aloo jhinge posto

Panchphoran
Onion & Potato together
Fry for a while
Haldi, jhinge, salt, tejpatta, whole green chili, ground posto (khus-khus).
Water iff required.
Cover and cook.

Colorado Fall Colors Trip - September 2008

Just a quick summary of what all happened in our Colorado trip, so that we don't forget.

Wed, Sep 24

• We drove to Park'n'Travel and then made it to the airport in time. No lines at security check.
  
• The flight was uneventful. Both of us read books.
  
• Picked up car from Hertz, which is much nicer than some of the cheaper car rentals.
• We headed out to Aspen.
• There was a wait on the freeway due to "rock scaling". Stopped at a cute small town & took some random pictures.
• Took the route to Aspen through Independence Pass instead of the regular I-70 way.
• The road to I.P. was pretty and uncrowded with views of fall colors in the distance.
• I.P. was nice & cool. There's a walk to a vista point, but there's nothing to see from there :)
• The road from I.P. to Aspen had a lot of fall colors, but no place to stop and take pictures.
• Finally we drove through Aspen and reached our hotel around 4:30. This hotel was much nicer than the places we end up staying usually on trips. I guess Snowmass Village is also much nicer than those towns as well :D
• After a break, headed out to Aspen to eat. After talking to the receptionist, we took the public transport to Aspen. It took half an hour with a bus change, but it was pretty fun to ride in a bus. After reaching Rubey Park, we roamed around Aspen and saw some art galleries. Aspen was really empty, I guess since this was a transition time between summer and winter. Finally, after roaming around a lot, we ate at La Cantina. It was nice, but pretty expensive. We ordered a combination plate mole chicken, enchilada and something and shared. We headed out to Rubey Park, precisely timed to catch the 8:45 bus back to SV, but it turned out that the buses were hourly at that point instead of every half hour. So, we roamed around some more and found this really nice t-shirt shop, which had a whole load of cool t-shirts. (e.g. "Your village called, their idiot is missing" :) ) After surveying the shop in great detail (we had a lot of time to kill), I even bought one Aspen t-shirt.
  
• Headed back to SV and reached the hotel and crashed.

Thu, Sep 25

Green Moong Dal

Today we are having green moong dal for dinner.

First we soak the moong dal for a while, up to 12 hours, as much time as we have - today it was 12 hrs. Then we cooked it in the pressure cooker (with salt and haldi) till it was pretty soft - 20 mins - and left it in there to soften some more.

For the tadka, heat oil, add jeera. Then fry onions. After a while, add ginger and a whole green chili (with slits). Then add some tomatoes and fry them as well. Eventually add the dal, and let the whole thing cook together for a while. Add salt and sugar to taste.

Cholar Dal

Cook chana dal nicely in cooker.
Fry onion nicely with panchphoran.
Add shredded coconut, green chili, ginger, cloves.
Add dal to this.