30 Days of Thankfulness

'You are richer than you think' is the tag line for one the banks here in Canada. Every time the ad comes on the TV, I think to myself, 'yeah right! nice way of fooling people into banking with you'. But after writing my blog post on Contentment  yesterday, I think it is true. We all are richer than we think we are, if your reading this right now, you are. You are able enough to own a laptop or a PC or a smart phone or all of them, to access the Internet. Richness does not define the amount of money you have in your bank account, or how big a house you live in, or the fancy restaurants you eat in. How often we forget that the simple things in life that we take for granted, are actually luxury to millions of people around the world. 

Taking time to be thankful for who we are and what we have, makes us realize how rich we indeed are. And that's what God tells us to do so too in the Bible (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).


So I've decided to be grateful and thank God for the simple things I take for granted, and tell myself how 'Rich' I indeed am. So now you know what the title of the post means "30 Days of Thankfulness". I will be thanking God for one thing each day, for the next 30 days. I got this idea from the blog 'Nesting Place', the author does 31 day series to love his home the way it is. So, why not use it to thank God. 


  30 Days of Thankfulness

• Day 1: Shelter & Safety
• Day 2: Family
• Day 3: Friends
• Day 4: Memories
• Day 5: Health
• Day 6: Children
  
• Day 7: Song Writers
  
• Day 8: Jobs
• Day 9: Limitations
• Day 10: Creativity
• Day 11: Transportation
• Day 12: Inventors
• Day 13: Bible
• Day 14: Food
• Day 15: Role models
• Day 16: Music
• Day 17: Singing
• Day 18: Mornings
• Day 19: Sleep
• Day 20: Life lessons
• Day 21: Faith
• Day 22: Social workers
• Day 23: Missionaries
• Day 24: Nature
• Day 25: Laughter
• Day 26: Safety
• Day 27: Love
• Day 28: Spare change
• Day 29: Hope
• Day 30:                      

(I will fill the links of the post as I write each day)

Contentment

'Contentment is not getting what you want, but being satisfied with what you have'

  

This one liner has been stuck in my head for more than a decade now. I was asked to make a poster with these words for one the annual Navodaya youth camp in 2001, and have remembered it ever since. Over the years, I've been learning more and more about contentment. The more I choose to be content, the more I am at peace. Now that I am a stay-at-home mommy, and my husband is the only person working, the need to be content is more :) and trust me, it is rewarding. But there are times when I do tend to sway by things and people around me, but God always reminds me 1Timothy6:6-11 from the Bible. ⁶ But godliness with contentment is great gain. ⁷ For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. ⁸ But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. ⁹ Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰ For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.¹¹ But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.

I am writing this post as reinforcement for myself about contentment. I recently came across a beautiful saying on a blog that I accidentally came across; yeah yeah I do a lot of 'accidental' reading. So the other day I started with a link on DIY and ended up clicking away as usual, form one link to another, making sounds of admiration and now and then. I love reading blogs on creative stuff, anything from home decor to DIY. I am inspired by creativity, the ideas that some people come up with are simply mind blowing.

 And then, something caught my attention. A saying by Jon Acuff and a comment in the blog 'The Shabby Creek Cottage' 

"The understanding that people are more important than things, the reminders about contentment, making the best of where we are at while realizing that this life is only temporary. So refreshing!" (Comment on the blog)

 How profound! Sometimes we simply start to feel inferior when we see some one's accomplishments or things. I think it’s one way of not being content with ourselves or what we have. We will never know how long and hard they had to work, to be where they are now, or have what they have now. 

Also, when we are content, it gives us an opportunity to see how much more we have and enjoy in life, when compared to the millions of people and children who die every day due to starvation and lack of basic essentials in life. 

God Bless.

For the love of Biriyani

I Love Biriyani, any kind, veg or non-veg :) well, who does not? It’s one of those universally loved food. My love affair with biriyani has been lifelong thanks to my mom. My mom is a great cook, her awesome biriyani are always a great hit with everyone. And when I got married, I found out my mother-in-law makes great biriyani too. Both my mother and MIL make awesome biryani with just a pressure cooker. I kind of don’t attempt making biriyani when either of them is around. I make biriyani too with a pressure cooker or the automatic rice cooker; they taste good, like homemade, nothing to brag about or feature until now :). LOL. Thanks to my new friend Subha who shared a recipe with me recently and was totally thrilled to see how simple it was. Every time I googled for dum biriyani, it called for huge vessels with lid that are oven safe (which I don't have) and then the double work of cooking the gravy separate and the rice separate, layering it. Phew! Just reading it I would give up. Cos for me biriyani is a one pot cooking thing, easy and simple. 

Well back to the feature biriyani, The Chicken dum biriyani. You can find the recipe in the link. I just made very little changes to the recipe. I added the whole spices (the cloves, cinnamon sticks etc.) and black jeera (caraway seeds) to the rice while cooking; I saw this in another video. I also did not add whole black pepper corns, cumin powder or seeds and garam masala in the chicken marinade. Instead I added some biriyani masala I had at home. Used red food coloring dissolved in water instead if saffron. I did not have fried onions too, so I sautéed some thin slices (grated) onions till dark brown and used them.

Comfort food - The Indian way

When it’s raining heavily and the day seems to almost turn into night, all I can think of is warm comfort foods :) . So when it started raining cats and dogs couple of days ago, I found the perfect opportunity to try an Indian comfort food recipe, which I accidentally came across.  It’s an Indian chaat called Matar Chat, made from dry peas. Here’s the recipe I followed, it’s super simple and yummy. It’s a great combination of flavors. I love chaats. The only change I made was use green dried peas instead of yellow dried peas. The taste was unbeatable, its one fool-proof dish that would make your taste buds dance, did I mention that I love chaats :) LOL. Well, one tip I’ll give you is to add the dry ingredients while the peas are really hot, and then just let it sit for some time so that they can soak up all the flavors. 

A Bite to Remember

When your away from your home country, you miss a lot of things, family, friends, the home you grew up in, but food is something that tops the list too. Or at least for me. Somehow it does not matter how many Indian restaurants or take outs there are, it just does not replace the real deal, not to mention having to drive all the way to get them in the first place. 

This past week we've been missing our home town, especially the evening South Indian snacks :) How we miss having easy access to tasty tea time snacks, mainly the savoury ones. Bhajis, Bondas, vadais, Samosas, Egg puffs, chaats, LOL the list goes on. Don't get me wrong I love the food here, but its sometime just too sweet and we end up longing for something spicy to cleanse the palate. And that's when we miss home even more, we end up talking about how awesome it is back home, how easy it is to get something you wish. Even our sweet shops and bakeries have something savoury. 

So today I made one the easiest South Indian snack, the Bhaji :) (with potatoes) just to cherish and calm my taste buds :)

 

I'm not writing the recipe cos there are hundreds of them on the internet. But if any of you want it, let me know.

Apple - Banana Cake

What do you do when you have over ripe bananas, not fit to eat?  - You bake a Banana cake.  Or at least that’s when I bake them.  I had a recipe that used apple sauce and yogurt (curd) instead of too much butter, but like I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I lost all my recipes when we moved.  So I thought why not bake an apple - banana cake, hoping my son who hates fruits will somehow get some fruits into him. A part of me thought I was a genius to have come up with the idea of an apple-banana cake :D, but there were hundreds of recipes online for it. As usual, I didn’t have to look beyond 2 links. I found an easy and simple one, here is the recipe for the apple-banana cake.  I just made some changes to it.   Well, did my son eat it? – Nope :(

Actual recipe	Changes made
2 cups white sugar	1.5 cups brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon	1 tsp cinnamon
2 cups all-purpose flour	1 cup all-purpose flour + 1 cup whole wheat flour
4 cups grated apple	3 cups grated apple
2 tsp baking soda	1.5 tsp baking soda