Thursday Tip of the Week No 8

Hi all ! My tip this week is related to white coffee/tea mugs , cups and saucers. Now plain white crockery particularly white coffee mugs are not really a favourite with me . They are the kind you see in restaurants and hotel rooms ,but those are the ones I use currently as my landlord stocked the cupboards with the kind . The problem now is that after using them daily for tea they developed tea stains which wouldn't go after washing the mugs. But now I have a solution. And by solution I really mean a solution of water and Harpic White Bleach. Yes the trick is to add 2 capfuls of Harpic white Bleach (or similar bathroom bleach) to half a bucket(about 5 litres ) of water. Immerse all your cups , mugs and saucers in this solution in the bucket overnight. The crockery comes out pristine clean the next morning. All the stains are gone. Just wash all the glassware with warm soapy water the next day before using it to get rid of any mild bleachy smell that might linger.
No, the bleach does not harm the glassware as the solution is a weak one. You need to do this just once a month.

Thursday Tip of the Week No 7

Hallo people, the tip this time is for keeping your flowers fresh for a long time. There are two things you can do:

1. Add a tblspn full of sugar and a tblspn of salt to the water in the vase (i.e. about 1 lt of water. Increase quantities of salt and sugar for more water)

2. Otherwise you can simply drop two aspirin tablets to a vase full of water.

I have tried both these tricks and I found that flowers stay fresher for at least a week longer than normal.

No I have not abandoned my blog!!!!!

No people i have not abndoned my blog. I am very much here,but so are my parents and they are the reason I am not blogging as much as usual. Hope they don't read this. Last 2 weeks have been great fun taking my parents around UK. Mom is doing most of the cooking and I do only the chatting and catching up on family gossip. Most of the times I am so busy eating everything that she makes that I forget to take photos. Must have put on a couple of pounds since she came.Not that I need any excuse to put on weight. I am posting a couple of photographs of places we visited this last bank holiday weekend.

By the way Thursday tip of the week No 6 is very simple. When mom and dad are visiting let them pamper you as much as they want. Such occasional pampering is good for one's general well being and mom and dad feel good too.

The beautiful canals at Bourton-on-Water

The City of Shires .....Oxford

Greenwich

Thats The Model Miniature Village of Bourton-on-Water in the Cotswold

Thursday Tip of the Week No 5

Hi people! Thursday is here and so am I with my tip. The vegetable you see in the pic below is one of my favorites. Yes Butternut Squash it is. The only thing that stops me from buying it sometimes is the fact that it is so difficult to peel and cut. Sometimes I feel I'll break all my knives and cutters in this pursuit. But the problem has been solved . What you do is just cut the butternut into two pieces horizontally and then pop both the pieces into the microwave. Setting should be high and time taken is one min. Change the position of the squash after 30 secs. After 1 min remove the butternut and let it rest for few seconds. It is the easiest thing to peel and cut after that. Try it.

I grated this squash for a raita today .

Thursday Tip of the Week No 4

The tip this week is related to home decoration. I made this floating arragement with flowers leftover from a wilting bouquet .Some of the flowers in the bouquet were very fresh even though most of the bouquet had dried up. I just didn't have the heart to throw away the fresh ones.The idea is to place one such arrangement::
1.Outside your house on the doorstep when you are expecting guests ,
2. In the centre of your dining table when you are entertaining and have buffet spread,
3. Or just as a coffee table arrangement on festivals or special occassions

Thursday Tip of the Week No3

Hallo people! I am back and this time it is Cool Minty Cubes I have for you. I made these mint cubes for a drinks party at home last week and they were well apprecaited, so I had to share them with you. I just put one leaf of fresh mint in each of the ice tray pockets and then filled the tray with water. These cubes look particularly pretty when put in fresh lemonade. Just put one or two cubes per glass , so that when they melt there is only one or max two mint leaves at the bottom of the glass. Lemonade with a touch of minty fragrance is very refreshing. With carbonated drinks they go well with Sprite and Bacardi Lemon Breezers.

I also made a few cubes with coke . I hate it when my coke becomes all watery due to the ice. And coke cubes solved the problem.

Tip Of The Week No2

Not Ice-Cubes but Spice Cubes

Hi , here I am back with my Thursday tip No 2.The small cubes and the large triangular blocks that you see in the pic above are what I call my spice cubes. The small ones are ginger cubes and the large blocks are frozen blocks of fresh tomato puree. I make these every 2 weeks and use them in all my curries and gravies. They really speed things up when actually cooking. You can make similar cubes with garlic paste and grated fresh coconut. Add a little salt to the ginger and garlis pastes before freezing and they keep for months in the freezer. I use small ice trays which I got in Ikea. So each ginger or garlic cube is equivalent to 1 tspn of paste and each tomato puree block is made from 1 large tomato.

Tip Of The Week

Hey all Blog-o-Buddies . Starting today I'll be posting a useful tip every week on Thursday. You might know some of them already or you might never have heard some. The tips will be mostly pertaining to cooking and the kitchen, but I might squeeze in a couple of tips which might help you in your work in the rest of the house too. Anything that will appeal to the Domestic Goddess in you and make your Godly Tasks easy.

Okay here goes:
Do you buy jaggery (unrefined palm sugar) in the form of a block and find it tiresome to break it down into smaller pieces. Well just pop the entire block into your microwave and set the microwave on the medium setting for 20 secs (when doing it for the first time keep a close watch on the block because every microwave will operate differently) When you remeve the block it will still look like it did before you put it in. But if you gently press it down with your palm it will easily crumble into a heap. If it doesn't crumble easily just pop it back into the microwave for another 10 to 12 secs. Just take care that the jaggery doesn't start to melt. Try it ! It always works