Cooking!! What?

Through my teenage days, I have been good at different things. Cooking was never one of them. I wouldn't really say I wasn't good at it. The truth is, I never felt the need to cook. Growing up in a house where mummy cooks the yummiest recipes and to have an elder sister to fill in when mom isn't around is a perfect setting to escape the kitchen. 

Of course I knew how to make the eternal maggi noodles, dal(pulses)-chaval(rice) or the special omelette. And my dad always claimed that the tea I made was excellent :) With his encouragement, and thanks to 4 years of the occasional hostel and the 5 years of living on my own I slowly did start to learn the basics. But again, I always got super experienced "cookers" as my roomies and thus never felt like exploring my cooking skills.

And then came marriage... No more roomies, no more mom and sis. Just one hungry husband :) 

It has been almost 1 year since I have been married, and I have to say I now actually LOVE cooking. I regularly experiment with desserts and mallu (kerala) dishes. And I am amazed that this is the same girl who would prefer cornflakes for dinner rather than having to cook :)

Here are my quick tips for any beginner :)

1. Always keep the following handy

a) Chat masala: This adds the yummiest tangiest flavor to any dish. Chat masala is normally associated with masala papads and bhel/chaats. But add this masala to bhaajis (vegetable dry dishes like pulses or potato/cauliflower) to transform it. 

b)Pepper Powder: Sometimes you feel like having something spicy and end up adding so much of chilly powder that its tough to digest :) Pepper is great and can be added in increasing quantities to any cooked dish according to spice levels.

2. Add less salt while cooking. The level of salt required depends on person to person and you can always add more salt later. But it is very tough to make a dish less salty!

3. The base to most of the Indian dishes is a variation of sautéed onions with mustard seeds, green chilly, ginger-garlic and curry leaves. It is as simple as that!

4. Coconut milk is a rescuer especially for meat preparations. Add tomatoes and a little extra masala with the base in step 4 along with the milk and meat to make one of the yummiest curries.

and finally

5. Never stop to experiment. Cooking is an art. You are either naturally gifted or you acquire the skills. Either way, experimenting and tasting your innovations is very rewarding. 

Oh, by the way the picture above is that of the chicken biryani I prepared with the help of my dear Gubbu :)

Hungry?? Get some fun and healthy recipes at http://yaylearner.blogspot.com/2012/10/homemade-pizza-yum-healthy-toppings_10.html

Enjoy! :)

Greener Grass

"The grass is always greener on the other side... OR is it?"

When we look at our lives,we so often find fault or think "Why me?". We take the easy route of complaining or fussing about small things. We let them affect us, our thoughts and actions and waste precious time and energy worrying about our "problems".

At times, we notice people, and feel for them. Momentarily we think, " Oh how blessed we are, that we do not have to go through what they are feeling". But as soon as these less fortunate people are out of sight, we get back to brooding about our "problems".

Why is it so much easier for us to find the bad over the good? Why do we concentrate so much on the smaller details of life that we forget the BIG picture?

As a child, do you recall connecting the dots on your little coloring books to create a picture from a blank page of numbers? Do you remember how happy you would feel to accomplish this, to look back at the connected dots, recognize the elephant or the clown that was hiding behind it? Proudly we would go ahead and color this new found picture to what we thought looked best. 

Life is full of these small dots, good and bad. If it was so easy for us to do that then, why is it difficult to believe that all these small problems are trivial. When you slowly start to connect them, and see the larger picture,you will realize life is not that bad after all. 

I truly believe, there is no such thing as less fortunate or greener grass. Not everything turns out like a fairy tale. Each of us have had our share of tears, only to make us stronger as a person and to work even harder to earn our right to being happy. 

We are our awesome best today, BECAUSE of these "problems".

Inspired? Read some more @ http://yaywriter.blogspot.com/search/label/Spiritual

Express, why not...

So how many of you have experienced the random babbling of a 6 month old? The continuous efforts of the lil one to express her deepest thoughts- the happiness, the fear, the excitement. All this in vain... only because it is just gibberish to us, the intelligent grown ups! 

Why is it then that we fear expressing our intelligent understandable thoughts? Why is it that we build this wall around us and choose not to let any one in. Is it cause someone sometime hurt our feelings? But how about all the others who genuinely want to hear you, laugh with you and shed a tear at your pain. 

Would the world be more beautiful if everyone expressed what they felt? or is the killing silence an alternative to keeping peace. 

Writing has always helped me through good times and bad. Small bits of paper, random thoughts,  scribblings at the back of my notebook. I never kept a journal, nor did I ever blog as I watched and read my friends pour out emotions, write reviews or share their favorite recipes online.

Not until I read today, a two page article written by my first and most precious friend, my sister. It spoke about thoughts, about inspirations, and about insignificant obstacles that stop us from writing. 

And I realized, again,

What is happiness if not shared... what is a tear if not wiped... what is a feeling if not expressed...

So here I am trying to do just that. I do hope that my writings will bring to you the same joy and peace that I experience, while jotting them down.