Life As I Know It

We have a kitchen garden at home. My mom grows vegetables, a few fruits and other herbs in the garden. The passion fruit plant is a creeper and hence covers one portion of our wall and this plant bears its fruits in abundance but how much passion fruit juice can one drink? So, I decided to make passion fruit jam instead. When I did cut the fruits I found that some of them were very sour and since we had a bunch of over ripe bananas I decided to use them as well in the jam. Ingredients: 6-8 Passion fruits 3 Over ripe bananas Jaggery (One lemon sized ball) Method: •  In a blender mash the bananas. •  In a deep container add the banana pulp, the passion fruit pulp and mix well. •  Cook this mixture on a medium flame while constantly stirring. •  Taste the mixture to see if it requires sweetening. Since the passion fruit, though ripe, tasted sour I added jaggery. •  Let it cook till it starts leaving the sides. •  Once done, take it off the heat and let it cool...

It was my dad’s birthday in July and I wanted to make him something nice. My dad loves the colours green, pink and white in that order. My mom and I decided to plan our menu accordingly so we decided to have a strawberry dessert. It was supposed to be a layered dessert with the layers in the following order – strawberry cake, strawberry custard with strawberry slices, strawberry cake, strawberry whipped cream and garnished with strawberry slices. Except when I told Lulu of my ambitious project she reminded me that Strawberry season was over and told me to make a Trifle instead. That’s how this idea was born. I now had to come up with ‘green’ fruit options and other fruits that would go well with the said green fruit. Suddenly like magic the ingredients fell into place and I was ready to make the dessert. Ingredients: For Custard: 500ml milk 3tbsp custard powder 6-8 Tbsps of sugar For Whipped Cream: 200ml Fresh cream (Amul) 1Tsp Corn starch 6-8 Tbsp of powdered sugar 2-3 drops of Vanill...

Image courtesy Wikipedia Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock has done an excellent job of portraying a man taken by a parasite – a parasite that has a mind of its own. The movie begins with an introduction to Eddie Brock and the nature of his work as a reporter and you know he is “all in” where his work is concerned. He will go any lengths to get his scoop, even sneak into his loved ones emails. Of course, he gets his scoop but along  with that he also loses his job, apartment and girlfriend.   Yet, there he is right outside a store paying $20 for a newspaper that is free. Parallely symbiotes have made their way to our planet via the Life Foundation Space Craft. The Craft crash lands in Malaysia and an emergency team reaches the spot to ensure that there aren’t too many causalities. The team finds the symbiotes that are captured and an astronaut who is barely alive. But not really… one of the symbiotes escapes and manages to wreak a RIOT . While riot ensues, scream, agony and venom mak...

My cousin was in town for a bit and she wanted to take her kids to one of our all-time favorite places – Downtown. For those not familiar with Mysore, on Kalidasa road is one teeny tiny shop that’s been there for over two decades that serves some of the best burgers I have ever eaten. Whenever I go out of town and come back home I need to have a burger from there or if I have a friend visiting, a meal at Downtown is mandatory. One of the reasons for the popularity of this little spot is that, the couple that runs it makes the burgers themselves and every day we are served fresh burgers. They go by quality hence the moment the patties are over the shop closes. One of the unique things about their burger is coleslaw. They use coleslaw along with beans and a patty. In fact in all the variations of their burgers they serve coleslaw. I was to go with my cousin but work got in the way. Thus, one Saturday I decided that my family would have to eat my own “version” of the Downtown burgers for ...

Facials are all too common but because subscription boxes and stores are now offering sheet masks at lower prices because of increase in different brands introducing new mask sheets every month. This popularity has given rise to a monster. I am that monster. I am a little lazy and I don’t do well in situations where I am supposed to sit still hence facials have never been my thing. Thanks to sheet masks I save a lot of time and money on my skin care routine. In our April month’s GlamEgo box we got the Vedic Line facial kit which had 6 sachets with each sachet labeled with its purpose and the order in which one is supposed to use them. Lulu had suggested that I take the kit with me the next time I visited the parlor. First of all I over think things: “Why will a parlor allow me to bring a product from outside?” “They’ll probably ask me to use their product only.” “They’ll charge me more.” “Will they charge me less?” “I should just give this kit to someone who knows to give facials at h...

Look at the consistency!  Blame it on the blog! Earlier, every time I thought of cooking something my first thought is, “ Is this blog worthy?” Now it is, “ Is this the healthiest version of the dish?” As it happens Lulu and I don’t recommend deep frying, or having overly rich desserts and even the recipes we’ve put up until this point have all been the healthiest version we knew. Yes, some things need deep frying ( Koftas ), sure… but we try to recommend shallow frying or toasting after having tried it out ourselves. I wanted to make mayonnaise but I was worried about making the traditional mayonnaise with eggs for fear of how it would smell. Which is also why I haven’t ever made it.   Then one day I came across this simple recipe on YouTube and had to try it! Ingredients: 25 Cashews 3 Garlic pods ½ Lemon 1 Tbsp vinegar (I used Apple Cider Vinegar) 1/3 Tsp pepper powder ¼ Cup water ½ Tsp pink salt (Or regular salt ) Method: 1. Soak the cashew nuts in water for 10 minutes. ...

“Main akela hi chala tha janab-e-manzil, magar log saath judte gaye aur karwaan banta gaya.” Avinash( Dulquer Salmaan ) is that guy who is working a desk job at an IT company. We see a day in his life and get to see his egotistical boss raving and lashing out at people like a maniac doing exactly what he asks his employees not to do. When he gets home he gets a call from a travel company and finds out that his father has passed away in a road accident whilst on his way to Gangotri. Usually death brings with it shock and grief. Except, we see Avinash isn’t affected by his father’s death. He heads out to ask his friend Shaukat( Irrfan Khan ) to lend him his van so he can collect his father’s body. Shaukat is Avinash’s friend who runs a garage and offers to drive him to collect his father’s remains. Now, Shaukat is a very outspoken man and has certain conservative views which he is constantly voicing out throughout the movie. His character is the caricature of most people today when they ...

Clearly Lulu and I have pretty much done every paneer dish we possibly knew and like. Yet since we both are constantly buying paneer we can’t help but go deep into the alleys of the internet looking for more paneer recipes. This blog experience in itself has been an adventure in terms of stepping out of my comfort zone. I have always thought of cooking as a necessary skill and didn’t really ever bother too much with the whole concept of plating and photographing the dishes I make. I primarily don’t like taking photos while cooking because I am constantly worried that I might end up putting my phone in the pan/wok/kadai! And the reason why I don’t like taking photos of dishes after they are cooked is because I am hungry and I don’t particularly like waiting to get the most perfect photograph because my brain and stomach keep egging me on to eat. Yet, over the past few months I have come to develop skills that help me distinguish between gadget and food and the sense to figure out the mo...