Chicken Dum Biryani

Ingredients:
Raw chicken - 2 pounds
Yogurt
lime juice
basmati rice - 2 cups

ginger garlic paste
whole spices for marination - cloves, bay leaves, shajeera, elaichi, whole pepper corn
Spices for marination - Red chilli powder, salt, pepper powder, cumin powder, garam masala, turmeric powder, jeera powder 
Fresh corriander & mint leaves
Onions
Food color

Method of preparation:
1. Marinate chicken with oil, yogurt, lime juice, ginger garlic paste, all the ground and whole spices. Leave this marinade overnight in the refrigerator . Use a lot of yogurt and oil, this is the base for the biryani.
2. Soak basmati rice in water for half an hour. Half-boil rice in about 4 cups of water with a few whole spices, salt and oil. Make sure rice is not too over boiled, each rice grain should be a little hard. Drain out all the water.
3. Fry onions, mint and coriander leaves in a lot of oil. 
4. Take a tray and line it with oil. Arrange chicken in the bottom layer, then a layer of oil/mint leaves, layer rice and again oil/mint leaves.
5. Dissolve food color in a lil milk. pour it randomly over the layers of rice and chicken.
6. Seal the tray with aluminum foil, make sure the tray is air tight. Place in the oven at 450 F for 20 minutes and then turn the heat down to 350 F and let it cook for another hour.

That's it!!

Another nostalgic day

Here's Another day in my life filled with nostalgia. A major Hindu festival today - Dassera....miss all the fun, food n family....
Dassera is somehow different from the other festivals. Everything about this festival seems exxagerated - food, drinking, merriment all around....it just has a different feel! I spent almost every single dassera of my life in my uncle's house, in a town called Nalgonda. We would go stay with them for like 10 days during this time of year, dassera was just an excuse :). My uncle bought me new clothes every year for the longest time I've known. Bathkamma is another festival that I always used to look forward to....esp dressin up, I mean really dressing up!!! Was an 'all female' festival....another part!Dress up, go to the temple, tons of gossip!!! Yayy!!!

And my bathkamma today....hmmm....where do I even start? It was just I, me, myself n my hubby catching some pics...

Life changed soooo much! I miss all the great times I had back home. I probably did not appreciate all this back then, I probay did not understand the value of spending quality time with family....but now I do. I miss not just my parents but my uncles, aunts, cousins, neices, nephews.....all of them. Calling n talking gives me just a lil solace but nothing like being there.

When will I get my old days back?will I ever??? Am I hoping for a miracle to happen...????

Happy Dassera.........

Some serious Android programming??!!!

Yep! I hope so.....even created a new blog to track my ideas, my experiences and my failures (hope i dont have too many of those!!!)

Here's my Android blog, will try to do a better job of maintaining it, i hope!! :)
http://enjoyingmyandroidwork.blogspot.com/

Mango Kulfi

Since summer's right around the corner, here's a nice way to cool off in the 100 degree Dallas heat. I got this recipe from a few friends, I mixed n matched what I heard & here is how I made my version of the Kulfi.


Ingredients (serves 4-6):
1 cup Mango pulp (canned or mango puree)
1 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 cup evaporated milk
1 cup heavy cream, I prefer Cool Whip
1 white bread slice
Sugar (optional)

Method of preparation:

Mix mango pulp, sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk till all the ingredients consistently blend in. I use a spoon to mix them all together, a blender can be used too. Add sugar in this mixture if you prefer to.

In another bowl (a round one) put heavy cream, using a spatula whip the cream till it's smooth. Use more cream if you want the ice cream - creamier. After the cream is whipped, pour the blended mixture and mix till everything blends in.

Cut out the corners of the bread slice and toast it - make sure it doesn't get too brown.Crumble the slice and put it in the mixture above. Adding toasted breadcrumbs gives a false feeling of "malai" in the kulfi :)

Mix for a few more minutes and put this mixture in a glass bowl or Kulfi cones. Freeze for 5 hours and your Kulfi's ready to eat!

Variations:
Experiment with different kinds of pulp for different flavors - pista, strawberry, plain malai kulfi etc.
Add a little powdered cardamom, almonds etc. for extra flavor.

Barcodes for URLs????!!!!

Really?? Barcodes for URLs?? Never heard of that before! My colleague told me today that there are websites that generate barcodes for URLs, and she got my attention.....bar codes for URLs? I rephrased what she told me just to make sure I heard it right. Yes, there are websites that generate barcodes for URLs. These generated barcodes can be scanned by mobile devices (that have a barcode scanner app, or built in scanners) to directly open the website instead of typing in the URL!! How cool is that!!!
So...I tried it out! I generated a barcode for my blog using the website: Bar code generator

You can use your mobile device to scan this image and can get to my blog. I use an iPhone, so I downloaded the "i-nigma bar code reader" app.

I noticed that catalogs that come in the mail also have barcodes, found one on the Express catalog today. See...I got a chance to learn something new today! :)

I think I'm in awe of Chiropratic medicine!!

I had my first Chiropractor appointment today in the morning and I learnt so much about it that I was in awe after an hour. A one hour appointment changed my whole perception of this line of medicine - I did not ever imagine that would happen.

What I knew about Chiropractic medicine before today -  a 'bone-setting' practice, an inexpensive way to get a massage :) honestly that's all I knew!!

And that is one of the primary reasons why I went there today. I've been having pain in my neck and shoulder for a while now, went for one massage therapy session and I did not see much of a relief after that. It was the same case with my husband too. So we wondered if at all it will help if we went to a Chiropractor and got the spine 'reset'. We looked up for providers and found the one closest to our apartment and I'm sooo glad we found him! He's such a passionate person and all that he told me about Chriopractic medicine only reinforced that thought. He did not really have to sit down and have a Knowledge Transfer session with me, in fact not many doctors do that these days, but he did and I really enjoyed it!

What it actually is -  a practice that treats the root cause of the issue instead of treating the symptom. As you all know the nervous system is the 'master system' of our body. Spinal cord is the back bone of our body and this is where all the nerves originate from and travel to all parts of the body connecting everything together - from the posters I saw in the office - that's a HUGE network!!!

The spinal cord has 24 parts, nerves originate from each one of the parts and run through the whole body. If one of them is misaligned, slowly but surely, over time the others get affected too. Misalignment causes nerve pinches that in turn cause issues to the organs they are connected to. See the image below to see which nerve pinch causes what symptoms.

The BEST part of Chiropractic medicine - NO prescription DRUGS!!! yayyyy!!

Ok, I guess I beat this down to death by now :) Will take off now and let you reconsider if you want to visit a Chiro to see if it will help you feel better.....

All in good health!!!

Recipes I like

Here are some recipes I like, I'm being lazy now....not taking the pains to write them out myself :)

Egg pulusu
http://www.sailusfood.com/2006/01/07/kodi-gudu-pulusu-boiled-eggs-in-tamarind-gravy/

Veg curry puffs
http://sailurecipes.blogspot.com/2008/03/curry-puff.html

Mango Lassi

Here's my first blog post about recipes. I'm working from home today, which is boring....and to top it off we don't have much work! Just imagine how bored I was to experiment a recipe and then blog about it immediately :) Well, this is a pretty simple recipe - so no worries, did not take much time and effort.

Since this my first post about recipes, I'm going to play around with the format a little. For now I plan to list the ingredients and the preparation method, will list the amount of each ingredient if necessary. If not, just follow your heart and throw in how much ever you feel like!

Ingredients:
Mango Pulp
Plain Yogurt
Milk
Sugar

Preparation method:
Blend all the ingredients into a puree - I used 'Magic Bullet' for this, really easy and simple to use. Serve chilled.

Variations:
If you want your Lassi to be a little sweet, add more sugar. Add more mango pulp if you want it a little sour. You can also use fresh mangoes if they're available.

Hip hop.....hip hop.....

How's it goin my blog??? Been a while since i blogged, wish u a very happy new year!!

Btw, attended my first hip hop class today...at move studio in Dallas. It was such an awesome class, I thoroughly throughly enjoyed it. Remember me cribbing about dance being my passion n me not being able to dance as much....well I hope that will end soon. Our instructor Geena NGaaje was just superb...great timing n super choreography!! Great job mam!!!

The song we danced for:  

Look at me now - Chris brown and Lil Wayne

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjEyqH8lQaw

Go hip hop! Go Geena!!!

I'm a happy person today!!!!