mayurisjikoni

Salad days are back   I usually go through these mood phases, wanting to eat junk food, only pasta or chatpata chaats etc. I cannot for some odd reason stick to eating the same type of food every single day. So I am back to my 'want to eat salad' mood. But that doesn't mean I am satisfied with just a tomato. cucumber and carrot chopped and mixed with lettuce. It has to be different. I also don't like the ready salad dressings so make my own. What are the advantages of eating salad? You may say they are healthy. Yes they are but along with that there are so many other advantages.Salads are nutritious, help you adopt a healthier lifestyle, helps you eat several servings of vegetables and fruits.Salads help to increase fiber and reduce cholesterol levels. A salad before your main meal gives you the feeling of fullness. This helps prevents overeating or bingeing.However, stay clear of fatty creamy dressings and when you use add-ons like meat, cheese, nuts don't use too ...

About time        I am so glad that France is the first developed country to tackle the issue of food wastage and will be passing a law that supermarkets will be banned from throwing or destroying food that is still edible. It is believed that in France about 7.1 million tonnes of food is wasted per year. There a many poor families, students, homeless and unemployed people forage the bins for food. To prevent potential food poisoning, supermarkets have been dousing the leftover food with bleach. In 2012 UK threw away 7 million tonnes of food. How much is that? Well, fill Wembley Stadium nine times over. The law will require the supermarkets to donate the food to charities or as animal feed. While there is a lot of argument that that is not the solution of dealing with food wastage, its a beginning. An average French person throws away 20 -30 kgs of food of which 7 kgs is still wrapped. Food wastage has to be tackled at the home level too. People need to be made aware...

lovely combination       For the month of May, the We Knead to Bake group had to bake an orange and cinnamon swirl bread. The combination of orange and cinnamon is absolutely heavenly. While I was baking this bread, the kitchen was filled with wonderful aroma of both the combinations. The original recipe used apricot preserve. I couldn't find any apricot preserve in the supermarket and we don't get apricots so I decided to first make orange marmalade and used that as the filling. This recipe finally got me to make marmalade which I had wanted to d for a long time but never seem get down to it. I thought it would be difficult but actually its very easy. I baked an eggless version of the bread and changed the recipe to suit me. I added sugar in the dough and used brown sugar for the filling. When I sliced the bread, the swirl was not a tight swirl, though I did try to roll the dough tightly. But hey, the taste was amazing. Its a lovely bread to have for breakfast or tea. I ...

Little Joys      Every time I log off from my hotmail account, the MSN new page appears. Its an interesting mixture of news, quirky happenings, lifestyle, finance, home etc. A whole package to take care of what interests you. Yesterday I read an article on what things kids of these days miss out on because of technology. Very interesting and I remember there was joy and a sense of achievement too when we used these things because that's all we had. For example, kids of today probably wouldn't know how to use a directory. Remember when we had to browse through the phone book to find contact numbers? I remember just for fun we use to see how many Patels were listed in the Kenya Directory or how many Njoroges were in Nairobi. During our trip to Florida we actually opened the directory to find how many Patels were in Orlando. We were missing our khichdi. Of course we didn't have the guts to call any of the numbers! That's a different story. Kids of today will probably never...

Learning   The few cooking groups that I belong to are really educative. I have learnt new techniques, more about world cuisine, a bit more about other countries and its fun to see the photos of fellow bloggers. The same recipe turns out quite different in different hands. If it weren't for these groups I don't think I would have tried out different sorts of breads or baked goodies. I would have probably stuck to the more familiar recipes. Sometimes time does not permit me to bake on time but I do finish the challenge before the month ends. A lot of research goes into challenging the groups to a certain recipe.Research by both the one who sets the challenge and also by the ones who take up the challenge.    For the month of May Gayathri challenged the baking eggless group to a Kugelhopf. What is a kugelhopf?Kugelhopf, kougelhopf, kouglof, gugelhuph, is a yeast bread popular in parts of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Croatia, Serbia, France, basically many parts of Central...

Floods everywhere    These days the news is mostly on the floods in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya and how people are getting to work and back home. Traffic delays, flooded main roads, water in homes, power station shut down because it gets flooded, resulting in some areas going without power for hours or even days. Everyone is busy blaming the County. While that is true that the county did not prepare for the rains by cleaning out the drainage, its our fault too. Rubbish which includes plastic bags, plastic bottles, paper, cigarette boxes, food packages etc are all thrown mindlessly on the roads and the roadside. So many times I have seen hawkers leaving dirty and used plastic bags on the roadside, people having lunch or dinner and throwing plastic cups and plates on the roadside. Where does all this rubbish land up? In the drains and as a result blocks the drains. Blocked drains means water cannot pass through. Yes it is also true that more and more buildings are coming ...