Rice And Curry

Sri Lanka is known for her warm hospitality and great food.The staple food of this beautiful island, is rice, which is accompanied with a wide range of curries,vegetables, pickles  and green leaves.No one could resist a  plateful  of  scrumptious delicacies.As hungry as I was,I  just couldn't  dip into the food without first taking some pictures of what I was going to eat.


A plate of rice with a variety of vegetables and curried fish.The vegetables you see are curried beetroot, lentils,  green leaves,thallana-battu  (Thai eggplant ) cooked spicy fish and fried pappadams,a crispy, savoury cracker.The best part of the whole thing is , you use your right hand fingers to mix a little bit of the rice and curries,take a morsel of the mixture and shove it ( not too roughly)  into the mouth.Hmm..And when munching, you get the real taste of all the goodness of the fiery spices and the flavourings of all the herbs.You got to taste it, to feel it!

My goodness! I still cannot believe that I had actually cleaned up the plate.

Learning From Recipe Books

I am thankful to two of my dear friends back at home for gifting me recipe books to take with me when I stepped onto a new threshold .I didn't have any formal training in cooking .I learnt the basics just by watching my mother cook for us.Later with the help of the recipe books which my friends gave,one was given to me as a wedding gift and the other was given to me as a farewell gift.And with a little bit of this and that ,I soon learnt the techniques of fine cooking.Some of the dishes from the recipe books have become my favourites too.

Spicy Mango

When the mango season is on ,we love to try a variety.The other day my husband bought some juicy looking ones from the grocer and my daughters wanted to try them straight away.But unfortunately though outwardly they looked so deliciously juicy ,once we had the skin peeled ,they didn't taste sweet at all. Oh! Dear! The children were thoroughly disappointed.I didn't want these mangoes to go to waste.I told my children that I would make them something surprisingly good.I made them an 'anchar' a spicy pickle , with the unsweetened mangoes.Do you want to know how easy making that recipe was .I sliced two big mangoes and cut them into bite size pieces. Into this, I added some red chilly, salt ,sugar and vinegar.That was it! they really enjoyed.While preparing this ,I remembered my own childhood days when my siblings and I would sit under the mango tree in our garden and eat the unripened fruits sprinkled with lots of pepper and salt.

Food For Thought

Sometimes we wonder, "What did I do to deserve this?" or "Why did God have to do this to me?" Here is a wonderful explanation! A daughter is telling her Mother how everything is going wrong, she's failing algebra, her boyfriend broke up with her and her best friend is moving away.

Meanwhile, her Mother is baking a cake and asks her daughter if she would like a snack, and the daughter says, "Absolutely Mom, I love your cake."

"Here, have some cooking oil," her Mother offers.
"Yuck" says her daughter.
"How about a couple raw eggs?" "Gross, Mom!"
"Would you like some flour then? Or maybe baking soda?"
"Mom, those are all yucky!"

To which the mother replies: "Yes, all those things seem bad all by themselves. But when they are put together in the right way, they make a wonderfully delicious cake! "

God works the same way. Many times we wonder why He would let us go through such bad and difficult times. But God knows that when He puts these things all in His order, they always work for good! We just have to trust Him and, eventually, they will all make something wonderful!

God is crazy about you. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning.
Whenever you want to talk, He'll listen. He can live anywhere in the universe, and He chose your heart.
Source -Email

Potato Contains Solanine

Another interesting article caught my attention today.I don't know, but you could have read it too.Reading through the  contents made me sick already.Who would have thought that the potato we have all grown in love with , has a disturbing  secret to reveal.Did you know that the green part of the potato is poisonous? The greenish hue of the potato namely the leaves,stem and green shades on the potato contains a natural toxin called solanine.This bitter  poisonous crystalline  alkaloid  is part of the plants defenses against insects,diseases and predators.These should be avoided at all costs.The article further mentions ' salonine develop in potatoes when  spuds are subjected to light or very cold or warm temperatures.It interferes with the  body's ability to use a particular chemical  that facilitates the transmission of impulses between cells' When eaten in large quantity ,it can cause vomiting,diarrhea,headaches, and even paralysis in the nervous system.The next time when cooking potatoes, discard any potatoes with green eyes,sprouts or greenish skins.

Curried potatoes

 Cooking With Potato