Chai at its Best!

We have a friend ( Ranga)who is famous for his tea making skills and whenever we go to his place, we would definitely get a cup each:)
And my tea making skills are just average to just barely make an edible tea. So when Ranga came over to our place today, we requested him to make his tea and I got a chance to learn his way of making it
Interestingly he also knew the reason behind it so the 'making of chai' steps will also include that.

Making of Chai

1. Depending on the kind of milk you use, this is the proportion
Full Fat Milk - 40% Milk, 60% Water
2% Milk - 50% milk, 50% Water
Low fat - 60% Milk, 40% Water
2. Crush Cardomom, Cloves and also a few pieces of ginger.

3. Boil Water and the crushed cardomom, cloves and ginger in high heat. (Dont use too much of cardomom or cloves since they have overpowering features unlike the ginger. If you have tulsi, that also makes a fine addition in small portions)

4. Once the water boils add the Tea powder after keeping the heat to a sim. The number of cups = the number of spoons of tea powder (light leaf teas might warrant some extra)
Reason : If you put the tea powder in the water and then boil it, then the longer the tea powder boils, the more bitter it becomes.
So put the tea powder after the water starts boiling.

5. Add Sugar once the water boils. 2 teaspoon of sugar for one cup.(this gives you a sweet cup of tea but not sugary)
Reason : If you add sugar before the water boils, it will elevate the boiling point of water and thus the water takes longer time to boil(alternate is to add sugar after you pour the tea into the mug).


6. Warm the milk in the microwave for a minute or so.
Reason : When you pour warm milk, the whole mixture of milk, tea and water comes to a boil faster than when you pour cold milk. (It also prevents the tea leaves from boiling longer and hence making the tea bitter.)


7. Once the tea boils after adding milk, you can switch off the heat and serve it hot after passing it through a filter.

Well, the outcome of this was a real good cup of tea which we thoroughly enjoyed with home made bread made by Sree:)

Thanks Ranga:)

Pic for Deepu

Well my cousin sister Deepu had come over for a visit..and the one thing she asked me to do was a drawing for her room. She also gave me a sample pic and the above is the final outcome:)

Another one for the Kitchen

Well, I wanted a pic for the Kitchen wall, so found something on the net that interested me and then just drew it the way I could. I liked the final product esp because I love all the colors in this pic:)

Fun to be a Man....

In all these past years, I had never dressed up like a guy for any of my dance programs. So when my Ma'am asked me if I could do the role of Lord Shiva for an event, I had mixed feelings.
I wasnt sure how I am going to carry that out. And ya, I always like getting dressed up for dance, so as you know the guy role never provides you the opportunity. But neverthless, I was excited about the new role and the program and I agreed.
Once I started the practice, I started loving the piece and on stage, I think I did do a decent job.
People complimented me and moreover my husband and all our friends were fascinated to see me as a guy:D
So here is a pic of Siva and Parvathi:)

My Tribute to Fall

I love fall colors. The leaves turning their colors from green to slight yellow and then orange is just amazing. Some trees are completely yellow where as some others have mixed colors of orange, red and green. And the different kinds of leaves that change their colors is also amazing.
I just drew this painting yest and I based it on fall leaves.

My First Chicken Curry:)

I am a die hard fan of 'Chicken' and I have always had chicken made by somebody else - my mother, neighbour aunty, friends. Today we had some friends coming over to our place and I thought I should try making chicken and so I made my first 'chicken curry':)

Below is the recipe I followed and I think it came out pretty well..Well I liked it and so did my friends....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HB7ywgJuTg

Let me know how it turns out for you.

Back to the brush once more.....

My first memories of drawing were the ones where I used to sit with other children under a huge tent with free colors in coconut shells provided for us to use. This is the Universal Arts Competition, which used to be held once a year, for which my dad had taken me till I was like 10 yrs old. I used to randomly draw something on the chart paper there along with my cousin who also used to accompany me.

My dad later sent me for drawing classes, and I had learnt a few basic things about drawing there.
Even though my artistic skills were not the best, I still used to take part in a few competitions in school. I soon realized that I suck at drawing with a "theme" or imaginative drawing. Give me a picture to look and draw and I can recreate atleast 50%. So from the above one can understand how mediocre I am in this art.

Well, after years of not touching the brush, I decided to give it a try again last week. Above is a picture I drew. Its a simple one, but the important thing for me was how happy it made me feel.

Moral of the story : Trees are artist's best friend. Even the worst artist(like me) can manage to intepret it in their own way( With a few strokes here and there) and it still will look like a Tree:)

Jingle Bells!!!

"Christmas"..I think its one of the most beautiful words that I know. It carries with it the smell of food, the happy faces, family get-togethers, the sight of beautiful decorations and the best of the best, the feel of HOLIDAYS!!! Well I could say that the above statement has held true for me right from when I was a child till date( not sure of the HOLIDAY part though!!! Its an unwritten rule that you are officially non-holidayic species once you start working in IT).

As a child, I used to wait for the last of the half yearly exams to get over to enter the Christmas Holidays! There will be children shouting to each other "Happy Holidays" and planning for meet ups during holidays:). Extreme happiness of having done with exams and studies for the next 10 days is written on all their faces. We were living in a colony, where all the families around us where Christians. I was the one who was most benefited by it:) We would at least get 7 cakes at home( me being a favorite among all for the amount of food I eat)and yummy dinners from my and uncles...Thank you all for those wonderful times:)..I still miss every bit of it! One of the most cherished memory of mine is the 'Star' that my dad gets for me every year without fail.We both used to go to the terrace and hang it there with lights! Thinking of it now just makes me realize what a precious memory it has turned out to be.During the week of Christmas, I can see the different kinds of Stars hung in every house surrounding ours and all of them twinkling in unison!

Well those were my childhood memories of this wonderful season. And now I am recreating those memories with Sree [ thatz my way of blackmailing him to help me decorate the Xmas Tree:D]with a Christmas tree at home and cooking something special on Christmas:).

Merry Christmas to all of you........

The Tree we loved...........

Once Sree got his transfer to Sunnyvale, we both shifted to an apartment here. The one thing that we were most happy about was the fact that there were two beautiful trees right outside our apartment and we were enjoying them whenever we looked out.

The tree changed is personality during Fall, bringing in more colors for us to enjoy. I was delighted.

One day, there was a banner placed informing us that there is a plan to cut the trees. There were some high tension wires going above our apartment and the trees were so tall that few of their branches would have posed danger as it was so near to the high tension wires. Well taking off a few branches wont harm..
But when I came back in the evening, I couldnt believe my eyes..They took off both our favourite trees..

It might sound silly...but I was really upset...I couldnt bear to look out of the Patio for a few days.

Finally now both of us accept that our beautiful tree is gone....but neverthless, we miss it..and whenever we look out of the window....we miss it more....

Carrot Rice!

OK...I know its been a long time since I blogged! I haven't blogged since I came to US and joined my job here.OK, that implies something;)...I'll reserve my thoughts here, because this is not about why I didnt blog, it is about Carrot Rice!!!

Well, I happened to visit my friend Suseela's place few months back and she had made carrot rice..It was my first time to see the combination of Rice and Carrot. I am not a huge fan of carrots, but this dish was a killer!!! :D. Sree, loved it too!!!

From that day, I was thinking of making this someday, but days went by and I actually forgot about this. Last week when we went for shopping, Sree bought carrots and told me we'll make somehting out of it. I told him, I'll ask Suseela for the recipe and try this out over the weekend...

After a quick chat with Suseela, I wrote it down and here it is...


Ingredients

1. Carrots : 4
2. Rice - 3 cups
3. Ghee
4. Coconut(grated) : 1 cup
5. Urad Dal
6. Bengal Gram
7.Clove powder
8. Cinnamon powder
9. Green Chilli - 3,4
10. Ginger
11. Garlic
12. Mustard
11. Turmeric
12. Salt
13. Curry Leaves
14. Oil

Steps to make Carrot Rice

a. Grate Carrot finely. [ If possible, make your husband / friend do this for you..this is the toughest part :D]
b. Put ghee in a pan, and fry the grated carrot in this for sometime, till the carrot turns a little pale and its raw smell dies off.
c. Wash the rice and fry the rice in Ghee, for sometime.
d. Cook the rice by putting water in 1 cup rice = 1.5 cups water ratio.
e. Grind the ginger, garlic and green chillies to a thick paste.
f. In another pan, heat oil and add mustards, bengal gram, urad dal and the cinnamon and clove powder.
g. Once the items on step f is done, pour the ginger-garlic-chilli paste to it and add grated coconut and turmeric and cook this mixture for sometime.
h. Add the cooked carrots to this mixture and stir the mixture well
i. Add Salt to this mixture
j. Once rice is cooked, add it to the mixture in step 'i' and stir it well.
k. Put Curry Leaves to garnish.

Well Carrot rice is ready now. This came out well in my case:D and I was surprised, my first try could taste good ..Anyways...its an easy recipe...So try it out. I couldnt take a pic of this, as it was over before I could even think about it.

I would like to thank my friend Suseela for this valuable and easy recipe and also my dear husband Sree[a.k.a Kodak] for grating the carrots for me and being my assitant in the kitchen.

Happy cooking!

First Step to US

OK....I know its been a while since I wrote something..but I am well justified...:) the past 2 months have been the busiest...with marriage plans, post marriage plans and now in US!. Time just flew!!!Earlier when people use to talk about US...it was some place so far!!! that's all that i had in mind.....but now since I am here.when I think back..I realize the actual meaning of terms like
'jetlag', 'Indian food', 'Bland food', 'You cant live without a car here', 'Expensive'. I am not yet old enough in US to actually to form judgements right now...about this place...but all I can say is that it was an impressive sight during landing and also I had been treated royally here(thanks to my hubby and his friends:)).