Easy Tea And Coffee Recipe

Being a tea and/or coffee addict, I have learnt to experiment a lot with these two beverages. While my south Indian friends have taught me the best way to make coffee (both filter and instant), i have also had ample opportunity to taste the strong masala north Indian tea, just right for a heavy winter morning. And then there's the Bengali Tea. The flavour just kisses your palate and you are left wishing it would linger all day with you..and for many cups more. I thought I will just share my way of making tea...which I have 12-15 times a day!

How to Make Indian Tea

A bit more than 3/4 cups water - Bring to Boil in a saucepan

A bit less than 1/4 cups milk - add and bring to further boil.

Add sugar to taste.

Add Tea Granules (1 to 1-1/2 tsp depending on the size of your cup) after water and milk has boiled properly.

Bring to boil twice (dont boil too much, just enough for the granules to mix in with the liquid). Switch off the stove. Add One spoon green leaf Darjeeling Tea. Cover and leave it till the tea leaves sink (yes, thats brewing).

Strain, Pour and Enjoy!

Coffee (Instant)

Add two tsps plain unflavoured instant coffee to your coffee mug. Add two spoons of milk and two spoons sugar. Stir it well till it foams. Bring water (1/4 mug) and milk (3/4 mug) to a boil. Let it simmer for 3-4 minutes. Pour it on the coffee in your mug. Stir and you have your hot steamy foamy mug of coffee ready.

This is not the connoisseurs cappuccino, but tastes divine. Add a spoon a cream on the top if you have a taste for it!

I Am An Online Games Addict

I am an online games addict. Free online games, Card Games, especially Spades, are my favorites.

Yahoo Games website is the most incredible online gaming site I have come across. My earliest introduction to the internet was of course through Hotmail. It was amazing to be able to send a message across the seven seas in a few seconds and get a reply too, esp. when phone calls were so damn expensive.

Then I happened to stumble upon Yahoo. And as there was not really much to do at college other than studying (in a residential b-school being the only married person in class, keeps you kind of lonely) I came across online games. Yahoo Games then was not the hyper cool version it is now. And there were not really many people online. I started with Literatti (as that was the least hedonistic way of wasting time!) and made some of my closest friends online at Yahoo Games.

After I left college I was busy for a couple of years. Then I had to leave my job. That was the time I really became a Yahoo Games junkie! I again started with Literatti, but that required too much of effort and thought. I played Chinese Checkers (do try it, its lovely) and then Hearts, before I finally settled with Spades. By then the gaming industry had evolved beyond recognition. No one played the Prince of Persia, GP (I have still not been able to find it online) or Mario or even Doom. Gaming scared me, joysticks fuddled me and those buttons and the remotes completely puzzled me. So I stuck to Yahoo Games. It was simple. We were a community. I played in the afternoon with old foggies whose girlfriends had left them or new mothers just taking a break.

I played on and off during jobs and almost full time when I was out of it! It was an addiction and there was always somebody playing when I wanted to, a community of strangers I could share any problem with.

Then something happened. Last September, I was introduced to blogs. I have played maybe 10 games of Spades since and my ratings have taken a dunking. My old friends are not there when I go back to the Yahoo Games. I have become a blog addict and more over making money via blogs has re-inforced that addiction!

So I have switched one addiction with another...and making money in the process so very much legalises my net addiction!

Easter Bunny

Easter Bunny and Other Easter Words

I never realized there would be so many Easter Words in our vocabulary. While one can go on an Easter Parade on Easter Sunday obviously wearing an Easter Bonnet (Irving Berlin's song "Easter Parade," written in 1933), its more common to wear an easter hat to church on Easter Sunday again.

Easter actually is associated with spring and rabbits are the symbol of spring, of abundance, gaiety and fertility too. So do you wonder where Easter Bunny comes from? But one has to wonder how this bunny, a mammal, can lay those multicoloured Easter Eggs! The easter egg has many significance, which maybe the little kids striving to make the best one, wouldn't be aware of. The biggest significance is that it's a sign of immortality and fertility. It signifies the beginning of life too, for its supposed to be a symbol of re-emergence of Jesus from his tomb.

The biggest significance of Easter is that it falls in spring. Its the time most spring festivals of other religions too occur...so called pagan festivals, ancient festivals, hindu spring festival of holi, eid and such. And wonder of wonders Easter too is named after an ancient spring goddess Eostre, goddess of Spring and fertility.

So the Resurrection of Christ like all other festivals is interwoven around ancient customs too, customs whose basic precinct is similar - celebrate the equinox, spring, beginning of life, harvesting - customs across race, religions, continents.

How can i forget Easter lilies. This spring flower in all its white symbolises purity and peace. Its blossom is the analogy of Jesus's resurrection while the buld is a symbol of the tomb...mush like the Easter egg!