Flower bouquets can last longer...

There is something so very beautiful about flowers that every woman ( perhaps men too!!) find very romantic. Who does not like a beautiful bouquet of fresh flowers?

A gift of a bouquet of flowers brings smiles and lights up hearts!

These can light up any living space and add that much needed colour and freshness to any room. Its sad that the flowers, however beautiful they are wither away. But, if cared for well, you can make them last a little longer than its actual life span.

• Remove the bouquet from its wrapping, cut all stems diagonally. This way it will absorb more water. 
• Take a clean vase, crush an aspirin and place it on the bottom of the vase and fill the vase with water. 
• Place flowers in the vase - the flowers must be kept at a place with ample light, but it should not be kept under direct sunlight such that the flowers dry up.
• Changing water everyday at the same time will help the flowers last longer.
•  Every week cut the stems a little above the last cut, diagonally. This way you can ensure that the flowers absorb the water it needs.

As I said before flowers will wilt away eventually, but if taken care of, you can make it last longer.

Rice vermicelli and Tuna salad

If i had known that rice vermicelli and canned tuna make such a good combination, I would have tried this salad earlier!
This is pretty much a 'mix it the way you want' salad Experiment with salad dressing of your choice,and I guess it would mostly taste good!

Ingredients:
Tuna - 300 grams canned/cooked

Chilly sauce - 1 table spoon

Soy sauce - 1 table spoon

Sun dried tomatoes - 2 table spoons

Pepper - 1 teaspoon
Rice vermicelli - 1 pack
Olive oil - 1 teaspoon

Salad leaves - a bunch of leaves of you choice. Spinach, rocket, lettuce, watercress... (optional, you can also substitute with veggies like carrots) 

Lime - juice of half a lime

Method:
Boil and drain the rice vermicelli.
Toss together rice vermicelli , soy sauce, chilly sauce, olive oil, pepper in a bowl.
Once mixed evenly add tune, sun dried tomatoes and salad leaves.

Add in a dash of lime and serve.

Reducing starch from Rice

Don't we all know, that cutting down on rice in our daily diet will help reduce stored fat in our body? Rice is a grain and  digest very quickly, much quicker than meats, or nuts. When they digest, they turn to simple sugars for quick energy. If the energy is not used right away the energy is stored as fat.

I love rice. I cannot live without it. Being a South Indian and coming from a household that eats rice three times a day has made me a rice lover , can I say.. devotee.
So in order to fit rice into my diet , keeping in mind my daily schedule which does not involve much of  physical exercise, I had begun to find out ways to cook rice better. I wanted to cook rice in ways which would to make it nice and light and fluffy, removing as much of starch from it as possible.
This method however, works best with white rice( rice that is white in colour) .I haven't tried this with the other varieties of rice (red, brown, black).
This is for all those who love rice but are scared of its starch content.

Rinse rice well before cooking, this helps in removing loose starch making it less sticky. For some varieties like basmati rice where the starch content is very high, soaking the rice in water for 20 minutes also helps remove the starch.
Boil water in a pot. Take about 4 times the amount of water as compared to the amount of rice.
Once water starts boiling briskly, put the rice in and stir well.
Do not cover pot , let the rice boil in the water.
If you like to add salt to rice, add salt now.
After 10- 15 minutes, stir rice around in the pot and check if it has got cooked . This can be checked by   squeezing a grain between your fingers. If the grain is soft , the rice has been cooked well. Some might like their rice overcooked while some like it just about right. Cook rice to the level you want it to be cooked.
Once rice is cooked, drain the rice in a colander.  In this way a lot of unwanted starch from the rice is removed through the water.
Another way of draining is to close the pot with the lid and tilt the pot until all water is drained out. This way the steam and heat still remains in the pot. The rice can be kept closed in the pot for some more time, allowing the rice to cook more.

This method of boiling and draining rice is better than simmering where the rice to soaks up all the water it cooks in as the water would have a lot of starch.
The difference can be felt while you eat rice cooked in this manner. It is lighter on the stomach and it will not give a  full feeling after the meal.

Choy Sum Thoran - Stir fry with Grated Coconut

I am very fond of buying veggies that arent commonly found in India and trying to adapt them to the Indian way of cooking. Some of them turn out very well, whereas some are best left as they are!
This time I bought a few bunches of choy sum from the market. Since it looked like a green leafy vegetable and leafy vegetables go well with the indian flavours , I thought I will try out a thoran ( stir fry with indian spices).
Choy Sum is used to describe the edible stem of chinese cabbage.

Ingredients:

Choy Sum - 2 cups finely chopped
Oil - 2 teaspoons.
Mustard seeds - 1/2 teaspoon.
Cumin seeds - 1/4 teaspoon.
Dried red Chilly - 3 nos. cut into half.
Turmeric powder - 1/4 teaspoon
Grated coconut - 1/2 cup.
Curry leaves - 1 springs.
Garlic - 2 cloves finely chopped
Green chillies - 2 nos.
Shallots (kunjulli) - 2 nos finely chopped
Salt - 2 teaspoons

Method:
Heat the oil in a pan and add the mustard seeds and cumin seeds.
Once the mustard seeds splutter, add the curry leaves and dried red chillies. Sauté for 10 seconds.
Now add chopped Choy Sum, turmeric and salt. Cover and cook for 5 minutes. Since Choy Sum has a good water content in it like most leafy vegetables, water need not be added.

Once the Choy Sum is cooked and all the water has evaporated, add grated coconut and mix well. Cook the dish for another 2-3 minutes.

Delicious Choy Sum thoran is ready.

Lime as a remedy for Tonsillitis

Have been suffering from Tonsillitis for the past few days. I have been searching over the net for effective home remedies and have tried out many things. Some of these remedies worked wonders! I thought I will share those with you.

Tonsils are tissue masses that are visible to the back of your throat on both sides. The acute inflammation of the tonsils are called tonsillitis. The first and most common symptoms that a common man can identify about tonsils is painful swallowing. It is painful to swallow ones own saliva even!  A sudden sore throat or a throat infection that worsens over time can also indicate tonsillitis. Other common symptoms include hoarseness or loss of voice, reddening or swelling of the tonsils with or without pus and fever.

Tonsillitis is mainly caused by viruses, the most common being the common cold virus. In some cases this can be due to bacterial infection also.

One of the most effective cure for tonsillitis is using lime. Mix a teaspoon of lime with half a teaspoon of salt and apply it to the back of the throat using your fingers. This works wonders for tonsillitis and also for a sore throat!

If you cannot do this well, i.e, putting your fingers into your mouth to smear the lime around your throat ( I just cannot do this properly) here is an easier but less effective way of getting lime to your throat. In a glass of warm water, squeeze in the juice from half a lime. Add 1/4 teaspoon of salt and 4 teaspoons of honey. Mix well and sip this slowly. This is very soothing and helps reduce the annoying pain during swallowing. Gargling with salt and lime also helps reduce tonsillitis.

When there is a throat infection, the key is to eat warm/hot food and drink a lot of warm/hot water. 

Did you hear the birds cry?

This is just a question that popped into my head while returning from the Moomba festival in Melbourne. The four day free community festival started off in Melbourne yesterday.
The fun and frolic at the festival is a welcome break from the horrifying pictures and videos of the earthquake and floods in Japan. It was pleasing to watch people around celebrating. We also got absorbed into the energy of the place and felt joyful enjoying ourselves completely. It was a nice experience. I cant wait to go back and try some carnival rides tomorrow.
The first night of the festival was wrapped up by an array of fireworks. The spectacular fireworks lasted for a  duration of 15 minutes. The fireworks were excellent and a great way to sign off for the day. We throughly enjoyed the show.

Near our apartment we always find a lots of sea gulls. Usually they are playful and a symbol of boarder-less freedom. Every time we find them busy about their own business- eating, fighting, resting.
Today, on our way back home after a great day at the festival, however they seemed disturbed, some of them crying out loud. It made me wonder, what was different today? Maybe its the weather, I thought.
That is when my husbands remarked, all the seagulls from the place of the fireworks might have moved here.
I felt, it could be true - aren't bird scared of the noises from the fireworks?
That is when this thought entered my head. Do we think about these animals and birds when we destroy their habitat or ruin the peace in their life? Did I think about these crying birds when I throughly enjoyed those fireworks? Does concern only spring for life in the same species first? Maybe it is how life on this planet is supposed to be.
Moving back to the images around me. As we fret and worry about human lives and property lost in the quake and tsunami, I cant help but feel that all this was meant to be. Maybe we care a bit more about our species than the other forms of life around us. Maybe this is how balance is to be achieved in this planet.

Life, after all, is composed of different forms of give and take. It depends on what you give and what you take!

Beetroot Steak and Chips

After having tried many Indian dishes with Beetroot, I wanted to try something new and head straight for Google. Thats when I stumbled upon two new dishes - Beetroot Chips and a Finnish dish called Punajuuripihvit - which I will refer to as Beetroot Steak.

Here is how you go about preparing them.

Ingredients
Beetroot Chips -
Beetroot - 1 nos, thinly sliced
Oil - 3 cups for deep frying
Salt - for seasoning

Beetroot Steak -
Beetroot - 1 nos, sliced into thick circular or semi-circular discs
Eggs - 2 nos
Bread crumbs - 1 cup
Salt - 1/2 teaspoon
Pepper - 1/2 teaspoon

Method

Beetroot Chips -
Heat oil in a deep pan and bring it to temperature required for deep frying.
Once heated, put in the thinly sliced beetroot and fry them until they become crisp. This can be identified by the absence of bubbles while frying. The procedure is same as preparing potato chips.
Remove them from the oil and place them in a plate covered with tissue paper - this is to soak the excess oil. After removing the excess oil, season the chips with Salt or any other seasoning agent.

Serve the chips hot with ketchup or any dip of your choice.

Beetroot Steak -
Break two eggs and beat them until they are mixed well. Add salt and pepper to this and mix well.
Dip the thickly cut beetroot discs in the eggs and coat them with bread crumbs.
Place a non stick pan on the stove and add a few drops of oil. Once the pan is hot, place the beetroot disc in the pan.

Let the side cook for two minutes and then turn them over to cook for two more minutes or until the bread crumbs coating the beetroot turn light brown.

Serve the steak with ketchup or any dip of your choice.