cakes that were made for him.

You can find our compilation of almost all the cakes made for his birthday from the age of 72 to 95!

CAKES THAT CELEBRATE

NELSON MANDELA

75th birthday Cake of Nelson Mandela

Compiled by Annikki & Jacob Matthan

May Madiba rest in peace.

Cakes help keep Divorce at bay!

The divorce rates in the developed countries are abnormally high. (There are no official statistics available for India, which has several other male chauvinistic problems more severe than just divorce!)

Here is a look at countries which have divorce rates which are more than 45% the number of marriages!

I have listed these based on Column 4, which is the number of marriages that end in divorce to the number of marriages during the same period.

In my book "Edible Art" I talk of discovering that Jacob had a sweet tooth almost 46 years ago even before we even got married. There is also a cliché that says that the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach!

When you put these two facts together, you can become a good cook and keep your spouse close to your heart.

But, in my mind, that is in itself, is just not enough.  (Your spouse is not married to a restaurant chef!)

More important is that your spouse remembers you through specific milestones, just as you would do in a project planning outline.

These events must be something that makes your spouse remember you fondly and lovingly, year in and year out.

What better day to do that than on your spouse's birthday.

Create an unique birthday cake for your spouse. You can be certain that your spouse will remember you 365 days a year for what you did.

Similarly, do it whenever your child or grandchild has a birthday. Do it for them. 

Trust me, you will have a spouse at your side, like I have had mine for the last 46 years. He remembers every birthday cake I made for him. 

Each one, besides its design, had a special meaning that showed how much I loved and appreciated him.

This was a very ordinary birthday cake to look at, a pine stump with a ice candle burning atop it. But along with it, I had a very simple birthday card which had a drawing by me of logs of wood.

It was a special thank you to him for the work he was doing, 365 days a year, to cut logs of wood to feed our wood boiler (furnace) which gave us our daily running hot water and also heated our home in the depths of our cold cold Arctic winter. He worked by himself in the cellar, just like my father had done in the years before.

It was hard and time consuming work in the cold stone cellar. He did it daily, not as a chore, but with love and affection for his family.

I can say that through my designed cakes, like this very simple pine stump cake with a matching birthday card,  I have kept his devoted attention as my husband! 

Get your spouse a copy of my book as a special Christmas Gift for this year. Money well spent?

Choosing the environment

In yesterday's blog I showed one aspect of creating the right milieu for a cake. This one is far more emphatic.

After hearing my stories about our friendly and not so friendly (our son, Jaakko, mercifully survived a deadly snake bite of a krait) encounters with snakes in India, Samu asked for a snake as a birthday cake. 

I created it without a problem. 

It was a combination of my hill (mound) cake into which I created the snake grotto. The hill and grotto entrance can be seen in the first photo. More intricate details of what I created from sweets, as the butterflies, and other decorations can be seen in the pictures.

Snake grotto in a hill (mound)

Global view of the snake entering the grotto

As presented to the audience with the snake in the shrubbery.

However, the third picture shows how it was presented to the audience with the green shrubbery carefully placed in the vicinity to create a beautiful very natural appearance of a snake moving into its grotto.

The reception was one of awe when those present saw this snake in its very natural setting. A sight to be remembered for a lifetime.

Snowman Cake

In the last blog I introduced you to the very first Mobile Snowman.

Living in Finland, making art out of snow is second nature. But to create a good snow creation, one must have what I call as Snowman's snow.

It must grip and be able to be fashioned.


But making a cake which is a snowman needs something quite different.

Once Grandson Samu asked for a snowman as his birthday cake, I had to think how to go about it.

I was glad to make a really good Snowman cake, and Samu and his friends loved it!

Ruins

When I reached 60, I thought I would have some fun, so I created a cake for my birthday, which I called "Ruins". I could obviously not make a birthday cake for anyone else with that name! :-)

It was the ruins of a courtyard with a wall with a red window and a cistern filled with water. The water flowed into the little pond in the courtyard.

In daylight it looked just like some biscuits.

But when placed against a window with light streaming in through the red window and water flowing from the cistern into the little pool, the whole cake just jumped to life.

Here are the pages of this from my book "Edible Art".

The book is available add an eBook from Scribd.com and as a Paperback from Lulu.com. For those that write in to me, I can I've you a link to get the book at a special Christmas discount of 40% ad the books will be autographed by me.