Another beautiful verse…

…from Narada Purana.

There is no teacher as your mother,

There is no wealth as reputation,

There is no friend as wisdom,

There is no pilgrim place as the Ganges,

There is no mother as forgiveness,

There is no God as Vishnu,

There is no penance as fasting,

There is no gain as knowledge,

And there is no fast as Ekadashi.

A year of living biblically

Author: A J Jacobs

My expectation from this book was very different from what it actually is – so I was somewhat disappointed. On reading the title, I was under the impression that it would feed my hunger for learning about different religions – in this case Christianity; that wasn’t entirely true.

The book is about how the author spent a year by following the rules of the bible, yes that’s exactly what the title says! His goal is to follow the rules literally. He consults a number of Rabbis and different versions of Bible to decide upon the set of rules. One does get an interesting perspective on the literal meaning of these rules and also how they get out-dated. What is impressive is that the author is an atheist when he begins this experiment but by the end of it, is not completely so.

I was expecting a deeper analysis of these rules and was irked to see the shallow interpretation – but of course, that was author’s intent. Reading this also made me realize that there is a huge common base underlying all religions; what totally amazed me was that like Hinduism, Christianity also has special rules for women during their monthlies!! All along I always thought that it was only Hinduism which prescribed it. Well this was one small example and it illuminates the granularity of commonalities.

Bottomline: An ok read.

Eggless Banana bread

I got this recipe from Cook With Love and must say this was my best experience with a recipe tried for the first time! The banana bread came out perfect, in fact DH and I kept comparing it to the Banana Walnut loaf that Starbucks sells :). Believe me, it WAS that good!

The crust has a slight crisp texture and the inside was soft and moist! Since I had 2 bananas, I scaled the recipe to 2/3rd and that seemed to suffice for 2+ persons.

Ingredients

• 1 cup sugar
• 3 bananas
• 4 tbsp melted unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp yogurt
• 1 and 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional), I’d 1/4 cup and that seemed fine.
  

Method

1. Pre Heat oven to 350 degree Fahrenheit
2. Mash the bananas.
3. Add sugar and yogurt to it.
4. Add butter, salt, and flour. Mix well.
5. Add Baking Soda, milk, vanilla essence and walnuts. Stir till everything is well blended.
6. Pour this batter in a greased bread tin and bake for about 50-60 minutes or till a tooth pick inserted comes out dry.