A Peek into my Life

I am currently in pantry cleaning mode. So, I have tried out a lot of recipes this past two weeks. I had bookmarked some of them for maybe a year now and I finally tried them out. Gingerbread Cookies The daughter saw an episode of Care Bears making gingerbread cookies and since that day, she had been insisting I make them. She even told me the recipe : ground cloves, cinnamon, ginger, molasses and flour. Thats a good enough recipe for a 3 year old. I followed the King Arthur flour recipe This recipe makes real tasty cookies! A great balance of spice and sweet and a good crisp to soft ratio. The dough needs to be kept cold at all times otherwise it will turn into a sticky mess real fast. I made the dough the previous night and stuck it in the fridge in a covered container and pulled it out of the fridge about half an hour before rolling to make it manageable to roll. The dough still has to be cold to touch. I rolled it out on parchment paper with a piece of plastic wrap on top....

Recently our snack stock ran out. I decided to restock it with some healthy snacks. One for the sweet tooth and the other for the savory. No Sugar Date ladoo with chia seeds Dates provide all the sweetness for this ladoo. They are sweet and full of fiber and nutrition. The nuts and seeds provide crunch and substance while providing good fats. Ingredients: 1 cup dates 1 1/2 cup mixed nuts and seeds * 4 cardamom pods Method Soak nuts like almonds and walnuts in water for about 2 hours. This makes them easier to digest. Peel and chop. This is a time consuming process. This step can be done a day ahead. Using a nut chopper or food processor will make it a whole lot easier. Boil some water. Barely cover the dates with the boiling water in a container. Cover and leave aside for 15 minutes. This softens the dates. This step is optional if you have a food processor. Since I used the blender, I took this extra step. Blend a little bit of dates at a time in th...

Last summer, I did some crafting on glass bottles and vases. I love glass as a material. I like shiny and glamorous things :) (although I am sure you wouldn't guess that if you saw me) Lets start with the shiniest of them all. I used glass gems on this one. These glass gems come in a variety of colors at any craft store. I first sorted the gems by their color. I also cleaned the bottle. I removed the label, washed and dried it beforehand. I used some rubbing alcohol to clean the outside of the bottle before gluing the gems on. A clean surface is highly recommended for any glass craft. I did not want to cover the bottle entirely with the gems and wanted some of the beautiful color of the bottle itself to peek through. I drew a design on the bottle with a marker to roughly mark where I need to leave out the gemstones. I tried to keep the lines equidistant but I am not good with measuring and straight lines. I just tried my best. I glued the gem stones starting from the bot...

I had bought some mustard greens and was thinking of ways to cook them. The obvious one was sarson ka saag. I wanted to go a little simpler. I thought of pairing them with one of our favorite dried bean - black-eyed peas. I based this recipe on the famous palak paneer and followed a similar method. This has become our new favorite way to eat greens. I recently made kale this way too. I am so glad to have found another way to eat greens in a totally yummy way while still being so healthy. It never fails to impress the husband (and of course, me too) with its taste. Think of this recipe as a technique and use it on any of the greens, pairing them with different dried beans. Mustard greens with black-eyed peas Ingredients: 1 bunch (4-5 cups) mustard greens 1 cup black-eyed peas 1/2 cup spinach leaves (frozen) * 3 green chilies 2 inch ginger 1 small onion 4 large garlic cloves 1 tomato 1/2 tsp garam masala 2 tsp milk powder * S...

Last weekend was the husband's birthday. It had been a very long time since I made a nice decorated cake. This was the perfect occasion for a nice cake. Just a couple of weeks ago, I saw a video for Strawberry Charlotte on the Joy of Baking youtube channel . I liked the look and I loved the strawberry cream topping. I am totally in a strawberry phase. We have gone through 8 lbs of strawberries in the last month (Some of them are in the freezer, but I am sure they won't last long). I followed the recipe for the Strawberry Charlotte almost exactly. The sponge cake was made exactly the way it was shown in the video. The folding techniques are quite useful. Since the air whipped into the eggs and sugar is what makes the cake fluffy and you do not want to deflate the batter when folding in the dry ingredients. I halved the strawberry cream as I wanted it to be more like cake with frosting rather than being tart like with a lot of strawberry cream filling. The ratio of cake ...

This week I had a few unexpected highlights in the kitchen and outside. I thought of putting them together in one post. Beets sabzi with pickle masala It was just a normal afternoon and I made a simple daal and rice for lunch. These days, I do not feel right about skipping vegetables in any of the meals. So I wanted to add a vegetable element that I could get done real quick, to go with the daal and rice. I had beet root and carrots in the fridge so I thought of making a quick saute with them and then, it went in a totally delicious direction when I noticed the pickle masala in the fridge. The cashews and chana dal add a wonderful crunch. I love the aroma of the tiny bit of bell pepper but it is totally optional. rice, masoor dal, beet sabzi and pineapple chutney Ingredients: 1 beet root 1 small carrot 1 small onion 1/4 cup chopped bell pepper 1 tsp oil 1/2 tsp mustard seeds 1/4 tsp hing (asafoetida) 1/2 tsp cumin seeds 1 tbsp cash...

I got a few raw (green) mangoes last week. I made a small batch of my mango pickle . With the rest of the mangoes, I made a couple of chutneys. My mom told me about this sour-sweet mango chutney which could work like ketchup with more of an indian flavor. I immediately got down to making it. I loved its tang. The husband loved it mixed with some sweetish yogurt. We are already halfway through the chutney in a week. I will have to make another batch soon. We enjoyed it with thalipeeth immediately after I made it. Mango Onion Chutney Onion gives cooling properties to the chutney, with the green mango providing the tang, making it perfect for summer. Ingredients: 1 large (2 cups) raw mango peeled and chopped 1/2 large (1 cup) onion 1/2 tsp chilli powder 1/2 tsp cumin seeds 1 tsp salt 3 tsp jaggery 3 tsp dry coconut powder Method Put all ingredients in a blender. Blend into a chutney. Notes: Brown sugar can be used instead o...

The school year is coming to an end. My daughter has some really great teachers at her preschool. She loves them. So we wanted to do something to thank them. We made some cards using a wine cork stamping technique I had seen on this blog . We actually found a wine cork on the road when I had taken the daughter out to ride her bicycle around the apartment complex. I put blobs of a few colors (blue, red, yellow and white) on a plastic container lid. The daughter swirled the wine cork around and picked up random colors and stamped a circle to make the flowers. I had drawn a circle on the paper to help her understand where to stamp. I also drew a few leaf shapes on the paper and she painted them green. I used tempera paints. When the paint was dry, I cut out the flowers and leaves leaving a tiny border of the plain yellow paper around it. I let the daughter stick the flowers and leaves on craft paper folded into cards. She put a dab of glue on the flowers and leaves and stuck them...