Crabs, anyone?

Crabs are one of my favourite food. I love their succulence, their taste, their aroma when they are cooked.

But everyone has heard horror stories of how they are caught by unscrupulous means, with poison or chemicals. But if you ask the seller how they were caught, she'd tell you they were caught with bait. So you are never sure unless you buy from someone you know. That's why we eat crabs so rarely, even though we prefer it to other meat.

Last week, the vendor gave me a brilliant sales pitch, telling me how fat her crabs were, how honest the catchers are, and how she eats them herself. After making her almost swear on the Bible, I bought some, overriding my better judgement.

Well, the crabs were not very fat as claimed, and the worst thing was- they had worms! So we threw the lot. And the worms were really hard to discern among the crabs innards.

Why do tiny things like crabs have to have worms? They are a known hazard with pork and other meat, but crabs? Anyway, for the uninitiated, crab worms can cause a disease with the really fancy name of paragonimiasis. It usually affects the lungs, causing fever,cough, blood in sputum, and other tuberculosis and pneumonia-like symptoms, though it may also affect the brain.

But if you cook your crabs well, you probably won't get the disease. That's why paragonimiasis not that common among Mizos, and is seen more in the Chakmas and other tribes who eat crabs raw, or undercooked.

So, love your crabs, but for me, they've rather lost their appeal.

More pictures

~It's hot.

~A truck put a major dent on our parked car.

~Ruatfeli won't let me sleep nights.

~I am still fat.

So here are some more pictures. They won't make the weather any cooler, the dent won't go away. Ruatfeli probably won't sleep any better, and nothing seems to help me lose weight. But here are some more pictures.Her God-mothers Padma and Monisha sent her a bunch of new clothes and the teddy (named Dolu by Padma). Ruatfeli modelling one of her night-suits.

She's tiny, but she can roll sideways already. And when she's had a good sleep and a full tummy, she brings out her social smile.

Helping her dad out with his work.

She's become chubby now. The before piture was taken when she was still in the hospital. She was a little over 2 kg, now she's a hefty 4.3 kgs :)

To dos

Since I've become a stay-at-home mom, I thought I should put the free time I have to good use. I just have 3 simple goals.

1. Lose weight


2. Study


3. Learn something new.

Losing weight is not as simple as I thought it would be. I put on quite a lot of weight during my pregnancy, and once the baby was out, the extra weight was much more obvious. I get corny comments all the time, like 'When are you having the baby?' or 'Do you have another one hiding in your tummy?', or 'Now you look like your mom'. Well, hahaha!, but it's funny only the first time round, so I thought I'd better do something about it. And like I said, it's not easy. Since I started staying at home, I mostly spend my day watching TV or surfing the net, and eating, ofcourse. The trouble is I like watching cooking shows, Nigella feasts on travelandliving is a favourite. I sit there gaining weight while she mixes cream and chocolate, and butter and brown sugar and whatnot, and I get crazy ideas in my head and end up baking cakes and roasting things. Arghh.

So I thought I'd try some light stretching exercises. I did a session of lunges once, and when I started to huff and puff, I looked at the clock and only 7 minutes had passed! I called up a cousin and asked (begged) her to lend me her treadmill. She kindly let me borrow it, I climbed on and immediately felt pain in my knees. How fit am I, eh? I talked about my problem to my mom, and she told me to simply go for a walk while the baby sleeps. How simple! So I've gone on walks, exactly 4 times, and combining the walks with the treadmill, I'm starting to feel slightly fitter. I hope I can lose enough weight to get back into my pre-pregnancy jeans. That's all I want.

Studying is not my forte, you'd know if you've read one of my previous post. But like I wrote in JOBS, incase the MPSC decide to employ doctors through exams, I want to be ready for it. That said, it's really, really tough reading text books. One can easily watch TV for hours but reading even a few pages take so much effort. I still want USB ports in my head.

Learning something new, or doing anything new is the only way to grow in life. When one was younger, one has more chances of doing something new. There are more new places to see, more new things to try, but as one ages, you get caught up doing the same thing everyday. I thought of trying my hand at knitting baby booties etc but I would need someone to teach me every step, and both my moms are too busy to do that. Learning to drive is also on the agenda. But the only time H and I got up early, we had visitors. Yesterday, we went out for a drive (risking another run in, as it was sunday), and in the middle of nowhere, he stops the car and tells me to drive. I protested, I was sleep-deprived, hungry, mentally unprepared, we had the baby with us in the car, I've forgotten all about gears and clutches, and to top it, it was raining! But he insisted, and it wasn't that hard at all! But I was rounding a turn and a taxi suddenly loomed. I managed to stop, got out of the car and that was the end of my lesson :). I badly want to learn driving, I've tried several times but failed miserably (worth another post). I don't think I have the heart for it. I will try again though.