The three qualities of life

Man possesses one or more of three primary qualities (guna): saatvika, raajsika and taamsika. All three qualities lead to different behavioral patterns in a man and bind him to this life.

Saatvika guna, is the purest and healthiest of them all. It doesn’t have any vices and enlightens one’s senses and conscience. A man in whom saatvika guna dominates, has his pain and vices destroyed and attains peace of mind. Laziness doesn’t exist in his world. He no longer has any interest in this world and he devotes himself to the worship of God. However, such a man can become proud of being happy or the knowledgeable one. It is this pride which hinders his unison with God.

Raajsika guna, is manifested in the form of affection for any thing living or non-living. It leads to desires and longing. It has the same relationship with these two as a seed has to a tree. The tree is born from a seed and it is the tree that creates the seed. Similarly, rajoguna leads to desires and it is desires which gives birth to rajoguna. Such a person believes he is the does of all his actions and that he deserves the fruits for them. It is this belief that binds him to this cycle of life and death.

Taamsika guna, as I understand it, is the most inferior of all the above qualities. It’s born from ignorance, where the senses and the conscience are weak and overpowered by emotional attachments. Tamoguna is predominant in a man who has pride and attachment to his body. It leads to ignorance and ignorance causes it. It exhibits in the form of sloth, indulgence and drowsiness in a man and through them binds him to this life.

Veggie patties/puffs

Long time ago, I’d posted a recipe for veggie patties/puffs and I was very proud of it because it was mine. I used to get readymade phyllo pastry to make them but recently I read on King Arthur’s blog how to make the pastry for turnovers; and I was jumping with joy!! It looked simple to make and the results seemed astounding. I was dying to give it a try and I did, I mean gave it a try :). They turned out simple scrumptious!! My MIL and FIL found them delicious!

Can you believe that I made the pastry at home?!?!? Look at the flaky layers…yummy! Here’s the recipe for the pastry. Its copied from the recipe on King Arthur’s blog. If you’re looking for step-by-step illustrated instructions then jump over to that link.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup cold butter
• 1/2 cup sour cream

1. First step: LOTS of butter. We’re going to “cut” the butter into the flour, just as if we were making pie crust. It’s easy to do this in a food processor; but use your own favorite method, if preferred. There’s also salt and baking powder in the work bowl. Why baking powder? PUFF pastry; a little chemical leavening doesn’t hurt! Be sure to leave some good-sized chunks of butter in the mixture. This is very important.
2. Add sour cream, and pulse briefly. The dough will look very crumbly, but will hold together just fine when you grab it.
3. Deposit it onto a floured work surface. Shape the dough into a rough square. Roll it into an 8” x 10” rectangle; for reference, this is slightly shorter than an 8 1/2” x 11” piece of paper. Don’t make yourself crazy here; approximations are fine.
4. Grab one of the 8” sides, and fold it into the center, like a letter.
5. Now fold the other short (8”) side on top of the first.
6. Roll 8” x 10” again and fold again.
7. Wrap in plastic, and chill for some time.
8. Take out the chilled dough. Place it on a well-floured surface, and start to roll. You want to make a square at least 16” on a side. Work quickly; the colder the dough, the easier it is to roll and cut and fill.
9. Trim the edges to make a square. You can sprinkle these trimmed-off pieces with coarse sugar and bake up some REALLY tasty nibbles.
10. Cut into 4” squares. You can use a pizza cutter to do that.

From the little ones to the big ones

Its been so long since I posted that what I initially wanted to post was my little baby tomatoes and peppers and by the time I’m posting, we’ve already eaten the fruits (or peppers!) of our labor!

We planted tomatoes, banana peppers and green peppers in our pots when the summer started. Since then we rarely miss a day when we don’t check how they’re progressing. When my mom was here, she used to take good care of them. In fact, they (the plants) missed her when she was gone. I would say it was under her care that they started bearing fruits.

Here are some pictures that I took of our little ones…

Banana peppers

Tomatoes

  

Green pepper/Capsicum

Aren’t they the cutest?!?!? Oh and we’ve had a couple of grown-up banana peppers too…

Waiting for the tomatoes and the green peppers to grow up!

Woodwork project

DH and I refinished an old coffee table recently. This was the first woodwork project that we undertook and were mighty pleased with it :-D. We’d this old coffee table lying around for a long time which we wanted to refinish but never got the time/energy/<put other excuses> :). Anyway, finally we did get on to it and here’s a before after comparison!

How it looked…

How it looks NOW …

Isn’t it lovely?!?!? It took us some sanding, some varnishing, some more sanding and then again varnishing to get this look. Now we’re on the lookout for more furniture that we can refinish :-D

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.