Rose flavored Ragi malt

Health conscious foods are deceptive. They taste and look bland.
One of those is Ragi malt which has a bland taste. Not everybody likes it.
Am one of those lots.
Food Garnishing and flavoring has visual impact and sensory impression on the food we eat.

I adopted one of my friend's recipe which tempts taste buds through rose flavoring.

Ragi beans - 200gms
rose essence - 10ml

Preparing Rose flavored Ragi Powder.
Grind the ragi beans in to smooth powder.
Add 10ml rose essence to ragi flour and mix well.
Dry it for a day under sun shade and store it in a dry jar.

Making ragi malt.

Mix Ragi powder to a glass of cold milk or water.
Bring glass of milk to a boil and mix cold milk and stirr continuously.
Continue stirring for no lumps until thick and soupy.
Add 2 tablespoon of sugar or honey to enhance taste.

Instant Tit Bit:
Add 2 drops of rose essence to prepared ragi malt soup for an instant kick mix.
Healthy Tit bit:
Instead of sugar try 2 spoons Date Syrup.

If you do have any tempting ragi recipes, i will be happy to share it on my blog.

Dosakaya Koora

This is one of my favorite curry.

Ingredients :
Medium sized dosakaya - 1

Small Onion - 1
For tempering:
Jheera, Mustard, Green  chillies, Hing, red chillies, curry leaves
Optional:
Garlic pod -1
Preperation:
Temper the ingredients in oil.
Add turmeric at last.
Add chopped Dosakaya to this and cover it with a lid.
Once dosakaya becomes tender, add chopped onions.
Once onions are added, do not cover the lid.
Fry them for 10min till they are done.

Variations to Dosakaya curry:
Garlic is optional if you like garlic.
This tastes good with roti's if you add 1 chopped Tomatoes.
For kids, use Ripe dosakaya for a sweet taste.

Vegetable rasam (V8 Vegetable juice Rasam)

I friends,
Hi  might not be blogging much for the next 2 months.
Today i had a confirmed 7th week pregnancy.
I have heard my baby's Heart beat today for the first time.
Voila!!! am up in the sky.
I do not want to get much  stressed and almost stopped cooking.
But my love for cooking cant stop me away from getting in the kitchen.
Though my hubby helps, i want to get more indulged in to cooking and satisfy my craving.

Since 2 weeks am craving a lot for Spicy foods and masala's than usual.
And Thanks god!! Am not having Nausea.
Am taking a lot of nutritious foods.
I tried V8 vegetable rasam and it came out great today.
Even  my hubby also liked it. He helped  me in making rasam and taking photographs.
I make rasam with different flavors.
Each one of the following are used each time in flavoring the rasam.
But the rasam powder used remains same.

Black pepper

Curry leaves

Cilantro

Tomato

Onions

Ginger

Garlic

Hing

Today am gonna share with you my nutritious rasam recipe which gives you tons of Vitamins and energy.
For the rasam powder, i add lil of toor daal to enhance the  taste of rasam.
Here is the recipe:

1 cup dhania

5 tblspn black pepper

5 nos red pepper

2 tblspn jheera

3 tblspn Toor  daal

1 stem of curry leaves (Optional)

Dry roast all above items seperately and blend it in a blender till it becomes a soft powder.

Vegetablerasam Rasam recipe:

Heat oil and temper mustard, jheera, green chillies, hing, curry leaves and red chillies.
Add the rasam powder and fry for a minute.
Now add 3 small tins of V8 mixed vegetable juice and boil for a while.
Add tamrind and boil for another 15 min and top it with chopped cilantro and serve  hot with rice and ghee.
Hot daal makes a good combination with hot rasam and rice with oil.

Mango Mukkala pacchadi and an award from raje

Today Raje from vegan haven from NJ sent me a sweet friend award.
Thank you raje for  a lovely award.
You inspire me to blog more with this award.
Thank you for the encouragement.
I want to share this award with my sweet friend
1. "Gita" from "Gitaskitchen.blogspot.com" who inspired me to blog from the beginning.
2. Rajeswari,  http://rakskitchen.blogspot.com/

And coming to the recipe
This Mamidikaya mukkalapacchadi recipe is dedicated to my sweet friend Raje from vegan haven who sent me an award.

Mangoes (Mamidikaya in telugu) are everybody's all time favorite.
If you wanna taste a mango, sweet or sour, taste in India.
When mango season ends, we get another variety of mangoes called "Punasa maamidi"
With the summer season mangoes, pickled mangoes are famous.
Punasa mamidi is famous for its "Mamidikaya menthi mukkalu" or mukkala pacchadi.
This is my favorite apart from maagaya.
Mukkala pacchadi tastes great when its fresh with its aromatic Methi smell. The Bitter and sour taste of methi and Mango makes the pacchadi different.
You can even add Garlic cloves in tempering if you are a fan of garlic.
This can be stored for up to 3 days outside fridge.
In the refrigerator, around a week but i bet you will complete this in a day or two.
That much tasty is this pacchadi.
This pachadi is different from aavakaya.


My recipe for Mukkala Pacchadi:

2 Large sour Raw mangoes or punasa maamidi chopped in to very small pieces
5 tblspn Methi roasted
10tblspn - Mustard roasted
Roasted red chilli powder - 1 cup
Salt to taste
Mustard oil or sunflower oil - 1 cup
Green chillies chopped - 3 tblspn
Garlic cloves - optional 1 spn chopped
Jheera - 2 tblspn
Mustard seeds - 1 tblspn
Curry leaves - 1 bunch chopped
Hing - 1 tblspn
turmeric - 1 tblspn

I chop  the mango with its skin on.
But if you have chemical concerns with its skin,  juust remove them.
Dry roast mustard, and fenugreek/methi seeds, roast red chillies.
Make a smooth powder of above.

For tempering
Fry chopped green chillies, mustard seeds, jheera, Hing and Curry leaves in oil.
Now add Turmeric, and the ground powder to the oil and fry for 30 seconds.
Do not burn else the Fenugreek fragnance will go away.
After the oil comes to normal room temperature, add this to the chopped Mango and set it aside for an hour before serving.
This is a tempting recipe for a hungry lazy day to enjoy your meal with single side dish.
After eating this dish, salt  lassi tastes like haven.
Raje this recipe is for you.

Moisturing Hand waxing home made recipe

Waxing makes your hands and legs very dry.
And it would be worse when you have a very dry skin.
Problam in Us in the north east and south east is "Cold weather"
It not only makes the skin dry but also makes you lazy to walk thru the beauty parlor door  in freezing and snow filled roads.
I have tried many wax brands.
Sally hansen
Nair are some.
I feel sally hansen is not effective for a coarse hair.
It leaves small wax patches.
Brazilian wax or bees wax is anotherone which is effective on coarse hair.
But i had severe rash using it.
I make my own wax recipe at home for my dry skin to keep my silky dry skin moist.
This is very effective.
Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1 cup honey
On a stove, heat the honey and sugar mixture on low heat till it boils till rim and switch off the stove.
You need not add Lemon or vinegar to this recipe to De-crystallize it when the recipe comes to a complete boil.
Do not over boil it else it caramelizes once it reaches desired warmth.
This perfect preperation will make the wax crystalize when it comes to room temperature.
Honey in this recipe not only removes Tan effectively but also leaves the hands moist.

Tips for a better wax:

1. Do not use any type of cream over the treatment area before wax.
2. Do not wax as soon as you have a bath. Wait atleast 3 hours.
3. Apply anti persparant powder if possible.
4. Wash with cold tap water.
5. If you have a oily skin, apply astrigent. This is not only an antiseptic but also helps manage oily skin.
6. If you have a dry skin, either apply moisturizer or body butter.
7. Do not apply soap for 6 hours.

Health Fact on hair growth:

Raise in sugar levels increases the realese of estrogen hormones.
Estrogen increases hair growth. Ex: If you use sugar tablets, you loose hair a lot and a reduction in hair growth.
Maintaining low carb helps you manage your hormone levels and hair growth.

Diwali celebrations in india

Diwali is my favorite festival and also the festival am afraid of.
I just love the way we celebrate.
But am afraid of the Fireworks which are involved with lot of sounds like "Lakshmi bombs", "10000 wala" Patakas etc.
We forget the world around playing with fireworks enjoying till late night 12 and till 1.
I was missing my diwali celebrations since 2 yrs.
I would have missed diwali this time too.

I had a longer stay in India  than  expected because of "Chuken Gunea" and took part in celebration with my parents.
I decorated my house with rangoli.
It took me 3 hours to complete the design.

My mom's personal assistant helped me to make it fast.
This time, the rangoli colors we brought were so colorful.
Earlier we used to get the powdered ones which is difficuilt to spread.
It would spread chunky that spoils the whole  rangoli.
This time we got the colored sand to color the rangoli.
This was so greateasy to spread and in 10's of colors.
I used the lord krishna, and small elephants to decorate the rangoli.
At last i flowered the rangoli with mums  and plastic flowers.
They look beautiful.
Isn't it?

Interesting facts about fast foods

• A single chocolate chip provides enough energy for a human to walk 150ft.
• Adding french fries and a large cola brings the total calories to an amazing 1,500 calories (2/3 of an adult man’s recommended daily caloric intake). A man would need to walk for about nine miles to burn it off. 

• The CDC estimates that 248,000 Americans die prematurely due to obesity and considers obesity as the number two cause of preventable death in the US (the #1 cause is smoking)
  
• If you decide to avoid fast foods which contain HFCS, then you have to  avoid 95% of Mc Donalds menu.
• Even subway which is famous for Healthy Fat free Diet, contains HFCS in its wheat bread and sour dough bread.
• When it was revealed in 1990 that McDonald's used beef tallow to flavor its french fries, Hindu vegetarian customers in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, ransacked a McDonald’s restaurant and smeared cow dung on a statue of Ronald MacDonald.
• A man would need to walk for about nine miles to burn it off. Adding french fries and a large cola brings the total calories to an amazing 1,500 calories (2/3 of an adult man’s recommended daily caloric intake).
• Coca-Cola originally included coca derivatives such as cocaine in their sodas, which at the time was not illegal. It was originally served as a “brain tonic and intellectual soda fountain beverage
• When McDonald's opened an outlet in Kuwait shortly after the end of the Gulf War, the line of cars waiting to eat there was seven miles long
• Today, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo products are sold in every country in the world, except North Korea. 
• In the U.S., we eat more than 1,000,000 animals an hour 
• Left unabated, obesity will surpass smoking as the leading cause of preventable death in America
• McDonald's distributes more toys per year than Toys-R-Us 
• Coco-cola can be used as car oil imagine how much harm it does to the body