Pumpkin Bread with No Eggs

I wanted to try a pumpkin bread with no eggs in it. I got a recipie from Allrecipies.com. This is a very good website for bread recipies and I have had mostly success with it. I made some modifications to the spice mix to suite to my taste (and the ingrediants that I have at my home). So here it goes.

Ingredients
0.5 cup chopped pecans
1.75 cups all-purpose flour
1 cups packed dark brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
1 teaspoons baking soda
0.5 teaspoon salt
1.0 teaspoon ground cloves
1.0 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cardomom
1 cups pumpkin puree
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup coconut milk
1/3 cup flaked coconut

Directions
1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour two 8x4 inch loaf pans.
2. Toast pecans in a saute pan until lightly browned. Set aside to cool.
3.In a large bowl, stir together the flour, brown sugar, white sugar, baking soda, salt, clove, cinnamon, and cardomom. Add the pumpkin puree, oil, and coconut milk, and mix until all of the flour is absorbed. Fold in the flaked coconut and toasted walnuts. Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans.
4.Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven, and cover loaves tightly with foil. Allow to steam for 10 minutes. Remove foil, and turn out onto a cooling rack. Tent loosely with the foil, and allow to cool completely.

Pumpkin Bread

Made pumpkin bread. Its called the downeast maine pumpkin bread. The link for the original recipie can be for from here. I modified it a bit to make it a little more interesting and spicy. Its more like a cake than bread. Came out very well.
Ingredients
1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup water
2.5 cups white sugar
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground Cardomom
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1.5 teaspoon vanilla

Directions
1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans.
2.In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared pans.
3.Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Concert by Grigory Goryachev (Aka Grisha)

Today, Myself, Anu, Deena and Peng-Fei attended a classical/flamenco guitar concert by Grisha. It was an amazing experience. A very talented and a genius of a guitarist. Got two of his CD's (with his autograph) and a photograph with him. A memorabilia that I will treasure. More about the guitarist at this link.

Asparagus Soup

So, we bought asparagus from the grocery store today. Harish told me that asparagus is used for soups. Since I had no idea how to make the soup, I search the internet for a recipe. The first two hits in google gave me recipes that invariably required something with meat in it. Then we got this link.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Fresh-Asparagus-Soup/Detail.aspx
The recipe has got rave reviews, so thought will try it out. We did not have vegetable broth and we had red onions instead of yellow onions. So we did make some change to the original recipe. This is the modified recipe.

1. Asparagus spears (one bunch)
2. Red Onion - 1
3. Yogurt - one cup (4-5 table spoons)
4. Salt and Pepper
5. One table spoon of vegetable oil.
6. Two table spoon of rice flour or all purpose flour.
7. Two table spoon of lemon juice.
7. Blender

All quantities are approximate. If you find something is less, add more of that ;-). If you think something is more, put in more water ;-).

Put the oil in a pan and as the oil heats up, put in the onion and wait till the onion turns light brown. Next put in the asparagus and let it cook for about a minute. Dont let the asparagus become brown. Then put in a 2 cups of water, salt and pepper according to taste and the flour. Let the mixture cook till the asparagus is cooked. Then in a blender, put in the yogurt and add cooked vegetables into the blender. Blend till you get a nice smooth thick mixture. Add the lemon juice at the end. Enjoy ;-).

Life

I will be graduating pretty soon and moving on to the next stage in life. Till now I had a clear goal in life, ie., to finish up my studies. That was pretty much my goal all through my life, as my parents were very keen on me completing my studies. But now that I am graduating and moving on to next stage in life (work etc), I have to seek new goals in life. The more I was thinking about the goals in life, the more I was thinking about life in general. I had a conversation with a very close friend of mine about this topic and that set into motion a through process that went on for sometime and this is what I could conclude.

The ultimate truth is that change is the only thing that is permanent in life. I have heard this statement, I have read books on it and I have thought about it. But I did not understand the implication of the statement until about 2 days back.

The day we are born the biological clock has started to tick. After every second, we are closer to leaving this world. There is no reason to believe that our stay in this world is permanent. All people who were born 200 years ago are no longer among us and 200 years from today I wont be alive*. After the initial panic of "realizing" this obvious truth, I understood that so many things in life that I take for granted is actually very precious that I cannot afford to waste. As a simple example, the breaths I take every moment in life. There is no joy in me for every breadth that I take. It is so "mundane" and common that suddenly it is no longer very interesting to enjoy the fact that I am alive and that it is actually a very nice feeling to experience each breadth in. There are few times when I am happy about the fact that I am breathing fine. I am sure as a new born baby, I would have been very happy (and relieved) to finally breath for the first time and fill my tiny lungs with life giving oxygen. When I workout or run for some distance, every breath I take after I stop excercising would be a very welcome experience. In my swimming class, when I was "drowning" in a five feet of water (I am almost 6 feet), the breadth after of air (instead of water) was very enjoyable. If I was suffering from cold and if the medicine relieves my blocked nose cavity, I would be very happy to breath normally. I am sure during the last days of my life, I would be happy for the fact that I am actually alive and breathing and scared of the thought that I might fail to take the next breath. Apart from these occasions, I do not think much about the fact that I am breathing normally and that I am alive.

If such a fundamental thing such as breathing is not permanent in life, then everything that we experience in life is not permanent. If we have such a thought process, so many simple things in life now suddenly become very interesting, important and a reason to celebrate. For example, simple things like the time that I spend with my friends, the joy of eating good food and writing my PhD thesis has now become moments to enjoy and savor.

This thought process brought me to a new state of mind. Every moment in life is precious and reason to be happy about. There is no reason to be unhappy in life. Because the very fact that I am living, is something that should be perceived with great joy. No matter in what situation I am in, I have to enjoy the moment. Because once the moment is gone, it never comes back. Our life is a journey in a one way street that terminates at the end. Dwelling on things that make us sad only takes away the time when we can be happy in this terminating journey.

Footnote:
*Medical science could alter the way cell grows and degenerate, making everlasting life a reality. Since that has not happened till now, and less likely to happen in my life time, I will assume that I am not going to benefit from it.

Egurukula

Me and my friend anand have started this website called egurukula.org. Its a website that is intended to see if internet can help technical education. This is the first version of the site. Hopefully students would find it useful. Depending on the feedback we plan to expand it further.

Not So Quick Sambar

My mom taught how to cook this version of sambar. I tried it out and found it to be really good. So thought it will be good idea to share it. Note that this sambar requires about 3 different vessels and a blender (Mixie). So it takes more time and effort to make than the quick sambar which i had posted earlier. But this tastes so much better than quick sambar that it is worth the effort.

The sambar described below will be enough for 4-5 servings. Things that are required:
1. Coriander seeds (Also known as meti seeds) - one cup
2. Dried Red Chillies - 8-10
3. Coconut - one cup
4. Onion - Diced one cup
5. Okra (Also known as ladies finger)- 2 cups
6. Tamarind
7. Dal
8. Salt

Fry coriander seeds and dried red chillies in 2 Tablespoon oil till the coriander seeds become brown in color. Put the fried mixture and coconut in a blender and grind it till it becomes a smooth paste. Cook Dal in a pressure cooker. In a seperate pan, fry onion in 2 table spoons of oil till it turns golden brown. Add Okra into it and fry it till its reasonably cooked and crisp. Add tamrind, salt, the cooked dal and the blended mixture into the fried onions and okra. Switch off the heat once the sambar starts to boil. You have a very tasty sambar!!.