Hello Mamta

My son lives in a very remote isolated community in the Kimberley region of W. Aust. When he went up there I kitted him out with all the essentials ie cumin seeds, coriander seeds, cloves, turmeric etc in little containers to start him off. When he first went up there he would only buy the packet curry sauces and add the meat/ chicken and I would urge him to make it from scratch.

Usually when he wants to cook something different he will ring me and ask what needs to be done. I have had great delight in getting him onto this site as it is so user friendly and the recipes are what home cooks would make. The other night he said he made the 'BEST CURRY EVER' and it did not come from a packet (wow fancy that:)

What he made was Mamtas Chicken Madras, he was even able to obtain 2 fresh green chillis from the small local store to spice it up.

Mamta your site is reaching all parts of this big state plus making my life easier. So thanks.

Cheers

JL

I'd also add thank goodness for the recipe printing facility. I don't think I've ever made a beef madras, Sri Lankan Chicken or Pork Vindaloo curry and guests not asked for the recipe. I remember my poor Mother laboriously writing out by hand recipes time after time. Guests seem particularly desperate for the Pork Vindaloo recipe - I suppose because it is something they will never get at their local Muslim run restaurant!

Thank you for that JL, it is lovely to hear stories like this :-). In early days of our site, Pete had given me access to analysis of this sort of information (what happened to it Pete?) and it gave me great pleasure to see that people from countries I hadn't even heard about, were clicking on our site.

Winton, at the moment, I am experimenting on cooking most of the curries in my slow cooker with one pot method. Today, it is the Chicken Navratna (Chicken cooked with nine dry nuts), marinated overnight in a blend of everything and now cooking. easy-peasy ;-)! I will paste pictures at some stage, some people coming for dinner tonight, so may not get a chance today. For meat/chicken curries, I am sure most can be cooked this way, give it a try. Whatever I have cooked so far, I have been told it is delicious.

So, no need to labour for people like your son JL, all they need is a slow cooker and some spices that he can stock up on when he goes to the big city!

mamta

Have you ever thought of having a YouTube channel and posting videos on there, Mamta?

Or how about a web camera in the Gupta kitchen so we can log on each evening to watch Mamta cooking!

Look forward to adaptation ideas for converting your recipes to a slow cooker Mamta. Expect beef and lamb should be well suited cooked this way, and perhaps we can buy cheaper cuts - even a tough old rooster should come out OK as you are sort of marinating and cooking at the same time over six hours?

As an adjunct however, with the price of fuel (and just received my electricity bill!) I wondered if we have reached the point where it is cheaper to buy tinned pulses/beans rather than soaking and boiling things like chick peas for hours? (unless you have a pressure cooker.)

Not exactly about cooking:

One tip is to be very sceptical about the supposed 'savings' offered by fuel comparison web sites. I was offered marvellous savings but when I did the calculations manually I would actually have ended up paying substantially more on all their 'deals.' The best savings are just to get gas/electricity from the same supplier and to ring your current supplier, say you are going to change, and a special offer 'for existing customers' often miraculously appears.

Mamta I'd guess the site statistics (who, where etc) were part of the server/website setup on a previous hosting. Since then the site has been moved to another server/host and different software that is running it... so those stats won't be as easily (and safely) available.

Steve

I rarely look at the stats for my website, but there is a good program that runs on the server and it's quite detailed.

A good program - and one I have used in the past - is Extreme Tracking. You can sign up for a free account but your stats are made public, if you pay for the service - which I normally do - the stats are private. When you paste the code for a free account an icon appears and you have to leave it - even if you try and hide it using CSS they will ban the account. The one you pay for has no icon. It shows you a map of where all the traffic is coming from along with detailed information about the visitors, operating system, browser et cetera. It lists all the refers and the keywords people have used to come across your site.

Something else that I've recently come across is a site called ClustrMaps and you can sign up for a free account and I guess you paste in a code and it shows you where all your traffic is coming from.

The stats are public but it only shows you where your visitors are coming from. It's a map of the world and the visitors show up as red dots on the map. The dots vary in size depending on how many visitors there are visiting your site from any given part of the world.

Have you ever thought of having a YouTube channel and posting videos on there, Mamta?

You are kidding, aren't you John? It is hard enough to take stills! Besides, I usually cook Indian food before I have a shower, especially when it is for a group of people. It wouldn't make a pretty film, LOL!!

What you are saying about various computer programmes, isn't aimed at me John, is it? I leave all that stuff to Pete, I haven't a clue! I am sure his mail box allways gets full of my questions!!!

Mamta

The Navratna Chicken curry is done now, it is looking good and my OH/taster says it is 'fine', which translated means it is good ;-)!

Mamta

It wasn't really aimed at anyone really, I just thought I'd mention it because it had been written in a previous post. I was under the impression that you wanted to know what part of the world your visitors are coming from.

I would love to know that, but I don't understand the programmes that will bring them to me :-(.

JL - congrats on hearing your son made the best curry ever. Im lucky in Australia as I have everything to hand...but out in the Kimberely! Now thats something else. Hope he shared it with people?

Cheers

Steve

Hello

Yes Mamta a slow cooker may be the way to go:)Maybe his Christmas present this year

His girlfriend went on a work trip to Broome and bought him a mortar and pestle so he could grind the whole spices that I had sent up. This really impressed me.

I have endeavoured to teach my kids that there is nothing of better then fresh home made and if one is organised it is faster then the 'fast food'from the local takeaway, besides being a whole lot healthier. Mind you where he is apart from a small shop the next town is 10hrs drive away.

Steve as to whether he shared - no he had the remainder the next day for leftovers and said it tasted even better.

However, he is quite chuffed and wants to try his hand at parathas and veg bahji which he wants to take into school for not only the other teachers but his students to try.Giving the indigenous kids a 'new taste' experience in food can only be good. Fresh veg are so expensive where he is and also rare that frozen will come in handy and just as nutritious.

Yes the world is a lot smaller thanks to the www. and sites like this

Cheers

June