Jewellery Chest - Popsicle / ice stick craft

Got boosted by the reward yesterday. So sat up and made this beautiful jewellery chest to treat myself.... :-)

Easy fun project for kids.

 

This is how I made it

Materials :

1.  Popsicle sticks
2. Fevicol
3. Velvette cloth
4. Embellishments using pearls, chamkis etc
5. Glass colours
6. Gold glitter glue
7. Zari border

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Step :1 :  For the base, arrange sticks like this :- (make - 2) one for base and other for lid

Step 2 : Place one stick on top and one at the bottom as shown in the pic (do this for both pieces)

One piece keep for lid (that is over. only decoration need to be done)

The other piece use for base & proceed as shown in the following pictures.

similarly arrange sticks two vertical over lapping the end place two horizontal - alternatively by applying glue on the ends till you get the desired height.

Once the box is ready, decorate it with the decoration materials.

 

 

Chest is ready to hold your treasures :-)

Awesome Blogger Award from Usha Srikumar

Received a sweet surpirse to day. Another boost to keep me hooked here! 

"Awesome Blogger" award from Usha Srikumar of "Usha Srikumar's Musings"

Thank you Ushaben :D

Sharing some of my favourites

1. Favourite City : Pune
2. Favourite Food : I am foodie so difficult to point out one dish
3. Favourite Humorist : Innocent
4. Favourite Season : Monsoon - which turns everything green & full of life
5. Favourite Flower : Love them all
6. Favourite Colour : All cool colours 
7. Favourite quote : Love n respect should be earned.

Now comes the joy of sharing. With a passing this award to my blogpals.

1. Sonia of Cards, Crafts and Kids Projects - who has already got many laurels and this is another feather in her cap. Most deserving blog. The beauty &  finish of her projects are so charming adding to crystal clear tutorials.
2. Sudha of Sudha Out of the Box - a multi talented crafter. Her blog speaks more than my words.
3. Anitha of "Working Mom's Endeavor to domestic success"   my new creative blogpal.
4. Riya of Colourful Butterfly - she is a colourful butterfly letting her magical fingers run all through her house which reflects in her blog. A young blood among my blogpals.
5. Aruljothi Karikalan of Creative Hall - a versatile blogger on various interests, enthusiastic crochetter, who does things with a neat finish

Congratulations Sonia, Sudha, Anitha, Riya, Jothi, wish you many more laurels & best wishes and more beaming sweet moments in your life.

Happy Blogging to all !  :-)

Keerai Molagootal / Greens Gravy for Rice

Green leafy vegetables are packed with vital nutrients. They have dietary fibre, flavonoids, vitamins and minerals. Helps building immunity, improves vision, lower blood pressure, etc

Tamil Nadu is famous for the green leafy vegetables boasting proudly the varitey of them in its Nature's basket. My bird's brain could remember only 21 of them now. The part of India I am in now has only palak & methi are found in abundant. But this season luckily i could find some molakeerai so making the traidional dish called 'molagootal' & 'masiyal' as much as possible as palak & methi will not suit this purpose. Arai keerai, molakeerai, siru keerai are the main varities which suits the dish best, however you can use palak too for it. But folks, I am forced to make you dependant on google search engine to get their names in different languages. (some food for brain!) :-)

Molagootal is a preparation without tamarind & strong masalas. So a sathvik food. It uses coconut & lentil which adds to its nutritional value. Goes well with white rice. Since it is a mild gravy, usually the accompaniment dish would be a Pachadi or Arachukalaki which are either tamarind or curd based dishes.

Video Recipe is available in Mira's Akshaya Patram

Arachukalaki video recipe is here :-

How to clean & use the leaves? :-

Clean the spinach & wash them (if you wash after cutting, it looses its nutrients) cut till the stem turns out to be tender. discard hard stem portion.

chop them into two & keep ready. This dish uses coconut.

Ingredients :-

1. Green leafy vegetable - 1 bundle
2. Grated coconut - 1/2 cup
3. White urad - 1 tbsp
4. Red chillies - 3 to 4 nos (or as you prefer)
5. Cumin seeds - 1/2 tsp
6. Toor dal - 1/4 cup
7. salt to taste
8. Turmeric powder - 1/4 tsp (optional)
9. oil for tempering
10. mustard seeds

Turmeric powder : Why I had mentioned it optional is because some don't add it as they want the gravy to be in lovely green colour. Turmeric will leave an yellowish tinge. So if you want you can add else omit it.

Procedure :-

• Prepare the leaves as mentioned above

• In a vessel put the leaves, add 3 cups water & when starts boiling, cook for 15 minutes in low flame.See to that you retain the green colour.

• In the meantime, pressure cook the lentil (toor dal)

• Filter the water & preserve it.

• The leaves, spread on a plate & let it cool

• Roast the white urad & red chilli applying few drops of oil till they turn golden in colour

• In a mixer add the grated coconut, cumin seeds, red chillies, white urad & adding little water, make a nice paste.

• Grind the boiled leaves & stems coarsely.

• To the ground paste, add dal & the filtered water you preserved (in which the leaves are boiled) and bring to boil in a low flame by stirring in between.

• To this add the ground coconut masala, salt to taste, Turmeric powder , required water - check the gravy consistency & bring to boil. When the foam forms on stop, remove from flame.

• Heat oil for tempering, add mustard seeds. after they crackle, add it to the gravy, mix.

• Greens gravy AKA keerai Molagootal - our main dish is ready. 

Side dish suggestions :-

For this gravy, the side dish that suits best are puli inji / pulikachal (or) Puli / Thayir Pachadi (or) Pickle (or) salad (or. ) raitas / Vazhathandu pachadi (a variety of spicy sweet sour and salty gravy)

Now comes the most important part of serving :

To the hot white rice, add 1/4 tsp melted ghee, serve the molagootal on top........ and enjoy with the side dish of your choice.

Moongphali chat / kadalai sundal / Groundnut salad

Groundnut belongs to legume family and not a nut as the name suggests.  It helps to fight malnutrition, by providing 30 essential nutrients & minerals, no transfat.

So if your child is a poor eater, please go ahead and give this wondernut in various forms.

1. You can boil & give them in a chat form as I have shared here.
2. Roasted peanut with little salt sprinkled over it.
3. Soak it along with other ingredients of adai & make nice adai dosai
4. Make peanut powder chutney & use it as a side dish even for rice.
5. Make masala pea nut but if you bake it instead of frying it is very good for health.
6. Roast & coarsely powder peanut, add it to the dry vegetable dishes
7. Chikkis (burfi)

and many more recipes.....

As we are experiencing pre-monsoon showers, hot beverages & snacks are in our monsoon recipe list.

Sharing with you a  healthy & simple recipe to make a nice colourful  Nutritious evening snack.

Ingredients :-

1. Ground nut - 1 cup (Fresh ones)
2. Onion - 1 no. (finely chopped)
3. Cucumber -1 tbsp (finely chopped)
4. Carrot - 2 tbsp (grated)
5. Raw Mango - 1 tbsp (optional)
6. Green chilli - 1 no. (optional)
7.  Lemon juice - few drops
8. salt to taste
9. Coriander leaves -2 tsp (finely chopped)

Procedure :-

• Pressure cook the groundnuts with skin adding water & salt
• Remove the pearls & discard the shells
• To the pearls add chopped onion, cucumber, raw mango, grated carrot, finely chopped green chilli, coriander leaves, salt, lemon juice and mix well
• Yummy & nutritious snack is ready to eat.
• Tastes best when served hot. So keep all the other ingridients ready, steam the nuts. Then add the other ingredients, mix & serve hot. 

Serving suggestion :-

To make the snack more interesting, serve it hot by steaming the pearls so that it stays hot and keep the other ingridients ready to be added to the groundnut before serving.

If you don't have fresh ones, then you can soak the dried ones & pressure cook it.