This recipe was inspired by Madhur Jaffrey and a couple of other recipes I found online.  I changed a lot of things, adding heaps more garam masala, using olive oil and adding extras like green chillies and cherry tomatoes.  I hope this recipe works for you as well as it worked for me - it's quite a simple process and is very tasty indeed!!


Ingredients

2 cups red lentils (dhal)
6 cups water approx


Olive oil
5 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
Tumeric powder
Knob of ginger
Cumin seeds
Mustard seeds
Chilli powder
Garam masala powder
Curry leaves
3 large green chillies
6 shallots
10 cherry tomatoes


Put lentils in pot with the water. 

Bring to boil, scrape off the foamy stuff on top.

Add some large slices of peeled ginger and a couple of curry leaves to the water and a few teaspoons of tumeric.

Reduce to a low (very low!) simmer, partly covered for around 40-50 minutes.

After around half an hour, put some olive oil in a frypan, heat and pop the mustard seeds and cumin seeds (if you ask me, more is more so don't be afraid to throw a few teaspoons in!)

Fry the garlic, shallots, the rest of the ginger (finely chopped), 3 chillies (seeds are optional - they aren't particularly fiery, so why not!), chilli powder, garam masala and curry leaves.  

Add more and more garam masala as you go, remember this will be diluted when mixed with the dal.  Add some tumeric and the cherry tomatoes, frying until cherry tomatoes have disintegrated. 

When dal is looking almost ready, add all the ingredients from the frypan and mix thoroughly.  You will need to add some salt (perhaps quite a bit!) and a bit more tumeric.

Serve with or without rice, add fresh chopped coriander and top with heated roti or naan bread. 

technorati tags: dal, dhal, lentil, red lentil, madhur jaffrey, cooking, recipes, food, vegetarian, healthy, Indian cooking

A quick note on how to tell if you have flu delerium.

I was in the supermarket today, buying Red Bull.

I read the ingredients briefly, then wondered what it was I had just seen.

Reading the ingredients AGAIN I somehow saw the same thing:

"May contain Pterodactyl".

Do I have flu delerium?

I think that's a yes.

technorati tags: pterodactyl, red bull, prehistoric, dinosaur, supermarket, shopping, personal, funny

It's always fascinating to find out where people find SaveSaveSave in search engine queries.  Here are a few of my faves (I am so proud to be ranking for these particular phrases):

poem on maggi noodles  (Banjo Patterson, eat your heart out!!) 

cellulite stadium 2   !?!?!?! (I'm sorry, I'm afraid I missed Cellulite Stadium 1!)

wacky toilet seats  (this one actually makes sense, I did do a post on wacky toilet seat designs)

naked people crossing  (I'm not going to ask why people are searching for this!) 

quinny  (er... use your imagination!)


And best of all, if you type in Google:

i need toilet paper for my bung hole.... acdc

you will find me.

I finally rank for "bung hole".

A dream is achieved.

I made the mistake of taking a bathroom break during "24".

If we're watching a program on TV, I usually ask my partner when I return "what did I miss?"

And he will say something like:
"they haven't worked out who did it yet" or
"they are still trying to figure out who is sending the letters"

When I came back after missing what must have been less than 3 minutes of "24" I asked the same question.

"What did I miss?"

"Well...
the plane's blown up,
a cougar's loose,
this girl's missing,
this guy's dead,
this one blew up,
this thing exploded,
they found another bomb and everyone's about to die."


Don't go to the bathroom during "24".

technorati tags: 24, kiefer sutherland, jack bauer, twenty four, TV, Digital TV

I was fascinated by a documentary I watched last night called "Selling the Moon".  The show centered around the human thirst for energy resources and the new technology that will help us get there.

Nuclear scientists have long known that fusion power is a possible way to generate large amounts of electricity using relatively small amounts of source material.  Rather than using large amounts of coal in a standard power plant or using fission power in a nuclear reactor, this method of fusing, rather than splitting elements seems to be the way of the future, if the technology is ready and the materials are available.

However, the only setback is this...

Helium 3 is the material needed to create this wonderful fusion reaction, and it's a tad scarce on the ground.  Literally.

In fact, the only large deposits we can find are on the moon.  So, logically, rocket companies and scientists alike are jostling for the rights to mine the moon.  Makes sense, doesn't it?

Except the cost of getting to the moon is somewhere in the hundreds of billions of dollars.  In fact, it costs 1 million dollars per minute to keep a man on the moon.  So a week of mining with say, 5 astronauts would cost, say 50400000000 dollars, if my calculations are correct.

Not to mention, a standard sized rocket ship can't really hold that much Helium 3 (possibly in moon rock, soil or dust form), because it would mess up the weight on re-entry.  And since Helium 3 costs billions and billions per tonne (a human-made concept), it makes it one of the most valuable commodities.  Ever.  And a kilogram of this stuff can keep a large city going for about a week.  So it is a given that many, many more trips will be needed to get enough to get us started.

It all seems just a little bit... mad.

These particular scientists / geologists and rocket companies have decided that the best way to solve our ever growing energy concerns is to mine the moon and create fusion power here on earth.  The idea is to replicate the very process that the sun and the stars use to create energy.

There's a small gap in this logic.

We want to create a miniscule replica of the sun's energy producing process here on earth using a multi billion dollar rare-as-hens-teeth Helium 3 gas that is only found on the moon.  So we're going to scoot up to the moon, mine the crap out of it, drag the stuff back here and start fusing it together using extreme heat to create energy so we can power our iPods.

Meanwhile, as we try to be insanely entrepreneurial and reinvent the wheel, the actual wheel is spinning up in the sky for all to see.

It's called the sun.

If we advance solar panel technology (using terrestrial materials!) we can further improve on what is a rather perfect solution.  Since the sun is already generating massive amounts of energy using fusion power, wouldn't it make more sense to harness the ready-made power of the sun, enjoy our practically (barring any supernovas!) inexhaustible supply of clean, non-polluting energy...

...and leave the moon alone.

technorati tags: science, astronomy, helium 3, moon, fusion, nuclear, fission, moon mining, alternative energy, solar power