Month: June 2022

Categories
Home Cooking

Garijelu Recipe

It is no secret to the people who know me – I have a sweet tooth. And I very often make something at home giving in to these sweet cravings. This time around I made Garijelu – one of the famous traditional Telangana sweets. I guess each state has a different name for this dish. Most of the Hindi speaking call this sweet – “Gujiya”. Below is the recipe (I know for a fact) is passed down from my grandmother – Ammamma!

Ingredients:

  1. Dried coconut – 2 halves
  2. Semolina – 1 cup
  3. Sugar – 1 cup
  4. Diced: Cashews, Almonds, Chironji – handful
  5. Poppy seeds (optional)- 2tbsp
  6. Cardamon powder- 1/4 tsp
  7. Wheat flour – 2 cups
  8. Water – to knead the dough
  9. Oil – to deep fry

Recipe:

For the filling:

  1. Take two dried coconut halves and grate them. Since grating is too much work, my dad helped me with this part. And he works smart! He sliced them into bite size pieces and made powder in the mixer. You can buy readymade coconut powder from the stores as well – you can take 2 cups of powdered coconut in this case.
  2. Add 1 cup of semolina, 1 cup of sugar, 2 tbsp of poppy seeds (this is optional), and handful of diced dried fruits of your choice. I used cashews, almonds and chironji. Finally add cardamon powder. Mix all the ingredients well and set it aside.

For Garijelu:

  1. Prepare the dough mix for Garijelu just like roti mix. Make small rotis and add 2 tbsp of filling and close them in semicircles. Close the ends by pressing it to seal the filling within and cut the extra dough from the garijelu. Prepare all the garijelu and set them aside.
  2. Heat oil in a pan. Deep fry the prepared garijelu. And they are ready to eat!

Writing this recipe down makes it seem as an easy process. But this is one of the time-taking dishes I have ever made – even for a batch as small as this.

Categories
Life Experiences

Children

Photo by Frederik Trovatten on Pexels.com

I like children – love them. I would like to have some of my own in the future. But could not resist writing about the annoying experience I am facing on a daily basis when it comes to our neighbors kids.

When you share common compound wall with an apartment, you will feel your next door neighbors are practically living in your house; especially when they carry out all their daily chores on the other side of our compound wall. Even though they have a fully functional apartment, they want to spend their mornings and evenings outdoors (on the other side of our compound wall). I have no problem with them spending their time outdoors. I do have problem when the kids become little demons and their parents/grandparents don’t make an effort to pacify them.

The eldest it the little devil! Any chance he gets he will do things to annoy us: toy with one of our cars parked out, when their car is right adjacent to ours. Throws food over the wall into our compound and used water bottles. Once I caught him doing this from my terrace – and that little devil’s response is always consistent: “It was not me aunty!” It is like live action Tom and Jerry show for me chasing after them!

And the youngest. Don’t get me started on the youngest! He is all but one. Does he have a set of solid lungs on him! From the day he was discharged from the hospital – at 4 days old, he likes to scream on top of his lungs when is taking bath. And where these baths happen? On the other side of the compound wall! – this might as well be happening in our living room. Or that’s how you feel when the screams start. I feel his screams in my bones! Even today – when he is a year old. Why the prospect of taking bath puts him in this state is beyond me! And to my utter displeasure this activity happens twice a day – morning and evening!😒

If you think this is the worst of it, their cousins arrived for the summer. They were here for a whole month! The activities happening on the other side of wall increased – double the bath time, double the screams, double the ruckus and everything! All this for a whole month!😐

Suddenly one morning just when I was anticipating the little devils to wake up and start their daily rituals, the screams never came – they left town finally! The climate also changed that morning cooling down after a terrible summer heat, subtly hinted the (relatively) peaceful days are here. It was a sign from above for me😁😮‍💨

As I have mentioned in my opening remarks, I don’t hate children. I do have niece and nephews I love and adore! I only hate those who are hell bent on making my life miserable!

Categories
Work Life

Constructive Feedback

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This post is again inspired by one of the posts I read in LinkedIn, just like the previous one: Interview Feedback Decoded (https://saudhaminimylaram.in/2020/06/07/interview-feedback-decoded/). The author of this post was idealizing one HR who was doing everything right and the rest of us should follow in her footsteps. While I agree with the author and also diligently share the feedback to all my candidates. I could not simply ignore the post since it reminded me of the incident that happened with me few months back.

Candidates expect the HR to share the interview feedback once the interview is completed. And when we do call the candidate to share the feedback most candidates will be happy they got a call from the HR expecting positive news (most of the time it is positive!) But I when share constructive feedback they will be taken aback and not have much to say except thanks for the feedback.

But not all candidates take the feedback in the way it is intended. My feedback to the candidates will be more in the lines of “you did well in the interview but the interviewers felt you could get a bit more exposure on certain skill and apply back to this position in six months time.”

If I reflect on this message, it is pretty clear I am leaving the window/opportunity to the candidate should he/she wishes to work on their skills.

But there was one very senior candidate who was interviewing for a senior role and did not qualify in the first panel interview. His coding skills were not up to the mark. I called him back to share the feedback, he went off in a tangent and asked “how can your company policy allow someone so junior to interview for a senior position? If this is your company ethics and policies I am glad I am not shortlisted and joined your company.”

Only an HR and professionals in senior positions can understand the wrongness of these statements. And the reasons these statements did not sit well with me were:

1. When you are interviewing for a product based company, the coding interviews will be a bit stringent than services companies. And product companies have 3600 interviewing style just to get a good read on the candidate in terms of company/cultural fitment.

2. For someone who comes with 11+ years of experience as developer should be able answer questions by a junior team member. By his logic, junior members are not so experienced. I mean, how difficult questions can he ask? And at some point in time even he was also a beginner and should have worked on basic codes. Ideally this candidate should be able to solve the codes given by junior team member.

3. For a senior candidate, this person lacked maturity while talking to a prospective job giver. Note: Never burn bridges when making contacts through job interviews. If not this organization, your paths may cross in future and it would be awkward at best to work together.

In the end, the feedback we share will ultimately help you crack an interview few days down the line, should the candidate choose to work on the given feedback. No point being nasty to the messenger after all!

By this I do not mean to shrink away from sharing feedback. We are moving away from the time where feedback was not provided, to it being provided in timely manner. It is now time to educate the job applicants the etiquette of communicating with the companies they are interviewing with! Agree?