Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Sabudana Vada Recipe

Be it a fast or just a way to celebrate the weekend, sabudana vada is one of the tempting snack for all. Here goes the Sabudana vada recipe for the tasty snack made at my kitchen .. Archana' s Kitchen :)

source:slurrpy.com


Ingrediants:
  1. 1 cup sabudana
  2. 1 cup water
  3. 1 big potato
  4. 2-3 green chillies
  5. 1/2 cup coriander leaves
  6. salt to taste
  7. 2 cups oil

Recipe of sabudana vada:
  1. Wash Sabudana with water thoroughly 2-3 times.
  2. Soak Sabudana for 3-4 hours in water.
  3. Boil and smash the potato
  4. Finely chop green chillies and coriander leaves
  5. Mix smashed potato, chopped green chillies, chopped coriander leaves and sabudana
  6. Add salt to taste
  7. Add water to make it slightly thin
  8. Make small cutlets from the mixture and deep fry in oil until it turns golden brown in color.


Tips while making Sabudana vada recipe:
  1. Do not add too much water and make the mixture very thin, as you'll not be able to give shape to the thin matter.
  2. Heat the sabudana vada in medium flame. On high flame, the outer part of the vada gets brown, although the inner matter remains raw.
  3. As the sabudana vada will be very oily use tissue paper to remove some oil. But put the vada on the tissue paper only after the sabudana vada cools down slightly.
  4. Serve the vadas with tomato sauce or coriander leaves chutney.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Photo Cakes

Photo cakes are becoming increasingly popular nowadays. While many of us never knew about this technology, it's provided by many cake shops from Monginis, Brownie Point to The Chocolate Room.

Source: yummycakesindia.com
How is photo cake made?

1 would wonder how is the edible photograph actually put on the cake. Well, this is actually because of 2 food materials – edible icing paper and food coloring products. The scanned image is printed on the icing paper which is made from rice/potato/cornstarch and the food coloring is used as ink to print the picture on the cake.

How to order a photo cake?

A picture cake has to be ordered at most 3 days prior to the day you want the cake to be ready. Some of them allow 2 days and some even 1 day. But cake shops do not usually agree for 1 day time. So if you are planning for a photo cake, well, plan in much advance.

The photograph to be printed on the cake has to be given as a soft copy - by email/pen drive etc. Better the quality of the picture, better would be the print on the cake. Hence make sure the photograph you are giving to the cake shop is of the best quality.

Different cake shops offer different flavors for photocakes. It could be blackforest, dutch chocolate cake, pineapple cake etc. Also some of the shops provide choice for the shape of the cake – rectangular, round, heart shape etc.

Cost for photocakes usually range between Rs. 700 and Rs. 1500 for 1 Kg. Photo cakes weight starts from 1Kg.

Some personal experience:

I had to order 2 photo cakes in the last month for celebrating 2 wedding occasions in the family.

1st one was from The Chocolate Room, Kandivali, Mumbai. We needed the cake on the next day of ordering, so we were quite worried about which cake shop would do that customization for us within 1 day. After contacting multiple cake shops, The Chocolate Room agreed to deliver the cake in 1 day. We emailed them the picture and visited the store to choose the cake flavor and shape. The Chocolate Room offered heart shape and rectangular shaped photocakes in flavors of Blackforest and Chocolate. After discussions and suggestions from the seller, we settled on a 1.5Kg heart shaped blackforest cake. It costed us Rs. 1800 - much more than what other cake shops charged. We were advised that the picture be framed with white icing for greater impact of the photograph. With big holes in our pockets we walked out of the store. On the next day, we got the cake at the time decided.

On the 2nd occasion, we ordered a photo cake from Monginis, Mulund, Mumbai. This time we called the cake shop 3 days prior to the occasion day. As it was not possible for us to visit the store, the flavor, shape, weight selection etc was done on the phone. Monginis offers photo cakes in only rectangular shape and flavors of dutch chocolate and Swiss chocolate. And charged Rs. 800 for 1 Kg cake. So we ordered a 1 Kg rectangular shaped Swiss Chocolate cake. Payment was done through online bank transfer. And I collected the cake from the shop on the day of the occasion.


Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Buy Pepper Spray - Self Defence for Women

I walked into a pharmacist shop and asked if they have a pepper spray. In return I got a shocked look and 5 seconds of silence. In another store, the person at the counter made me repeat thrice "Do you have a pepper spray?.. pepper spray.. small can of pepper spray!". Answer I got was No.

Looking at the number of rapes in our country in the year 2012 i.e. almost 600 in delhi, more than 200 in mumbai, 50s to 100s in kolkata, chennai, bangalore, hyderabad, we know how important it is to carry a pepper spray can for self defence for women. It’s not just meant for females, but it’s for old aged people too. An attacker is always stronger when our mind is in a sub-conscious state i.e. we are thinking something or are disturbed with something.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lype/6376366675/
  

Pepper sprays are meant to affect the attacker temporarily, hence doesn’t cause any permanent damage. If the spray is applied on a person with asthma or any other breathing problem, it can lead to death. It is illegal to posses the spray without a valid license in many countries across the world, although in India it’s legal. You can buy pepper spray easily nowadays. If you are an online shopper, healthkart.com is a good source with fast delivery.

Some basic features of pepper sprays regardless of their brands are:
  • Small in size; generally 30-40g weight. This make it easily portable. 
  • Can be sprayed from 5-10 feet of distance 
  • Knocks off the attacker for 15-30 minutes and sometimes even for hours. 
  • Sprays could be in the form of stream, fog, cone or foam

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