A Peek into my Life

When your kid does not like to touch vegetables, even with the proverbial 10 foot pole, you have to think of ways to put vegetables in their tummy. Most kids, especially mine, love pasta. She has progressed from plain buttered pasta to pasta with cheese sauce in recent years. When there is a sauce, there is always a scope for adding vegetables. Looking at that silver lining (to eating pasta with cheese sauce), I added creamy vegetables which will not take away from the texture of the cheese sauce. Cauliflower and pumpkin blend to a creamy texture with onions and garlic providing flavour. I did not forget the cheese in the cheese sauce. I put in a mix of colby and cheddar cheese. I prepare a relatively large portion of the sauce and freeze it. It freezes well for 2-3 months. This is such a big help on busy school mornings. I just boil 1/2 cup of pasta and mix 2 tablespoons of sauce, quickly defrosted in the microwave and a couple of teaspoons of the pasta water. I pack it in her l...

Sounds like a weird combination and it’s not what I had in mind when I started making it. All I wanted to do was make it taste completely different from what I have tasted before :) After thinking about how I should make the pasta this time for the whole day, this is what I did. I boiled a combination of bow and spiral pasta in salted water. While it was boiling, I added a small onion, two small tomatoes, a small capsicum, walnuts, olive pickle (made by me), some olives, and garlic into the food processor and made a coarse paste out of it. Then I heated olive oil in a pan and added the paste into it and sautéed it for a while. Then added some milk, cream, oregano seasoning and chilly flakes (the small packets which you get at dominos, I put them to good use) :) Added the pasta and some corn, covered it with cheese slices and covered the pan and let it warm for 10 mins till the cheese melted. The verdict: Anurag says it is kind of like pav bhaji meets pasta. I say it was one of the b...