Category Archives: Health

Mouthwatering Monday – Indian Bread – Kulcha

Image September 15, 2014 jcisnowjs Leave a comment

Kulcha is the most famous Punjabi flat bread. I love eating it with spicy Chole and Paneer dishes. Although, I prefer it with Matar or Chole.

Kulcha by Jyoti Singh — Kulch with Matar and Tamarind Chutney

Here is one version of Kulcha which is not fried but rather cooked with almost no oil, on a skillet.

Ingredients –

1 cup All Purpose Flour
2 tbsp Yogurt
½ tbsp Baking Powder
½ tbsp sugar
½ tbsp salt
¼ cup Milk
½ tbsp oil

Method –

Mix Flour with Baking Powder, Sugar and Salt, in a bowl.
Add Yogurt, oil and mix well. Use Milk to make a soft dough.
Rest the dough for atleast 2 hours.
Make small round patties with dough and roll it to make into flat elliptical shape (look at the pic for clarity).
Heat the skillet/flat pan, and sprinkle little oil over it.
Place Kulcha on the skillet. Brush top of Kulcha with water and sprinkle cilantro leaves on it. (you can also use Kalaunji).
When top part start making bubbles, flip it over.
Flip it again after a minute.
Do this till your Kulcha got that beautiful golden color spot on it.
Remove it from skillet. Brush with some butter and serve hot.

Kulcha is ready, just keep in mind to cook it on medium heat, so it can be cooked thoroughly without getting burnt. You can use Kalaunji or cilantro for garnishing. Health conscious, avoid the butter at the end. 🙂

Kulcha is best served with Chole, but here I have used them with spicy Matar Daal. I love this combination.

Along with Matar and Kulcha, we have Imli(Tamarind) chutney here.

Enjoy!!!

P.S. My cooking is experimental. You will find many similar and different recipes, but the idea is to explore your food and do experiments with it. Enjoy Cooking Experiments and Experiences 🙂

Food, Health

Mouthwatering Monday – Tortilla / Spanish Omelet

Image July 28, 2014 jcisnowjs Leave a comment

Omelets are ‘The Best’ when you want to eat, something tasty, healthy and which is quick to make too. I have made Omelets many times and with many different combinations, but so far, Spanish Omelet or shall I say Tortilla is the best, that I have tasted.

It’s mostly known as Tortilla, and in English as Spanish Omelet, just to avoid confusion with the normal Egg Omelet.

Spanish Tortilla is made with Potatoes and Eggs. Onions are a modern addition to this traditional Spanish dish. What makes it stand out from the rest, is its juicy taste, which was missing in normal Omelet.

Enough writing about it, now it’s time to make and eat. So, here we go with the recipe of Tortilla / Spanish Omelet. 😆

Ingredients:

6 Eggs
2 Potatoes, cut into finger shape
1 big Onion, chopped
1 Green/Red Pepper, finely chopped
2 Green Chillies, finely chopped
Salt, as per taste
¼ tbsp Black Pepper
1 tbsp oil/butter

Method:

Saute Onions in the pan.
Whisk eggs in a bowl till they are fluffy. Add salt and pepper.
Add sautéed onions, green pepper, green chillies to eggs. Mix well.
Cook Potatoes in a pan with oil/butter, until they are tender.
Pour egg mixture over the cooked potatoes.
Cook for few minutes on a low-medium heat, until golden brown.
Flip and cook from the other side too.
Cut into triangle/pizza like slices, and serve.

Remember, Egg and Potatoes are the main ingredients, rest is your taste and imagination. You can also use Mushrooms and Peas. It can be eaten hot or cold, and thus it can be a good picnic dish too. 😎

P.S. My cooking is experimental. You will find many similar and different recipes, but the idea is to explore your food and do experiments with it. Enjoy Cooking Experiments and Experiences 🙂

Food, Health

Mouthwatering Monday – Paneer Tikka

Image June 30, 2014 jcisnowjs 2 Comments

For us vegetarians, Paneer can be termed as delicious and mouthwatering as Chicken is for the Non Vegetarians. We relish Paneer dishes. Karahi Paneer is one of my favorite dishes, along with Paneer Tikka, which I have tried my hands on this weekend.

Paneer Tikka is marinated Cheese/Paneer, with spices and curd, which is grilled or baked, preferably in a tandoor, but an oven will do too.

Below is the recipe for it. I have done this with some variations so, posting my variations too, along with the original recipe.

Ingredients:

1½ cup Paneer (Tofu also worked for me 🙂 )
2 Capsicums (Red Yellow or Green) – I have not used Capsicum coz hubby doesn’t like them 😛
1 Onion
1 Tomato
1 cup Hung Curd
1½ tbsp Ginger-Garlic Paste
1/2 tbsp Red Chilli Powder (use Kashmiri Red Chilli if you want more Red Color)
1 tbsp Turmeric Powder (Optional as per your taste/color choice)
1/4 tbsp Garam Masala
1 tbsp Cumin Powder
1 tbsp Coriander Powder
1 tbsp Chaat Masa
Oil to spray for baking/griling
Salt as per taste (You may also like to use black salt in small quantity)

Method (fairly simple):

Mix curd with all the spices. Add lemon juice to it. Mix well.
Dice vegetables and Paneer into square shapes or any shape you prefer, just small pieces 🙂
Marinate Paneer and vegetables in the Curd mix prepared above. Put them aside for 2 hours, in fridge.
Preheat oven to 350 F.
Place your onion, tomato, capsicum(I didn’t used them 😦 ) and Paneer onto Skewers (You can use toothpicks too).
Spray with some olive oil.
Put them in oven for 10 minutes.
Rotate your skewers. 10 minutes more in oven and done.
Serve hot with chutney of your choice (preferably Mint chutney). Sprinkle some lemon juice to add that tangy taste to it.

You can garnish them with lemon wedges and onion slices.

Preparation won’t take much, except for the 2 hours of marinated time. Tasty and healthy recipe which my kids enjoyed eating too.

One more variation– I used extra gravy left after marination as separate dish or as Masala for my Paneer Tikka 🙂

P.S. My cooking is experimental. You will find many similar and different recipes, but the idea is to explore your food and do experiments with it. Enjoy Cooking Experiments and Experiences 🙂

Books, Health, Spiritual

The Human Aura Astral Colors And Thought Forms

Image January 17, 2014 jcisnowjs 6 Comments

The Human Aura Astral Colors And Thought Forms

(By William Walker Atkinson)

It’s hard to finish a Non Fiction, specially harder when you redevelop your fetish for watching television shows. Still, I can say proudly that despite all the above hindrances I completed three non fictions this month. Namely “Chakra Balancing”, “The Secret” and now “The Human Aura Astral Colors And Thought Forms”. Strangely, I have to read all three of them simultaneously, as all are related to each other in some way or other. In order to understand the one, you should know about the other. That’s why it took me so long to post a book review. (Read my blog post on Chakra Balancing here).

Nevertheless, here I am. I completed “Chakra Balancing” and “The Secret” first. Human Aura I read about on and off, as required while studying the previous ones. Today, when I completed it, I realized just how much wisdom there is just lying in plain sight around us. So much energy and life, meaningful things that we completely ignore and rather focus on some trivial materialistic things.

Coming to the book, it begins with revealing what is actually Human Aura or Prana or Aabha as we call in Hindi. Prana is the Vital essence, The Life Force. This Prana Aura does not only reflect our being, but it reflects on what we are? What we are thinking? What state we are in? More importantly, how we are communicating with the universe?

When we feel something or are going through a particular emotion we are projecting that feeling through our Aura. This is mirrored in so many different colors, each corresponding to various feelings out there. I have dealt with the same in one of my previous post “The Color Of Love”. This topic is so vast though that it can not be covered in a single post. In the book, each color is explained with its corresponding state. Even the hue, tint and shade of a color make a huge difference towards the Aura visualization.

But, what is the so called Feeling that gets projected in these Aura’s colors. It is our Thoughts. Our thoughts who are manifested in our Aura in the forms of colors and vibrations. Vibrations that we send to our universe. They not only affect us, but also the persons who come in contact (not necessarily touching) with us. Have you ever thought how you feel sad in someone’s company, or why a Hospital always feels like a Morgue, or a playground feels like freedom? Have you thought, why did you label someone as a positive person and some as dull and boring or a pessimist? Most of the times what we feel about others is what their thoughts are projecting about them to the universe.

Another interesting aspect that this book talks about is about healing through Aura Magnetism. Healing with the help of a strong magnetic Aura is pretty old phenomenon. I have heard of many saints and god souls who have helped others by just touching them or giving them the life energy; Prana. This works on the same concept as Aura Projection. I have tried my hands at this too, and that too successfully. Cheers!!!

This book has dealt with many such concepts related to Human Aura, but still this subject is too vast and knowledge is so ancient that one can not fully capture it in one book. For a beginners sake this book is pretty good in answering some of the basic questions. Good introspective read. 🙂

Books, Health, Spiritual

Chakra Balancing by Michael Hadfield

Image January 2, 2014 jcisnowjs 6 Comments

Chakra Balancing

We spent so much money and time in medicines and all alternative healing methods that sometimes we forget to treat the basic underlying problem. What we are really doing is actually just treating the symptoms. When we take medicines for fever or cough or constipation, we are actually trying to cure these symptoms, while the problem which actually causes this problem in the first hand remains untouched and unexplored. Chakra Balancing is one such method which focuses not on the problem but on root of problem and tries to make our body and soul in balance.

We have seven major Chakras in our body governing our emotional, physical and as well spiritual self. Out of these seven Chakras, six are placed in six locations of our body, seventh one the crown Chakra is placed at the crown, just above our head. Each Chakra is represented by seven different colors and seven lotuses of different numbered petals.

Coming to the book, Chakra Balancing, this book started on a great note, exploring on the idea of why western medical science can not treat the illness and other psychological diseases. Why do we need Chakra Balancing science? This book gives a brief description of all these seven Chakras, their location, their color. It also tells you how you can balance an unbalanced Chakra. But, everything this book tells you is nothing new. Any person who knows a little bit about Chakras, knows this much. All this information is readily available on internet.

This book tells you nothing new that you didn’t new before. Only new thing that this book has is where you can purchase every item listed here. It annoys you when you are reading a book and in between you are getting links to buy a particular DVD or a healing mantra audio or a pendulum. This could have been part of a different section in the book.

Nevertheless, keeping these little things aside, I think the idea behind Chakras could have been explored more in the book. Like what are the foods that can boost up the energy of a particular Chakra or a specific Mantra healing of a Chakra. These are not covered in the book. Still, if you are a beginner and do not know about Chakras than you can pick up this read.

Go Read and Get Healed. Happy New Year.