Thursday, September 30, 2010

Past week...

The past one week has been a good one for me.
Firstly, my shoulder is feeling a lot better, the pain is almost gone and I can once again travel by trains which I had started to avoid because of my bad shoulder.
Over the weekend, we visited many of our relatives and hogged on their love and the food (yummy yummy) they so lovingly offered us :)  It had been a long time since we had visited them and I was happy to be pampered.
I also discovered a quaint little shop in the bylanes of Malad, which had all the things I had been searching for; colourful wool, decorative handles etc.  Since then, I have been happily making bags, one after the other....so one can expect more pictures of my creations coming up!!
Over the past week, I have received a lot of appreciation for my work and a couple of people even bought my stuff!! It really means a lot when people genuinely appreciate one's creativity. It keeps the creative flow going...

So hope the good tide continues!! cheers!

P.S: I would love to hear from you, my readers...so please feel free to leave any comments regarding my posts, what you like about them, what you don't like, what you would like to read about, how I could improve my blogs etc.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Indian Rupee Symbol!


You all must be aware of the new symbol for Indian Rupee. Now we can all proudly use the new symbol on our computers without having to change our old keyboards. Go to this link and follow the instructions, and then show off the rupee symbol to the world with pride!!

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Lucy's tote bag!


I got the pattern for this bag from Lucy's blog. Though nothing compared to Lucy's bag, I am happy with the way this bag has turned out to be. I also tried a new pattern for the handles instead of the handles Lucy used in her bag. On the whole, an easy pattern but needs a lot of yarn. But do give it a try!

Monday, September 20, 2010

Almond Oatmeal Cookies

I have always been interested in baking cakes and cookies but until yesterday, I had not been able to bake the perfect cookie. They were either left uncooked or else they would turn out too hard and tasteless.  Yesterday, I decided to try baking some cookies for a little girl and found this amazing almond oatmeal cookies recipe online. I tweaked the recipe a little but the end results were amazing!!!


Ingredients:
Cooking oats - 1 and 1/4 cups
All purpose flour- 1/2 cup
Almonds - 1/2 cup
Sugar - 1/2 cup (adjust as per taste)
Vanilla extract - 1 tsp ( I used a pinch of fresh vanilla from the vanilla seed)
Butter - 1/2 cup
Salt- 1tsp ( do not add salt if using salted butter)
Baking soda - 1 tsp

Grind the almonds coarsely. You can also use blanched almonds. But I used them as they were and they gave a nice crunchy taste to the cookies.

Mix together melted butter and sugar until smooth. To make it easier, I powdered the sugar before adding in to the butter. Then add the salt, vanilla extract, and the baking soda. Mix well and then add the flour.  Mix well and then add the oats. Mix all the ingredients well to form  a sticky lump. Wet your palms and take spoonful of the mixture and shape them into cookies. Place them on a greased cookie tray taking care to see that there is space between the cookies as the cookies will rise and become bigger when baked.  Bake in a preheated oven at 200 degrees C for 18-20 minutes or until they turn slightly brown at the edges. Remove from oven and let the cookies cool as they tend to be slightly soft when warm. When cooled, they turn to be crisp but crumbly when bitten into. The above recipes makes about 30 cookies.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Another one....



Finally I finished this fat bottom bag!!! I had always wanted to make one of these since some time now....phew!!! The end result is good, but I want to make more of these in bigger, larger sizes, and more colours. I am now really hooked on to crochet. I want to try more and more patterns with different colours. Hoping to finish at least one new bag per week. 

Monday, September 06, 2010

Mirchi ka Salan

Both of us love spicy food.  Satya especially is very fond of stuffed vegetables like stuffed bhindi, stuffed mirchi etc. So I regularly buy Bhavnagri mirchi to make the stuffed mirchi for him. But this time I wanted to try the Mirchi ka Salan recipe with these Bhavnagri chillies.

Mirchi ka Salan

Ingredients:
250 g Bhavnagri chillies ( you can also use capsicum or any variety of green chillies)
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp mustard seeds
1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds
1/4 tsp kalonji ( I did not use this)
5-6 curry leaves
salt to taste
2-3 tbsp oil
2 tbsp chilli powder
1tsp turmeric powder
1 tbsp coriander powder

Dry Masala:
1/2 cup peanuts
2 tsp white til.
2 tsp cumin seeds
Dry roast these three ingredients and powder them.

Wet masala:
1 onion
1 tomato
5-6 garlic cloves
1-inch piece of ginger
2 tbsp of freshly grated coconut
Grind all these together to a fine paste.

Heat oil in a kadai. Add the slit chillies and fry them until they become tender and lighter in colour.  Remove and keep aside.
In the same oil, add cumin seeds, mustard, fenugreek, kalonji, and curry leaves. When they splutter, add the wet masala. Fry for 2-3 minutes.  Keep stirring to avoid burning of the masala. Then add chilli powder, turmeric powder, coriander powder, and the dry masala. Keep frying on a medium flame until the oil starts to separate. Then add 1 cup of water, salt, and the fried chillies. Mix well, cover and cook for 2-3 minutes.  The gravy should not be watery. Serve hot with chapathis.

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Cooking tip!

For many South Indian recipes, coconut needs to be dry roasted until brown before it is used for making the masala.  Dry roasting coconut takes a long time and one needs to be patient.

Now dry roast coconut  in a microwave in minutes!!
Spread the freshly grated coconut on a paper sheet/tissue and microwave on high for 3 to 4 minutes. Keep a watch and stir in between to keep it from getting burnt. Stand it for a couple of minutes and.... Voila!! Dry roasted coconut gets ready in a jiffy!!

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