Kalonji and Onion Seeds

Kalonji is widely used in Indian cooking. They are little black colored seeds and add a nice peppery flavor to your cooking. They are mostly used in pickles and achaar. People often refer to Kalonji as Onion Seeds. This is not true!

The botanical name of kalonji is Nigella Sativa. They look almost exactly like onion seeds, but the flavor slightly differs. Onion seeds are rarely used in cooking and are mainly for actually growing onions!

Although you will find many sources that say onion seeds and kalonji are the same; even I thought they were; this is not the case! Kalonji and Onion Seeds come from two completely different families.

Indian Working Hours

Working in an international call center, it is difficult to find out what the official working hours for the respective countries are. It is only due to my work that I discovered that different countries have different work weeks and break patterns. For example, UAE takes their week off on Friday and Saturday with Thursday being a half-day. Their timings are also incredibly different, they work for a couple of hours in the morning and then take an elongated break till the evening when they start working for a couple of hours again. Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia follow a similar pattern. This is incredibly different to India.

India's work week is Monday to Friday, with Saturday being half day in a few organizations. The work day generally starts at 9:00am and finishes at 5:00pm/6:00pm. Lunch break takes place in the afternoon, from 1:00pm to 2:00pm.

This post may not seem of much concern to most of us, but after having to spend hours to find out official break timings and working hours for a number of countries, I'm sure this will help at least some one!