Recipe: Tomato Pappu

Dal is the item which will be used by everyone and in every region. Today I will give the basic recipe with dal- Tomato Pappu.

Ingredients:

Dal - 1/2 cup
Tomatoes chopped-2
Green chilli chopped-2
Onion chopped-1
Turmeric powder-a pinch
Chilli powder-as required
Salt-as per your taste
Garlic-2

For tadka:
Oil-2tbsp
Red chilli-2
Urad dal, Channa dal,Mustard seeds, Jeera, few Curry leaves.

Preparation:

1. Add dal with tomatoes, half of the onions, green chillies, turmeric powder, chilli powder and salt in a pressure cooker and cook it till 3 whistles (I mean to say till dal is cooked).
2. Once cooked mash dal with added ingredients. Adjust salt and chilli powder.
Now add oil in a pan and add all the ingredients for tadka. Once mustard seeds starts to split, add onions and garlic to it.
3. Once onions are cooked add tadka to the mashed dal.

Tomato pappu is ready.

Recipe: Semiya Payasam

Today we will prepare an other sweet which is well known to everyone. That's none other than Semiya Payasam.
I hope there is nothing much to explain about it. But the only tricky part is to make sure, payasam consistency is not thick.

Ingredients:

Milk
Elachi-4
Sugar-1 cup
Semiya-1 cup
water-2 cups
few cashews, kismis
ghee-2tspn

Preparation:

1. Fry cashews, kismis, semiya in ghee and keep it aside.
2. Now boil water in a pan and add semiya, elachi to it.
3. When semiya is half cooked add sugar to this. Adjust sugar as per your taste. In this stage when you taste it, sweetness should be a bit more than you usually eat for payasam.
4. Once semiya is cooked switch off the stove.
5. When you are about to serve heat the milk, take some cooked semiya in a bowl and add milk to it.
6. Garnish with cashews and kismis.

That's it. Your semiya payasam is ready.

Note: If milk is added to semiya while cooking, after sometime milk will be absorbed by semiya and the consistency will be thick.

Happy Independence Day :-)

Thalimpu Rice with Left Over Rice

Everyone will be thinking what to do with the leftovers. We can't throw them off just like that. I will maximum try to utilize it.
Coming to the rice... When leftover there are some many recipes that you can do with it.
You can prepare lemon rice or rice thadka (thalimpu annam)

Thalimpu Annam Recipe:

Ingredients:
1 cup Cooked rice
2tbsp oil
few channa dal, urad dal, mustard seeds, jeera
2 red chilli
curry leaves, coriander leaves
1/2 lemon
few ground nuts
Salt
Turmeric powder
1 onion chopped
2 green chilli splitted

Preparation:
1. Mix salt in rice. Make sure rice should not have any lumps.
2. Take oil in a kadai and add channa dal, urad dal, mustard seeds, jeera, red chilli, curry leaves, groundnuts
3. Once tadka is done add green chilli, onion, turmeric powder and fry it till onion are transulent.
4. Now squeeze half a lemon in the mixture and add rice mixed with salt and let it be there for 5mins.
5. Garnish with some coriander leaves.

That's it your thalimpu annam is ready.
You can eat it with or without any side dish.

Himalaya Herbals Kajal

Today i am doing a review on Himalaya Herbal Kajal.
Before starting my review I would like to tell you that i have watery eyes.

There are few qualities that everyone ought to look when comes to kajal:

Color

Smudge free

Sting

Staying power

Product Claims:

Extra smooth & Water proof

Enriched with Almond Oil that nourishes your eyes, keeps them cool and makes you look fresh and bright.

A unique blend of herbal extracts that cools and nourishes your eyes.

No harmful chemicals.

Hypoallergenic.

    Directions:

Apply kajal within the lash line.
Key ingredients:

Almond oil, Castor oil,Camphor, Damask Rose, Triphala

Price: 110Rs for 2.7gms

Please check out the below snap for the color and smudging effect:

When comes to Himalaya products I will buy them without any hesitation as they are totally herbal. One good thing about these products are either they provide good result or not... they won't be bad on you.

Coming to the kajal here are the pros and cons of it:

Pros:

• The color of it is darkest dark- perfect black.
• It doesn't sting my eyes.
• Packaging is good with green color outer cap.
• Hygenic- as there is no need of digging your finger to get the product.
• Plastic packaging with twist up cone shaped product.
• Easily removable with any cleanser or oil.
• Reasonable priced for the amount provided.

Cons:

• It is not smudge free. It smudges badly when wiped.
• Staying power is ok ok. Stays for maximum 2hrs (may be because of my watery eyes).

Finally, I would say this is not a super duper best kajal but a good daily wear kajal.

Will I repurchase? No. This iteself will last me for long time. I will try other kajals in the market just to keep them in my collection if needed. Even I am not a kajal person as they smudge and makes me look like a racoon.

Hope you guys found my review useful.

Arts&Crafts: Anchor Stitch Kit

Stiching is my hobby. Still I like to do simple works which completes in small durations (I dont want to stress my eyes by stiching delicate designs)

In search of those kind of works I came across this Anchor Stitch kit. Till then I thought the easy way to create decorative wall hangings is by sand painting. Anyways it is not as easy as sand painting but yet simple compared to other stiching works.

Manyfactured by Madura Coats Private Limited.

Items provided in the kit:

1. Netted sheet with printed design and clues to fill the colour.
2. Cotton threads. Each will have a number associated to it and in the kit alphabets will be provided for each color. These alphabets will be provided as clues in the netted sheet.
3. Needle

Price: somewhere around 300Rs (I don't remember this exactly. As I bought this 1 and half years back


How to Stitch:


Only thing we need to do is to identify proper color and stitch in the vertical directions in the netted sheet for the part related to that color. Needle needs to be taken up from back side of the hole from the top border and should be inserted into the hole of bottom border in the same line.

Its very simple and they have very good collection of designs in different sizes.

We can decorate this by pasting some chamki or kundans etc. Frame the sheet. It looks beautiful with the work. Even if there is no separate border for two colors in the design we can differentiate the design properly. Availability is not a problem.

Hope you people like this.Try to do this you will never regret of buying these designs.