Happy Easter

Grape Squash

Surely, you  are going to be an addict of this grape squash recipe. It is good for health. Especially for kids. 

Ingradients :

      Seedless black grapes   - 1kg

      Sugar                            - 1kg

      Citric acid                     - 1 tsp

Preparation: 

Cook covered. After boiling, keep the flame on simmer for 10 more minutes.

Prepare sugar syrup. In a vessel take sugar, add water till the heaped sugar level. Keep the flame on low. Stir in between. When sugar syrup boils, makes sure that the sugar is well dissolved. Let it boil for 1 more minute or till it reaches slight thicker consistency. 

Allow it to cool. Grape squash is ready. 

Transfer it to air tight bottles and refrigerate. 

You may add few ice cubes while serving. 

It is also very tasty when we use  soda instead of water. 

Neeru Dosa

Last week, I soaked raw rice to make batter for Appam. But I didn't have enough quantity of grated coconut. So I kept the soaked rice in fridge and prepared Neeru Dosa in the next morning. As the name indicates, it's batter is of little  watery consistency. It is a tasty variety of 'Dosa'.

Neeru Dosa with tomato chutney

Ingradients

   Soaked raw rice - 1 cup
   Cooked rice - 2 tbsp
   Coconut - 3 tbsp
   Onion sliced - 1/2 of a medium one.
   Salt - to taste

Grind the ingradients well using enough water. Keep the consistency little watery. Pour the batter into a vessel. Add few drops of cooking oil and one sliced onion into the batter.  Heat a pan. Keep on medium flame. Grease the pan lightly with oil. Pour one ladle of batter in the pan (this includes the sliced onions). Don't spread the batter with the ladle. Instead, rotate the pan holding the handle so that the batter spreads uniformly to make a round shape. 

Neeru Dosa in the pan

When preparing dosa, after spreading the batter on the pan, I usually cover the pan with a lid and removes it just before turning it. When one side is done, turn it and cook for few more seconds. (I use gingelly oil for this preparation. Before turning the dosa, I sprinkle very few drops of gingelly oil on the dosa.)  Serve it hot with tomato/coconut chutney. 

Happy cooking....

After a long gap of 28 Years...!

Victory lap by Team India

India won the ICC World Cup in Cricket after a long gap of 28 years.  It was a fantastic final between Sri Lanka and India. Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni ended it up with a magical sixer when 10  balls were remaining. Dhoni selected as the Man of the Match and Yuvraj Singh as the Man of the Tournament.

Indians started celebrations in every possible ways around the world... At last, a dream came true... 

Hipster Doily

I tried another doily. Rachel Choi's Hipster Doily pattern.  Nima suggested me this site after my last  attempt of doing a doily.  I think these are far better than the first one. I would like to do the Hipster doily's larger version soon, and try to correct the mistakes in my first doily.

Hipster Doily

Hipster doily - Zoomed in

My First Simple Doily

I got a simple doily pattern from http://ashleymisiak.webs.com/apps/blog/. For the first time when I crocheted, it was a tragedy. This is my second attempt. There are many mistakes. Not that much happy with the outcome. 

The following was the code for the doily pattern. 

1. Round1: ch 8, sl st to first ch to form a ring. (8 ch)
2. Round2: ch 3 (counts as 1st dc throughout) 19 more dc into ring, sl st totop of ch 3. (20 dc)
3. Round3: ch 3 (counts as 1st dc and ch 1 throughout) *dc in next dc, ch 1. Repeatfrom * around, sl st to top of ch 3. (20 dc, 20 ch)
4. Round4: ch 3, dc in next ch-1 sp *dc in next dc, 2 dc in next ch 1 sp. Repeat from *around, sl st to top of ch 3. (60 dc)
5. Round5: ch 3 *dc in next dc, ch 1. Repeat from * around, sl st to top of ch 3. (30dc, 30 ch)
6. Round6: ch 3, dc in next ch 1 sp *dc in next dc, 2 dc in next ch 1 sp. Repeat from *around, sl st to top of ch 3. (90 dc)
7. Round7: ch 3, *dc in next dc, ch 1. Repeat from * around, sl st to top of ch 3. (45dc, 45 ch)
8. Round8: ch 3, dc in next ch 1 sp *dc in next dc, 2 dc in next ch 1 sp. Repeat from *around, sl st to top of ch 3. (135 dc)

First time, when I did it, everything was fine till  4th round. But when the 5th round was finished, I was much disturbed. It was supposed to have only 30 double crochets, but there were more than 90.  Kept all the tools aside. Next day, decided to do it again. The code says -  Round5: ch 3 *dc in next dc, ch 1. Repeat from * around, sl st to top of ch 3. (30dc, 30 ch) -  The gap between the double crochets were not formed when I did this. After dc in next dc, ch 1 I left one chain space  before doing the next double crochet. Then only I got the gap there.  Is it correct? The actual pattern was  of 8 rounds. Since I felt it too small, I added two more rows. Till 8th round, there were no fringes formed. But when added the last round, fringes began to appear. Experts please comment on this.

A Crocheted Birthday Gift......

This is a birthday gift for my  my friend's daughters. A grany sauqre drawstring purse. I got this pattern through ravelry.com from http://yellowpinkandsparkly.blogspot.com/. Made five granny squares first. Then joined them to form a box with an open top. Five rows were added on the top of the box. Made a double crocheted string and passed it though chain space of second row from the top. After the box was finished, it took few days to work again on it. At last, it is finished.....

The original design was supposed to do with granny squares of five rows size. But I  made it with six. So, my drawstring purse is bigger than the original pattern. 

The box is finished...

Can be used for storage...

One more row to finish...

And the final product...

Crocheted Hearts

I have....... one.. two...three.... hearts now.  Got it?  I did these crocheted hearts few weeks back. I got this pattern from planetjune.com.

Crocheted Little hearts

Crochet Fever...

During last week, we (me and my friend)  were in great enthusiasm thinking about learning Crochet. I tried knitting first, but lack of helping hands forced me to drop the idea. After dreaming of crochet for more than few months, we did some shopping to collect the essentials for crochet practice from the Mazoon Shopping Complex  in Ruwi. We bought some threads and crochet needles from there. Though we had a little knowledge about the materials needed, the shopper also helped us to choose the things. He might have thought of us mad, when he came to know that we are going to learn crochet and buying all these things.... No problem... we are ready to try Crochet... The main strength behind this thought is that we will get enough support from Nima & Ninu Jacob and also can make use of various video tutorials available in different websites and Youtube.

Anyway, there is nothing in having a trial. If it is success, we will continue doing it.  When I tried the chains and slip stitch,  I was greedy to do the Granny Square. And after some trials, the attempt was successful. Above is my first Granny Square.....There may be mistakes, but can improve...

Granny Square

Few more rows added...

Crocheting Circles

Sakroo is Coming...

INFORMATION IS FOR EVERYONE

Sakroo.com is a business search engine exclusively for Sultanate of Oman developed by Dgtal World LLC. There are more than 7900 companies listed in the site. Soon, sakroo will cover services such as sales, exhibitions and events. Sakroo Farm, which lists all the companies on the Google Map is another attraction of the website.  There are search options on bank, trading, hotels, colleges, tickets, beauty, food court, auto, oil field, shopping, NGOs etc in sakroo. You can search by company name, based on area/city.