I wish to give a long and a lengthy ‘About-Us’ and here it is:
I am Mangala. What about the name Mangala? Mangala is my real name. I thought I should not display my original name in blogs and decided to promote it with the name Sarah. I like this name Sarah and felt Sarah will sound glamorous :P. But then, why pseudo-names? why not blog with my actual name? I decided to be factual rather fictional and considered to write with my very own name ‘Mangala’.
Why this space?
When there are millions and millions of food and cook blogs over the net, why cooking.jingalala.org? Is it to while-off the time? to fish new friends? to brag over? to teach people cooking? to yield cash? Well, though the notion had them ALL in little percentage, the big area in the chart of ‘Concept Behind’ is occupied by the small word – ‘Sharing’. I thought, rather documenting my family’s recipes just to myself in a word document or in an excel-sheet and hiding it with myself in my password protected laptop, why not share them to anybody and everybody over the web?
The backgrounds of the recipes are mostly from the places where I grew up and spent my childhood days – Madurai and Trichy in Tamilnadu, India. Stories behind the recipes often will be from my both grandmother’s homes, ammachi and appatha :), aaand some from school friends, college friends, friends at work, neighbors, aunt, uncle, in-laws and fellow-bloggers. Of-course.. of-course.. recipes from my Amma will definitely be top in the list. If I got to put recipes from my blogger friends or unknown bloggers, I will leave you a link to their original recipe. About my family: a nice fat happy family and will introduce to you in few of my recipe stories.
Photography? I am like, I wanted to try eeverything I like. Painting, sewing, embroidering, singing, dancing(?%^$#@), acting, driving, swimming… cooking, but, at last I’m a know NoTHING 🙂 . In to my recent likes come ‘Photography’ lol. I’m at Level-0 in photography, or at least in food-photography. Though I can never expertise in them, I can at least learn the basics and present my recipe pictures little clean. When I googled for basic food photography, Nags of cookingandme.com had a wonderful post. It is helping me a lot today! So the snaps of the food pictures in my posts are my own clicks and sometimes do a post-production with my snaps before blogging about it. Though post production is taken care by Mr.Picasa, (a little left drag for color, right drag for highlight…finished), capturing the picture is a hard task for me. Never can I master photography [mastering is a Big word], but I have hope in presenting you with decent pictures of my recipe post. If you would like to know what camera I use for my posts, I suggest you read my yummy Mango Pie post
Who inspired for Jingalala?
I like to search for recipes, not for ‘how-to-dos’ but for their images. Some images make me hungry even when my tummy is fully fed. Like a nomad, I had this habit of recipe-image searching. If an image looks good I open the link and get to see their ‘how-to-do’. On such a nomadic walk over the net, the internet introduced to me two handsome sites, DK’s chefinyou.com and Rakanand’s Rakskitchen.net. I only stop and stare at their food pictures when my tongue-waters silently inside. Not just the presentation pictures, but the step-by-step pictures. O my God! It is a hectic job. Every scroll we make in their page is their hard-work. I realized it very lately when I tried to picture step-by-step for my first recipe. I am now having a habit of visiting some more food and cooking blogs. Everybody’s is unique I would say. Some way or other each one of their cookery site is different. I do not know what is different in mine, but wish I get more time and patience to have it liked by most of you all. I will let out all the tips, tricks and mystery behind all recipes!🙂
Why Jingalala?
I did not know when I got this thought, may be several years back, I had idea to write this phrase: ‘life jingalala’ (hae, even before it came in that advertisement :)) behind our car if we own one. Or to give a funny clause to my site like ‘paati-sutta-vadai’(Grandma’s Fritters). But, I liked jingalala and named it so. The .org in cooking.jingalala.org has nothing to do with non-profit organization. We did not have .com so opted for .org.
Measurements
I am no veteran in cooking, neither a novice. I know quantity of ingredients play a soul role in cooking; but never understood the measurements of cups, teaspoons and tablespoons :). I’ve seen my mom’s cooking and use the same habit of measuring with eyes. I’m now slowly learning to take notes of the approximate time and measurements of my cooking so that I can give you the right information. Do not consider this as a warning:); I felt it like to share with my members.
I will ask for comments
Jeevs – my husband. Good comments from Jeevs is like a rare rainbow :). He comments on my cooking ONLY if the dish is extremely good. I got tired asking remarks for my dishes, and decided not to ask at all ;). I learnt to encode the real comments from Jeeva’s remarks very recently. If he says no word after eating, it means the food is edible and good :D. If it is a ‘Nalla iruku ma’ (it’s nice darling), it means the dish is TOO GOOD TO EAT and if it is a ‘Romba nalla iruku ma’ (it’s very nice dear), it means my dish is EXTRAORDINARILY AWESOME. This founder of cooking.jingalala.org is a-new to my list of inspirations. In fact, I learnt many virtues from him :P. Latest of which is ‘Do Not Expect remarks for your works’. Good comments make me feel happy, great and excited; bad ones make me upset and ‘no-comments’ make me worse :D. Well, that was during the initial period of facebook. It is not that I am not expecting your comments for my posts in this blog. I definitely will and I definitely need them. But if I see ‘no comments’ for my posts, I will now not feel worse :).
Even a single-word comment of ‘Nice’ will make me happy. Sure, you can leave your link too in my comments section if you tried my recipe or even if you started a new blog! Actions for bad comments? 🙂 you knew it, just disapprove. What if your good comments are not approved for long time? It means I am travelling/spending time with my family or sleeping
Sharing
Yes, you can leave links of my site and links of my posts to your friends, in your posts, facebook, twitter etc. Every little recipe-post in whichever site it is will definitely have the author’s dedication and time. Since I am a newbie in blogging, forget about the writing… but capturing a good picture of them and post-producing them is really hard for me. Please do not reproduce the contents and the pictures in any form without my knowledge. I will sure be excited and happy if you would first ask me.
Origin of cooking.jingalala is still a long story and you thought the story is all over :D. Everytime Jeevs ask me to start a cookery blog, I will just visit to my favorite blogs and being a gawker, I keep scrolling up and down, jump to their many pages and think ‘No. Never will I present recipes and dedicate time like them’. But today.. it’s happening! After several push from Jeevs and few of my friend’s encouragements I’ve made it today! One of my other targets is to have links to my recipes in Tamil language too. Though it might sound vain, to me, if you like something, then reading it in your native language brings you some satisfaction.
Thank you for visiting friend! Cheers to you for reading the long write-up. I wish I can offer you a hot cup of ginger-tea for your visit, but here you have more than that! Scroll down and up, navigate to pages, explore and learn on the recipes: the origin of the recipe, stories about them, and remarks on them. Kumon, Tweet on! Have a Jingalala time cooking!
[You can read more about me]
Mangala from Cooking.Jingalala
Eat well!