Pumpkin Soup

This is one of those coincidental creations that began with the weekly clearing out of my fridge. Special because its dead simple with readily available ingredients at home and very healthy!!

Pumpkin Soup

Credit - Yours truly :-) :-D

Quantity - 4-6 servings depending upon your soup bowl size

Time - 30 minutes

Ingredients -

• Pumpkin - 1/2 kgs.
• Potatoes - 2 nos. (medium size)
• Onions - 2 nos. (medium size)
• Garlic paste - 1/2 tsp.
• Oil - 2 tb. sp.
• Milk - 1 cup
• Ground Nutmeg - 1/2 tsp.
• Coriander - 1/4 cup (finely chopped)
• Salt to taste

Method -

1. Pressure cook the potatoes and pumpkin for 5 to 8 minutes. Do not drain the water because we will use it for blending the soup to attain required consistency. You can also boil the vegetables.
2. Finely chop the onions and fry them with the garlic paste till they turn brown. You can do this simultaneously while the vegetables are cooking.
3. Once the vegetables are cooked, peel the potatoes and mix the fried onions before blending the soup. You have to do it in 3-4 batches and use a net to give that extra smoothness to the soup. Use the freshly created stock for attaining the semi-liquid consistency.
4. Add milk and nutmeg to this smooth soup and bring to boil. Before serving, add the chopped coriander for garnish.

Serve - Serve hot with bread or rice. Just a bowl full of this soup is good enough a quick healthy treat!

Chocolate Mousse (Egg less)

Credit - Nigella Lawson

Quantity - 6 servings

Time - 15 minutes preparation and minimum 60 minutes chilling

Ingredients -

• Mini marsh mellows - 150 gms.
• Unsalted butter - 50 gms.
• Dark Chocolate Chips - 250 gms.
• Water - 4 Tb. sp.
• Fresh Cream (Double) - 300 ml.
• Vanilla essence - 1 T.sp.
• Bar of Chocolate (White/ Milk) - grated for garnish

Method -

1. In a pan, mix marsh mellows, butter, chocolate and water. Heat on a simmer till it turns into a homogeneous mixture. Set aside for cooling.
2. With a help of a blender, whisk the double cream with vanilla essence till thick and soft.
3. Fold in the chocolate mixture into the whipped cream.
4. Put random swirls in dessert bowls for chilling in the fridge.
5. Just before serving, garnish with grated chocolate.

Serve - Chilled with grated chocolate. Also a small dollop of cream looks very stylish!

p.s: Yes I am a chocolate lover!!!! ;-) :-D

Chocolate Buiscuit Cake

Since I have a sweet tooth, here goes my first dish that is a dessert! :-)

Credit - Chaya Maushi (Our family cook)

Quantity - 6 servings

Time - 10 minutes preparation and 7 mins cooking

Ingredients -

• Bournbon Biscuits - 1 pack of 169 gms.
• Parle G Biscuits - 2 packs of 84.6 gms.
• Eno - 1 tb. sp.
• Milk - 1 3/4 cups
• Nutmeg Powder - 1/2 tsp.

Method -

1. Grease a microwave proof mold and set aside.
2. In a mixer, make fine powder of these two biscuits.
3. Add half quantity of milk to this powder and with a blender, mix well. Along with the remaining milk, add Eno and nutmeg powder and mix well.
4. Immediately pour this batter in the pre-greased mold and set in microwave for 7 minutes.

Serve with - Coffee/ Vanilla ice cream/ Chocolate sauce

Turning Point

Post 25 years of age, most of my friends (married or unmarried) are dealing with "the turning point" in their respective lives. For some odd reason, its only to do with the "marriage" status or coping up with the same. I strongly feel that turning point is a continuous phenomenon, and not a one time thing! Turning points are of course at times of marriage, but the list is endless... For eg. turning points in careers, relationships (family, friends, colleagues etc.), health, education, and the list goes on...

As the first post of this year, I wish to share some of my observations and principles regarding the turning point that is currently a burning issue around me!! Please note that I am a full time working woman, so my perspective is limited to working women only. I have always lived by these principles and they have never let me down.

1. Getting married or being in a relationship is a turning point for both involved. So there is no reason it should be a one sided affair. It is very necessary that your relationship is on a "one to one" level, literally. To be precise, in a healthy relationship there is no Secondary position! 
2. Respecting each others careers goes without saying. Your partner wont be able to put it in words, but your wholehearted support and interest in his career makes him respect you even more!
3. Parents involvement is one of the greatest opportunities to strengthen your bonds. It is very crucial to establish that sense of security within each other and respective parents that, they are a part of your new life. Though the couple decisions are going to be the final word, including your parents in them will only add to the family happiness!
4. Couples do need a set of common friends as much as they need their own set of friends. While you should have your independent time alone with your friends, making sure your partner has his time alone with his friends is also important.
5. Your partner was big enough to choose you as his life partner. So he is big enough to take care of himself as well! It is not caring to keep on showering your partner with orders of what to do, how to behave, go to gym, drink or smoke less etc. all the time! This will only dilute the importance and seriousness of those crucial occasions when you really need your partner to do things only because you are saying so!
6. Being possessive is not at all romantic, its simple pure insecurity which needs to be addressed on war footing. Getting attracted or interacting with an opposite sex doesn't mean cheating on you! Smothering each other will only destroy your comfort zone rendering you to go away from the transparency in your relationship.
7. While the list of "compromises I have made" may crop up during arguments, there are honestly only 2-3 things in your life that you cannot compromise. Everything else becomes secondary and it helps to a very large extent towards making life together smooth and compatible.
8. As you need to have something that you do just the two of you, there must be something in your routine that you do alone as well. It should be something which will establish your personal space! And share what you think or do or feel during this time with your partner. It makes your relationship that much closer!
9. Do not forget that your life began from the time you were born, and not from when you got into a relationship. So your relationship or marriage is a part of your life and not the entire life. Keep a track of your dreams or plans or ambitions you have had since your childhood. Don't give them up just because you will share your life with someone, and make sure your partner does the same!
10. And lastly, never deny your partner for sex! Making love cannot be a deal in any relationship ever. No reason what so ever is justified for denying your partner over this! Its like a knife that cuts and the wounds heal, but the scars remain forever. In stead focus on shedding all the inhibitions that you may have over sex. Your level of pleasure is indirectly proportional to your level of inhibitions!! Lesser the inhibitions, more the pleasure and better your sex life!

These were the best of suggestions I picked up from the doses all my well wishers gave me before I took the plunge into marriage hood. After penning them down here, I feel they are more like the 10 commandments of relationships! :-)

Off Appriciation

We are in a constant need of a moral booster, and in most cases from someone else! My observations go in favor of - "Appreciation is (for some odd reason taken to be as) the best motivation!" I do agree that appreciation is one of the ways of getting encouraged, but it's certainly not the end of the list. And more important, not the best means!

Since the focus is on appreciation in this post, lets try and define what is appreciation,  deeper and relevant to us in the real sense. One of the dictionary explanations says - "Appreciation is the recognition of the quality, value, significance, or magnitude of people and things." Keeping this as the background, 2 things should be taken into consideration - First, that of the periphery of judging the performance on quality, value, significance or magnitude; and secondly, who is appreciating in the same periphery.


So why is the periphery so important? Simply because it avoids vagueness, brings in more clarity, and defines the limits of evaluation. And the other side of the same coin is the auditor. It sounds such a perfect form of moral booster if it goes this way! 


Given the abusing of this term off late, it only makes me wonder - of what importance is an appreciation which has no authenticity? 

Time to wake up

Its all around us and a common thing in our world,
To see destruction of nature, heritage and human lives.
The survivors of destruction are homeless, hungry and thirsty!
Is this the way we want to leave behind our history?

All succeeding generations learn from the past,
For building their worlds on what we leave behind.
What do we have for them apart from mass destruction?
Is there any good to over power our evil for their selection?


Let us think, let us act and let us rebuild
A place which will make us feel our life had a purpose,
We did live for a cause and made better future,
And we created history our children would like to nurture!


Time to wake up and change the world before the end of our time!
Time to wake up and swear off to eradicate the evil slime!

Touch me not

I couldn't stop myself from capturing this, while passing by one of the most emotion displaying plant - Touch me not... :-)

It reminds me of a lovely line I once learnt long time back. 'John Keats' writes in his 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' - "Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." (Meaning - "Beauty is nothing but the truth around you. Like wise, no matter what it is, if it is the truth, it has to be beautiful.")

p.s: It's amazing to understand the same lines in an entirely different perspective which you had before! :-)

-Thekkady, Kerala (August 2011)