Motivating Biographies

Hi there,

Here are success stories of some visionaries / hard working people featured on CNBC.

Posting it here thanking the channel:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/32462661

More and more stories here -> http://www.biography.com

Hope you enjoying watching/reading them!

Making Muffins - Correct way

1. Take 1/2 cup milk (as it is mentioned) and mix with the muffin mix.
    Tip:- It is important not to blend too much. Just mix till all the content is moistened.
2. Pour the content into the baking cups (fill only 2/3rd) which should be already placed in the muffin pan. If you pour the content directly into the pan, then the outcome will be like my previous attempt (check my earlier post on muffins)
3. Place the pan in the center of the preheated oven.
4. After 15 mins (as directed), check the progress, if it looks baked, take a toothpick and insert in the center of a muffin. If it comes out clean, muffins are ready.. take out the muffins immediately or else wait for few more minutes and check again.

Wondering what is that mix? http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=10294661

PS: Success doesn't need any explanation. But mistakes do. You can check this by comparing the length of my previous post and this!! lol 

Burnt Muffins

Hmm...I burnt the muffins today! I wanted to bake it perfect as this was my first time in making muffins. We (Dinesh &I) used to get this yummy banana nut muffins from Starbucks to fill our stomachs when we travel 2 or 3 hours. I saw this muffin mix in Walmart on one of our everyday visits :P and immediately the finance management part of my brain started calculating the difference between buying Starbucks muffins & cost of home made ones. The mix is just 88 cents and we get 6 muffins (it was mentioned). I got the mix. The only addition is 1/2 cup milk so all it needed was my baking skill.

So where it could have gone wrong? Don't think that I was careless or missed the timing - I sat near the oven watching them rise like a sun!!

Out of curiosity, I opened the oven several times to check the progress.

I figured that the sides of it were light brown in color - just right to take out but the tops were still battery...hmmm this is not good. I opened the oven and thinking how to fix, took a tooth pick and was about to insert into the center of a muffin to test... keeeeennng...keeeennng....keeeennngg...whats that??? Is the oven timer off? Nooo.. I had set itto go off only after five minutes!! The sound came from the hall...I ran and found that stupid fire alarm went off....oh mann...... hurriedly came back, closed the oven door and opened all the apt doors and windows....got panicked whether this apartment is connected to the whole block...whether the maintenance people would come and drill me :-( ..... If I can't bake these small stuff then I can't use the oven?!!! after few seconds the 'keeennng' stopped on its own and I waited for some moment and relieved that this incident didn't disturb anyone!! thank god!

It was mentioned in the mix that I can make 6 muffins.. so I greased 6 muffin cups (pan has 12 cups) but atlast the batter was enough for only 4!! so there was some ghee left in the empty two cups and in hot temperature, it gave out smoke and when I kept the door open for long (warning: opening the door in the middle can flux the temperature greatly and disturbs the baking process) the smoke reached the fire alarm! Ahh...this was the reason!

Coming back to the muffin, I saw through the glass that its top is baked well (fingers crossed for the sides and bottoms of the muffin) and I have to take it out now. one look at the fire alarm and one look at the muffin pan, I opened the door and took the pan out fast and closed the door immediately.

By this time sides were burnt perfectly black :( . The temperature seemed so high that the bottom and sides baked so fast except the top! when the top was baked well, parts that were touching the cups were burnt.

What could be the root cause? (yeah...this is RCA*... LTF** will be implemented soon ;-D )
1. my oven works only in one temperature. Couldn't adjust it!

2. I didn't place the pan in the center of the oven.

So far my stunt with cooking made me realise three things - timing, proportion & order of steps are important, but today I realised temperature is equally important!

So the temperature was high and added to that, the pan was sitting near to the hot panel. I have to fix these problems before next try... I like that in me - "next try"! he..he..will bake them again until I get it. After all its not burnt completely - yummy muffin excepts the sides ;-)

Its ok to fail the first time otherwise we won't realise how good is success! :-)

*RCA - Root Cause Analysis, **LTF - Long term Fix (I was in IT production support before, used these terms enormous amount of times...so can't help it :P )

Will surely post the best method and tips to make perfect muffins after I succeed!

Cost Guide

Here goes my first post...hope it is useful!

While googling on the cost of a service, I came across this wonderful site which guides (really) about the cost , gives reference related to the subject, suggests with where you can shop etc.,
Have to say that the reference articles are informative.

Also, experienced users post their views on the page which is much more useful to get an idea of the subject.

The website is www.costhelper.com