Bhutanese Styled Pasta

One of the fore most things I have learned to cook a different meal was Pasta since departing from my home country, Bhutan. I learned to stay independent and slowly began to cook other different meals. It all started when my old mate, Kezang served us Pasta as our lunch meal and sometimes as a dinner during my first year of university. I liked pasta more than any other meal. It is easy and fast to cook. Pasta increases calories in our body. It is nutritious and healthy.

Everyone knows s that Pasta is an Italian food and they take sauce as an additional taste. Italian Pasta is dry and less spicy. Since I don’t like sauce and sour taste in the meal, I cook in a Bhutanese method to suit my flavour. This means, I like to cook Pasta with soup, hot spices and cheese to make it gravy and tasty. So, I prefer my Bhutanese styled Pasta cooked at home rather than buying it from the restaurant.

I got so much attached with Pasta that I would take Pasta as my breakfast, lunch and dinner and then continue for weeks and months. Basically, I was not cooking rice or noodles. My friends were surprised and even told me, “Yeshi, aren’t you fed up eating the same meal?” and I answered, “NO, I am not” Pasta became my favourite meal. Fortunately or unfortunately, I even got a name, ‘Pasta Choden’ from one of my guy friend. The funniest part is, when my friend visits me, I cook Pasta for them. I am a Pasta icon (This is funnier) because I taught my other friends to cook my way of preparing Pasta.

Here are the tips to cook my style of Pasta

You will need:
A packet of Pasta
1 Chopped and sliced onions
2 round sliced potatoes and your other preferred green vegetables like peas and broccoli
1 chopped and sliced tomatoes
Oil, Salt, Cheese, Chilli (Raw and powdered)
Corriander/Lemon (Optional)

1. Put Pasta in a pan with hot boiled water (warm water is fine too)
2. Pour oil, salt and chilli powder (It creates colour to Pasta)
3. Then add potatoes and the spices
4. Keep it to cook for 15 to 20 minutes and stir
5. When it is cooked, keep the pan away from heat and add cheese and stir again
6. Put coriander for additional aroma
7. Lastly, serve it hot with lemon (optional)

I guarantee that you will enjoy eating Pasta as an occasional meal. In Bhutan, Pasta is usually given to kids as a change in their diet. I hope, everyone reading this post enjoys cooking Pasta and finds it delicious as much as I did and I STILL DO. Eat Pasta, stay healthy and live happily!!!

My One is to Three Ratio New Year Resolution

The closing of 2011 flashed everywhere-in news, in facebook, in twitter and other social entertainments. Everyone started to wait for the new day and to make a new motivation in their life. Like everyone else in the world, ever since the last month of 2011,I started to bucket list my New Year Resolutions that particularly connects with my hygiene. Accordingly, as excited and sad I was, I came up with three tops most resolutions. They were;

1) Quit the Drinking
2) Stop eating chillies
3) Become a Vegetarian

I am looking at my above resolutions again and wondering whether I have really succeeded in fulfilling the above resolutions.

Firstly, as a friendly gesture and as a company to my friends around, drinking wine became a casual stuff. With days going by, too many birthdays and the celebrations blew my heads off and honestly, I felt like I have more liters of wine than water. I enjoyed the blurriness when drunk, I liked the dizziness, when drunk and took joy being talkative when drunk. But for how long am I going to rejoice over drinking? I thought it would be a good idea to stop drinking and see how my life goes with it. I made it my first priority among the resolutions then.

Secondly, as for the chillies, I have my usual habit of eating hot chillies. I am Bhutanese and a sharchokpa girl, nothing makes my tummy happy like those hot chillies. But this hot chillies really made me suffer and ended up going to hospital for check up and then finally, taking medicine to cure the nail pinning pain on my stomach. That’s how I stopped eating chillies and at the same time, I included in my New Year Resolutions.

Thirdly, becoming vegetarian as my New Year Resolution just happened to click in my bucket list. I somewhat wanted to go back to my old times when I was a vegetarian in Bhutan and then see how my life works outside my country being a vegetarian. I have seen my other vegetarian friends complaining about meals from the restaurant and they would usually eat it from home. Or sometimes they take vegetarian burger. Their life seemed quite hard not getting to eat other delicious non-vegetarian meal. Despite all these, I challenged myself and just go through and survive without meat.

It is almost a month now that I really see the progress on my above resolutions. Well, there were occasions and I didn’t drink. There were meats laid on the table during my meal time with frends, I didn’t eat the meat. How about the chillies now? I stopped eating chilies for four to five days. I lost my appetite and every time I take my meal with less chillies, I started to get annoyed to myself. Isn’t this crazy or say, is it funny to get angry at myself? I even started to barf off the meal right in the meat.

Then, I realized how I made the terrible mistake of eating too much of chillies despite my friend’s acknowledgement. Mistake was a mistake and I need to dump the mistake in the bin and continue eating chillies. Irony, I am eating it all over again. This time, I am eating with precaution not to eat raw chillies alone and eat with the food only. At last, my three to three new year resolution didn’t work out and for one thing I am sure, I can never stop eating chillies. If anyone of you have any solution to this, help me out!!!

Now that Chunipa Losar is so close knocking your door to yet another family and friends gathering and celebrations, you all must have bought meats and drinks. Wish You All a Happy Chunipa Losar tomorrow and Enjoy your day at the fullest.