Silk tips

Buying Silk


The body structure is a vital parameter based on which silk is bought. There are a few guidelines that will help when you buy silk according to your physique.

Women, who are stout, should go in for softer fabrics like Chiffons, Georgettes, Crepes that drape well. Mysore Silk also helps give a slimmer effect. Organzas, Kora, Tissue silks, must be avoided since they tend to flare.

To get a fuller look, slim-built women can preferably choose Organza, Cotton, Tissue and Tussar Sarees.

Shorter women need to wear sarees with slim borders or even no borders.

Sarees with bigger borders suit women with a tall profile.

Shades like Maroon, Green, Pink, and other dark shades go well with women who are on the darker side.

.Wearing Silk

A graceful drape can immensely enhance the overall effect of a saree. Here are a few tips on wearing silk.

On formal occasions & at work, it makes better sense to pin up the saree, which makes it not only manageable but helps you look smart as well.

At functions, pin up the tip of the saree and let the rest fall on your hand for a graceful look.

Pinning up at the back of the shoulder will conceal the pin and also keep the saree intact.

Avoid wearing a flared petticoat.

Make sure starched sarees, especially cotton and tissue, are ironed properly. The pleats also should be carefully pressed and shaped while draping.

.Maintaining Silk

To retain the glory of silk, a great deal of meticulousness is required at every stage. With proper care, silk can be well-maintained for years together.

Washing

1.Do not use soap for the first three washes. Gently rinse in plain cold water.

2.For the subsequent washes, use a mild detergent.

3.Wash the pallu, border and body separately.

4.Avoid washing the saree with inferior quality material or bright colours.

5.You can use a protein shampoo with warm/cold water. The shampoo protein will feed the protein in the silk.

6.Avoid using chemicals – these may damage and reduce the lifespan of the silk.

7.Do not brush or lash the silk saree; it might lead to tearing the zari.

8.Avoid twisting or wringing the silk.

9.Do not bundle and keep wet for long durations.

.Drying

1.After washing, the saree must be dried immediately.

2.First, roll the saree in a dry towel to remove the excess moisture.

3.Then, hang it on to a padded hanger.

4.Ensure that the silk saree is out of direct sunlight.

.Dry-Cleaning

1.In dry-cleaning, fluids are used to remove stains from the fabric.

2.The fluids contain little or no water and do not penetrate the fibre as water does.

3.Dry-cleaning is the best way to care for silk, since the solvents used do not affect silk.

4.The following points must be kept in mind when taking your silk clothes to the dry-cleaner

.Ironing

1.While pressing, keep the iron in medium heat only.

2.Press silk while it is still damp with a warm iron (below 275 degrees), or use a steam iron.

3.Take special care to iron starched material.

.Packing / Placement

1.The saree should be stored in a cool, dry place.

2.Unfold your silk sarees and change the folding preferably every month.

3.All silk outfits must be wrapped in muslin cloth

4.Ensure minimal friction between the cloth and the embroidery when you fold embroidered outfits.

5.Silk outfits are best maintained if kept in a hanging position.

6.For wrinkle-free outfits, delicate handling is required.

.Dealing with Stains

1.Firstly, wash with cold water immediately.

2.For hard stains, soak the stained area with petrol and brush with a soft cloth.

3.Stained silk must be dry-cleaned as soon as possible.

4.By rubbing acetone on the area, nail polish stains can be removed.

5.For lipstick stains, use dry-cleaning fluids, followed by washing soap and water.

6.Greasy stains can be removed by dabbing talc. Once this is done, the talc should be brushed off and stain remover applied. The stain can then be washed off in the hottest water possible.

7.For treating food stains like milk, ice-cream, chocolate, gravy, etc., use a dry-clean solvent. By applying detergent and then washing off with cold water, the protein part of the stain can be removed. After using a stain remover, it should be washed off in hot water.

8.Protein stains like blood, deodorant, egg, meat juices and perspiration can be cleared with detergent. They should be soaked in cool water and laundered. If they persist, try rubbing a mixture of a few drops of Nh2 with hydrogen peroxide

Lovely proposal

Papdis chat

Ingredients:

16 Papdis(optional small pappad)
4 medium potatoes
500gm low fat natural yogurt
50gm little black chick peas or kala channa
Half tsp chilli powder
Half tsp black salt
One tsp whole cumin
Two tsp Sev or Bhujia

Coriander chutney
40gm or large handful of fresh coriander
1 green finger chilli
Juice of 1 lime
Salt to taste

Tamarind sauce
2 inch ball of tamarind
5 tbsp boiling water
2 tsp brown sugar
Half tsp black pepper
Half tsp black salt

Method:

Soak the tamarind in the boiling water mixed with the sugar and rest of the spices. Next boil the potatoes and crush into little bite-sized pieces. I just peeled, chopped them and microwaved them covered for 7 minutes on high.
Next, puree the coriander with the rest of the chutney ingredients until you get a smooth paste. Strain the tamarind of its juices two times until you get a thick, sweet and sour sauce.
Now it’s a simple assembly job. Place the Papdis in a single layer on a plate. Spread the crushed potatoes and kala channa on top, then pour over the whipped yogurt, sprinkle the spices, spoon the chutney and drizzle the tamarind sauce.
Finish with a sprinkling of the Sev or Bhujia and enjoy the colours, textures and flavours immediately before the Papdis soften. I served this with sparkling grape juice and birthday cake to a friend.

Kashmiri paneer

Ingredients:

225gm paneer
1 tbsp tomato puree
250gm thick plain yogurt (Greek is best)
1 tsp paprika or Kashmiri chilli powder
1 black cardamom
1 bay leaf
Half inch ginger
5 skinned almonds
1 tbsp oil
Salt to taste

Method:

1. Finely chop the ginger. Puree the almonds with two tablespoons of the yoghurt and then mix into with the tomato puree and paprika.
2. Cut the paneer into large pieces, like in the picture. Frankly, you can cut it up any way you want. It doesn’t matter. But it does look more special like this.
3. In a large frying pan or medium kadai, bring the oil to heat on high. When it starts sizzling, add the bay leaf and cardamom. When they start spluttering, add the ginger.
4. As the ginger turn golden, lower the flame to and stir in the yoghurt mixture. Leave this to simmer for about 20 minutes, until the masala takes on a rich orange hue and oil starts oozing to its surface.
5. Just stir in the paneer at this stage for five minutes. When it softens, serve and eat straightaway. This was especially lovely the next day when the paneer had a chance to lie around in the masala.

Fish fillet

Ingredients:

275gm or 2 skinless and boneless white fish fillets (I used Basa, Cod works well too)
 2 green finger chillies
 75gm white onion
 3 garlic cloves
 1 inch ginger
 1 tsp salt
1 egg
100gm plain flour
Breadcrumbs
2-3 tbsp oil

Method:

1. In a blender puree the onion, green chillies, ginger and garlic together with the salt. Coat each fillet on both sides with this marinade and leave to sit.
2. Now, establish the assembly line. First, turn the grill on to a high heat (220 degrees centigrade normal or 200 degrees centigrade fan assisted).
3. Then line a flat baking tray that’ll fit your fillets with kitchen foil and smooth the oil on top of it. Next, in a flat bowl whip up the egg, and add half the flour on one plate and four tablespoons of breadcrumbs on another.
4. Line the flour, egg, breadcrumbs and baking tray up on the cooker. Now cut each fish fillet into half through the middle, widthwise.
5. Dip each side of it into the flour patting to coat evenly so no onion mixture is exposed. Then the egg and finally the breadcrumbs. You need to make sure that it coats evenly each time and then lay on the baking tray.
6. Repeat this process until you have four breaded fish fillets. Then grill, flipping over to the other side mid way, for 20 minutes until you have golden brown and crisp fish fillets.
7. Try this with fresh lemon wedges, a summer salad and some tomato chutney for a quirky and healthy TV meal.

New Comments System on Blogger

Commenting is one of the most integral parts of blogging: it’s what makes blogging a conversation, not a monologue. That’s why we are pleased to announce two cool new improvements to Blogger’s comments system: much better spam filtering and the ability to view all comments on your blog in one place.

Introducing Comment Spam Filtering

A blog is an open communications system, inviting conversations from all web users. Unfortunately, spammers have been finding their way into these conversations. To fight spam, some of you enabled moderation of all comments or required word verification or login. While somewhat effective, these checks limit real-time conversations around your blog.

To address this, we’ve integrated Google’s spam filtering technologies into the Blogger comment system. Some of you will notice the new “Comments” tab. (Note: We are gradually rolling this out to all users, so some of you may not see the new Comments tab yet.) In the Comments tab, there is a Spam sub-tab that shows all the comments that are likely spam.

The comments in the Spam inbox are not visible to your readers. Here, you can permanently delete spam comments by selecting them and choosing Delete. You can also mark comments as Not Spam that have been incorrectly classified as spam (what we call the “false-positives”). Choose Not Spam and the selected comments will be moved out of the spam list and will be immediately published on your blog.

These feedback actions also help us better identify spam on your blog. We encourage you to occasionally check your Spam inbox to see if any non-spam comments have been marked as spam. Please note that spam filtering currently only applies to new comments.

You can report any issues with our new spam system by clicking on the “Report spam filtering issues” link on the bottom of the Comments
Spam page, or by visiting this Help Forum page.

Comments “Inbox”

We also created a place where you can see all the comments that have been published on your blog. The Comments
Published sub-tab provides a similar view as your email inbox. This view comes in handy when you want to see all of the comments on your blog in one place. With the new comments inbox, it’s easy to find new comments on old posts.

In the Comments
Published sub-tab, you can select comments and mark them as spam or delete them. When you mark a comment as Spam, it will be deleted immediately from your blog. You can also Delete comments for editorial reasons or just Remove Content to leave a record of the comment.

Comment moderation has also moved under the Comments tab and has been extended to allow you to mark comments as Spam.

We hope that adding comment spam filtering and the new “inbox” user interface will be a good starting point toward improving the Blogger commenting system and we look forward to your feedback.

Steamed meat layer cake

Ingredients:
For cake:

3 eggs(b/medium sized)
50gm castor sugar
pinch of salt
100gm superfine flour
1/4tsp baking powder

Method:

1. Beat eggs,salt and sugar untl fluffy and thick.
2. Fold in sifted flour with baking powder and stir well.
3. Now keep this mixer aside.

For meat layer:
250gm minced chicken/beef/mutton
1 big onion
1 tsp pepper
2 tsp pepper
2 tbsp cheddar cheese
1 tbsp wheat flour

Method:

1. Cook all the ingredients  except flour with little oil until crispy.
2. then fold in flour for thickening.
3. grease and line a square mould.
4. pour half cake and steam for 20 mins.
5. then spread the meat mixture on top and pour in remaining mixture,steam for another 20 mins.
6. then set to cool in room temperature and serve.