Kraft Korner - Quilled Paper Jewellery - Towers of Hanoi

When I began reading and knowing about crafts, I found paper quilling to be very intriguing. How a simple strip of paper is entirely transformed to so many different shapes and patterns! My very mindset about paper started to change.. Though I kept browsing and reading more about quilling, it is only very recently that I mustered courage and got myself my first set of quilling strips and a simple slotted quilling tool. To start with, I just made a simple tight coil out of a sky blue strip and sealed the ends. When I wondered what I could do with it, my recently acquired another interest - jewellery making- inspired me to try out a pair of earrings. I made another blue coil, two pink ones and strung them into this:

Musk Melon Juice

Prep time: 5 min                   Cooking time: 0 min                Makes: 2 tall glasses

Come summer, all that the throat and stomach crave are juices, smoothies and other coolers. Food becomes just a mere necessity and the heat in the kitchen makes elaborate cooking even more difficult. But good thing is, there are plenty of green leafy vegetables and juicy fruits available in the market. So, instead of just the plain old lime juice (which is still a fav), I keep trying out newer and newer juices and milkshakes nowadays.

Until moving to North India, the only musk melon I knew was the one with sandal-colourish-flesh and brownish skin that we get in the South. At home, we just sliced it into cubes (after peeling and deseeding), sprinkle sugar on top, give it a quick mix and eat as such. It was plain heaven in summers.. yumm :-)

Foto Fridays - Devotion

Late by a day.. But better than...

Four-ingredient Mutton Curry

Prep time:  5 min           Cooking time: 15 min                         Serves : 4

Making non-vegetarian dishes usually involves a lot of preparation  - peeling pearl onions and garlic, grinding fresh ginger garlic paste, chopping loads of onions and tomatoes, grinding masala paste, et al. All this labour mean non-vegetarian dishes being usually reserved for Sundays. So, when my mother-in-law told me about this simple mutton curry with very little prep and no ginger-garlic, I was surprised and even wary of trying it fearing that the taste might be traded off for all the effort saved. But when I did try, what a pleasant surprise it turned out to be!

Kraft Korner - Paper Lampshade

I was never the 'craft'y type in our house.. My mom used to do embroidery, toy making, crochet work, wire bags, baskets and vases, bead work etc. All this before marriage, she says. We still have her creations at home and I remember playing with the wire-crocheted dolls when I was small. But after marriage, me and a full time job on her hands, she slowly stopped making time for these trinkets.

Foto Fridays - Search

Foto Fridays - Black Buck

Cauliflower Oats Adai

(Cauliflower- Oats Savory Pancakes)

Prep time: 6 min approx             Cooking time: about 4 min for each adai          Makes :6 adais
 

This recipe was inspired by Sharmi’s Oats Recipes collection.. After seeing them (visit her collection here), I was tempted to try my own version of the oats adai a little while back.. It was peak cauliflower season in North India and so I thought, why not cauliflower in adai? And to keep it light (in fact, truth was I did not have the preparation time to soak the dals. Hence the excuse :) ) , I avoided the pulses too.. But the batter needs something to hold together, right?

Milagu Muttai Kuzhambu

(Egg with peppery gravy)

Prep time: 8 min          Cooking time: 5 min               Servings: 2

I wanted to begin the blog with this one since this is my first original recipe. I had travelled from my place of posting to my home for the weekend and reached just around dinner time. V was about to start from his office and I wanted to make a quick dinner for us before he reached home. I looked in the fridge and what was there.. Just a couple of eggs and 2-3 not-so-fresh onions. No veggies or tomato or coconut to even lend that usual gravy base in typical South Indian cooking.