A Peek into my Life

We went on a short one night trip to Saputara in the middle of the week. It was a holiday for Independence day and the school was on a 4-day short break combining Independence day and Parsi new year. The three of us, along with my in-laws left from Thane around 6:20 am. My parents were going to reach Saputara from Gujarat. They started at 5:50 am. We stopped at 7:30 am at Shree Dutta snacks on the Nashik highway for breakfast. It is famous for their Maharashtrian food. And Maharashtrian food is usually spicy. So, I and my daughter stuck to plain idlies and bread butter. The others enjoyed sabudana khichadi, upma, and sheera. We left around 8:30 and headed towards Nashik. The route to Nashik is very scenic and especially so during monsoons. We were in Nashik around 10 am and took the diversion towards Saputara. The road becomes a narrow 2-lane road once you divert from Nashik towards Saputara. This time, the road was quite bad with really huge potholes in some p...

You might remember my husband's birthday cake , way back in June. Well, today I am going to talk about the rest of the menu for the birthday lunch. He loves paneer and dal makhni like most vegetarian North-Indians :). But, my daughter and father-in-law do not like paneer. They prefer chicken to paneer any day. I saw that the common link between all the three dishes was - makhni sauce. That would make my work easier. Instead of having to prepare 3 separate dishes with separate ingredients, I could prepare the makhni sauce beforehand and on the day of the lunch, I could just put the dishes together. Paneer Makhni Dal Makhni Butter Chicken I made the makhni sauce on the previous day and stored it in the fridge. On the day of the birthday lunch; For Paneer Makhni, Combine a 3/4 to 1 cup of the makhni sauce with half the amount water to make it liquid. Brought it to a light boil Reduce the flame to slow and added equal (to water) amount of cream. I used Amul cream. ...

Yesterday I went to ‘Zaika’ restaurant in Raheja Arcade in Koramangala in hope of eating Gujarati thali. There was a mention of this restaurant and that it serves Gujarati thali, in Bangalore Times on Friday. And as you know, I have been praising Gujarati food; I thought we can try it out. But now, after eating it, I can understand why people wouldn't like Gujarati thali. It was bad. They tried but the result was far from the real Gujarati food. Yes, they made it sweet. People should understand that sugar is an ingredient in Gujarati food, but it is not the only ingredient. There has to be a good proportion of spicy taste in it and sweet is just to offset the spices. Anyway, what made it worse was the price. Priced at 125 per thali, and limited food, it made matters worse. The katoris in which they provided the vegetables were so small, they could be meant for infants. Me being used to the unlimited Gujarati thali with lots of dishes, it was a major disappointment. I guess ever...

Eat Happy - the tagline of a very happy looking eating place called "Mast Kalandar". For some reason I really like this place coz whenever I go there, I never return anything less than ‘happy’J. I remember when the place had newly opened on Bannerghatta road; a very café sort of look with bright colors used everywhere, lot of orange and yellow…the chairs are orange too. It looked like a good place to go to if you want to get into a sunny mood. I hadn’t gone there for a long time as I was not sure about the kind of food there. I went there for the first time some months ago after I got married and after I was tired of cooking dinner every weekday :). As soon as I entered, I realized it’s a ‘hatke’ (different) place…starting from the menu to the method of ordering. The menu is put up on a colorful wall behind the counter. You don’t get your menu and don’t get to order from your table but you do get food served on the table. That was a new one! But the menu is so exciting that...