It happens only in my kitchen..

I wanted to make palak paneer. Yes, you heard me right. I am not a great cook. I look into you tube or blogs for recipes and make it. In fact I learnt the basic rasam that way. I am still in my maternity leave na. So, I have lots of time at home, when baby sleeps.

Coming back to where I started palak paneer. When I googled I got sanjeev kapoors link. It was simple. Here is the recipe. The recipe was for 2 bunches’ of palak. But great me, took the proportion for one bunch. It resulted in too much of chilli taste. What did I do?? I looked at the second link. I introduced my own idea of adding potato to it. Oh, I forgot to say that I bought palak 2 days ago, it was half dry. And I forgot to buy paneer. So, I bought liter milk extra to make panner. But what will you get out of milk in water ( ya, my milk man doesn’t put water in milk but he puts milk in water. You understand what I mean na.) so, the quantity of paneer what I got was small. So, need potato to make it taste better.

So, after preparing the curry, I had to take another kadai. Start with oil, jeera again. Added onions this time. Fried the boiled potatoes in it and then added the first made dish to it. And my mom came into kitchen asked me,” you didn’t put kotamalli and karvepilai( coriander and curry leaves)”. So I added that also and made it a south Indian flavor.

Finally, the dish is ready. But in spite all efforts, the chilli taste dominates. But, my darling family is ready to eat my experiment.

Forgot to say, I am cooking a new dish every day. I am sure, all of you wondering why now. I realised that, my daughter is going to ask me, “don’t you know to cook this also?”. So, I am getting ready. What are you thinking now? What did I do all these days till I got my daughter? Ha ha ha.. Lucky me, had my MIL cooking for me and packing Dabba for me..

Blog links

Blog links. I know you are confused on the title. What I meant was how you got to know about so many blogs. The link chain. So, here I am going to tell, how I met so many good and sweet people. And also give their blog names with small description on it.

1. I totally forgot the first blog. I just remember the person. He used to post things on cricket and Sachin Tendulakar.
2. I found through orkut: shanta. She writes lots of imaginary stories and poems. I love reading them. At times I use to look into dictionary after reading the blog to find out the meaning of the new words I learn.( No wonder she topped with 97 marks in English in CBSE 10^th board exams. )I can feel the pain in her writings. My favorite poem is”the daughter of a whore”. I started crying after reading them.
3. From Shanta it was Aishwarya. She is one of her followers. So, I clicked on it on found out her blog. She writes about her life and events. She does post nice photographs.best part is that she is classmate and benchmate. Which I found out later.
4. From melborne mangai- it was boosbabytalk. I kind of found it at write time. when I was 6 weeks pregnant. She writes about her two daughters. I enjoy every post relating to Ashu and antu. They are really cute. You will know how beautiful life is when you have two daughters. In fact I got know more about pregnancy ,reading her childbirth story. More about epidural and things. It’s like you read about a topic from blog and go and Google more about it later.
5. From boosbabytalk, I found out my favorite R’s mom. This is when I realized the importance of mommy bloggers. You get to meet people who are managing their kids and jobs well. You can get tips and relate to lots of things. It has become a ritual to read her blog every day.she write about everything and anything, more about her beautiful daughter R. I just can’t say that this is my favorite post. Everything seems interesting there. Still I like the picture of R with the broom stick.( Harry potter style).
6. From R’mom , I found out pepper. Pepper too writes about life. I like the fact that she is honest in her writings. Not everyone in this world would accept that they are lazy or just write their heartfelt true opinion. People kind of be diplomatic, subtle about true themselves. But she is brave girl/lady.
7. Then I found out tharani, Sugar and spice, chatterbox recently. I am still reading their posts. It would take time to write about them.
8. Hey just then I realized that I am reading blogs of women writers. Oh my god, I am not a feminist. I do read blog written by a man. ragesh writes about mathematics and life. He tries to merge both of them. He finds logic and calculations behind everything. The link is that he is my best friend.
9. There is another cooking blog I read. It’s" quest for foodie". There is no link here, as she put her new post a gtalk status message. Hence I get to read her new post. She is basically into cooking. She writes about her cooking experiments and recipes. She posts really lovely photographs of her work.

So, this is how, I found out all the blogs. I am sure to find more and more blogs through the above blogs.

How to get more readers to ur blog?

I am sure most of them would have done this or know this. But still, I am writing it for benefit of people who don’t know.

• Basically you need to write good stuff. (don’t be angry for this point. Just at times it is essential to write key points also)
• If you have lots of friends, do tell them about your blog.
• Read others blog and comment on it. It will make them read your blog.
• Become a follower of somebody; in turn ask them to become your follower.
• Register in blog forums.
• Write about current issue; make sure that you enable your blog for Google search option. So people find it.
• If you have your blog in your name, which is unique. Then people can trace it from Google, if they search for you.
• Put the blog URL on ORKUT,FACEBOOK etc etc, for more publicity
• Ask your co-bloggers to write about you and give link of your post in their blogs.

Hope the tips were useful. In case you have more ideas, please do let me know.

Blog tips

According to me, following things would attract readers like me.. please note that this is my personal opinion. It’s not based on any study or survey. It is just a view.

• Back ground has to be preferably plain and doesn’t merge with the blog text. At times background is more dominating
• Text chosen has to be a nominal size, legible font. At times people use too many cursive fonts , that it’s difficult to read
• Blog roll: incase there is a blog roll, make sure that the latest once are on top. So, you will get to know the active members immediately. As I feel, you will get latest opinion from them and encourage them to write more.
• Pages: I think there is problem with adding pages. You cannot write more than one post in the second page. So, people who add more page have to give links of the post. But generally I see people using pages instead of labels.
• Labels: I feel it’s an attractive and useful feature. You can pick read your favorite topics. So don’t forget to put labels for the post.
• Search option: I think this feature is available in wordpress. This is also a nice feature helping people to locate a post which is their favorite
• Post: there are two kinds of people. People who like short , crisp points. People who like long reads. So, I can’t comment on content or the length. So, just make sure that people come and read your blog again.
• Comments: make sure that you reply for all the comments. It keeps the interest of people commenting. You should appreciate their effort. It’s just that they are not reading, but taking efforts to share their views.
• Add few picture once in a while to make it more interesting.

In case you want more people to follow your blog, wait for the next post. J

contest!!!

Its celebration time.. My blog’s birthday is coming up.. i thought of celebrating it with all of you with a contest..

TOPIC: WHAT BLOGGING MEANS TO YOU

LAST DAY:5-09-2011

VOTING LAST DAY: 7-09-2011

RESULTS: 8-09-2011.

All of you can write and give the link to this post as comments. I am not the judge; it’s going to be all of you. After 4-09-2011, you will be asked to vote for the best post. Based on the maximum number of votes, you will win a logo and title. I am not offering any gifts :). As you might have to reveal identity and give address all that. I hope you agree with that.. J