Paal Payasam Recipe

Well this is an adapted version of a recipe that I read some where. I tried it as an experiment and it was awesome. I made 3 payasams for our this year's (2009) onam. Adapradhaman, aval payasam and pal payasam. Everyone liked pal payasam more than the others.
Here it goes.
Take one glass of redrice (matta rice)
I would recommend to wash the rice and soak it a while so that it becomes easy to cook. Otherwise some brands are difficult to cook well. anyways it's upto your choice.

Cook rice with enough milk (instead of water use the same amount of milk) in a cooker. (you can cook it as usual with closed lid and whistle) Once its cooked open the lid and add enough sugar and boil for some more time. This makes the payasam more tasty. The more it boils, the better. You can add milk if you require. Once you feel the rice is cooked properly then add 1 medium size tin condensed milk and boil for 3-4 minutes. Add crushed cardamoms and put off the fire. Heat ghee and fry cashew nuts and raisins in golden colour and garnish.

My family and friends loved it. Hope you will love this too.

Lessons on Life -Moral Story

There was a man who had four sons. He wanted his sons to learn not to judge things too quickly. So he sent them each on a quest, in turn, to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away.

The first son went in the winter, the second in the spring, the third in summer, and the youngest son in the fall.

When they had all gone and ! come back, he called them together to describe what they had seen.

The first son said that the tree was ugly, bent, and twisted.

The second son said no it was covered with green buds and full of promise.

The third son disagreed; he said it was laden with blossoms that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen.

The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe and drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfillment.

The man then explained to his sons that they were all right, because they had each seen but only one season in the tree's life.

He told them ! that you cannot judge a tree, or a person, by only one season, and that the essence of who they are and the pleasure, joy, and love that come from that life can only be measured at the end, when all the seasons are up.

If you give up when it's winter, you will miss the promise of your spring, the beauty of your summer, fulfillment of your fall.

Moral:

Don't let the pain of one season destroy the joy of all the rest. Don't judge life by one difficult season.

Persevere through the difficult patches and better times are sure to come some time or later.

Simple & Easy Tomato Rasam Recipe

Here is the recipe of a simple and easy tomato rasam. This is been given to me by my friend gisha. I don’t like the taste of the typical kerala rasam recipes and she made this one for me. Very nice

1. Sliced medium size tomato – 3-4nos
2. Whole red chilli (dried) – cut half
3. Green chilli –according to your taste
4. Ginger mashed -1 piece
5. Garlic sliced – 4-5 big pods
6. Turmeric powder
7. Curry leaves
8. Hing power (kayam)
9. Salt 

Heat oil and splutter mustard seeds, then add Whole red chilly + Green chilly, ginger mashed, garlic (sliced) + thin sliced tomato + turmeric powder + salt + curry leaves and sauté well. Add hing powder. once tomato is almost like half gravy add enough water and boil. Put off the fire in 2-3 minutes.
Garnish with coriander leaves and serve

Amazing Body Shots

I received this email about the "amazing body shots" from my freind and was so amazed by the content. It is really interesting to understand how the body cells/organs work and it changed my whole outlook about body. This made me take a decision to take care of my body, eat food that keep body healthy and also get rid of all bad habit that affects body health. Hope this will help all others as well.Almost all of the following images were captured using a scanning electron microscope,

Incredible details of 1 to 5nm (nanometer) in size can be detected.

1. Red Blood Cells

They look like little cinnamon candies here, but they're actually the most common type of blood cell in the human body - red blood cells (RBCs). These biconcave-shaped cells have the tall task of carrying oxygen to our entire body; in women there are about 4 to 5 million RBCs per micro liter (cubic millimeter) of blood and about 5 to 6 million in men. People who live at higher altitudes have even more RBCs because of the low oxygen levels in their environment.

2. Split End of Human Hair

Regular trimmings to your hair and good conditioner should help to prevent this unsightly picture of a split end of a human hair.

3. Purkinje Neurons

Of the 100 billion neurons in your brain. Purkinje (pronounced purr-kin-jee) neurons are some of the largest. Among other things, these cells are the masters of motor coordination in the cerebellar cortex. Toxic exposure such as alcohol and lithium, autoimmune diseases, genetic mutations including autism and neurodegenerative diseases can negatively affect human Purkinje cells.

4. Hair Cell in the Ear

Here's what it looks like to see a close-up of human hair cell stereo cilia inside the ear. These detect mechanical movement in response to sound vibrations.

5. Blood Vessels Emerging from the Optic Nerve

In this image, stained retinal blood vessels are shown to emerge from the black-colored optic disc. The optic disc is a blind spot because no light receptor cells are present in this area of the retina where the optic nerve and retinal blood vessels leave the back of the eye.

6. Tongue with Taste Bud

This colour-enhanced image depicts a taste bud on the tongue. The human tongue has about 10,000 taste buds that are involved with detecting salty, sour, bitter, sweet and savory taste perceptions.

7. Tooth Plaque

Brush your teeth often because this is what the surface of a tooth with a form of plaque looks like.

8. Blood Clot

Remember that picture of the nice, uniform shapes of red blood cells you just looked at? Well, here's what it looks like when those same cells get caught up in the sticky web of a blood clot. The cell in the middle is a white blood cell.

9. Alveoli in the Lung

This is what a colour-enhanced image of the inner surface of your lung looks like. The hollow cavities are alveoli; this is where gas exchange occurs with the blood.

10. Lung Cancer Cells

This image of warped lung cancer cells is in stark contrast to the healthy lung in the previous picture.

11. Villi of Small Intestine

Villi in the small intestine increase the surface area of the gut, which helps in the absorption of food. Look closely and you will see some food stuck in one of the crevices.

12. Human Egg with Coronal Cells

This image is of a purple, colour-enhanced human egg sitting on a pin. The egg is coated with the zona pellicuda, a glycoprotein that protects the egg but also helps to trap and bind sperm. Two coronal cells are attached to the zona pellicuda.

13. Sperm on the Surface of a Human Egg

Here's a close-up of a number of sperm trying to fertilize an egg.

14. Human Embryo and Sperm

It looks like the world at war, but it is actually five days after the fertilisation of an egg, with some remaining sperm cells still sticking around. This fluorescent image was captured using a confocal microscope. The embryo and sperm cell nuclei are stained purple while sperm tails are green. The blue areas are gap junctions, which form connections between the cells.

15. Colored Image of a 6 day old Human Embryo Implanting

It is blessed to give than to receive

I am not a writer ….i am only scribbling whatever I think…. This is my thought for today….

Love is supposed to be unconditional….isn’t it?....then why am I expecting everyone around me to return something back for what I am giving.

(I am not referring here about selling of course…selling means giving something in return of something)

Isn’t it my husband who always give me without expecting anything? I always expect something in return when I give. I expect him to do things the way I wanted; not the way he likes to do. When my expectations are not meant I regret for giving whatever I gave. I keep on grieving about past.

One great person said : It is blessed to give than to receive.

The happiness that you get by giving is incomparable than the happiness of receiving.

Man is always greedy. There is no end for your needs. We have to learn to give…more and more and more…. It may be a smile, may be a word of kindness…may be a glass of water to thirsty person…may be to help an uneducated to get an information..there is no limit for giving…..you can give anything….

Whenever you pray “pray for being able to give and not to receive”.

Miss India 2009 - Pooja is an inspiration for all women

Published in Times of India:

Neera Chopra lived through abuse, poverty and some tough choices to make her once-unwanted girl child, Pooja Chopra, the Pantaloons Femina Miss Pooja Chopra with her mother.

I don’t know where to begin... they were terrible times. My husband was well-placed, but the marriage had begun to sink almost as soon as it began. Like most women do, I tried to work against all the odds .

My in-laws insisted everything would be alright if I had a son. My first child was a daughter, and that didn’t do me any good... but I couldn’t walk out. I had lost my father, my brother was in a not-so-senior position in Bata. I didn’t want to be a burden on my family and continued to live in my marital home in Kolkata.

I looked after my mother-inlaw, who was suffering from cancer, and while bathing her, I would tell myself she would bless me and put things right.

I don’t know how I tolerated it all. The least a man can do, if he must philander, is to not flaunt his women in his wife’s face. Then began the manhandling. I still wanted my marriage to survive. I was a pure vegetarian and learnt to cook non-vegetarian delicacies thinking it would please him.

Then, I was pregnant again. When Pooja was eight months in my womb, my husband brought a girl to the house and announced he would marry her. I thought of killing myself. I hung on the slight hope that if the baby was a boy, my marriage could be saved.

When Pooja was born a girl, for three days, nobody came to the hospital. There was a squadron leader’s wife on the opposite bed, who was kind enough to give me baby clothes for Pooja to wear. When she was 20 days old, I had to make a choice. I left the house with my girls ‘ Pooja and Shubra, who was seven then. I haven’t seen my husband since. I promised myself, even if we had just one roti, we would share it, but together.

I began life in Mumbai with the support of my mother, brother, who was by then married. It wasn’t the ideal situation, especially when he had children ‘ space, money, everything was short. I began work at the Taj Colaba and got my own place. How did I manage’ Truth be told, I would put a chatai on the floor, leave two glasses of milk and some food, and bolt the door from outside before going to work. I would leave the key with the neighbours and tell the kids to shout out to them when it was time to leave for school.

Their tiny hands would do homework on their own, feed themselves on days that I worked late. My elder daughter Shubhra would make Pooja do her corrections... This is how they grew up. At a birthday party, Pooja would not eat her piece of cake, but pack it and bring it home to share with her sister. When Shubhra started working, she would skip lunch and pack a chicken sandwich that she would slip in her sister’s lunchbox the next day.

I used to pray, ‘God, punish me for my karma, but not my innocent little kids. Please let me provide them the basics.’ I used to struggle for shoes, socks, uniforms. I was living in Bangur Nagar, Goregaon. Pooja would walk four bus stops down to the St Thomas Academy . Then, too little to cross the road, she would ask a passerby to help her. I had to save the bus money to be able to put some milk in their bodies.

Life began to change when I got a job for Rs 6,000 at the then Goa Penta. Mr Chhabra, the owner, and his wife, were kind enough to provide a loan for me. I sent my daughters to my sister’s house in Pune, with my mother as support. I spent four years working in Goa while I saved to buy a small one-bedroom house in Pune (where the family still lives). I would work 16-18 hours a day, not even taking weekly offs to accumulate leave and visit my daughters three or four times a year.

Once I bought my house and found a job in Pune, life began to settle. I worked in Hotel Blue Diamond for a year and then finally joined Mainland China ‘ which changed my life. The consideration of the team and management brought me the stability to bring them up, despite late hours and the travelling a hotelier must do.

Shubhra got a job in Hotel Blue Diamond, being the youngest employee there while still in college, and managed to finish her Masters in commerce and her BBM.. Today, she is married to a sweet Catholic boy who is in the Merchant Navy and has a sweet daughter. I continue to finish my day job and come home and take tuitions, as I have done for all these years. I also do all my household chores myself.

Through the years, Shubhra has been my anchor and Pooja, the rock. Pooja’s tiny hands have wiped away my tears when I broke down. She has stood up for me, when I couldn’t speak for myself. Academically brilliant, she participated in all extra-curricular activities.. When she needed high heels to model in, she did odd shows and bought them for herself.

When I saw Pooja give her speech on TV, I knew it came from her heart. I could see the twinkle in her eye. And I thought to myself as she won ‘My God, this is my little girl.’ God was trying to tell me something.

Today, I’ve no regrets. I believe every cloud has a silver lining. As a mother, I’ve done nothing great.

‘I won due to my mother’s karma’

Pantaloons Femina Miss India Pooja Chopra’s mother promised ‘One day, this girl will make me proud’. Pooja speaks on fulfilling that promise... When I was 20 days old, my mother was asked to make a choice. It was either me ‘ a girl child, or her husband. She chose me. As she walked out she turned around and told her husband, ‘One day, this girl will make me proud’. That day has come. Her husband went on to marry a woman who gave him two sons. Today, as I stand here a Miss India, I don’t even know if my father knows that it is me, his daughter, who has set out to conquer the world, a crown on my head. Our lives have not been easy, least so for my mother. Financially, emotionally, she struggled to stay afloat, to keep her job and yet allow us to be the best that we could be. I was given only one condition when I started modelling ‘ my grades wouldn’t drop.

All the girls in the pageant worked hard, but my edge was my mother’s sacrifice, her karma. Today, when people call to congratulate me, it’s not me they pay tribute to, but to her life and her struggle. She’s the true Woman of Substance. She is my light, my mentor, my driving force. My win was merely God’s way of compensating her.

Mentor - Conversation 1

There is this prayer group called Spiritual Revival Ministry which I used to attend every Friday in St. Michael’s church, Sharjah. This prayer had delivered miracles in my life and most amazingly had given me strength and peace in my life even when I was facing the worst in my life. I was happy and relaxed. Months passed by and the summer came. The prayer starts 12.30pm and the weather became very hot. I can’t tolerate the heat so much and therefore started being lazy to go to church during the Fridays. I started going to church on Sunday evenings for 3 weeks.

From the second week of missing the prayer I started feeling tired with my life. I couldn’t handle my problems. After missing the third week I became so restless. At this point I called my mentor who always inspires me and guides me. I am posting here a part of our conversation which made me calm and relaxed and helped me to see things clearly at least for the time being. The beginning is missing as I started recording the conversation only after a while…

Pleasure and joy is different!!! joy is an experience a heavenly feeling from inside out. Only god or the source can give us inner joy.

We always look into the past and make judgments which is the most smallest and petty thing we do. No one knows what god is preparing us through our current situation of life. We cling so much in to the past that we are not able to see the future.Every new invention comes from the future and not from past.

Life is like a tree which has roots upside and branches down where the roots grows and supports the whole tree. It is not the past pushing us and it is the future pulling us.

If we look at life and all the problems in the world; the reason for all the problems is not politics or religion. It is because; the divine force wanting to come down to earth/matter and the resistance of the earth / matter to accept this. Everything is happening due to this resistance.

It’s not that there are no more ideas in the world; but our mind cannot expand to accommodate the ideas god gives us. Becoz we human beings have a tendency to fight for our smallness/narrowness.
People have so much passion about their problems in life…or whatever happening in their life.

We have been told a big lie by the whole world that happiness/pleasure is not good.
It is very easy to control someone who are unhappy. It is not at all easy to control people that are happy and enjoying life. We have been hypnotized by the society of the so called religious intelligence systems making you sad and unhappy. I am sure god want everyone to experience abundance. Abundance is so natural and poverty is a sin.


The eye of the body is an organ of division
The eye of the soul is the organ of vision

We divide everything with our eyes. Unless and until we open the eye of the soul we cannot see truth of life. What we are seeing is not necessarily the truth. For eg. When you put a stick in the water and look the stick through the water you will feel that the stick is not straight.

True freedom is not the freedom to do everything that you want to do in life. To be in true freedom is when you start living inside out; when you can chose the way you respond to any event. There are forces that will try to stop you in reaching the truth.
One is mind…. Mind will ask you lot of questions…… Try to keep your mind silent or stop thinking and enjoy the peace.

The conversation was broken here…. I am sure I will get the continuation in some other conversation…..

Are we ready?

When i thought of starting a blog, my intention was to talk to myself, which is very rare now a days. I want to reinvent myself as a new person. And here I am!!! I am feeling so great.

This is an email that i received from one of my freinds....its a story from the book "Chicken soup for the Soul"
This  post is to remind myself about what i need to give back to this society, why i have been created as a unique person"
A college professor had his sociology class go into the Baltimore slums to get case histories of 200 young boys. They were asked to write an evaluation of each boy's future. In every case the students wrote, "He hasn't got a chance." Twenty-five years later another sociology professor came across the earlier study. He had his students follow up on the project to see what had happened to these boys. With the exception of 20 boys who had moved away or died, the students learned that 176 of the remaining 180 had achieved more than ordinary success as lawyers, doctors and businessmen.
The professor was astounded and decided to pursue the matter further. Fortunately, all the men were in the area and he was able to ask each one, "How do you account for your success?" In each case the reply came with feeling, 'There was a teacher."
The teacher was still alive, so he sought her out and asked the old but still alert lady what magic formula she had used to pull these boys out of the slums into successful achievement.
The teacher's eyes sparkled and her lips broke into a gentle smile. "It's really very simple," she said. "I loved those boys."

Imagine if a teacher can make this much difference in those kid’s life how much difference we can make as a mother/father/son/daughter/brother/sister in our own family itself.

Mother Theresa Said “I think today the world is upside down and is suffering so much because there is so very little love in the home, and in family life. We have not time for our children, we have no time for each other, there is no time to enjoy each other.”

“Love begins at home; love lives in homes, and that is why there is so much suffering and so much unhappiness in the world today…. Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parent have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of the peace of the world”

“Don’t wait for leaders to it; do it alone, person to person”