mayurisjikoni

beat the heat      Extreme weather is some what becoming a norm in the present time.  6 feet of snow in autumn, torrential rains accompanied by landslides and floods, high temperatures, cold gusty winds, cold spells. All this is happening due to pollution, less trees, concrete jungles, thinning ozone layer and so many other factors put together. Usually around Diwali time our apartment gets a lovely cool sea breeze and many a times we have to close the windows so that doors do not bang, vases do not topple over and curtains do not fly out of the window like flags.Sometimes in the evening the breeze makes us feel a bit cold. The cool breeze, day and night lasts till the month of February and then it changes direction and the apartments facing the west, receive the breeze. However, this year its a different story altogether.There is no breeze at all and the temperatures are high. My wind chime has not jingled at all! We feel like having cold drinks, ice creams, ice, fruits and salads. My

An exotic flat bread       Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen chose Sheermal for our group We Knead to Bake  for the month of November. Had I heard of sheermal before? Yes, but and I had written it down to try it out. I had come across the recipe for sheermal by Tarla Dalal and Sanjeev Kapoor. So when I went through the recipe that Aparna gave us, I was pretty excited Finally I was going to bake Sheermal. In the meantime other members had already baked it and shared a few of their experiences. Most of sheermal photos sent to our facebook page looked so perfect, delicious, well baked and rich.      I made mine today. I must admit that I had totally forgotten that we had to post the recipe today on our blog. I had presumed that I still had till the end of the month. A gentle reminder from Aparna, made me sit upright. So early in the morning the dough was kneaded and by lunch time hubby dear had lovely sheermal with corn curry.      What is sheermal? Well, sheermal, seermal or shirmal is a fla

Save our Planet     My hubby dear has his breakfast pretty early but I prefer to have it after I have bathed and done my pooja. While having breakfast I usually watch the news channels, catch up with the whatsapp messages and also make phone calls that I have to for the day... call for the gas cylinder, social calls, whatever needs attention for that day. Anyway what really caught my attention was the news that in some Scottish stores the use of plastic bags has dropped by 90% since they introduced the 5p charge for bags. 500 billion to a trillion bags are used every year by the world. Without thinking we gather several bags when we go shopping and usually just throw them away in the dustbin. Stop and think what happens to those bags you have just thrown. It fills up the landfill sites. This land could be put to better use. Plastic finds its way to the ocean and eventually finds its way into the stomachs of the marine life, killing them. Plastic bags are found at the country side, on f

Une baguette s'il vous plait!        The Home Bakers Challenge for the month of November was to choose any of the recipes given in the previous challenges. For a new member of the group, this was like opening a treasure trove. Which one to choose, which one to choose was constantly on my mind as I went through the lists. My mind was getting all muddled up as I wanted to try most of them. So the other best option was to go through my bookmarked list and see if any were a match to the long list of recipes. I finally chose to make french baguette. Though I didn't follow the recipe given by Priya Ranjit for the Jan 2014 challenge, I made them using the poolish method. I had this recipe bookmarked for over a year! Sometimes the exotic names in itself seem daunting. Though the method was pretty simple, I didn't think I could bake a baguette. However, I did and am so glad I chose this recipe. Already the poolish is fermenting for the second batch of baguettes. Poolish , biga, spon

full of vegetables    The recipe for vegetable handvo has been in my recipe book (followers may recall that all my recipes since I started cooking, are jotted in a big diary given to me by my dad) even before I got married. My friend's mum use to make this very often as a snack or as a meal. When Padmajha Sureshbabu of Seduce your tastebuds  gave me corn and sesame seeds for the shhh cooking secretly challenge , I immediately thought of the vegetable handvo. Obviously there were so many other corn recipes popping up in my mind as I love corn, but I couldn't miss the opportunity to blog one of my written recipes. Before I proceed to the recipe, I must mention that Padmajha's blog is very interesting recipes she does book reviews. The write up is done so well that you get tempted to read the book. Do visit her blog.    This handvo recipe is not like the normal handvo that Gujaratis make. This handvo is just vegetables, no rice or dal flour. Its a good dish to have as a snack,

HYPER KIDS        Most of us are complaining about the heat and how its affecting us. Feeling listless, tired, hot, craving for very cold sugary drinks and so many other woos. However, I was just observing how the heat does not affect the kids that much. The kids in the school near our apartment were jumping, running and playing in spite of the heat. In the afternoon, kids from our apartments were playing football, running, skating and their energy levels were at the optimum. Looking at them made me feel even more exhausted. How can they be so hyper? Its nearly bed time but the kid staying above us is jumping away. Is it the food these kids eat? Boundless energy and constantly on the go.         I guess we were the same when we were kids. Playing, jumping, climbing trees, walking to friends and relatives places. The main street near our home would become a playground for all the kids from the surrounding neighbourhood. At that time, there was hardly any traffic near our homes. Later wh