Happ tummy Happy smiles

Making someone smile is important specially if this someone happens to be immediate family and close friends. However my family is so diverse that making everyone happy in one go is difficult.

But for me celebration time is all about having the entire family over to my place and let the fun times overflow.

In an attempt to bring a smile to the face of my loved ones I follow the adage that the way to a persons heart is through his or her stomach. People may forget anything that you do for them however they seldom forget lip smacking tasty and mouth watering food/meal. Tasty food is both the key to a persons heart and a challenge to make for the person who is preparing the food.

For instance when the elders sit and talk the snack that they prefer is spicy and garlic flavored snacks. So the snack to win everyone’s heart is Chilli Garlic Potato Bites.

 

Did I just say “So that is the snack that makes everyone happy” its true if I don't count the kids.

For the kids the snack to win their hearts is Aloo ki tikki.

 

Every time when my aunt comes over I have to make her favorite Super Wedges.

 

With this menu the snacks seem sorted out but wait….

The same menu every time? Not for my guests as Variety is the spice of life and the element of surprise keeps the excitement intact for every get together.

Initially the idea that I am willing to make a snack to suit every one in the family did get me the tag of the favorite /best host but at the same time when the bellies are full with the food The biggest question is, Is this food healthy?

What oil did you use to fry the snacks?

Here I must confess and share a secret that is that all snacks need not be fried. I must add to this statement that I have discovered a way to cook my snacks that is instead of frying I opt to bake them. Even when I am making a fried snack I have a secret recipe to make my snack cholesterol and trans fat free. So when I share the nutritional facts about the snacks that I cook the frowns turn into a smile

 

There are plenty of people out there who would be thinking that like a dutiful host I would be spending my entire day in the kitchen cooking one snack after the other. To this my friends I must share another secret that I spend no more then three minutes on any particular snack.

So be it

 Or

 

Or

 

or

 

or

or

 

or

 

or

or

 

or

I can put a snack on the table in a few minutes.

At the risk of sounding boastful I must admit that the longest I have taken to prepare these snacks is 3 minutes (This is the time for deep frying and for baking it is a 12 -15 minutes) and those who have tasted my snacks would vouch for the fact that my snacks taste just yummy.

You might say that I might be an expert cook or a chef who has expertise in cooking.

I must confess that neither am I an expert cook or a chef but a regular office going guy who just wants to keep his family and guests healthy,happy and smiling.

Instead of of having a magic wand or using some kind of magic I have a secret assistant called McCain

The secret I want to share is that my freezer has a few permanent residents that are packs of

McCain French Fries - Extra Crisp, Extra Delicious

 

 

 

 

 

 All these are tried and tested snacks to bring a smile on the faces of those who eat them

So when I go to cook a snack I just take out a pack of McCain and the best part is that there is no need to thaw the ingredients. I can just deep fry the contents of the pack and in about 3 minutes the snack is in a plate ready to be devoured by my guests.

In case I decide to bake my snack the process gets done in 12-15 minutes .Irrespective of the way I prepare the snack its taste turns out to be equally fabulous.

What reduces the freezer to table time for the snack is the fact that each McCain snack is Pre-cooked in Pure Vegetable Oil .

For someone like me who has a large extended family and whose house is always teeming with guests I could not be serving my guests the same above snacks over and over again throughout the year so I opt for variations

for instance the McCain Smiles can be turned into a fun sandwich

 

Aloo ki tikki can be turned into a Chapati Roll or wrap

Ihave discovered endless possibilities in turning these McCain snacksinto even more interesting recipes

 

 

 

In my experience the people who come over are either family, friends and neighbors and there is the unknown variety of guests who tag along or are the guests of our guests. Often there are those office seniors and the boss about whose food habits we seldom know much about.At such instances I pay heed to my grandmothers advice. When in doubt about what to cook then make something with

potatoes as potatoes are eaten all around the world and it is one of the most widely used food ingredient so I opt for a pack of McCain snacks that are made with potatoes.

I am still the person who cannot differentiate much between a screwdriver and a ladle.

Yet my snacks turn out just right every time.

So next time you have guests over you can always call me and I would gladly help you put together a snack on the table with the help of McCain

Or better still why don't you pick up a pack of McCain yourself and indulge in some healthy and quick snack making for yourself and for those you care about and get the credit of preparing a lip smacking snack.The satisfaction of bringing a smile through your food to the faces of those you care about is a reward in itself and the realization that you are cooking something healthy is a bonus.
http://www.mccainindia.com/

The real joy of togetherness

Life throws us into unexpected events all the time for me togetherness is that magic wand that prepares us to face life as it comes.

Those golden days of yore are no more when people had plenty of time to spare and share with their loved ones. This resulted in an impeccable bonding that was cemented fast with the glue of love caring and sharing and it was truly the real joy of togetherness. Over the passage of time and with the advent of new technologies specially the mobile phone time has become in short supply. It is not that the time has started moving faster as the clock still ticks at the same old rate but its only us the people who are so busy that we do not have the time to bond and connect with all those who matter,our loved ones, all those near and dear and our neighbors.

I still remember that when I was a child the members of our household had plenty of time to indulge in sharing of information news and various activity. The evenings were the most lively and interesting part of the day as I got to interact with my grandfather who was a cloth merchant. With the falling of dusk he came home and now it was time for me and him to spend some quality time together. These moments of togetherness when he shared the anecdotes of the day used to be the most prized moments for me that I still cherish to this day. As night fell it was time for my grandmother to tell me stories from the Ramayana. These moments were full of her love and caring for me.

In those days we used to live in the walled city of Delhi and the houses were so closely packed that had no space for a real garden. My grandfather was very fond of gardening and seeing my interest he ordered some pots and seeds. One evening when he came home I found a man accompanying him with a donkey in tow. On one side of the donkey was a sack full of soft yellow soil and on the other side were brightly colored earthen pot. He asked me to fill the pots with soft fertile soil which he had brought along with the pots. I still remember the touch of that soft cool soil as filled the pots with the soil that my grandfather had brought. He then took out a packet of seeds from his pocket and showed me how to plant a seed by making a small hole in the mud and putting a few seeds in it and then covering it with mud. The final step was to water the pot. He assigned to me the duty of watering the pots every day and advised me to be careful and not flood the pots with water .These were the first steps for me in learning how to grow and care for the plants. Now me and my grandfather used to tend to our plants everyday and he asked me to maintain a notebook to maintain and record the growth history of the plant. When I saw the green first leaves emerge out of the seeds I got very excited. I ran to my grandfather to give him the news.

Apparently it was an ordinary natural process but for me it was no less then shear magic unfolding before my eyes. In the beginning we were the only two tending to the plants but slowly we found all the family members gathering around us when we were tending to the plants. Everyone got involved in this gardening activity and this getting together was just like party time with lots of smiles and jokes being shared. As I grew up I moved out from the walled city now there was plenty of space but no time.

Life was now becoming mechanical and lacked the warmth of togetherness. Now I realized that my life was losing its touch with relationships. I thought that I must do something to change this and as I remembered my childhood days when gardening had connected the whole family together I went to the unattended plot of land in front of my house into a garden. Watching me work in this garden made the children of our family curious and soon they joined me in my endeavors. I found that our gardening team grew in leaps and bounds as the neighboring children too plunged into the activity. Once the children got involved their parents also pitched in. I found that this was a very good way of getting to know and interacting with the neighbors. Due to the combined efforts the plants bloomed and were loaded with fruits and flowers however for us these fruits were not the only reward. We were also rewarded in terms of experiencing the real joy of togetherness. Nature has helped us in securing a perennial bond

http://www.kissanpur.com/.

Look no further LG NEXUS 5X is here

I am a person who likes to be always connected with my friends and a good mobile phone is an essential tool that helps me connect with them. I like to party with my friends and go on outings and take selfies and pictures. My requirement was a phone that could do the perfect job of letting me chat with me friends as well as allowing me to click photos wherever and whenever I wanted.

Till now the greatest handicap that I face in using the mobile camera to take photos is that the dim light photos do not turn out as good as desired. There is a lot of picture noise and detailing is lost in the night shots. This left me frustrated as I was not able to capture all those priceless moments with my friends in the form that I wanted them to be.

Then I chanced upon the LG NEXUS 5X series phone. The features of this phone are like a wish coming true.

The phone is packed with features that I adore and find essential out of this long list the top three are as follows.

Firstly the processor is a Snapdragon hexa-core 128Ghz 64 bit processor with Adreno 418 GPU that ensures that the phone keeps running fast and smoothly for a very long time to come. I love phones with a fast and powerful processor as the processor and the GPU speeds determine the speed and responsiveness of the phone. A hexa-core would help me multitask and switch between apps with ease. It would also make sure that I have plenty of processing power irrespective of the fact that I may be using an app,taking pictures or playing a game.

Secondly The Camera with Rear: 12.3 MP²; 1.55 μm; f/2.0

and Front: 5 MP camera makes it stand apart from the crowd. The 1.55 μm camera on this phone captures more light even in the dimmest conditions so even the low light pictures turn out to be sharp and detailed. This is indeed a feature that I find very attractive.
It not only clicks pictures and take videos but provides a beautiful interface to diplay ,search and share my images and videos according to the people,places and things in them. This friends is definitely very big advantage as most people would agree that searching for and locating a video or a picture that we may have clicked and stored on our camera can be a daunting task.
I interact with a lot of people in a day and invariably come across people who would just pick up your good looking phone and start browsing its content on the pretext of admiring the design or its features. Just imagine your boss picks up your phone and chances to find a message that is a gossip about himself.How awkward moment for you certainly. However if you are using LG NEXUS 5X you avoid facing such embarrassments and your content is safe from prying eyes. This becomes possible because of the Nexus Imprint security feature.
This is a fingerprint sensor for your phone that unlocks the phone only in response to your fingerprint.

So when the owner of the phone uses the phone this feature quickly opens the apps or the home screen in response to the owners touch. However the finger print lock prevents others to access your content without your authorization.
The fingerprint sensor is so placed that one need not do anything extra or special to use it. Its strategical location makes it possible to do a scan it just by putting our finger on the screen.
NEXUS IMPRINT has a feature that takes measurements each time you use the phone so with each use it just gets better and faster.
There so many more features in this phone but looking at these feature alone I can decide that this is the phone for me. It not only fuels my passion for recoing life in pictures and videos but makes it easy to search and share my prized possession that is the memories that I create with the media I record and most importantly my content is super secure thanks to the NEXUS IMPRINT feature built with a fingerprint scanner.

I am participating in #ChampIsBack activity at BlogAdda.com . 

TV is Personal Again

Quite often I think that there is someone running this universe however I get perplexed thinking as to why this some one who build the universe and all living beings gave me family members who have so different taste from me specially when it comes to choice of viewing TV programs. 

 The TV viewing has  becomes a constant battle of the remote .When I want to watch a cricket match my mom wants to see her favorite Soap, My Dad wants to view the news and my little sister wants to watch and sing along a music channel. I used to think that it is only my predicament however this is the story of every household from my neighboring Sharma Ji to the top floor Verma Ji the battle of the remote rules every household from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

Once upon a time not so long ago being able to record and playback the TV broadcasts used to be one of the items on my wish list. Those were the golden times when there were only a few channels vying for our attention. In those days of Yore I did manage to get some time to watch television. However with an exponential growth in the number of TV channels . My share of TV viewing keeps going down with the launch of every new TV channel. The funny part it even with so many channels around there is so little entertainment available when I have the time to watch the TV so the need of recording live TV has become an immediate necessity.

If I could record live TV then I would never miss a match as I could replay each match and view it at will. Like any cricket lover I would never miss a six hit by our Indian cricket team not would I miss out on any wickets that our team scalps.

As an ardent cricket lover who eats ,drinks and lives on cricket I feels pangs of depression when our team loses a match specially the big tournaments like the world cup. So playing back and viewing old match winning game replays would be very therapeutic and uplifting experience for me that would encourage me to record all the cricketing action where team India is involved.

I feel I would be able to help my mom a lot by using the recording feature as she would not only be able to watch the daily soaps that she misses while attending to the household chores. Also it would save her a lot of time if I could skip or fast forward the ads in her daily soaps.

I have tried dedicating songs to my friends in class however whenever the request or dedication is played the person invariably is not present to view the dedication. So if I record the dedication I can surely earn some brownie points with friends while I playback the recording.

Another very important thing that I would like to record and playback is old classic movies that I find are invariably scheduled at very odd times like way past midnight or during the day when I am not at home and free to watch them. Since their rerun does not happen too often the ability to record and playback the movies at a more suitable time would be a boon for an ardent movie admirer like me.

Now I have found a magic genie which has changed the whole scenario. No more the regrets for the missed telecasts due to lack of time or power outages .Now there are no ifs and buts. It is  a yes all the way and a smooth sailing for me with the new Tata Sky+ Transfer .With this tool in my hand I have become the blue eyed boy of my family who is like a media mogul who schedules and controls the entire program playback schedule filled with programs that we want to see and that too at our preferred time.

I am much in demand now as all my family members want to see one or the others favorite shows again or at a more convenient time. Now whenever me and my family members want it becomes a prime time for us and the TV plays only what we want to see.The even better part is I am no longer in need of the TV set to watch the recorder TV . I and my family can watch it on our own devices like the mobile, Laptop or the Tablet. Finally my TV is mine again

http://www.tatasky.com/transfer/

 

My Home a Vision Painted With Love

My home is not just a structure made with cement, concrete,steel and other building material that needs to be hid away with paint. It is not inanimate but a living thing throbbing with life and a reflection of the personalities of the members in my household.

All the individuals that live in my home  have distinct choices when it comes to choosing color styling and décor of our home. As far as the bedrooms are concerned they are designed and styled according to their choice, but when it comes to the dining room and the living room there comes the discord. There are arguments galore as all the members want their specific choices to be the preferred ones. No one wants to give in and it becomes a matter of hurt pride leading to a lot of tension in the air. As a solution we thought of giving everyone a chance by rotation to design and change the dinning room but the main deterrent was the cost involved as painting is not an everyday affair. After putting so much of labor and money we expect the paint to last a few years. Then we chanced upon the #PaintFinder from the Bed Bath & More website

It is a wonderful tool that lets you pick colors from a chart. Then applying the chosen color as a theme to a room helps us visualize the room to be painted. The best part is that no physical labor or expense is involved in this exercise. One can pick and change as many colors and themes as possible.

This is the closest one can get to viewing the coloring effect without having to spend any money.

Out of themes we can choose the themes that we like or design our own. Even though it may sound technical but in actuality choosing color and applying a theme involved only a few clicks. Even designing our own theme was very simple and the best part is that one can share the theme images and get opinions from friends. This opens up a world of opportunities and combined creativity brings out some astounding results.

 Pick a theme and then click on a color to try it out

One can also save the theme or share it with people and get their opinion

Pick a color

Apply it to a room to see how the colors  appear in a room

The interesting part was that each one of us came up with quite beautiful themes and shades to go with it. 

 My moms choice

My Sisters choice

My  choice

My Dad's choice

To democratize the selection process we decided to cast a vote to select the final theme and colors. However there was more surprise in store for us as we ended up voting for each other designs as we found each others design to be better then our own!

 

 

This led us to another situation that this time we were vying to pick each others designs. To simplify the matter we revisited the #PaintFinder from the Bed Bath & More website

section and together we created a new design ! 

 The final color selection  that we did together

Similarly we came together and decided on a color for the living room as well

We chose this color as the green gives us a feel as if we are connected with nature even though our apartment is in the middle of the concrete jungle.

Now when we sit together in the living room we all take pride in the fact that we have together created this new look.

“I am participating in the #PaintFinder activity in Association with BlogAdda & Bed Bath & More“

Celebrating Life with the maxfreshmoves

Dance is the ultimate form of relaxation and getting refreshed. Letting oneself go with the music makes you release the negative energies that tire and drain you. Both dancing and music are also very therapeutic as they not just help us forget the worries but also ups the levels of positive energies in our bodies. As we dance along a good song or piece of music we feel the flow of positiveness through our system. As we move about in a dance our heart pumps more blood that carries more oxygen to our entire body and we feel refreshed and revitalized. This is just the feeling That one experiences watching Allu Arjun dance and show his maxfreshmoves as Anushka Manchanda sings along. This may be the physiology that happens inside the body but it simple terms the experience is exhilarating and out of the world. Since one feels like listening to the song and watching the dance sequence again and again so it automatically falls under the category of addictive. The feet begin to to tap and the hands begin to move. It all happens so spontaneously that it is a moment to behold that celebrates life to the fullest.


I was in the mood to record and share my maxfresh dance move with my friends. As I played the music and was about to record my moves to be shared with the world. I got a liittle surprise. My aunt who was sitting on a chair suddenly started dancing to the tune of the maxfesh song by Allu Arjun and Anushka Manchanda. Seeing her age the last thing that I would expect from her is that she would break into a dance that too with such enthusiasm and vigor on a Allu Arjun song. The Music got to her and she started dancing. It is a high energy number and she improvised some very ingenious moves using the packs of Colgate Maxfresh toothpaste.In a span of over two minutes that the music played she dances non stop and gave quite a performance. By the end of the show I was truly impressed and amazed by the level of performance and energy showed by the lady at such an age. She mentioned after the dance that she is already feeling better . Her face was glowing with the satisfaction of having performed a dance so well.



“I am dancing for #MaxFreshMove activity at BlogAdda. If you are not blogging, you can join me by participating in this #MaxFreshMove facebook activity.”

Airtel 4G Better then Buy 1 Get one

We often get offers like when you buy one soap you get a match box free or when you buy a toothpaste you get a toothbrush free but how many times have you got an offer when you pay for a smaller product and get a bigger product or service in its price. That's exactly what Airtel is offering to its subscribers .Airtel 3G subscribers can use and browse the internet at 4G speeds. Its just like paying for a cycle ride and getting to ride a Ferrari. However unbelievable may it sound yet it is true. This offer is not just for bigger cities and metros like Delhi but is applicable in 296 cities across the country in which Airtel is offering its 4G services. To use the Airtel 4G services with your 4G compatible service you need to have an Airtel 4G SIM to use the Airtel's 4G. To enhance the use and ease the process of making the 4G connections available to more and more people Airtel is offering a free 4G SIM . People desirous of getting there free SIM delivered to their addresses are required to send a tweet #GetAirtel4G . Getting on to the an speed Airtel 4G experience is easy and uncomplicated. Usually whenever a faster and improved service is introduced the cost is passed on to the consumer but this is one of the fewer instances where a 4G service that is faster and better is being offered in the price of a 3G service making it the best part of this offer.With a 4G service around all the users of the service can expect a lightning fast browsing and downloading experience. The cloud based
downloads,uploads and the apps that use a lot of data are going to work faster as the download and upload times would be greatly reduced. A plethora of services like video calling ,watching streaming videos, live broadcasts of sports like Olympics,Asian games and cricket matches can be viewed in real time as events. For people who telecommute the work experience would be richer and more rewarding as they can anytime connect with, clients and colleagues using the faster and more efficient 4G services. I find the roll out of the Airtel's 4G services in 296 cities a precursor to the 4G services being present in the entire country. So even when one is touring or students who are staying away from parents and their family would have the great opportunity to interact with anyone in real time through video calls and conferencing. I believe that these faster 4G services from Airtel could also be used to provide essential services like health care services to the remotest part of the country via Tele medicine with Airtel 4G forming the back of the communication network. If properly utilized the 4G services can help create the infrastructure of a digital India where even the remotest corner of the country can utilize the fast speed of the 4G Airtel network to provide school education and professional training which would be at par with the best institutions of the country.
http://www.airtel.in/4g/