mayurisjikoni

first time ever!       When Priya challenged the Home Bakers Challenge group to bake scones, I got excited. Excited because I love scones, because I have so many scone recipes in my recipe book but never tried any and because now I had to bake them! My cousin Jayshree is an expert at baking scones. She baked some during my last visit to London and invited my sister in laws and me to her house for early breakfast.... tea or coffee with scones. She served them with some jam, butter and clotted cream. Took one in my plate, finished it with some hot tea, then had another one. She kept on insisting we have more, but the mind was saying no and the taste buds were saying yes yes. So my sister in law and I shared one. By the time we left her house, we were just too full. We had some work to tackle but couldn't. Had to plop in front of the telly and let those scones with dollops of clotted cream, digest.       I kept on putting off the task hoping that the rain...

    Easy communication      WhatsApp has improved communication tremendously. You just need to be connected to an internet or wifi and voila... you're good to go. Its become easier to communicate with friends and family who are far from us or when we are travelling. So the typical messages sent are  'leaving for the airport', 'reached the airport', 'done with security and immigration', 'having coffee', 'boarding plane', 'boarded'. Then for a while its peace and quiet. As soon as one lands, the first task is to find out if there is free wifi at the airport. If there is messaging begins again. 'Lovely airport', 'immigration line very long', 'waiting for baggage', 'reached our destination', etc etc. While for most of this is really good because we can keep in touch with family and friends, sometimes whatsapp can turn out to a be a huge nuisance. If you are part of several groups, then your mobile is certai...

NO SUGAR, NO CREAM        You maybe wondering what I am talking about. I am talking about an ice cream where you don't need to add any sugar or any whipping cream, no sweetened condensed milk. I came across this recipe in an Eating well article. The original recipe used just the bananas, but I added milk to give it a more creamier, softer texture. You really can't make out that this ice cream is not made from any cream or condensed milk. Easy to make, can also make it in minutes if you get unexpected guests. However, I do recommend a very strong blender for this task. You know the magi mix type or even the steel jug type which we normally get in India. I used my kenwood blender and it worked fine for this recipe. You will need to push and prod the mixture till it can blend into a thick mixture on its own. Frozen bananas is like crushing ice in your blender. Partially thawed bananas do not work so well. This ice cream will definitely have less calories as compared to ...

another Gujarati dish   The first time I had rasiya muthia was when my mother in law (Nunu) made them. I fell in love with the dish. Nunu would make them quite often as even my father in law loved them. The first time she made them in a huge huge pan, I was baffled. I thought why is she making so much. Little did I know till we sat to have our lunch, that rasiya muthia was a family favourite and that everyone enjoyed making a meal out of it. After Nunu left for India I tried the recipe twice but the first time, the muthias all broke up and I was left with one very thick kadhi. The second time round the muthias were very hard. I had watched Nunu make rasiya muthia so many times but never thought that it would be difficult. She had made me write down the method but I didn't have exact measurements. It was like "so you take a bit of that and a bit of this and make the muthias. So for many years I gave up on making them and would ask her to make them whenever we would visit her in...

Where is Peace?          Why is it so difficult to understand other people? Little mistakes, circumstances, difference of opinion, different race, different religion, different cultures all make us misunderstand each other. Our daily lives are filled with these misunderstandings. Whether a minor action or major, people tend to misunderstand it and don't even bother to find out the reason for that particular action. Misunderstandings leave you feeling low, angry, unhappy, cheated, and above all unwanted. Many a times we just stand up again again and again to strive through live. Humans are a resilient lot, but how much can one withstand injustice, ill treatment and misunderstanding? The world is increasingly becoming a place where fellow humans are becoming less tolerant resulting in bad actions, bad words, misunderstanding and ill feeling. Will we ever become a one peaceful world, supporting each other and truly being what humans are meant to be... tolerant, pea...