Embroidery work

Please look into some of my embroidery works that I’ve worked on a white plain cotton chudithaar…

The neckline and arm line and the middle line from the neck till the bottom of the chudithaar is Couching or laid work. I used the blue woolen thread as surface thread and the second finer thread is the normal kamal thread for anchoring.

This is followed by a line of feather stitch. This is running around the neckline, arm line, and the middle of the chudithaar.

For the shoulder line, I’ve used buttonhole stitch.

Payaru thoran

I don’t know what to call this bean (Legume)..I call it “payaru”…”Chonna (red) payaru”..

There are other types ”Paccha (green) payaru” …”paasi payaru” for making pongal….Rajma…konda kadala…Channa….Let us not waste time in naming these beans….I called it plain…”payaru”….

I wanna to join the event listed way below…..Hence thought I would cook some beans….the typical pozhukku….(boiled) which is my favourite and my friends used to tease me in my school days “malayali dish”……every other day my amma prepares any of the legumes as side dish…with curd rice…Yum….

How to prepare Payaru thoran:
1. Soak the payaru (2 cup..according to your wish) overnight
2. Wash it with fresh water and pressure cook it for 2-3 whistles. You can add a pinch of salt while pressure cooking or later.
3. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a kadai, add 1 tbsp mustard seed, few uzhudu dhal seed, few kadala paruppu. Sim the burner so that these seeds do not get charred. When the seeds change the color to light brown, add 2 onions chopped, slit 2 green chilies, 2-3 red chilly and 1/2 tsp of turmeric powder and fry it until they are done. Add salt to taste. Add curry leaves and stir fry.
4. To the above, add the boiled payaru. Mix it well and cook it for 2-3 mintues.

Payaru thoran..... I’m sending to Cococooks who is guest hosting "MLLA-10th helping",an event started by Susan.

Dinner is ready!!! ….Still waiting….

Finally I got a project after a long gap, which played an important role in making me an ardent blogger..But time to go back to some serious coding and stuff…The mahila sangam that I had been boosting off, often and on, is no more..We all got split..sobs!!!…I’m taking it with a positive stroke that everything is for good…new project, new location, new friends …everything new new…..I liked my office…The project has kicked off with a great bang..The whole of this week is training, training , training……Not able to even type in some few sentences for my blog…Still catching up….Anyways, good in all perspective………Reaching home late at 8 0’clock these days catching all possible transport facilities to reach home…auto, share-auto, bus….

I got this call from dear hubby at 6:45pm while I in the share-auto going back home ..”hey, how to make avil uppumma?”..”what?”…I exclaimed surprisingly…My hubby has never cooked for me so far all these 9 years of marriage…

I have heard pathetic stories that he burnt the cooker gasket cooking rice without pouring water in the bottom….or it is over cooked like payasam….or cooked rice and had got curd, or the puliogarey/ lemon rice mix from super market when I leave him alone while going to my native place.

My daughter too joined the call along with husband over the speaker phone. I gave my usual step-by-step procedure. “Wash and drain the excess water..”..My daughter is instructing my husband word-by-word as I’ve instructed. Then to make it simple, I asked him to grate coconut and add sugar to it and mix thoroughly. I was wondering what would be the output….

Very inquisitively, called up once again to find out the progress…”Dinner is ready..dear”…Still ½ hr to reach home……”No worries..”….”Still waiting?”…I was remembered of an ad…some refrigerator ad…..

Reached home and to my surprise, my children were enjoying the aval uppumma..seasoned with onion and chenna dal seeds and grated coconut over it. Waah!!!!....I tasted it and asked him how did he do the whole thing?.....My daughter answered me “ we washed and put turmeric powder..then kaduku ittu thaalichu “..But then, the yellow color was uniform throughout which I hardly get when I prepare…So mused…I asked what is the secret behind this uniformity..yellow?...My husband quickly responded “simple, kept on putting turmeric powder till we got the required color”…Ah!!! Lemme check the bottle how much turmeric powder is remaining? OK…No worries….Didn’t argue with him?.....Appreciated for his great effort…..

But I’ll tell you…the dinner was superb …Aval uppuma was yum…ingredients being love, love and lots of love……………..

Washing Machine breakdown

With this fast paced life, how can a women, especially a working women like me, can live without a gadget/instrument/machine which does the work or which helps me to finish my work much easier than a manual labour..Hats off to the ladies of last century, especially my amma’s era…I wonder how she, being a homemaker, managed herself, at my age now, with 3 kids and my Acchan around..doing her household chores…all by herself ..with no servant maids around...I bow my head to my Amma and other ladies who still continue with their traditional way of taking care of household chores………………….

But in case, if these friendly gadgets becomes foe at crucial time, it will be like screw up…..It adds to fire….and especially when the breakdown happens when I’m not around……

I’m reminded of an incidence……I was trying frantically to get a job …in an area which I had experience….the same old IT….I was attending interviews almost every alternative days…grabbing on the 1st opportunity when consultants and company’s calls…walk-in’s during weekends….On a typical Saturday, I was running out of the time….rushing up to quickly finish my daily household chores….and which I was not able to finish…and silently delegating to DH…..He doesn’t approve of such delegation…but no way out…you know….He returns the “I-will-not-do” nod…I was off to one such interview which was scheduled at 9:30 in the morning…I was late as usual…but never mind, so many people had turn up…hence it was not noticed……By the time, I finished my first round of interview, it was half past 12. I was asked to wait for my HR round…I went to food court to grab something to fill my hungry stomach…. when I saw a missed call from my DH…..I called him to enquire how he is doing with the children…….all by himself…., making them take bath, feeding ….pavam, handling all by himself…He is far better than me at it, though…He says “ Is the washing machine broke down?..”….I exclaimed screamingly over the overcrowded pantry “No”….”what happened?”…The whole room is flooded with soapy water ….”what?”…”Yeah, some leak…maybe some hole at the bottom of the machine, I believe”….”What did you do?...tell me the steps that you followed….”…He goes….Ah! He has forgotten to close the inlet pipe….”Close the tap”….and redo from this step….He goes “you come and do…”…

My washing machine is a automatic but kind of semi-automatic…. Manual interference is allowed.....The inlet pipe does not work with its fullest capacity…It takes hours for the inlet pipe to fill the bin…Hence I never open the inlet pipe and manually fill it with 2-3 buckets of water till it gives a screeching sound…”KEee”…Then I shut it and manually select the “program”..and “select” button…It starts running and keeps mum in between…then it goes for the next step…”Soak”… for another 10-15 minutes…Then once again it goes “Keeee”…and goes to the next step automatically “wash”….then there is a continous “cluck cluck” movement for next 10-15 minutes and the whole soapy water get drained out through outlet pipe…Then it goes for a vigorous drain action….and goes for the next “Keeee”…..Now at this step, I interfere and manually pour some 1-2 buckets of water for the final rinse with fresh water….when the water level reaches the correct level…it yells back at me with “Keee”…I shut the lid once again….and once again it goes back to the vigourous rinse action….and goes automatically to the next action “Spin”….the bin goes energetically for the anti-clockwise motion for the final drain of water from the cloths and goes to “Dry” step …hot air gushes from the sides to remove the left out wetness of the final washed cloths…It takes almost 45 mintues to 1-hour for the whole job to get over……


When I reached my home, it was 3 in the afternoon..I decided to do a FIR of the whole situation…The room where the washing machine was kept was closed…..I opened it to see the whole room flooded with soap water….I carefully reached the machine and started my investigation…...and Ah!!! I smelled the reason why? My DH does not know this step by step procedure…He has opened the inlet pipe and left it open throughout the process…somehow my machine since it got used to this manual intervention, didn’t understood that it has to close the inlet duct, I believe….hahhaha..what should I say?....the water started overflowing from the bin….

Now that the ball is in my coat, armed with broomstick and bucket I washed up the whole room…..and once again started the washing machine right from the beginning….At the end of the whole hungama, not only the cloths got washed and cleaned ,the whole place became spotless, sparkling to the evening sun…...