A Peek into my Life

The gawar bean is definitely not a celebrated vegetable. It is a humble bean with a humble name. Gawar also means a simpleton in Hindi. Its funny to think someone came across a vegetable and decided to call it a simpleton. Although the English name - cluster bean makes sense. As per this wikipedia image, the beans grow in clusters. The people who think they do not like this vegetable do not know the secret ingredients that make this vegetable taste like a million bucks. Jaggery and goda masala play really well with the slight bitter undertones of this vegetable and some nuttiness in the form of sesame seeds or peanuts also adds a delicious flavor to the sabzi. This needs a little prep time, like all delicious vegetables (looking at you, methi!!). They need to be stringed and cut. But if you got your hands on tender and fresh beans, you will not have to struggle with tough strings and save on some prep time. This is a distinctively Maharashtra style of sabzi with the very...

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 ...

The Easter egg hunt is long over but your house is still filled with the plastic Easter eggs. What do you do with them? That is the question I asked myself ....and to Google a while ago. Turns out, a lot of people have that question and have answers to them too. So the ideas here are not original but I went through a lot of them and many were repeated on so many places that I do not have the proper links to credit them. My daughter loved the Easter egg hunt at her preschool and she loved her plastic Easter eggs. It was her first egg hunt. But when I turned those eggs into something more, she was excited. Musical Egg Shakers The first thing we made were musical egg shakers. This is the easiest to make. Materials: plastic eggs rice, beans clear tape Open up the plastic egg. Fill a little bit of rice or beans or other grains in them. I used rice for one and black eyed peas for another. Tape the egg closed so that the fillings do not fall out. Have fun making m...

So last Thursday was "Gudi Padva". It is the marathi new year. But I really had no idea about it. I woke up and lifted up the blinds and saw the opposite apartment had a gudi. And then I went "Ok....so today must be Gudi Padva." I did not have anything to make the gudi nor am I good with pujas. But my brother and his wife are good at it and thanks to them, here is a picture of what a gudi is. So I decided to do the thing I am good at : make a special meal.Traditionally, srikhand is made on this day. But again, unprepared as I was, there wasn't much yogurt at home and I was planning on making yogurt at home, which I did, but it wouldn't be done in time to make srikhand. So I decided to make seviyan kheer. And to make it a whole lot special, I decided to make chole and puri along with it. It was just the right time to try out my bookmarked chole recipe from  http://ribbonstopastas.blogspot.in/  I recently discovered this blog and it is great wit...

Spring is finally here! The temperatures are warmer and cool drinks are in order specially since I am avoiding turning on the air-conditioning. We need to conserve some electricity after a looong spell of running the heating. The king of hot weather drinks here is the lemonade. There have been times when we used to buy bottles of lemonade from the store but not any more. The store-bought lemonade does not taste that good and has lots of unwanted chemical ingredients. And when it is so easy to make, who needs storebought anyway? If I haven't managed to convince you yet, it is very cost effective. How cost effective, you ask? Lets see : Storebought bottle of lemonade costs 2.6$ for 2 litres (67.6 oz) Homemade lemonade : A bag of lemons is also about 2.6$ sugar costs about 3$ This amount gives me 20 cups (160 oz) of lemonade So, cost for 2 litres of homemade lemonade comes to around 1.2 $ Saving : 1.4 $ per 2L bottle of lemonade Enough with the maths, lets get on to what...