Besan Laddu Recipe

NPR included my Besan Laddu recipe on their program, "From Chompsgiving to Chew Year's". They were looking for holiday recipes and selected my recipe! If you use my recipe, please use a little more butter if needed. They didn't include that little tip. Enjoy! Jyotsna

Holiday: Home Made Salt Scrubs

When I graduated from massage therapy school, I felt I had accomplished something very good. Therefore I wanted to be "good" to myself. I recall walking into the gift shop next door that had many spa essentials. I bought this very expensive jar of salt scrub which had the essential oil lavender mixed in. Lavender has a way of transporting the mind, and the skin. It is a very healing essential oil. My grandmother had lavender flowers tucked into her pillows, which always relaxed me before going to sleep while visiting. So, I brought home that expensive bottle of lavender bath salts and tried it out in the shower. I was amazed how new my skin felt after using it. When I began to think about gifts that would transport the mind and body, my thoughts went straight to lavender salt scrub. I like that the word indicates a verb, which is busy doing the work. For a lot of women, we deal with dead skin cells building up on our skin, and it prevents the skin from breathing and being healthy. So, here is a simple "tested on me" recipe for bath scrubs, which is inexpensive and can be put in a jar you have washed out. Print some labels of your own homemade variety, or use canning labels to write in your own script.

SALT SCRUB 1 cup of sea salt 1 cup of olive oil (or other carrier oil like almond oil) 20 - 30 drops of essential lavender oil Using a clean jar of any type (but you can use a canning jar), pour the sea salt into the jar. Next pour 1/2 of the salt into the jar, and allow for the oil to absorb the salt. When it has, pour the other 1/2 of the salt. Give this a little time, maybe a few minutes. Finally, begin to add your essential oil. I let the oil drop into a tablespoon and that way I knew I wasn't using too much. Mix everything very well. Tighten a lid on the jar and decorate with a beautiful ribbon and a hand made tag or sticker. Otherwise, you can use canning labels.

A nice touch with this gift is to include a fancy spoon and a hand made wash cloth. Alternatively, you can substitute sugar for the sea salt, and this is a very nice scrub too! Jyotsna

Home Made Playdough!

We had a heavy frost this morning and it is quite chilly. It's been the perfect time to stay indoors and work on holiday gifts. This year is a full on holiday without buying gifts. I'm making everything. We celebrate Christmas with my parents and brother and his kids. Usually my sister-in-law's sister comes with her family for the family dinner. I wanted to make sure I bring something for her children and not knowing their preferences, so I settled on the home made playdough recipe. This is a great recipe and the playdough is SO soft! After making it (which was very easy) I used standard food coloring (no sugar in the colors!) to bring on the fun. I got the recipe from the blog, Chef in Training. Hope you enjoy this awesome playdough. Jyotsna

Tuesday's Table: Rice

I'm not advertising for anyone. I simply letting my viewers (the few) that I love Lundberg's Brown Basmati Rice! I could eat it every single day. Have you ever cooked basmati rice? Well it's better when it's brown. The aroma is divine. It has a hint of popcorn, a hint of earth and a hint of yummy. We eat a LOT of Indian foods. Without rice, our food would just be veggies and pulses. I purchase it in a 25lb bag from Whole Foods. If anyone knows where I could get it cheaper, I'd love to know. We eat this as our main grain. http://www.lundberg.com/products/rice/Organic_California_Brown_Basmati_Rice.aspx Jyotsna

Tuesday's Table: Hot Chocolate Mix

I visited Toward's Sustainability today and saw a post she made about hot chocolate mix. It looks so good and simple. Thought you may enjoy making this for your family. As she pointed out, no coffee creamer. I know that my friends and family will be getting this mix in small jam jars this year as a little holiday love! Jyotsna

Tuesday's Table: Banana Bread YUM!

Delicious Banana Bread

We got banana's on sale for .29 cents a pound and decided to make Banana Bread. It's moist and delicious. I'm making another one to freeze. Probably will bring out for Thanksgiving. MOIST BANANA BREAD 2 cups of all purpose flour 1 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp baking powder Sift ingredients together. Cream together the following: 1 stick butter 1 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 tsp salt Add 2 eggs 1 tsp vanilla extract 4 tbsp sour cream (which I left out!) Add flour mixture 6 small ripe bananas (bananas should be VERY ripe) OR 4 large ripe bananas Mix bananas into the flour/cream mixture. Spray cooking spray (or wipe with oil) on a bunt cake pan or bread pan.. Pour mixture into pan. Bake in a preheated over of 350 degrees for 1 hour. Enjoy! Jyotsna

Tuesday's Table: Sun Tea

It is raining outside today on October 18th. We can't see the sun, and the leaves on the tree's are turning a bright and satisfying yellow. This means one thing only. The amount of sun the tree's have had is reducing and now the season of Fall or Autumn is upon us, regardless of it Fall has already come. It is here now, and today. We can't argue with Mother Nature. She sends the clear message irregardless of the calendar! We have been enjoying Sun Tea lately, and it was my way of making the Summer drag on by. As the crisp yellow leaves fell onto my yard this morning, I decided to give Sun Tea another try. I put cold water into the jar, added a big tea bag and set it out, in the rain, without any sun. In 1 hour, I had delicious tea. Just to prevent any bacteria from growing, make sure you put this in the fridge right away!

Enjoy! Jyotsna

My son

Cutting the apron strings wasn't supposed to be this hard. I hope this is temporary, but I don't know. My son doesn't want to live at home with me anymore. He's going to be living with his dad for 90 days, to give that a trail run. My heart is crinkled up. I want to go back to when he was a little boy, one who clung to my leg, and one who asked, "Can I ride Mommy?" and would hop on my foot to be carried around. Same little one gave me one of my many memories of being a mother when he was around 1 1/2 years old; after I held him over my shoulder and patted his back while saying "I love you", he patted my back too. The hardwood floor in our old house has scratch marks where he would run his little car back and forth, contemplating on important things like how fast the wheels could spin, or if he could make it to China sitting upon his tiny Matchbox car. We had those leisurely hours which seemed to go by very slow and purposeful, which now as he is angry at me, pass before my eyes as if to say,"Too bad, you didn't do well enough, or enough at all, and now you lost me". He's not a baby anymore. He's a young man, on the brink of manhood, and he doesn't respect me. He would like to tear at my heart with very bad words, reminding me that when he turns 18, he's going far away from his stupid mother. Mother.

Simple Living Sunday

My camera is away today, so I'm stuck with my old camera. I was fiddling around today and decided to make some T-Shirt Yarn, and I was impressed with the possibilities. I have quite a few T's that I'm planning on taking apart. They are shirts I can't really wear, nor do I want to wear. I stopped wearing T-shirts some time back. I'm too old to look good in them. I had thought I'd knit a rug for the bathroom, but maybe I'll make a dish cloth for the kitchen. The sky's the limit. I know one thing...you can't get something from nothing. My back is hurting after doing that spiral cut. Okay, here's what you do if you don't already know. Lay out your clean T-shirt and cut off the band at the bottom. Just cut into and begin a spiral till it's off. Then begin a spiral cut on your T, which will end up giving you a skein of worsted weight yarn. (Approximately). If you want to be specific, take your ruler and try to keep your yarn cuttings at about 1 inch or so. Measure every so often. When you have finished spiral cutting, you will need to do one more step before making a ball. Take your hands and gently stretch out your new yarn. Don't worry, it shouldn't break. Stretch out the new yarn until the sides curl in. This will also lengthen your yarn. If you do this, please share a photo of what you make! I'd love to see it. Sometime soon, I'll have a product knitted from this yarn. So keep in touch. Enjoy! Jyotsna

Fabulous Friday: 10 Things I Look Forward to on Friday!

10. Grocery shopping and a full fridge. 9. Only one more postal day for bills to arrive. When the light bill, phone bill and internet bill arrive, I start bleeding money. Ouch! 8. If's Friday! The weekend has begun. 7. Friday signifies the point in the week where I can start spending more time cooking fabulous meals! Yum! 6. Friday also is the start of the weekend where we watch tons of movies from Netflix. They stayed glued to Netflix, and I get more straight computer time! 5. Friday marks the time of the week when we have more visits with friends than any other day. 4. I love getting into a new book on Friday. I have the whole weekend to finish the book. 3. Less people cut through our neighborhood after Friday, making for a quieter weekend! 2. I finish more knitting projects on Friday. A hold over from my work weeks where the work needed to be finished before I could go home! 1. Date night! Well, if you're like me and you haven't had a date in a long while, it's a good night to soak in the bathtub!

Fall Break

It's Fall Break this week for my girls. We use K-12 for our homeschooling program and they don't need to give attendance, meet in class connect sessions or for that matter do anything. So what do they want to do when they don't have to do anything at all? READ!

Manual Monday: Magic Slippers

I knew I was going to post this pattern for baby booties the moment I saw it! SockPixie has a fairly simple pattern on her blog for the cutest baby booties I've seen. She calls them "Magic Slippers". I'm planning to make a pair too.

Manual Monday: Priya's Pink Hat...Finished!

On Manual Monday, I'll always share something I'm working on, or something I've finished. It could be knitting, sewing, or anything else that can be made on a machine, but I choose to make with my own hands. Today, I want to share the cute little hat that I salvaged from my daughter Priya. Priya did a pretty good job, but I had to fix some of her mistakes. Some were not completely fix-able. The hat looks really cute, and it's now ready to be sent to a sweet and deserving little girl. I think this hat will fit a two year old. At first when Priya started, she was working to make a hat for her doll. She told me this after I started working on it. LOL! I put a cute pom-pom on it. Hope you enjoy. Priya is half responsible for this, and I am half responsible for this. Just wanted to give her kudo's for starting the hat in the first place. : ) Look for other things we are working on. My daughters attend K-12 virtual school (home school) and this is their fall break this week. I have a feeling that we will be busy making holiday gifts.

So even if you are a beginner, pick up your needles and start knitting. It's enjoyable to learn and to make things you can use. There is nothing more satisfying than knowing that someone benefited from your knitting! Jyotsna

Simple Saturday

Here's another Simple Saturday. After finishing the simple cotton knitted washcloth last week, I photographed it and thought it looked so pretty. It is, a great satisfaction when something simple has been accomplished. I was still able to spend time listening to my kids, visiting with friends and enjoying phone calls while knitting this little cloth. I'm make some more, in different colors, so that it won't be too simple.

Jyotsna

Simple Saturday's: Pie in a Jar

Doesn't that look fantastic? Sometimes the most enjoyable things come from the most simple ideas! Pie in a Jar is a great way to gift someone during the holidays. I think I will make one for everyone on my gift list. You can use canned pie filling (with corn fructose and worse) or make your own with natural ingredients. But more importantly, these cute little Pie's in a Jar will warm the hearts of those you love! So, the basic's are: Choose wide mouth jars. Butter the insides of the jar. Save the lids. Start by pressing pie dough into the jar. Cover the entire inside portion. Leave a "lip" of pie dough at the top. Fill with pie filling. Cut a circle of pie dough from the inside of the lid. Put the circle of dough in the jar on top. Fold the "lip" of dough over the top and shape with fingers. Don't forget to cut out a shape from the circle. A heart is nice. Your Pie in a Jar is ready! You can cook it right then, or you can freeze the pie. If you gift it while it's still frozen, your recipient can decide when he or she would like to cook it. Decorate the jar and attach a inexpensive metal fork to the jar....think dollar store. Add a homemade tag with some raffia. Share love!

Enjoy! Jyotsna

Thrifty Thursday: Mending Day

When I was a little girl, one of the first things my Mother taught me was how to darn a sock. She gave me a used light bulb and showed me how to put it inside the toe or heel of the sock. She showed me how to repair my socks. My dad had his special way which his grandmother had taught him. No matter what, the message was clear. Waste not, want not. My parents both grew up in the impressionable years of the depression. They were fortunate enough to have everything they needed, but wants were frequently dismissed. The families overall needs were more important that the wish to fill a personal desire. People never threw things away unless the use was completely exhausted. Making repairs to clothing and household items was very common. Sometimes it was a grandmother who spend her time mending, and other times the children were taught and everyone mended their own clothing. So when it came time to begin to instill these values into my children's minds, I was stunned at what I found. My kids have grown up in the throw away society. They have rarely gone without things they needed. Most of the time they have what the want, or at least some of what they want. My daughters when through a very upsetting stage when they were between 7 and 8 years old. They literally had so much that they began to break toys just for the fun. They didn't understand what it meant to "need" anything. I became very distraught. I knew I had to do something soon. I begin to talk to my daughters about our beautiful earth. I told them that they were responsible for teaching the world to take care of it. I gave them needles and thread, cloth, scissors and ideas. When something broke, I helped them repair it. I didn't realize until recently that it takes time to teach these values. They are doing very well with both appreciating their things, and helping to repair them when they break. Being thrifty means many things to many people. To me it means, "Reduce, reuse, recycle". It means, "Waste not, want not". It means, "Take what you need and return the rest to the earth". This is a darning egg which is placed in the heel or toe of a sock.

Darning socks takes practice. To learn how, practice following this pattern.

Most socks today are considered disposable. They are cheaply made and when they develop a hole, it spreads quickly. Hand knit socks will last longer and be more enjoyable to wear. This is a photo of a sock from Traveler's Yarn. If you would like to learn how to make hand knit socks, here's a link: http://www.weebleknits.net/socks.html

What about sewing buttons on? Buttons pop off all the time. It's good (when trying to be thrifty) to keep a small stash of buttons on hand. For goodness sake save those extra buttons that come with your clothing. You never know when you will need them. Mostly, you may end up using them on creation of yours! Even if you have to replace all of the buttons on your clothing, it's worth it if the outfit still fits and is in usable condition.

When I sew missing buttons back on my clothing, I get this really special feeling that little can bring. Learning how to replace a button will extend of life of your clothing. When clothing is both expensive and good clothing is hard to come by, repairing your clothing always makes sense. And even if you plan to send your outgrown and unwanted clothing to friends or charities, you will have a good feeling knowing that your clothes were in good shape when you shared them.

In closing, this is a very practical video with highlights how to darn a sock. I believe this is becoming a lost art. Grab a darning mushroom or light bulb and start darning! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nY1jTVyBE0 I hope you enjoyed this Thrifty Thursday! Jyotsna

Practical knitting joke on Julia Roberts....LOL!

Wordless Wednesday

Okay...I'm talking, but this is it. Ravi got into the All West Choir! : )

Tuesday's Table

We eat homemade foods mostly, and at our table. There is something very simple about eating basic foods together. One of the kids favorite foods is home made bread. Today I made a loaf of Sunflower & Flaxseed Bread which I served with dinner. It was very rustic looking, and very delicious out of the oven. Usually one of my kids will call out the ingredients while I combine things. So usually everyone helps, even though it's "Mom's Bread".

Rustic Sunflower Bread

1 1/3 cups water 2 tablespoons olive oil 3 tablespoons honey 1 1/2 cups bread flour - instead, double your whole wheat or use white flour 1 1/3 cups whole wheat bread flour 4 teaspoon vital wheat gluten 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon active dry yeast 1/2 cup flax seeds 1/2 cup sunflower seeds

Prepare your large bread pan with oil and then flour.

Oven: 400 degrees. Baking Time: 25 - 30 minutes.

Sift flours, salt, vital wheat gluten. Mix water, honey and yeast in separate bowl. After the yeast mixture has started to bubble, begin to mix in the wheat mixture. Add oil to wheat. I like to mix in half first, then add in the other half. You will end up with a fairly sticky dough.

Now add in your flax seed and sunflower seed. You will need to work the dough quickly. After it all is sticking together (you may need to use some extra flour if your dough is sticking to your hands), turn it out to a work surface (non-porous). I like to use my table because it is the right height for me to reach out with my hands and begin to knead the dough. For two or three minutes (or until it feels more soft), knead the dough. I like to grab the dough with both hands and squish it, then fold it over till I have the dough folded into a 1/4 shape. I've folded it four times, then kneaded it again. Place it back into your mixing bowl and place a cotton dish cloth over it. Leave it for 1 hour to rise. Check on the height of your dough from time to time. You want it to double.

Once your dough has doubled, remove it from the bowl and knead it all over again. Don't be afraid to work it fairly hard. I enjoy the way it feels in my hands. My kids actually think it's "squishy". Continue with the kneading and folding for 2 or 3 minutes.

Finally, shape your dough to the length and width of the bread pan, cover and allow to rise for 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Once your dough has at least doubled or tripled, you can put it in a pre-heated oven. I really like my breads cooked longer because I like the chewy crust. But if you want, you can bake your bread for 30 minutes then test. You should be able to tap the top of the loaf and get a hollow sound.

Slice and butter. Our breads rarely last more than the length of dinner! Enjoy!

What else is on my table?

I'm about to move this hat to double points to finish it. I'm planning to put a fluffy tassel on top. This hat will go to a child in need.

My original hand knit cotton wash cloths are getting worn out. I've been working on some new ones.

I'm trying to decide what to do with this Schaefer Yarn. It's beautiful. True confessions: I bought this 2 years ago as a birthday gift to myself. Here it still is! Please help me decide what to do with it. The color is Catherine the Great. Content: 78% Cotton, 22% Rayon. I've been a wool snob for most of my knitting years. Know I'm confused as to how to use it.

Thanks for stopping by to read! Jyotsna