February 2022 – Fuller Minds

Pickles

Are pickles supposed to be made only by grannies? Are we there yet to break this stereotype? In my opinion, if you love eating pickles you should be able to make them too.

You might say, why not buy the pickles from store? Well, they would not taste as good!

And so, I have tried my hand at making pickles since two years and I thought it’s time to post the recipes which worked so well for me.

Dosavakaya Pachadi

This is one of my favorite pickles! You can make it anytime of the year. Many people will suggest we use green Dosakaya for this pickle. But I have used yellow dosakaya and it tastes just the same.

Ingredients:

One Cucumber (Dosakaya)

¼ cup Mustard powder

3 tbsp of red chili powder

1 tbsp of salt

½ cup sesame oil

Preparation:

Wash Dosakaya and dry it completely. Cut it into small bite size pieces. Taste one piece to see if is bitter. Note: do not use the dosakaya if it is bitter.
Add mustard powder, red chili powder and salt to the cucumber pieces. And mix all the ingredients thoroughly.
Now add the sesame oil and mix well. Leave it for a day and it will be ready! Store the pickle in a glass jar or porcelain jar.

Lemon Pickle

I make this pickle only because I do not want to waste the lemons we get abundantly at home. And honestly I don’t know what to do with them most of the time. So pickle it is!

Ingredients:

Lemons: 6

Salt: to taste

4 tbsp of red chili powder

1 tsp turmeric powder

1 tbsp of Methi powder

1 cup of sesame oil

Preparation:

Wash and dry lemons. Cut them in 8s. Add salt and mix thoroughly. Move this into a glass bowl and let it rest of two days. Lemons will marinate in these two days time.
Add red chili powder and methi powder. Mix all the ingredients thoroughly.
In a pan, heat oil and let it cool. Add the oil to the ingredients. Store this mix in a glass jar or porcelain jar and let it rest for two days. Lemon pickle is ready!

Pandumirpakaya Pachadi

I have always seen heaps of red chilies being sold and did not what people did with them. Until I was told last year, we can make pickle with them. I did try it last year but not sure I did not share it then.

Ingredients:

Ripe Red chilies – 250 grams

½ cup rock salt

½ cup seedless tamarind

½ cup garlic

1 tbsp of Mustard powder

1 tbsp of methi powder

2 cups of sesame oil

Preparation:

Wash and dry the ripe red chilies. For an hour in sun or leave them for a day indoors to dry them completely. Similarly dry the salt in sun for an hour.
Cut the red chilies into small pieces (1 inch). Grind the chilies to coarse paste. Add tamarind and salt to the coarse paste of red chilies and grind them all together. (Note: do not make fine paste at this step.) Move this paste to a closed container and leave it for a day.
Add the coarsely ground paste to the grinder next day and add garlic. Now make a fine paste of this mix. Add mustard powder and methi powder to this and mix it thoroughly.
In a pan add sesame oil and heat it. Cool it down and add it the ground paste. Pandu mirpakaya pachadi is ready!

Shamirpet Deer Park, Hyderabad

It was our first family outing post pandemic and all of us were excited to get out of house and enjoy a day out in open fresh air! We chose a less crowded place and on the outskirts of the city.

The park is itself is quaint like any other park you come across in the city with lot of trees, play area for kids, rocks etc., and an extension to the forest area. Since this park is in the middle of nowhere, there will be hardly two to three families in the park at any given point in time. How do I know this? You will get the answer to this as you read on.

This park is maintained by the government. The deer only come once every few hours for the food provided by the reserve. My idea of deer park was deer will be going about their business – eating, playing and killing time. Visitors like me can walk in any hour of the day and watch them. Easy peasy!

NOT!

After walking for almost a kilometer post lunch no less, we get to know the deer make an appearance when they like! ☹

Having driven so far out of the city with literal dark clouds hanging on us we did not want to go back without seeing them. And so we waited for their darshan!

Finally they made their appearance for 15 minutes and disappeared into the forest. There was a flurry of activities around the park for those 15 minutes! People taking pictures, shouts of excitement and what not!

So if you plan to visit this place, try visiting with a big group. So you won’t go crazy waiting around for the deer and have enough company to keep you occupied.

Watching those deer for however short time was worth the wait. It felt peaceful watching them having no care in the world, living a wild life in open. The deer were beautiful from a distance – not that they came any closer for us. They were living in sanctuary. Their sanctuary! Content with their lives!

When we came back home and checking our pictures which ones can go on our social media, we realized one thing. With technology growing and evolving I forgot to change settings from portrait mode to normal picture mode. With this, I effectively blurred the deer in the background of all the pictures I have taken of my family. Needless to say, I never heard the end of it from them! 😀

Overall, we had a good time in the park with family. The long drive back home got even better when the sky opened and poured out its worth. And we had lots of fun listening and singing monsoon songs!