Rain T Muffin

Rain, tea and home-made banana walnut muffin!!
What a combo :D

The weather is perfect, its evening time - so perfect time to have tea, and I see bananas lying on the dining table and my empty muffin tray on the center table. Just couldn't resist.

Plus no guilt trip! I have become a health freak over the last few years. Though that doesn't stop me from eating loads of junk food or desserts, I feel more happy when I know that what we are eating is a healthy food. We bought the microwave oven about 1 1/2 years back. And till now I had baked just once (almond biscotti). A's birthday was a motivation as I like to give surprises. It was a hit :) So this is the 2nd time I am making muffins in this month :)

I wanted to make more quantity this time as it got over in 5 minutes last time. So I put twice the measure for everything except butter. Here is the recipe from my friend Joe (with very very slight modifications) -
I put a small piece of butter in a vessel with powdered sugar (1 cup) and mixed it till it became a soft ball. I sliced 2 big bananas with a knife into this vessel and mashed and mixed it with the butter/sugar mix. Just added the remaining ingredients, broken walnuts and almonds (as I didn't have enough walnuts), 2 pinches baking powder, 1 spoon vanilla essence, a pinch of cinnamon powder, almost 2 cups full wheat flour (yes no maida!!) and mixed well by adding milk till it became a semi-solid paste. Buttered up the muffin tray and poured this mixture into the tray, while my oven was pre-heating for 10 minutes at 200 degrees. I left the tray inside the oven for about 12 - 17 minutes. And MUFFINS ready :D

Wow, I can't believe that it was so easy :) Since this is without egg, my in-laws also love it.

Such a healthy snack! Now I want to find out if Nutralite makes saltless butter :) And I want to bake more!

Special quality

This morning, when I was exercising, something new stuck me - a quality that I had not noticed all these years in someone :) I dont know why I thought about it today, may be because of the incidents that have happened over last few days.

I dont know if many people agree with me, but the one thing that is very difficult to avoid is talking or thinking bad or negative about someone else. It can be something very small and silly, but unconsciously we tend to say negative things about another person. Sometimes its in the form of making fun of that person, or in the form of complain, or sometimes we are angry just because we dont see eye to eye with another person.

I have been trying not to judge others. This morning I realized that my brother is a natural at this :) I really appreciate this quality in him. It just makes life so much simpler. No one is perfect, so let us all lead our lives in our style and ways and not judge anyone. But to be honest I haven't seen many people being like this. But I can proudly say that I know few people who are :)

Happy Birthday

Its birthday season in our family. Yesterday was A's bday. We had been to Harry Potter movie wednesday night. I loved the movie.

Thursday morning I took A on a very small drive near our house! I am yet to learn a lot, but I finally decided to start driving!! Ideal thing would have been to learn driving completely and give the perfect gift to A. But I have made peace with myself and settled to learning slowly.

We went to big Ganesha temple, had breakfast at Brahmins cafe bar and were back home. I made vegetable pulav, raitha and shavige kheer for lunch. Everything tasted very good (is what everyone said :)). I baked Banana walnut muffin which turned out so well :) Thanks to J for the recipe. I want to cook and bake more. For dinner, we ordered chinese from Tangra, food was very good. We had got pineapple cake from Au Bon Pain.

Avenue Road

Vegetable Pulav and Raita

Shavige payasa

Banana Walnut Muffin

We started early morning at 5.45 from our house to Belur Halebid. The drive was beautiful with great roads. Though we took few wrong roads, we were in Halebid at around 11.30am. We hired a guide and spent more than one hour exploring the carvings and learning the history from the guide. Its one of the most beautiful temples I have seen. Its just amazing to stand on the temple stone knowing that many many years back, kings/queens/dancers have touched this place. 

Halebidu is famous for the carvings on the outside walls, whereas Belur is famous for the inside walls, inside the temple. In Halebid, the walls start off with 4 rows - 1st row has elephants for strength, 2nd has lions for courage, 3rd and 5th have flowers for beauty and 4 th row has horse for speed - Characteristics needed for a king to be successful :). There are stories from Mahabharatha and Ramayana throughout the wall. Both Belur and Halebid are star-shaped temples. Halebid has 2 Ishwara idols inside - one for king and one for the queen. Belur has Vishnu temple. Both the temples have many pillars and a central round stone that was used as stage for dancers. Each pillar inside the Belur temple is beautifully carved and has unique design on each. One can call the temple a international jewelry box as the design of the carvings are so intricate and perfect that it seems like the modern jewellers have copied the design for their jewelry from here. Few things that I can re-collect about the carvings on the walls - Peacock feather, Lion legs, crocodile face, monkey brain depicts a mythological animal; women in all the moods, 600 hair styles in a woman; hollow skull as form of head gear; Vamana avatar; lot of Krishna stories; Food chain - Snake, Pig, Lion, imaginary bird. 

The weather was pleasant and very less crowd. The road from Halebid to Belur was very scenic with mary gold flowers all along the road. We took a guide at both the temples, and were glad as they explained everything very well. We had oota at kstdc restaurant in belur and headed towards Chickmangalur. Our friend's place is about 20km after Chickmangalur, in the middle of coffee plantation. The house is like a resort, and very beautiful. It was good not to worry about my cell phone ringing or about the time. It was raining here and we had a relaxed time, thanks to SS. The only thing we did was eat and eat. S is a great cook and makes great desserts :) We did a small walk near the house, went to kavikall mata - which is at the top of a mountain and has an amazing view of the Bhadra forest reserve. Muthodi is one part of Bhadra which is around 20 km form Mallandhur. I could stand there forever and watch the mist cover the mountains completely for a minute and then clear out the next minute. 

Our friends run a homestay called woodway - their house thats been converted to a nice homestay. S has done a great job of decorating the place and making it a cosy haven for the tourists. 


The drive back was equally good - reaching our house in just 4 hours. A nice getaway :)

A Special Person

July 12

I am dedicating July 12th to my father in law. He completed 78 years :) We had a nice simple day. Morning lot of calls from relatives and friends, visits from his office friends, bouquets from many people, temple visits (Rama temple, Shankar Mutt) with his wife, lunch at home, more calls and wishes, evening Ganesha temple pooja with all of us, dinner at a restaurant called cable car! This has been the routine for last many years. On his 75th, he had a huge surprise - we had the dining table covered with 75 gifts :D, had written few words on similarities between A A and appa, qualities that we all admire about him etc. He LOVED each and everything that day :) He loves surprises, he loves just EVERYTHING!!

Once one of our friends had said that she will be the happiest if shes half as active as my FIL at that age. I agree with her. Hes so full of life. He is knowledgeable about anything and everything. And he is interested in almost everything in this world :D.

I dont want to sound like a kid whos writing an essay about her fil. But I had to write today, as theres so much to learn from him. I respect and admire appa a lot. Sometimes we find it hard to convince him to let us help him in few things, but we have to appreciate his enthusiasm towards life. Yes, that is the word, enthusiasm! I want to have his attitude and enthusiasm in everything I do. Everyone should :)

I can really go on and on writing about this. Happy Birthday Appa :)

Me!

Jul 6

I logged into the site, and saw that I had few incomplete drafts. It may not make sense to read now, but I just thought I will put it all together. Few weeks back A was telling me that my blogs/the way I write depicts my nature exactly. My blogs go all over the place, just like my mind - I just cannot concentrate on one thing at a time, always have 100s of things in my head, keeps jumping from one topic to another. 

Here are the snippets of my thoughts from random days

Jul 5, 11pm

I was about to hit bed, but couldn't resist the temptation to write down few words.

June was a good month. I would like to call it my fitness month, as I used to wake up and exercise almost everyday. Once I got into the routine, it became very easy for me to do it daily.

Started July with a trip to Pune. So definitely its going to be a great month :) Its time for me to execute the birthday "wishlist" (as I would like to call it) this month :D Rather than listing down the items, I want to write about it only after I do them. So good luck to me!!

June 18

Theres so much I feel like doing.

June 4

How do we define "right" and "wrong". Something came up yesterday, and usually my general reaction would be that it was so wrong. But without hesitation my mind said that theres nothing called right or wrong, its just the way one looks at something. I know its not that simple. But I am glad that I did not judge someone and just left it at that.

How can we define right and wrong, good and bad. I am referring to the smaller things here. At a bigger picture, we all know. hmmm..

May 2

Rain Rain, beautiful weather!!

Has been quite sometime since I keyed in few words. Feels like there are many things to write about. Am sitting in my favorite place, just had spice cinnamon chai. Finished reading a book - Chai by Jane Ainslie - a light read. A started his new job today. Its a brand new Monday,  :)