My Other Passion........

I am not a good cook, just manage to cook for the sake of my foodie family. Many fellow bloggers were of great help in this. Hundreds of  times I have opened their pages to go through their version of recipes.

I am not a foodie, in fact a very bad eater. I can eat anything without taste also(my hubby's version).

I started this blog to share my passion for crafts with all of you. Earlier I use to be lazy and did not give much importance to my creations because creating them was part of my existence. Very recently I've started to take it seriously and am trying to post most of the things I create.

By now you all must be wondering...............what is it with all this ranting. Well, I shared one of my passion but did not share my passion for healthy and nutritious food. I like to cook healthy food and in healthy manner. Few days back while searching for some cooking methods, I came across many things which I did not know or follow (ignorant me!!!). This got me started. I decided to store them somewhere and what better way than to have it on my blog.

From today onwards, every Thursday, I'll be posting some healthy cooking tip/method/blah blah on this blog. I know you must be knowing them already. So, your expert comments are welcome and I'd love to read them and improve my cooking ways.

Today I'm starting with a recent fade; I have suddenly seen a spurt in number of pro-biotic food items available off the shelves. Everybody is suddenly adding one bottle in their daily diet. Mothers are happy to feed their kids one of these products because they enhance immunity. Very true. They improve our immunity,  but we were always using the benefits of bacterias(pro-biotics). A very simple example is: Curd.

Now I come to the point: How does they help in improving our health and what all we can eat for this.

A good and natural way to introduce pro-biotics in food is fermentation. Some benefits of fermentation are:

• Increases the taste and flavours.
• Increases antibodies which fight with infections.
• In case of curd, fermentation converts lactose of milk to lactic acid, which is easily digestible by our body.
• Some fermentations improve antioxidants in food and we all know their benefits.
• Fermentation improves essential vitamins, nutrients in food and even generates new nutrients. E.g. When we ferment dough, its vitamin B content improves drastically.
• Bacterias form a natural shield in our intestine and thus inhibit pathogen growth inside.

I prefer Curd, home made Bread, Idli, Dosa, Uttapam, Dhokla and sometimes Bhature etc. to add bacterias in my cooking than gulping down a bottle of probiotic.

Hope you find this information useful.


Shalini

Linking this to: Colours Dekor the weekly story 
Image taken from Internet.

Papermache Babushka doll

We (me and 'C') had made a papermache babushka doll long time back but somehow did not post it.
Here it is:

Used a balloon as base for papermache and added one cardboard ring as the bottom to let it stand. Though I could not draw nice features ('C' says it looks somewhat angry), we still love it.



Shalini

Linking this to : Colours Dekor the weekly Story

Happy Onam.....

Shalini


(Image taken from smsnshayari.com)

Repurposed Pouch

'C' was in need of a colour box to store his crayons. I did not want to give him a normal pencil box or a plain plastic box. I wanted something where he could properly store his crayons and easily handle them also. After much brainstorming, I suddenly remembered a pouch which was lying unused for quite sometime and decided to change it according to his needs. Here is original pouch from inside:

 

 I removed pocket and elastic band and added another band for his crayons.

 

(Did not have a black band, anyway white is looking good.)

 

All inside neat and safe. I plan to change its outer maroon piping also, but that will happen some other day. Hope he is able to use it properly.

Shalini

I'm linking this to :

Transformation Thursdays.

The ShabbyNest

Story Telling

'C' had a story telling competition in school on Saturday. I found an easy (yes, because he had to memorize it) story here. Used puppets as props but problem was having a background for puppets. After toying with whole lot of ideas, decided to give him a background on a chart hanging from his neck. We made two fish and one picnic basket. 'C' painted a rock, shell, boot and sea weed which we pasted on the chart in a manner that top area of all of them was unpasted(red fish had to hide there).

Story goes like this 'Big blue fish is hungry and calling small red fish. Red fish is afraid that big fish will eat it so tries different places to hide, but every time big fish can see her tail. And finally while hiding inside the boot, red fish is unable to escape and comes to know that blue fish is having a picnic and want her to have picnic with her.'

Here is a pic:

(Cropped his face).




Shalini

Linked to Colors Decor 'The Weekly Story'

New Kurta

I stitched a kurta(Top) for myself few days back. Though this is not one of my best creations (I have stitched so many in some 10-12 years but do not have pictures of them). I team it up with a white churidaar and white dupatta. Here are pictures of my creation.

Front view of the kurta

This one is back side...

 

Closer view of the neck.

 

Shalini

Another Glass Painting

I recently painted one more ganesh on glass. Have a look.

Shalini