Origins of Henna

Henna is a form of art which involves decorating hands and feet with designs made out of leaves from henna plant. Following are the pictures of a henna plant.

The traditional process is to grind these henna leaves and make a paste out of it. And apply the paste in several designs. The leaves have several medicinal elements. First and primary being the instant cooling effect when applied to the body especially palms and feet. It is known to remove several skin/foot diseases. 

The rich color of stain that henna leaves on the skin on contact is very appealing and attractive.

Since it is not possible to get the fresh leaves everytime, an alternative to have access to henna is to dry the leaves, and make a powder from it.

The powder can be mixed with water or lemon juice or tamarind juice and the resultant paste is coned in much like cones for cake icing. These cones are then very convenient to draw simple or intricate henna designs. Henna is totally organic, biodegradable and excitingly green way to adorn the palms and feet.

For more details to the history of Henna in human civilization, you can read more at:

http://silknstone.com/About-Henna.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henna

Orzo with artichokes and sundried tomatoes

Pasta is comfort food for me, both to cook and eat.
This is a recent experiment of mine with orzo, which turned out pretty neat.

Ingredients:
1. Orzo - 2 cups
2. Olive oil - 3 tablespoons
3. Chopped artichokes - 1 cup
4. Chopped sundried tomatoes - 1/2 cup
5. Capers - 1 or 2 tablespoons per taste. (You can choose not to use them if you are allergic to capers or their taste).
6. Basil pesto - liberal/per taste.

7. Crushed red pepper flakes - 1/2 table spoon.
8. Garlic - 2 cloves, minced or mashed.
9. Onion - 1 small one, chopped

Procedure:
- Cook orzo according to the directions on the box/packet.
- Add oil to a cooking pan, let it warm up.
- Saute onion, garlic, crushed red pepper.
- Then saute artichokes, tomatoes. You can add chopped red and/or green bell peppers if you like some extra color in your food :)
- Put the flame on simmer and stirr in the cooked/drained orzo. Stirr in capers, salt. Add cracked pepper per taste. Let cook for roughly 3 minutes on the slow flame.
- Serve with a dallop of pesto or stirr it into the pasta along with capers.

Enjoy!

Mexican Chocolate Chipotle Bites

Chocolate and Chipotle? Umm..?!!
I could not quite figure out how my taste buds will react to that combination when I read the recipe first. I made them anyway - and turns out the blend of the two is excellent and very unique!! A sweet and spicy treat that catches your attention at first bite and wants you craving for more even after gobbling a few cookies.
I made these for a Superbowl Party and folks at home loved it. The food theme was Mexican, I wanted to make Flan first, but then chose to make something unique and here it was!

Following is the recipe - it is an adaptation from Better Homes and Garden's Amazing Mexican Desserts article.

Ingredients:
For cookies:
- 2 eggs
- Two cups brown sugar
- 3/4 cups butter (one and half sticks)
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 teaspoons chipotle powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 1/2 cups of all purpose flour

For the filling:
- 9 ounces of semi sweet chocolate
- 2 tbsp butter


Procedure:
For the Cookies:
- Get butter and eggs from the refrigerator a few hours before you start preparing, so that you have them at room temperature.
- Beat butter, brown sugar, chipotle powder, salt, cinnamon using a hand or stand mixer.
- Beat eggs and vanilla until they mix - dont mix too much(for too long).
- Mix in all purpose flour. At the end of it the batter, dough rather, will be highly fragrant thick lump.
- Let the dough sit for a few hours so that the ingredients blend in.
- Knead the dough lightly, make 1 inch balls and  flatten them to about 1/4 inch thick rounds (this will be the size your bites will be).
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees; line the cookie sheet with parchment paper; place the rounds in rows i inch apart and bake each batch for about 8-10 minutes. Do not over bake the biscuits. Once you get them out of the oven and cool off, they get tighter and crispier. So make sure you adjust the baking time according to your texture of preference.
- Once baked, remove the treats from the oven, let them cool off a little and transfer them to a wire rack.

For the filling:
- Melt in chocolate and butter in a small saucepan on a low heat. Stir frequently.
- Once the chocolate is all melted, remove from stove and let it cool.
- Based on your preference, you can use this melt at room temperature or refrigerate for a few hours and let it get thick.
- Spread filling on bottoms of half of the cookies. Top with the remaining cookies bottom side down. Makes about 25 cookies. Enjoy!

Store cookies in an airtight container; good upto 3-5 days at room temperature or freeze upto 3 months.
Happy baking!

Independence Day: Varying thoughts.

Today is the 65th Indian Independence Day. The day that reminds the spirit and feel of 'freedom'. As I try to learn what this means for each and every person and country - I realize one ugly truth - most of the countries today have been colonies! The unending hunger of power, quest and conquer! Wow.
Even though colonization was a concept for a long time, the recent most in familiarity or in relevance to the Indian Independence is the Colonial Era, which the Spanish, French and the British dominated. I started to  wonder if there were any countries today that did not share a saga of fight or struggle for independence and who did not celebrate their 'liberation'.
Japan, China, England, Germany, Russia, France, Sweden - probably(within my research limit) they are the only ones that do not have an independence day. Some of them have a National Day, which is not exactly Independence Day.

I wonder how it feels to live in those countries or be from those lands, where people have not struggled or fought to be recognized and liberated; where people just lived their lives without a strive; where people never knew how much it costed to held their head up and stroll down their own streets of motherland, without worrying about a foreigner knocking them down; where people did not know the value of silencing speech or thoughts and that uttering what one thought or writing what one felt would be punishment;  and much much more - all simple attributes of a free life.

And I think of Rabindranath Tagore's poem:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where the knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where the words come from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake!

This short poem from Gitanjali reflects such a powerful force, with each word and sentence defining independence. How many of us today really appreciate or use it like our forefathers dreamt of or fought for?!

Taxes 2011 - is it better to delay them?

Last year we filed for an extension and did not really file taxes till end of Sept.
We wanted to be proactive this time and talked to our CPA last week. We did not finish the task and were going to schedule something this week. Then I read this on Yahoo News -

Taxes--April 18 (Yes, that's Right) Is Coming Up

Why does Congress wait until the last minute to come up with these changes?I am confused whether or not to delay now..I'll probably go for it anyway.