A Peek into my Life

During my daughter's summer vacation, we go to my parent's place in Gujarat for about a month. We come back relaxed and ready to take on the next school year. We also come back with a couple of more kilos on us; given all the delicious mangoes of Gujarat and even more delicious food cooked by mom. This year she made the most delicious alu wadi (if you are in Maharashtra) (or patra, if you are from Gujarat) I had till date. Since we are talking names in different languages, the English name of the leaf is colocasia leaf. Anyway, I tried the recipe as soon as we were back and settled at home after the month-long vacation. I had to record this delicious recipe for reference. This alu wadi is not deep fried but is crisped up on a cast iron skillet with a little oil. To achieve a good browning, the cast iron pan needs to be preheated on high flame first. Once it is hot, keep the flame low throughout the cooking. A small amount of oil along with low and long heat ensures a crisp ...

I like to bake muffins as I have said before. I bake a tray of muffins and freeze the batch. It lasts us about a month. I make them healthy enough to be eaten at breakfast since they make for a quick, portable breakfast. Today's muffins are a tad bit more indulgent. They could pass for dessert if you really try. :) I had an overflow of citrus fruits in my fruit drawer and they were not getting eaten at all. So I made a marmalade to rescue them. The marmalade will have a blog post of its own sometime later. I made marmalade muffins from some of that homemade marmalade. Marmalade Muffins adapted from Poppytalk The citrus zest and vanilla make it one amazingly scented packet. I could love it for just the smell but it tastes delicious too. I think it is a better use of marmalade than even spreading on buttered toast. Ingredients: 1/2 cup all purpose flour (maida) 1 cup whole wheat flour 2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt 3/4 cup milk 1/4 cup mel...

As I promised on my previous post, this time I write about strawberry jam. Making jams is such a rewarding experience, much like making achaar, the Indian pickle. Jams are generally thought of as a store bought commodity, so it makes home-made jams so much more special. As with anything homemade, you can control the quality of ingredients and know exactly what you are eating. I tried two types of jams with my stash of Costco strawberries. A balsamic strawberry jam and a strawberry chocolate jam. My daughter couldn't keep her hands off the strawberry chocolate jam While reading up on strawberry jams, I found some useful information. Strawberries are a fruit that is naturally low in pectin and pectin is the substance which helps the fruit juices to gel and combine into a jam. Apples are naturally high in pectin and commercially available pectin if often made from apples. So instead of buying pectin to make the jams, I added apples to the jam. Although, jams do not necessarily...

Bagels and cream cheese is such a classic breakfast. It is a great on the go breakfast. Quick and easy like spreading butter on bread except its spreading cream cheese on bagel. Making flavored cream cheese takes the breakfast to the next level. You do not need to spend extra bucks on buying flavored cream cheeses because making them at home is easier than whipping cream and as with anything homemade, it can be customized to your taste. The flavored cream cheese can be made ahead of time and refrigerated for a week. Honey Walnut Cream cheese This is our favorite kind of cream cheese. It is sweet enough for breakfast without being dessert-like. Honey gives it a complex sweet flavor which cannot be achieved with sugar. Walnuts add a nice crunch. I also add a little bit of yogurt to my flavored cream cheese to lighten it and make it more spreadable right out of the fridge. Ingredients: 3/4 cup cream cheese 1/4 cup yogurt *see notes 1/8 tsp salt 1 tbsp brown s...

I am not a morning person. Getting up and making breakfast at 7 in the morning is very difficult for me. The most I can manage is toasting bread. But when the husband is out of the house at 7, a real housewife cannot let him go without a real breakfast, can she now? And then there is the question of packing a healthy breakfast for the kid to take to preschool. "How can I pack the most nutrients in what little she eats, without adding any weird tastes", is a question I always struggle with. Anything other than chocolate, milk, plain rice falls somewhere in the weird tastes category for her. Anyway, to help me with the breakfast question, I try to make a few healthy, freezable and delicious options when I have time and my brain is not working at a snail's pace (like in the morning). One of the breakfast which everyone loves is : muffins. All I have to do the night before is, pull a few out from the freezer to thaw in the refrigerator. And they are perfectly ready to eat ...

Another weekend has gone by and comes Monday and with it, the wait for Saturday. But this weekend was different with many tasks being done. The most important was getting Netlon fixed. Well, measurements of the windows and exhaust fans are taken and tomorrow we will have a lizard proof house. Or so I hope. On Saturday, the inverter guy also came to install the inverter. The whole day went by just like that with people coming all the time to do some or the other work. In the meantime, I managed to prepare pizza for lunch. I had the pizza base ready, prepared the pizza sauce and used baked beans, capsicum, onion, and mozzarella cheese for the topping. I got ready made breakfast that day with Anurag preparing bread-omelets and tea. Couldn't have had a better start to the day. Got out of bed and voila! Breakfast is ready, courtesy hubby dearest. We also managed to watch a movie on DVD in the afternoon with a few breaks in between. In the evening I was too full to eat anything. We wen...