Lines I like

The bad times aren't in any pictures, but they're the ones that take you from one good snapshot to the next.
-- Forget the movie this is from

Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.

From Woody Allen quips

* “To you I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition.” – from Stardust Memories

* “Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.” – from A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy

* “To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But, then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness — I hope you’re getting this down.” – from Love and Death

* “Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought — particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things.” – from Side Effects

* “Talent is luck. The important thing in life is courage.” – from Manhattan

* “You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.”

* “Love is too weak a word for what I feel – I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F’s, yes I have to invent, of course I — I do, don’t you think I do?” – from Annie Hall

* “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.”

* “It’s not that I’m afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” – from Without Feathers

Light up the sky...

Even after all this time the sun never says to the earth, "You owe Me."...
Look what happens with a love like that,
It lights up the Whole Sky.

~Rumi

Smart vs. Stupid!

Smart critiques.. stupid creates!

Smart has the plans.. stupid has the stories :)

Smart has the brains, stupid has the balls..

Meant to be ?

"There comes a point in one's life when one realizes who matters, who never did, who won’t anymore, and the one who always will. Not to worry about people from the past...there’s a reason why they didn't make it to the future…"

Kahlua coffee cupcakes!

Link to original post.

Notes:
Makes 12.
Add about half a cup semisweet chocolate chips to the batter, or while pouring to the pan. Anything with chocolate only makes it better!
-----------------------------

Preheat Over to 350, line cupcake pans with paper liners

Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
Pinch salt
1/3 cup Kahlua or coffee flavored liqueur
2 tsp instant coffee granules
¾ cups granulated sugar
1/3 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
2 egg whites
1/3 cup buttermilk (or 1/2 cup milk with a little lemon juice, let stand for 5-10 minutes)

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt (set aside)
2. In a small bowl, whisk together Kahlua and instant coffee (set aside)
3. In a bowl, using an electric mixer, beat together sugar and butter until light and fluffy
4. Add egg whites one at a time, beating after each addition
5. Alternately beat in the flour mixture, buttermilk and liqueur mixture, making three additions of flour and one each of the buttermilk and liqueur, beat until smooth
6. Scoop batter into prepared cupcake pan (about ¾ of the way full)
7. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until tops of cupcakes spring back slightly when touched.
8. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes then cool completely on wire racks.
9. Make sure cupcakes are completely cooled before frosting

Coffee Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
3 cups confectioners sugar
Pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp instant coffee granules
1 tsp hot coffee
1 tsp Kahlua or coffee-flavored liqueur

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, using an electric mixer on low speed, beat together butter, sugar and salt until well combined. Increase speed to high and beat until light and fluffy. Add vanilla, beating until frosting is smooth
2. In a small bowl mix together coffee granules, hot coffee and liqueur. Stir until coffee granules are dissolved. Let cool completely
3. Add cooled coffee mixture to butter mixture, beating until smooth, creamy and well mixed. You will need to scrape down the sides of the bowl several times while mixing
4. Spread icing over cooled cupcakes

How it feels ..

.. to not feel like you have entered a room till he looks at you, touches your hand, even makes a joke at your expense. Lets everyone know you're with him. You're his..

(from P.S. I love you)

So much struggle for meaning, for purpose. And in the end, we find it only in each other. Our shared experience of the fantastic and the mundane. The simple human need to find a kindred. To connect. And to know in our hearts... that we are not alone.

~ Heroes

the Cycle of life

Perspective on life according to George Costanza:

"The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A death. What's that, a bonus?!?

I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you go live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, go collect all your super, then, when you start work, you get a gold watch on your first day. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You drink alcohol, you party, and you get ready for High School. You go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last 9 months floating with luxuries like central heating, spa, room service on tap, then you finish off as an orgasm! Amen."

Banana nut bread

Ingredients:
1/2 cup honey (or little less than 1/2 cup sugar)
1/3 cup vegetable oil (can substitute with 1/2 cup butter)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2.5 bananas)

1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped nuts (walnuts, pecans, etc)

1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup water

Preheat oven to 325 degree F
Beat the honey and oil to mix in a big bowl. To this add eggs and beat together.
Add the vanilla essence, and mashed bananas and mix well.
Stir in flour and salt to the wet ingredients.
In a small cup heat the water, add baking soda to this, stir immediately and add to the batter.
Stir in chopped nuts to the batter.

Pour into a greased 9x5 pan.
Bake for about 55-60 minutes. Cool completely before slicing.

Mujadara recipe

Courtesy: Sheeth

Ingredients:

1 cup washed rice

1 cup lentils

3 spoons Olive oil

5 cloves garlic, sliced

1 spoon pav bhaji masala (or cumin powder + black pepper powder)

2 big onions (thinly sliced)

1.5 spoons sugar

salt

Procedure:

Heat 1.5 spoons olive oil in a non-stick pan (low flame). Add 1/2 of the sliced onions and 1 spoon sugar and saute for a minute. Then, let it be there on a low flame with sauteing every once in 5 minutes, until it caramelizes.

Heat lentils in water until water. Turn off the stove when water starts boiling and let the lentils be in it for a while (5 min or so)

Heat 1.5 spoons olive oil in a rice cooker (on the stove in medium flame). Fry garlic and onions in it until they turn light brown.

Add the half-cooked lentils, salt, sugar (1/2 spoon), pav bhaji masala, 2.5 cups water and remove from flame.

Cook this mixture in a rice cooker.

Add the caramelized onions to the rice mixture as soon as it gets cooked.

As tempting as it would be to get lazy and not make the caramalized onions, please do. It offsets the taste of the rice beautifully, and is a no-can-do-without!

Rasam!

A fairly simple recipe for Rasam.. sans any off-the-shelf rasam powder!

Courtesy: Vijaya

Ingredients:
Rai (mustard seeds), Uluva/Methi (fenugreek seeds), Red chillies
Tomatoes, Ginger, Garlic, Jeera (cumin seeds)
Tamarind
Hing (asafoetida), Black pepper powder

Grind the tomatoes, ginger, garlic and jeera to a paste. Add just a little hot-water to the tamarind and 'mush' it with your hands, to effectively get tamarind paste/water. Add this to the ground tomatoes.

Vaghar (saute) in oil the rai, methi, and broken red chillies (and optionally, curry leaves). Add the tomato-tamarind paste to this, and bring to a boil.

Add the hing and black pepper powder. Optionally add fresh-cut dhaniya (corriander/cilantro) leaves.

Variations:
-- The recipe as above is a good drinking-consistency, perfect for cold winter evenings!
-- If you prefer to have it with rice, to give it a little body, you can cut about 1/3 of the tomatoes and grind the rest.
-- To thicken the consistency, and add to your proteins, add boiled tuvar daal to the recipe above (add it to the saute mix, before bringing to a boil).