Memories of India and yet another recipe
Posted by baahar | Filed under food, health
Yesterday I went to an Indian store and felt like stepping into my memories of a trip to India a few years back ( see some photos here ). The atmosphere, the smell, the bits of Hindi I picked up whilst strolling the aisles, and the head-wiggling of the staff must have done it.
I remembered the words written down on the business card the owner of the hotel I stayed in Mumbai gave me: a Home away from Home. Even though I prefer food that hasn’t travelled half the globe, I can perfectly understand why people want to have a piece from Home where ever they go, may it be in form of a grocery store. When you are an immigrant you learn to value the new things you find at your new home, but you also realise that the old things never taste like they used to “back home”. In my case this means that every winter I try to hunt down tangerines and every summer I try to hunt down watermelons that come all the way from Turkey.
One thing from my India trip I remember vividly, is the Delhi-Mumbai flight I took with Air India. Oh, I enjoyed every bit of it .. the chaos at the airport, my conversation with the lady at the check-in counter who initially sent my baggage to the wrong airplane, the interested stares and smiles from the passengers, and the huge meal … a huge portion of delicious okra and the hottest green chilli pepper I have ever tasted.
The okra dish made me realise that we in Turkey have a way of turning everything into a torture :) The more time it takes to prepare a dish, the more it is valued and we seem to be masters in making up rules to increase that time.
I am aware that this blog slowly turns into a food blog, but there is not much I can do about it now :) Here comes my okra / bhindi recipe .. Indian style.
Ingredients:
- 300 gr fresh okras ( to serve 4 people )
- 2-3 table spoons of coconut oil
- 3 tomatoes ( peeled and finely chopped )
- 1 cup yogurt
- 1/4 cup milk
- 2 tablespoons of pea flour
- 1 teaspoon of hot paprika paste
- 1 teaspoon turmeric powder
- 1 teaspoon ginger powder
- 1 teaspoon cumin powder
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon red pepper powder
- salt and pepper
Procedure:
Wash your okras a few hours before you want to cook them so that they have time to dry completely. Chop them into small pieces of ca. 2 cm. I can almost hear my my aunts asking in shock: oh my God, you are actually cutting the okras?
Yes, I do !! And it takes only minutes :)
Heat a pan, put 1-2 tablespoons of coconut oil in it and let it get hot. Put in the okras and let them cook for about 10 minutes, stirring them occasionally (ca. every 2 minutes)
Once the okras are tender put them out of the pan and set aside.
Put another 1-2 tablespoons of coconut oil in the pan and add the pea flour. Stir it for about a minute and add the tomatoes. Now add all the spices and the yogurt. Bring the mix to a boil. If it gets too thick you can add some milk ( I used about 1/4 cup of milk ).
Now you can add the okras into your sauce, close the lid of the pan and let it cook on low heat for about 20 minutes.
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 30-40 minutes
Healthy Delights
Posted by baahar | Filed under food, health
It has been over a month since I banned processed sugar and white flour from my daily diet. As I said before, the transition was surprisingly smooth. My family and friends do not realise that it has been a huge change for me .. I mean really huge. If my late grandfather and best friend would see my eating habits now he wouldn’t believe it. We used to be partners in crime during the Eid days when it came to eating all the chocolate in the house my grandmother reserved for the guests :)
As easy the transition was, there was one thing I did miss during the past month … biscuits/cookies to go with my glass of milk.
But today, when I was looking for healthy dessert recipes without sugar I came across Heidi’s 101 Coobooks blog where she published her friend’s Nikki’s “Healthy Cookies Recipe“. Me being me, and also not having the exact ingredients at home, I changed the recipe a bit and was blown away by the way they turned out. And it was unbelievably easy and fast to make as well. I made a big tray full and there were only 6 left when I last saw them in the kitchen.
Without further ado, here comes the recipe with the title: easiest, healthiest, tastiest, bestest cookie recipe I’ve seen. Pity that my photo doesn’t do the cookies justice.
Ingredients:
- 4 ripe bananas
- 1/4 cup rape oil
- 2/3 cup raisins
- 2 cups of oat bran
- 1 cup ground almonds
- 1/3 cup coconut flakes
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
Procedure:
Mix all the dry ingredients. Blend the bananas in a large bowl with a hand blender and add the oil and raisins. Add the dry ingredients and mix everything using a spoon. Take tablespoon fulls of the mixture and place them on the baking paper leaving some distance between each.
Bake at 180 C until they get brown underneath (takes approximately 30 minutes)
Tags: cookie, dessert, health, recipe
Earth Day Reflections
Posted by baahar | Filed under misc
Today the EarthDayNetwork on Twitter tweeted this:
@EarthDayNetwork if you do not do anything to protect the earth everyday, what does it mean to celebrate “Earth Day”?
And I thought about what I’m doing to protect the earth everyday, besides recycling paper, metal and glass that is. Here are some of the things I could think of:
- Minimizing the use of plastic: I usually don’t use the word ‘hate’, but when it comes to plastic I can safely say that I hate plastic. I try to remove plastic from every part of my life by: only buying beverages in glass bottles, re-using plastic tote bags I got from some supermarkets, buying tote bags out of alternative materials (e.g., plastic-like bags made with starch ), …If you are not sensitive to this issue, you should look at these pictures that show where our garbage goes: http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11Thankfully my latest decision to cut off processed foods from my diet, also meant a reduction of my plastic consumption. However, considering that even the keyboard I’m typing this is made out of plastic, I still have a long way to go :(
- Minimizing waste: When I look at how much food, water and other resources I am wasting, I feel like having failed with regard to this verse in the Quran
Eat and drink: But waste not by excess (Baqarah 2:168)
- I try to minimize my waste by, buying food items in small quantities so that nothing can rot before I get to use them, reusing left-over food (e.g., rice, lentils, vegetables can be used in a soup the next day .. thanks to blenders, I even throw left-over spaghetti into soups, but hush, don’t tell anybody :), …
As you can see, I don’t do much to protect our world. It is not our possession after all .. it is a trust.
I would love to know what else I could do … feel free to share your ideas in the comments section.
Menemen – Recipe
Posted by baahar | Filed under food
My Turkish friends might laugh this recipe off, because this is one of the dishes that is being made so often that it is not considered a proper dish anymore :) Nevertheless, it is a favorite among students who live away from their families (i.e., their mothers) and everyone who wants to fix a meal the quick way.
Ingredients:
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
1 onion ( chopped )
1/4 paprika ( chopped )
3 tomatoes ( peeled and chopped )
some parsley
some garlic ( optional )
salt, pepper
5 eggs
Procedure:
Melt the butter in a pan add the oil and heat it up. Throw in the onions and paprika, close the lid of the pan, bring to minimum heat and let it simmer for 7 – 10 minutes until the onions are supersoft. Increase the heat and put in the tomatoes, the parsley, and garlic. Let it simmer for 3 minutes and add some salt and pepper. At the last step break the eggs into the pan and stir until the eggs are thoroughly cooked (ca 3 minutes).
I love to eat it with yoghurt and a small slice of whole wheat bread - bon appetit !
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Dental Tales
Posted by baahar | Filed under dental, food, health
Under normal circumstances, these lovely looking, delicious, mouth watering ( ok I stop) bars of Marzipan chocolate, would last for a week and a half. But it has been 3 weeks since I bought these and I’m not done even with one bar. What happened?
Well .. I went to the dentist a couple of weeks ago. I had tooth ache and wanted to make sure that it is nothing important, like some kind of inflammation that could spread to other teeth or something. My dentist made several tests and said to me that my tooth died and it needed a root canal therapy.
I had several in the past and don’t dread the pain, even though I don’t let the dentist use anesthesia. I very much dislike painkillers. I want to feel what happens with me and when my situation gets better and worse. In cases like this, I like to make the best of the situation and experiment with pain. How much can I stand? What happens when I concentrate on something else? Can I make the pain move from one place to another? etc.
For years, I was thinking that dental problems are simply genetics related. That some people have strong teeth and some don’t … simple. After all I brush, I floss, I eat healthy (or so I thought), but still have problems with my teeth. And my dentists always would say that there is not much to do apart from that … that we have to live with it.
I’m wondering why is that so. Other doctors always look at you in a somewhat judging manner when you become ill, as if saying “what have you done to get sick like that, you are not a child anymore, you should know what is good for you, etc”. But with dentists, this is different. They just drill and fill and say to come again in a few months. Not a word about effective prevention besides “brush your teeth after eating candy”.
Well, turns out it doesn’t matter that much if I brush my teeth after eating candy or not. The problem is how the blood sugar levels fluctuate and affect the rest of the system. After all our blood transports all the necessary minerals and vitamins to the various parts, including our teeth.
When we take a look at the common diet of todays people living in the ‘civilized’ world, we see that almost everything we eat raises our blood sugar levels, because they contain processed white sugar and white flour. And the body gains nothing from either .. they have no nutritional value whatsoever. High sugar levels in the blood cause the body to try to regain its balance, which takes time and during this time our immune system becomes vulnerable. I even found a list of 146 reasons why sugar is ruining your health
I always heard people saying that white sugar and white flour are bad. But they always talked about it in relation with body weight. And to be honest, I don’t mind a kilo or two more on my bones, if it means that I can enjoy my ’sensible’ daily portion of chocolate. If I knew that it affects the body (and the teeth of course), impairing its health from the inside, I would have stopped eating them a long time ago.
Better late than never, right? For more than 3 weeks now I don’t eat white sugar and white flour. And I am surprised how easy the transition was. Every two days I take a tiny bite of chocolate, though :) The immediate effects of my new diet, which contains no processed food from the shelves except milk and yoghurt, has been:
- 1.5 kg weight loss in the first 10 days without doing anything else
- stronger teeth: I was very much surprised to see some results so fast
So now my challenge is to analyse my diet and look whether it contains the minerals and vitamins the body needs and then to adjust it to get the required daily amounts (not less and not more).
The second challenge is to find out how different elements of nutrition affect each other, so that I can add good combinations to my diet and avoid bad ones. For instance, calcium seems to affect the absorption of iron in a bad way.
Lot’s of research to be done on my side :) I will share the results here .. stay tuned :)
Monday Mood Board
Posted by baahar | Filed under Uncategorized
As you can guess from the board, I’ve got a cold. This year I got ill rather often .. signs of aging? .. could be : ) Thankfully it is nothing serious. It only deprived me of last nights sleep.
Having spent a significant amount of time in the hospital lately ( because of my friend ) I realised once more how precious our health is. I’m very thankful for every single illness I saw there and don’t have.
My prayers go out to all seriously ill ones ( http://spiritjump.blogspot.com/ ) and also to the earthquake affected people in Haiti and Chile.
The items in the mood board are from these very talented European Street Team members:
1- Juicy Orange – Ring Set from PetitPlat
2- Get well soon – greeting card from ArtMind
3- Lavender Chamomile herbal pillows from BlueTerracotta
4- Colorful Afghan blanket from AtelierAfra
More mood boards can be found on fleurfatale’s blog.
Vienna meeting
Posted by baahar | Filed under Uncategorized
Here is the report of our meeting with Swee and Vadjutka upon request from several EST members:
A while ago Swee informed me that she was planning to come to Vienna for her 23th ( !! ) birthday. As KreativLink is living nearby and I’m already here, we thought a meeting would be lovely. Vadjutka was going to join the party from Budapest (3 hours by train). Unfortunately KreativLink got a cold the day before and couldn’t come.
On that day it was cold … VERY cold. I picked up Swee from her hotel and we headed to the Mariahilferstrasse (major shopping street), which we had to walk all the way up to the train station to meet Vadjutka.
As the train rolled into the platform, I was concerned whether I would be able to recognise her or not. Then the train stopped and lo and behold, in the wagon that stopped right in front of us, a girl … waving and smiling … with a camera hanging from her neck =) She started to take photos right away, giving me an excuse not to take many pictures and leave that to the professionals =)
From the day it was certain that Swee would come, I wanted to take her to Bortolotti. My favourite ice cream parlor on the planet. So I made a reservation for the first time in my life. When we settled on our reserved places, it was pressies time. Vad and I brought along some birthday presents for Swee and she surprised us with Christmas presents =) Her workmanship and eye for detail is just amazing.
My presents from Swee ... she spoiled us rotten indeed =)
Vad's presents from Swee
Swee with her rings from Vadjutka
After those lovely moments we ate sandwiches with Italian names …
but in reality I wanted to skip that part to order ice cream … asap. I showed the girls the pics in the menu card to get them drooling. But in the end they said that they are full !! Unbelievable but true … I mean there must be always space for some ice cream, right? I was feeling that this moment was a significant one with regard to the way I see the world.
Apparently the world was divided into two sets of people: those who have space for ice cream … and those who have not.
My ice-cream cup captured by the talented Vadjutka :)
I ended up being the only one eating ice cream, while the others waited for me to finish. Hopefully I can go back with KreativLink one day to enjoy a large cup … TOGETHER … not alone … not all by myself *no pun intended whatsoever* =)
After that it was time for me to go, because the time for midday prayer was about to run out and I had to reach home before that. Then I thought I could stay a little longer and guide them at least to the Naschmarkt, if only I could go to a clothing shop with changing rooms to pray there … secretly =)
Unfortunately there are not that many shops at this end of the Mariahilferstrasse and Vadjutka wanted to go get some beer for someone as a present, from a special brewery nearby. She didn’t know the exact address, so we didn’t know how long that would take. We had to make decisions =)
She, a Jew, said “first the prayer, it is important”.
Me, a Muslim, said “let’s go get the beer”, because I didn’t want her to get lost. I think that was the first time ever I said that … probably the last time too =)
Finally we decided to split up. She went by herself and we went to find a suitable shop with a changing room. The first one we found was for men clothing only … so no chance for me to pretend trying out something. The next one was ok, we went in, I picked up a cardigan, said “oh that’s nice, let’s try that out” and headed right to the changing room. Relief !!
We met Vadjutka again at the Museumsquartier and went to a small shop with very diverse items. Among other things the “giant microbes” . After that I lead them to the Naschmarkt and left them with a hand drawn map of the places they had to go next … I hope it was helpful =)
To sum it all up: it was a lovely day. I hope we can meet again some time, some place …
Calzone Recipe
Posted by baahar | Filed under food, handmade
Here comes my beloved calzone recipe. I just made a new batch and my folks aaah’d and hmmm’d a lot … so, here you go =)
Ingredients
… for the dough
1 kg flour
350 ml warm milk (= 1.8 cup)
200 ml warm water (= 1 cup)
2 teaspoons (1 package) dry yeast
9 tablespoons olive oil
5-6 teaspoons of salt
4 teaspoons of sugar
… for the filling
You are actually free to put whatever you want in it. Your favourite pizza topping will do.
Procedure
Put some of the water in a cup and slightly mix in the yeast. Add a teaspoon of sugar and let it wait for 5 minutes.
Put the flour, milk, rest of the water, oil, salt, rest of the sugar, and the yeast+water mixture into a bowl and knead well. Put a cloth on top of the bowl and let it rest for about an hour.
After the dough has grown to approximately twice its size, make little balls (a little larger than a walnut) out of it and put aside.
Roll out each ball to approximately 14 cm in diameter (= 5.5 inch). Put 1,5 tablespoons of the filling on one half of the dough, fold over the other half and tightly secure the borders =)
Bake at 200 C (= 390 F) for about half an hour or till they look brown and crisp.
Update on THE “EST Granny Square Blanket”
Posted by baahar | Filed under misc
Since the announcement of this project one month ago, many packages poured into my home from all over Europe … Latvia, Germany, Finland, Turkey, Austria, Norway, France, … all of them containing colorful granny squares like these:
I know of a few that are still on their way, so we have 54 of them now and counting. Thanks to this project I realised once more, how people everywhere in the world are willing to participate in projects to do something ‘good’, in however small way that may be.
I also realised that 7×7 cm is not equal everywhere :)
As I will not be able to put together the blanket until new year anyway, I want to extend the time EST members can participate in this project for one month. So the new extended deadline is 31.12.2009.
As for the charity organisation I would want to donate the money that we will hopefully raise by selling the finished blanket: one organisation close to my heart is Architecture for Humanity. I love their way of bringing together local architects with communities in need and provide open designs to build sustainable homes and other types of buildings. Sustainable is the keyword for me here, because even though I love many organisations for their charitable work, I would love to see more sustainable projects that are of benefit for the people in need for a longer period of time.
My favorite charity organisation is the IHH with their projects like “They Need You To See – brighten the eye of one of 100.000 Africans“. However, for this blanket project, I would love to donate the raised money to Architecture for Humanity. If this is ok with the participating EST members, of course.
Tags: architecture for humanity, charity, est, etsy, handmade
Project “EST Granny Square Blanket”
Posted by baahar | Filed under etsy
Some time ago, ArtMind from the European Street Team (EST) on Etsy blogged about her dream in progress, referring to a granny square blanket she was working on.
Back then I mentioned the idea that we, as the EST members, could make a collaborative granny square blanket for the team, where all participating members would send a square or two for me to put together as a blanket. The response from many a EST member was convincing enough to announce this project now.
How to participate:
- send me a convo over my Etsy shop
- with your participation you will commit yourself to send me at least one granny square by the end of November 2009
- it would be highly appreciated if the squares would be 7 cm x 7 cm, made out of mercerized cotton yarn.
- as for the yarn: I’m using regular crafty yarn with which 26 stitches amount to 10 cm. Washable at 40 degrees (see picture below)
- 3 sized crochet hook should be ideal for the yarn
- You can use this tutorial to make your squares.
As you can see, I already started by crcoheting two squares :)
Happy crocheting !! :)
Tags: blanket, crochet, granny square, handmade
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