Monday 16 July 2007

Dimple Manglani, who lives in Hongkong wants to make chocolate chip cookies.


Hey Dimple

If you wish to make chocolate chips cookies this is what you can do.

Always remember that the trick to this recipe is the technique. If you don't use a heavy duty mixer (to cream the butter, sugar, and eggs, as directed) and don't let the cookie dough rest in the refrigerator overnight, then, these are just regular chocolate chip cookies.

before you begin any recipe, you must have all the ingredients ready, by your side.

you will neeed

• 1 Cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)
• 1 Cup brown sugar
• ¾ Cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 ½ tsp. vanilla
• ½ tsp. salt
• 2 ½ Cup flour
• 1 ¼ tsp. baking soda
• 2 Cup walnuts coarsely chopped
• 3 Cup chocolate chips (18 oz.)


You must measure all ingredients.

Let butter warm to room temperature.

Sift the dry ingredients together a few times.

now beat butter in mixing bowl of a heavy duty mixer with flat (paddle) beater at medium speed until it is lighter and clings to bowl (30-45 seconds).

Keeping beater at medium speed, add both sugars in a steady stream.

Continue to cream butter and sugars for 4-5 minutes, scraping down bowl twice. When it is done, the mixture will be light in color and fluffy in appearance.

Next you must whisk eggs with vanilla in small bowl and add to butter and sugar mixture, keeping beater on medium speed.

Be careful to pour in the eggs very slowly. It should take 3-4 minutes to add the eggs. The mixture then appears fluffy, looking like whipped cream cheese.

Now put beater on slowest speed and add dry ingredients. As soon as the dry ingredients are incorporated, add chocolate chips and walnuts. Leave beater on lowest speed for a few seconds to mix it all together.

Then you must make into golf ball sized balls and place on cookie sheet right next to each other. You can use an ice cream scoop to measure each cookie.

This should make about 30-35 cookies. You can put 5 rows of 7 cookies on a 17-inch by 11-inch cookie sheet.

Put in fridge overnight or for at least 6 hours, covered.

Remove and let it warm to room temperature for about 30 minutes.

Put cookie balls on baking sheet to bake. Flatten a little making edges go straight up and down. Make a slight depression in center with finger.

Bake at 400 degrees, 8-10 minutes. Edges should be golden brown but center 1-inch pale.

Let it sit at room temperature 5 minutes before taking off baking pan.

Share these cookies with your friends and they will love it.

Sunday 15 July 2007

Taj Mahal, One of the seven wonders of the world.



Taj Mahal, Taj Mahal
How beautiful you can be!

One of the seven
Wonders of the world
You rock in this lawn, so green.

You stand proudly in your
Sparkling white dress
Inspiring artists like me

To trap your eternal, spotless
Beauty,travelers have come
across the seas.

They tell me that you are
A monument of love
Of great ruler for his queen

You were the ultimate
realization of
Emperor Shah Jahan’s dream.

Taj Mahal, Taj Mahal
How beautiful you can be!

Friday 13 July 2007

Humpty Dumpty....



Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
With a whistle between his lips
He made a call
All the beautiful girls
All the handsome boys
Never could understand
His tuneless song

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Alone he sat outside a mall.
None of the shoppers
None of the strollers
Turned to look
when he had a fall.

Thursday 5 July 2007

Hey, are you a Harry Potter fan?

Harry Potter’s latest movie "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” is releasing in my town. My friends tell me that this one lacks passion but children will still love it.

This movie is about Harry, Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix, a secret assembly of wizards, who believe that Lord Voldemort has returned to wreak havoc.

But the Ministry of Magic denies his return and sends Dolores Umbridge to Hogwarts to keep Harry and his allies silent and obedient.

It starts magnificently with horrid, fat Dudley (Harry Melling) being saved from death at the hands of the terrifying Dementors by Harry's illegal use of magic. Harry is whisked away to face an inquisition at a wizard court.

In Imelda Staunton's brilliant performance, Umbridge's pink suits and sweet manner disguise her cruelty and madness. Under her reign, Harry has to train up an illicit army in secret and escape to confront Voldemort in the Ministry of Magic.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix is more dramatic than the book but lacks the eccentricity of previous episodes.

The secret of Harry potter is that it enchants and terrifies you.

Everybody is going, Are you going too?

Did you know?

When J. K. Rowling, a single mother, wrote the first Harry Potter, sitting in a café scribbling away in a notebook, she would never have dreamed that it would go on to become a phenomenal success. Nearly every publisher rejected the manuscript of the first novel. Her agent finally sold it for a measly advance of thousand pounds and warned her not to expect anything further. Her second novel sold a few more than the first and it was only when the third novel hit the bookstands that Harry Potter became a phenomenon. Today, Rowling is richer than the Queen of England, thanks to the success of Potter novels!

Wednesday 4 July 2007

Ba ba bhabhi


Ba ba bhabhi
Do you have a bun?
Yes dear, yes dear,
I wrapped it with
a ribbon

Why did you
Wrap a Ribbon
on the top of
my bun?

Oops!
I am sorry
I thought it
was a gift
for my son.

Tuesday 3 July 2007

Sajani Shakya is a very special 9 year old girl. She is a living goddess.

One of Nepal's kumaris, or "living goddesses", has been stripped of her title because she took a trip to the US, according to local news reports.


Ten-year-old Sajani, one of Nepal's top three kumaris, has been touring various cities abroad since last month to promote a documentary film about the Kumari of the Kathmandu Valley.

Sajani arrived in Washington to help promote a British documentary about the living goddesses of the Katmandu Valley and to see a bit of the United States. She is the first of the Nepalese living goddesses to come to the United States because the girls live mostly in seclusion.

Her trip has made news in the US, but caused problems at home because kumaris are forbidden to leave Nepal

In Nepal, Sajani is a living goddess, one of about a dozen such goddesses in her homeland who are considered earthly manifestations of the Hindu goddess Kali.
Her typical day is, when she has to rise early for her family and others to pray to her. It was difficult for her when she was younger. She had to get up at 4 to bathe for the morning prayers.

Sajani never gets into trouble. In fact, her family worships her, and if she is in a bad mood, it becomes a major drama because it's considered bad luck.

The goddesses of Katmandu are chosen when they are about 2 years old from a Buddhist caste, though they represent a Hindu deity - an example, of the harmony between the two religions in Nepal.

The king of Nepal has traditionally sought the blessings of the three main goddesses, who live in Katmandu, Patan and, in Sajani's case, the city of Baktapur. Hindu and Buddhist priests pick the living goddesses after consulting a horoscope and then finding a girl who meets the 32 perfections, from skin of golden color to a body like a banyan tree.

Devotees believe that the goddess Kali inhabits the girls, though they do not exhibit unusual behavior, and then the goddess leaves them when they reach puberty. After that, the girls retire with a small pension. They are free to work and marry.

People go to the goddesses to touch their feet as they are carried through the streets. They give them money as offerings, which in Sajani’s case go to support her family. They visit Sajani in the goddess's house, where she sits on a small ornate throne, to ask for a better job, better health, a measure of happiness. The girls are not expected to impart wisdom, they give just blessings.

People relate to her as a divine being but also as a child: they pray to her, but afterwards they sit and joke with her. There is something very comforting about worshiping a child, something about the cycle of life, about renewal.

The goddesses are busiest in late autumn, during the festival of Dasain. The royal goddess in Katmandu and the other in Patan live in varying degrees of seclusion.
Sajani has the most normal life, blessing those who show up, but also playing with friends and going to school, where she is treated with respect, though not assured of straight A’s.

She plays hide-and-seek, computer games, watches Hindi films and, as the film shows, fiddles with a toy cell phone sometimes when she is on her throne

Sajani knows she has only a few years left before she must retire. She says she would like to be a teacher someday, but she cries with her mother over the loss of her life as a goddess.

"When I'm not a goddess anymore," she said, "no one will treat me as well as they treat me now."

Source: http://www.iht.com/

I wish I had a sister

by Pooja Kiran Kamat (a poem by a 9-year-old)






If, if ,if, I had a small sister
Who was cute and chubby like me
I would skip, and jump,
And play with her
She would laugh, just like me.

Like George Makenzie
I would run, through the streets
With boxes on my feet,
On lullaby tunes, I would sing
a song, till she fell, sound asleep

With a cap on her eyes,
She would splash too much water
She would swim, just like me
With goggles on her feet,
She would swim behind me
And smile, to show her teeth

I would take her to school
We would study together
Two doctors, we would be
She must, must be, always with me
Oh! What fun, that would be!

Oh, I wish, wish, wish,
I wish I had a small sister
To play and laugh with me

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