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.

Easiest way to peel coconut for storage

If happen to have a lot of cracked coconuts, and if you are soft handed like me, then you know peeling the coconut from its shell is the toughest job to do - especially when you do not want to use the fresh coconut right away.

Tip: Store the broken/cracked coconut half in the freezer(doesnt have to be in a cover). After about a week, remove from the freezer and you will find that the shell separates without any effort. Now keep the coconut half as-is or grate it is upto you. Store in a ziploc bag and throw in the freezer, enjoy the goodness of coconut for months! Thanks to my mother-in-law for the tip.

Wreath, Tree - why these Christmas traditions?!

One the traditions I follow for thanksgiving is hang the wreath ring on the front door.
Once I draw out the ring from its box, dust off and hang it, I am filled with excitement - as it marks the start of holiday season and all the warmth(despite cold weather) the holidays bring.
However, I, for the first time this year, wondered, 'why wreaths, wreath rings for holidays' ? Ever since I am in the US, I started seeing that people do a lot of things to mark holidays, most evident outside the house as you walk past or drive by watching decorations are wreath rings on the door and/or lights. Wreath was easy, less work and suitable even when we lived in an apt...and so I simply picked up that tradition to mark holidays.

Other question was on Christmas Tree. It is so common to see a Christmas Tree during this time..but why do people put up the tree? I just couldn't seem to find or remember the reason from recalling all the fables I read or heard as a child.

To satisfy my curiostiy - I googled. Thanks for Wiki, there is an extensive explanation on Christmas Tree it give elaborated information on even star or angel decor on top of the tree:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_tree

Wreath was a tough one...took some time to find. I found a link which give a decent history(though am not completely satisfied):
http://www.e-wreath.com/wreathhistory.html

What I gather essentially is, in the Western half of the world, since Europe was the only effluent, flourished establishment of population many many years ago they followed and documented their traditions. As the Europeans invaded and acquired other parts of the world, they carried their traditions with them wherever they went..and few common ones became popular over time.

The joy of holidays is defined, but not limited to traditions.Origins apart, it is simply fun to follow them.

How much time do we really have?

Time is a relative term, it has a relative definition.
'I do not get enough time' - is a common phrase that we hear and most of us use - most of the time!
I take pride in thinking that I am different from the common lore in that I manage time, chores and energy effectively and pay enough attention to life at all fronts. My pride was shattered with my recent visit back home.

Two weeks straight, I watched my mother, a 57 year old lady, work her way through each day with utmost discipline. She is a primary grade teacher by profession; and a dedicated mother and daughter-in-law by passion.

I was comparing my daily routine to hers. I wake up in the morning and talk on the phone for a while even before stepping out of bed. Get ready, pray, have breakfast and step out of home to work. I take about one and half to two hours to do all this. I applaud myself everyday that I sit steadily and eat  my breakfast and then step out. After I watched my mom - I was ashamed. Give these 2 hours to her in the morning - she wakes up at 5.30 in the morning and leaves homes by 7.30 to catch the school bus. In these two hours, she cooks for the day, cleans, fills up water( we do not have 24hrs water supply, so need to fill up and store water for later use), gets ready, prays, has breakfast and then leaves. I was totally amazed and ashamed looking at her. Because I was around, she was talking about health, welfare, finances - any topic at random that came up at the spur of the moment. If I were to talk about the same, I needed to sit down, have a calm mind, and need a settled time to 'discuss' these topics.

Forget about just a morning; in one day, there are so many things that she does or can do. You can call that every day is complete for her because apart from simply doing the daily chores as in-charge of the household, she catches up on news, reads books, caters to her in-laws and helps neighbors if needed too. So much in a day?! It is the same 24 hours she has that I have too. I can never do so many things in a day.

All in all what I came to realize is that time and schedule is how we handle. It all depends on how lazy you let yourself be versus how much you to push and stretch yourself to adapt. Given a good physical health, the ability to do something comes from the mind. This still did not satisfy me and answer my question as to how my mother can do everything that she does.

I thought hard and finally gave up. I talked to her and she said - 'time is money'. As the old proverb goes, if we imbibe this in us and treat every moment like its the most valuable moment of life, discipline and time management automatically follow the course of action. You dont need to sit down and plan on what to do or how to manage time, it is a mental process. Amma says, 'its a problem with your generation'. Instead of just getting up and doing what needs to be done, she says, we spend more time thinking and talking about what to do rather than just doing something. I got furious when I heard that first. I thought she was poking at me. But when I think about it, yea, she is right. We set our bars too low and get satisfied with simple achievements of everyday life; when time, energy and wisdom can be spent much more efficiently. She says spend each day for a purpose. Now, I do not know how exactly I can or will do this, but I am going to try for sure.
Its all about 'making' time - not 'having' it :)

Capsicum(bell pepper) and Potato Curry

Last night when I walked into the kitchen, and found nothing to eat, I was tempted to order a delivery or simply get out and grab something to eat. Then I changed my mind - and am glad I did. I made dinner for two - in just 15 mins, it was sumptuous and totally yummy! Here is how:

Ingredients:

1. One potato, medium - peeled and diced.

2. Two capsicum(bell peppers) - diced.

3. half spoon ginger-garlic paste

4. Some Corriander(cilantro) - chopped

5. One spoon dhana-jeera powder

6. 3 whole Red Chilli 

7. Half spoon Red Chilli powder.

8. pinch of turmeric powder

Procedure:

Heat a shallow pan on medium flame. Add oil.

After oil heats up, add turmeric powder, red chillies and potato to the pan, stir and cover with lid.

Let cook for few minutes, stirring occasionally with lid covered.

When you see that the potato has softened a little, add ginger garlic paste and stir. then add capsicum to the pan. Stir and cover with lid.

Let cook and stir ocassionally.

Capsicum gets cooked very quickly. Once you notice the mixture is about half cooked, add salt.

Stir, remove lid.

Leave the mixture on flame for about 5 mins, occasionally stirring.

When done, turn the flame off, add red chilli powder, dhana-jeera powder and cilantro, stir and cover with lid.

Serve warm.

chitti boorelu

Ingredients:
1. wheat flour(godhum pindi) - 1 cup
2. rice flour (biyyappindi) - 1 cup
3. salt
4. red chilli powder
5. buttermilk( better if sour)
6. ginger
7. green chilli
8. jeera
9. asofotedia



Process:
Mix the dry ingredients - flours, salt, chilli powder, jeera, asofotedia in a bowl - stir with a spatula. Grind green chilli and ginger and add paste to the mix. Add buttermilk little by little and stir the mixture into a soft tight batter(enough tight like vada batter or even pakodi batter).
Set batter aside for 1 hour.

Heat oil in a pan - enough for deep fry. Make small balls of the batter and deep fry until golden brown in hot oil. Let cool. Serve warm.

Utappam: Aandhra Style

Ingredients:
1. Buttermilk, preferably sour(Pulla Majjiga) - 3 cups
2. Poha(Atukulu) - 1 cup
3. Raw Rice(Biyyam) - 2 n 1/2 cups
4. Menthulu - 1 tea spoon
5. Salt
6. Ginger
7. Green Chillies
8. Onions
9. Cilantro(corriander)

Preparation:
1. Wash poha, methi seeds and rice
2. Soak the washed ingredients in buttermilk for 4-5 hours(longer if needed).
3. Grind the soaked ingredients along with the buttermilk - get a tight batter without adding any extra water or butter milk. Add green chilli and ginger and grind them all together again. The result should be a smooth, tight batter.
4. Let the batter sit overnight.
5. Chop onions, cilantro(corriander) and green chillies.
6. Heat a flat pan, wait until the pan gets heated a bit.
7. Add few drops of oil, pour about a big spoon of utappam batter into the pan into the shape of a flat round. Do not touch to flatten it with a spatula (like you do for dosa).
8. Add the onion mixture on the top. Cover pan with lid.
9. After a few mins, when one side turns brown, remove lid and flip it to the other side. Let it cook on the pan without lid for 2-3 mins.

Menthi Podi

Ingredients:
1. Chana dal(senaga pappu) -1 cup
2. Urad dal(minapa pappu) -3/4 cup
3. Dhaniya - 1 cup
4. Menthulu(methi seeds) - 2 tbsp
5. inguva 1/2 spoon
6. dried red chilli - 24 mid-size

Procedure:
Roast(lightly) all ingredients in a few drops of oil. Let cool. Grind into a soft powder.(grind red chillies first).

Collection of quotes

I have been looking for a collage for quite sometime...many have collections, but this one is really good..extensive actually. Dont be baffled by the look of the site..just bear with it and dig in.

The site is: Windsom Quotes

Official start of Winter?

Winter Solstice?! Never heard of that..actually never heard before that 'today is the first day of winter'.

I was watching news today evening, the anchor was rambling on and on about the health care bill that got signed this morning, how fair or unfair the voting procedure was, pork to the senators..blah blah blah...and in all this rambling, there popped up the catch phrase - 'first day of winter'! I wondered what is it or when it is and googled for it. Turns out there is good amount of scientific significance to calling Dec 22nd of every year the official day of winter. Wiki quotes: "The Winter Solstice occurs exactly when the earth's axial tilt is farthest away from the sun at its maximum of 23° 26' ". This is the day when the day is shortest and night is longest in the Northern Hemisphere.

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

Reading through the article was like recalling the science lesson in school. Helps to learn terms and brush up memory sometimes, though all I know or care for now...T'is the Holiday season and I am looking forward to my looong vacation!! :)

Cyber Monday

Never heard of this term 'Cyber Monday' before. I was watching the 11Alive news and suddenly the anchors were talking about internet and frenzy and how Cyber Monday is catching up!

Hmm..wondered what it is and took help of the 'default' search engine(Google) and found all the answers on the 'collage of encyclopedias' (Wikipedia)

Turn out, the Monday after Black Friday is called Cyber Monday. Named so because of all the online deals from various merchants. It started 4-5 years ago and is picking up momentum very quickly because the online deals are way cheaper than the black friday deals, a lot of them offer free shipping, people dont have to get out of their home or waste their energy and time beating the bad weather. Instead they can stay at the home or even work, take a few minutes, and few clicks and get what they want! Check out Wiki for more info on Cyber Monday.

What I liked most about it?! Why the name..."The name Cyber Monday grew out of the observation that millions of otherwise productive working Americans, fresh off a Thanksgiving weekend of window shopping, were returning to high-speed Internet connections at work Monday and buying what they liked"..hehe, interesting :)

Purchasing scented candles:Fragrance Vs Life for money value

We all like and buy candles for various reasons. I know of many who buy un-scented candles, because they are mainly interested in the light rather than smell. I buy scented candles most of the time..I like the light plus am a big fan of fragrances. After controlling my passion and piling up on perfumes, I drifted the passion to candles. As an 'everyday' candle user, I tried using many brands, but with time I have come to observe and realize few things about the brands and how they make their candles.

Pottery barn: I love Pottery Barn candles for their unique fragrance. From my experience, their collection is so different and hard to match anyone else. I always use them for a special occasion or mood because none of the others can excite me and make me smile with glee as these. The trouble I have is they are very subtle. I need to have a few of them in my room to actually smell the aroma, but cannot buy so many of them because they are expensive. Also, I do not like the fact that they do not last long. I shop the outlets most of time to save a few bucks, because the regular stores in the malls can be more expensive.

Yankee candles: I like Yankee candles for the large collection of fragrances. More fragrances to choose from than Pottery Barn, few of them are very very good, and a lot of them are 'nice'. For the same size, they are lesser expensive than the Pottery Barn candles and last relatively longer too. They are still expensive. To beat the price, I do not buy fragrance of the season, I normally wait until they go on sale and stock up to use whenever I like. The 'home fragrance' collection and few others have a strong aroma, so I normally use these to light up the house and diffuse the smell while I am cooking, and they work well for that purpose. I also do not need very many of them..probably 2-3 scattered across kitchen and living area are good for my purpose. I occasionally use few signature collection fragrances for special occasions. These candles are almost worth their value, burn well, and last long..and burn almost to the bottom of the jar.

Colonial Candles: These are the best value for price and fragrance and size. The fragrances are not the best for smell, but they have a decent collection. The price is decent. The best feature: they burn until the last drop of wax in the jar...and last months. I use them more like a regular candle while cooking and even though I leave them burning for about 2-3 hours and probably 1 in the kitchen and 1 in the living room..thats enough to diffuse the smell from cooking and they last about 4 months for a 23 oz jar.

Occasionally few other candles from Glade or Bath and Body Works or Pier1 Imports attract me, but probably I'll not buy a lot of them to fill the house and use them everyday. I am yet to explore the unbranded local artisan work.

Marriage Cetificate

If you are an NRI living in the US and are going to India for wedding, DO NOT forget to get your marriage certificate along with you when you are coming back. I do not know how it works out or is required in other countries, but in US, especially if you are in the GC process or will likely be, you will soon realize that it is one of the most critical documents required.
Neither me nor my husband had any idea that we need to take a marriage certificate after the wedding. My mother was the first person to tell it to us and she was very persistent..she reminded each day until we went to the local registrar's office and got it.
It took us about 4 hours to wait for the document, but it was all worth it.

I recently talked to a friend of mine whose GC went into inquiry because of missing marriage certificate. Of course she also did not have her birth certificate and submitted a non availability certificate for it. She struggled through quite a bit to submit subtitutes...and finally got through later.

Mango people

You know what this means if you watched 'Love Aaj Kal'. I have been watching quite a few movies off late...just thru and after dinner almost everyday. When we started to see this one, we wanted to stop watching right after 5 mins and switch on news or something else. It was so haphazard and had no relevance between this scene and the next one, dialogues and Saif did not make sense. But, slowly with time, the movie became interesting. It is a good movie, well taken with a good screenplay. Yea, it has its own share of flaws, but not to focus on them, the story flows and the genuine acting and dialogues bring in good laughs.

Plaster Vs Pottery Painting

By the look of it, at the first glance, you might not be able to tell the difference, but if you did any of the painting, you clearly know and can tell what is pottery and which is plaster. The plaster painting molds are made of plaster of paris and have an acrylic coat on them to give them the finish. Pottery painting molds on the other hand are made out of ceramic, and will need to be fired in a kiln to give them the finish. Plaster ones are cheaper and much more affordable than pottery. Also they are easier to paint because just one coat of color or one stroke is enough. When painting pottery it definitely needs to be done in multiple layers, there needs to be base coat and then rest of the art can go on top of it. The advantage of pottery painting comes in when 'edibility' factor comes in..you can actually use the mugs or plates or any other crockery, while the plaster ones are plainly for eyes delight and art's content :)

Hindi Movie: Sikander

My brother called me last week and told me particularily to watch this movie. He called me right after watching the movie and said he was moved watching it. He gave no further info, so I was very curious to watch the film. I finally saw it today - a powerful movie, though not impressively taken. It revolves around the life of kids in Kashmir, how they are effected by the terror that is going on during the fights in Kashmir. As soon as I realized the movie is around this theme, I was very tensed, because I was not prepared to see the children suffer or to see any kind of atrocities happen to the kids. I was tensed through out and had a terrible headache because of that. It was emotionally draining tho the movie did not involve any violent or abusive scenes. Overall, it is a good movie..should not be watched for purely entertainment for sure...thought provoking and brings realities to vision.