BBQ Tonight

Since Miss Ayesha has started her donkey finding campaign and sealing eatery after eatery for unhygienic conditions, one doesn't really feel like going out and eating - specially the beef or meat stuff.  And perhaps this has become as a good omen for the housewives as their husbands and kids now prefer eating at home rather than going out with 'friends.'

Well this being one of the reasons and my annual ritual of arranging a small BBQ at my home, last night was the night when I had the BBQ tonight right in my home. However, this time, I had only myself, my wife and a son for the party, so we decided to arrange the show on a smaller scale rather than going on the roof top and using the BBQ apparatus.

And for last night, we decided to use our long disused 'angeethi' - a coal-powered domestic stove generally synonymous to Asian countries. Although being coal-fired, it had nothing to do with the Nandi Pur power project, where the coal did not give out any electricity - but here in our case our coal-fired angeethi came to life in a giffy and soon the smell of coal started to fill in the side alley of my house.

 Readying the coal

Soon the coal were red hot and ready for the about a dozen skewers to turn those into freshing cooked aromatic tikkas.

There is no parallel to the aroma of burning coal with meat juices that fell on them adding a unique combination which one cannot smell when going out. Although I was all by myself enjoying the aroma, with my wife occasionally coming out to see how 'things' were being done and seeing what was being done with her Khaddi bag!!

While the coals were being readied or even when the tikkas were put over the coal to be cooked, I was also busy taking photos with my Galaxy S4, including some gif format shots too, which can be seen in this post. So the homemade chef's photography skills were equally being tested mainly for the purpose of this post.

After the entire lot of skewers was done, came the next step - frying a part of the trove into the frying pan with tomatoes, onions and green chilli.

In the gif below, you may be able to see the oil and juice of tikkas bubbling making up the dish into a heavenly food.

 

And wow - the dish was finally ready and we all devoured it till there was nothing left in it. 

Oh, before I forget, a few words of Khaadi bag I mentioned earlier. Well in the absence of a 'Pankhi or Pakkhi' or the hand held fan to boost up the burning of the coal, I used one of the Khaadi bags as improved Pakkhi - while my wife really felt sorry for the fate of a good bag which could have been used for some other purpose.

Well that was all about the BBQ last night - do you do BBQ at your place too? If not try someday - there is no parallel to homemade tikkas. At least one is sure of the source and the animal!!

Photos credit: All photos including the gif format shots are taken by me. 

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Our First Dahlia

We have recently shifted into our new house and the first priority of my wife was to set up our little garden with ornamental plants and flowers. We bought some of our favourites, including the double dahlia. Beside marigold what we planted and have since grown, a few days before our red and pink double dahlia started to come out of their sprouts. Today when almost fully grown and in bloom, I decided to take a shot to preserve our first dahlia flowers. This is the pink one, majestic and beautiful.

For those who love flowers, I add here that dahlia is named after Swedish 18th-century botanist Anders Dahl. In German the dahlia was known during most of the 19th century as Georgia, being named after the naturalist Johann Gottlieb Georgi of St. Petersburg, Russia.

There are some three dozen species of dahlia, of these hybrid dahlia is usually grown as garden ornamental plant.

Since dahlia has been our favourite flower, it has always been part of our garden wherever we have been. Photographs of some of our dahlia can be seen at Jalalspages (Flickr). Links to a few best shots are as under:

Macro | Flora | Dahlia

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The magnificent Dahlia

Of all the flowers, the full bloomed double Dahlia is my favourite. Every season this beautiful flowers blossoms in my garden and satisfies my photographic adventures on these. Dahlia is a perennial plant which is native to Central America, Mexico and Colombia. 

There are 36 known verities of Dahlia. While these have ornamental value in the home gardens, it is also used for food.

View here some of my flower/other photos at Flickr

And one important information: Dahlia is named after an 18th century Swedish botanist Andres Dahl.

The above photo of Dahlia from my garden was shot by me and I feel pleased to share it.

Related Link: My Photography (Jalalspages at Flickr)
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A page from my stamp albums

My Philatelic World is my blog where I share my interest of philately – the art of collecting stamps and my stamp collection. Initially, I have been sharing individual stamps, mainly from Pakistan, with my viewers so far. But recently, I have also started sharing pages from my stamp albums showing stamps of different countries.

Interestingly, all stamps are at least 45 years old (and later) as I started collecting stamps in 1965. But in some cases the stamps are even 65 years old, as can be seen in case of Germany carrying portrait of the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler which were printed prior to 1945. So that makes it something like 65 years old. Going further back, I have a collection of Iranian stamps that were published very early in the 20th century, i.ie from 1909 onwards. My active stamp collecting came to an end in 1975 when I left to find bread and butter for myself. But my albums continued to be very dear to me all these years.

Then there are countries that do not exist on the world map anymore and have become part of new countries or have changed names since. Gilbert and Ellice Islands is one such example, which after having been part of the British Empire for almost a century became part of Kiribati and Tuvalu. I also have stamps of Czechoslovakia which after 1993 has been broken into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Philately is an interesting hobby and perhaps the most adopted throughout the world. Though with the introduction of e-mails and SMS facilities, the art of letter writing has diminished. But those who love stamps still continue to find these small rectangulars fro their fun and hobby.

Gilbert and Ellice Islands

A page from my stamp album – Iran

A page from my stamp album - Germany

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