12 Tips to Care for Your Nails at Home

1. Wash and dry your hands properly.

2. Using a double-sided emery board, file nails using a gentle stroke. Avoid corners of your nails.

3. Shape your nails. The most popular shape is oval, but choose the one which suites your hand and finger.

4. To harden soft nails, soak in warm olive oil for about 20 minutes, on alternate days.

5. To clean stains from your nails, mix one tablespoon of lemon juice in a cup of water and soak your nails in this liquid for a few minutes. Then, wash off with warm water and apply a hand moisturizer.

6. In case you wear nail polish, make sure to give your nails a break from time to time.

Nail Care Tips 

7. Whenever you wash your hands, make sure to dry the nails properly and apply a hand cream or lotion, using it on the nails as well. This is because soap makes the nails dry and brittle.

8. If you have brittle nails, it is advisable to wear a nail polish, or at least the colorless base coat, as much as you can.

9. Add shine to your nails by massaging coconut oil or warm castor oil on to them.

10. Dip a cotton-tipped swab in hydrogen peroxide to clean under the nails and whiten them.

11. Drink fresh carrot juice daily, this is high in calcium and phosphorus and is excellent for strengthening nail.

12. If your nails are weak, splitting, or fragile etc, the problem may possibly be traced back to a poor water intake. 

11 Signs and Symptoms for Skin Cancer

A lot of their symptoms overlap—which doesn't *really* matter because despite which category you fall under, it's still skin cancer. We tapped into Gohara's expertise to find out which "little" signs could potentially mean big trouble down the road if untested: 

1. If you cut it in half, do both sides match up evenly? Asymmetrical moles aren't good.

2. Also look out for moles with jagged or irregular edges—normal ones are typically smooth.

3. If you've noticed the color of your moles become darker or just change color, ahem.

4. Track your mole's size to see if it's growing. Anything bigger than, say, the size of a pencil eraser needs to be checked out.

5. Moles that bleed or hurt.

6. Pimples that won't go away on sun-exposed skin. Zits appear and disappear all the time, but if a translucent, pimple-like bump doesn't go away after a month or so, it's most likely not a pimple.

7. Bruises on your feet that won't heal.

8. Exposure to HPV took us by surprise. So genitals—that normally don't see daylight unless, you know, you're chilling at a nude beach—with the virus can also develop squamous cells and lead to skin cancer.

9. A key phrase is "non-healing sore," which often refers to problems in the mouth (caused by smoking). Oral skin cancer falls under the SCC column, so please, DON'T PUFF THE TOBACCO.

10. Look under your fingernails for brown or black streaks. These can also appear on your toes.

11. Crusty, scaly (gonna be sick) skin is another biggie. But there's a difference between this and things like dry skin, psoriasis, or eczema even though these can all mimic each other in appearance. Usually, skin cancers are tender and won't respond to topical creams that most other ailments react to. 

While these symptoms don't always link to skin cancer, you should schedule an appointment with a derm just to be sure.

Vaazhai Thandu Pachadi (Banana Stem Raita) - Plantain Beth Recipes

Ingredients

Banana Stem - 1/2 feet [Half feet]
Salt - 3/4 teaspoon
Curd - 1 cup [200 ml]
Green chilly - 3
Grated Coconut - 1 tablespoon

Preparation

1. Chop banana stem into medium size pieces

2. Put this in mixer grinder container

3. Add coconut, salt and green chilly

4. Grind this nicely

5. Mix this with curd

Jigarthanda Drink Madurai Special Recipe

Main Ingredients:

Badam pisin - 1 tsp or 4-5 small pieces (almond gum)

Milk - 4 1/2 cups, full fat milk

Nannari sharbat - 3 tbsps (sarsaparilla root syrup)

Ice cream - 3 scoops (made from reduced milk) OR store bought vanilla ice cream

Sugar - 3 tbsps (adjust)

Method

Soak badam pisin in 1 1/4 cups of water overnight. Next day, it will swell and form a transparent jelly like consistency. Remove any impurities if any.

Bring full fat milk to a boil and reduce to almost half its original quantity. You will have 2 1/4 cups of reduced milk. Turn off flame, add 3 tbsps of sugar and mix till dissolved. Bring to room temperature and chill in fridge till use.

To assemble the drink, take three tall glasses. Add a generous tbsp of the badam pisin in each glass followed by a drizzle a generous tbsp of nannari syrup. Divide the sweetened milk among the three glasses till three fourth full.

Top with a scoop of reduced milk ice cream or store bought vanilla ice cream and serve immediately.

Jigarthanda Drinks Recipe

Tips

Make reduced milk the earlier day and chill in the fridge overnight.

Make ice cream the earlier day and freeze.

You can replace nannari syrup with rose syrup/rooh afza.

You can use agar agar (china grass) instead of badam pisin, if you do not have access to almond gum/badam gond. If using agar agar, soak a fistful in 1/3 cup of warm sugar syrup till they form into a jelly and use in place of badam pisin.

Badam pisin is available in native ayurvedic medicine stores.

I have used homemade ice cream. You can use store bought vanilla ice cream.

In case the drink does not have a light brown shade, you can also achieve it by adding caramalized sugar to the reduced milk.