Strawberry Milk Shake !!

I am lazy when it comes to eating fruits which are very good for health. So one thing Ajay and myself like is making milk shakes with fruits. So here's the recipe for a strawberry milkshake.

Ingredients: (serves 2)
Strawberries (12), Apple (1), Milk (1 and half cup), sugar (1 tspn or per taste), vanilla or any other icecream (1 scoop)

Procedure:
Crush strawberries and apple with little milk in a blender. Then add remaining milk, icecream and sugar and blend well.

Variation:
Banana can be used instead of apple, icecream is optional.

Health conscious tips:
We use 1% milk and shake still tastes good.

Bhel Puri !!

I have been writing about my interests on this blog which include travel, books, & movies. Cooking is another interest I developed over the last 6 years. I spend a considerable amount of time every week experimenting in the kitchen. So I decided to write about a few successful ones here. Probably I'll have fun reading these posts after 5/10 years reminding myself of the good old times. I get to share my experiences with others, and of course I will have a them written down for reference.

Today I will start with a slight variation of Bhel Puri (or Jhaal Moodi) which is my and Ajay's favorite quick & healthy snack or sometimes even becomes a light meal.

Ingredients: (Serves 3-4)
Murmura-puffed rice (about 4 cups), Potato (1 big), Onion (1 small), Tomato (1 small), Cucumber(small piece), Green Chili (1-2 small), Coriander leaves (for garnish), Peanuts (1/2 cup), Lemon Juice (2 teaspoons), Aamchur (1 tspn), Chaat Masala (1 tspn), Namkeen mixture (1/2 cup, salt (1 tspn).

Procedure:
1. Boil the potato either in a pressure cooker or microwave. Cool it, peel and chop the boiled potato.
2. Roast peanuts in microwave for 1 minute. Cool it for a few minutes and crush it to coarse powder.
3. Chop the onion, tomato, cucumber, chillies.
4. Add the boiled potato, aamchur, lemon juice, salt, and chaat masala and mix well.
5. Finally add murmura, crushed peanuts and mix well.
6. Garnish with coriander leaves and namkeen mixture.

Health conscious tips:
Potato and namkeen mixture are optional, the bhel should still taste fine without them.

The Five Love Languages and The Case for Christmas !!

I finally finished reading the book "The Five Love Languages" by Dr.Gary Chapman. This was a wedding gift from a very dear friend. It is a very apt gift for a couple. This book talks about 5 different kind of love languages. Similar to different spoken languages, Dr.Chapman says that there are 5 love languages and not every person speaks the same love language.

The author says that depending on the personality of a person, he/she subconsciously speaks a particular love language and hence feels good and loved when actions of their partner correspond to his/her love language. For example a person may feel loved on receiving gifts while another might feel loved through words of appreciation. The author says that the five love languages are "Words of Affirmation", "Acts of Service", "Quality Time", "Receiving Gifts", and "Physical Touch". So a person whose love language is "Words of Affirmation" need not feel loved on receiving gifts. Hence it is important to understand the love language of our life partners and other family members so that we can express our love in a manner they will be able to see, understand and actually feel it. Through numerous real-life examples the author shows how a couple can keep the love in their marriage always alive, just by understanding the love language of their partner. He talks about many of them who were at the verge of separation, but got back together after counseling sessions with the author where he helped them identify their love languages and express love to their partners accordingly. I tried to figure my love language and feel that mine corresponds to 2 out of the 5 listed in the book. In such a case, the author says that there always is one primary love language. The book also has a study guide at the end which may be useful in figuring out our love languages. My next step is to go through this guide with Ajay and pinpoint our primary love languages.

The other one that I read recently is "The Case for Christmas" by Lee Strobel. A mentor of ours gave this book to us and told us about the author 'Lee Strobel' who has written books on topics which are very hard to justify and almost impossible to produce solid proofs like origin of Christmas, Christ, and about creator of the world. 'The Case for Christmas' is a small book with powerful content and particularly good for those who want some evidences about Christmas and all the facts around it and around the birth of Jesus. I particularly liked his approach wherein he investigates cases looking for solid evidences through interviews with well-read and knowledgeable philosophers, professors, and researchers. In this book he categorizes evidences into four kinds: 'EyeWitness evidence', 'Scientific evidence', 'Profile evidence', and 'Fingerprint evidence' and collects information through interviews for each of these categories. He then justifies the evidences quite convincingly. I liked this style of proof through evidences for hard to perceive concepts such as existence of God, Creator, origin of Christmas, etc. I am eager to read his other two works, 'The Case for Creator' and 'The Case for Faith' and hope to find answers to some of the questions that I have always had.