A vegetarian food blog with unique and interesting recipes from all over the world mainly focused on South Indian Cuisine.
April is here, and spring is already spreading its charm and splendor. Hope you all are enjoying the spring, and I am so happy to announce about the 118th edition of the event “My Legume Love Affair – MLLA.” Yes, I am hosting this month and scroll below to learn more about the event and how to participate.
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Before bidding goodbye to 2017, I would like to look back as usual. Following the tradition of 2014,2015,2016, here is my retrospective post or a short recap of my blogging journey in the year of 2017. But before, I would like to thank all my readers, friends, and family for the strong support and for trying my recipes and sharing your thoughts and comments. If not for you all, I wouldn’t have been able to continue this journey for 8.5 years.
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I am happy to announce the next kid’s delight event. In 2015 I picked pasta for kids as the theme and last year it was cakes and cookies. And this time, the theme is “Kids friendly Soups and Stews.” The winter weather calls for soups and stews, and nothing can comfort like a warm bowl of soup. I think I am repeating it, but IMO soups and stews are the perfect way to sneak in veggies. Now bring on your kid’s friendly soups and stews. :-)
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Today I am going to share my second-day experience at IFBC 2017. You can read about the host city Sacramento here and my first-day experience here. The second day was much more fun and comfortable, and I was delighted to see all the blogger friends again. We bloggers decided to attend different sessions and to share notes. Isn’t that great? I liked the idea, and I was all up for it.
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Blogging remotely in our comfort zone is always great. At the same time, meeting peers and other fellow bloggers become quite tricky. It becomes “it’s just you” forever. Conferences are a great way to meet other bloggers and to build the network. Today I am going to share about my first-day experience in the International food blogging conference that I attended recently in Sacramento.
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SACRAMENTO – the mere name makes me all nostalgic. The tower cafe, the restaurants on Broadway(especially the Andy Nugyens), the state capitols, the tree-clad downtown, Java City, the fresh fruits and vegetable stands, UC Davis Children’s hospital and last but not the least the Sac State. :-) If I can call someplace as my hometown in the USA, then it has to be Sacramento. I spent the two most hectic yet meaningful years of my life in Sacramento. Yes, I am a proud Sac State Alumni, and if you ask me to write about the city of trees – Sacramento, I can keep writing about it. :-)
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It just feels like I completed the April Mega Marathon and did the roundup. Time just flies, and here I am, again with an intro post about another edition of the Mega Marathon. Every year during April and September, we group of bloggers post recipes daily except Sundays under a pre-decided theme. I have been participating in these mega marathons from 2015, and this is my third year. As you all know this April, it was all about baking, precisely A-Z baking. This September it is all about Protein Rich dishes.
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I am elated and excited to share this fantastic news with you all today. We at IMC, released the Millets Ebook today! This is my second ebook…. Yayyyy!! What a great way to start the month! This idea of posting millet recipes seeded on Mother’s day 2015. We, the members of IMC brainstormed and came up with lots of recipes, and that’s when we decided to compile all those recipes into an e-book. The millet recipe contest sure did spice it up.
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Here is the much-awaited roundup post of the kid’s delight event – Cakes and Cookies. I hosted the event during the holiday season. I know it’s the perfect time for cakes and cookies but at the same time, it is the time for traveling and family visits. Irrespective of that, I received 29 lip smacking yummylicious recipes. Thanks to each and everyone for making this event a great success and without any further ado here is the recipe roundup.
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We celebrated Vaandu’s 8th birthday today!!! You might have guessed the theme from the title, yes, it is the Angry birds. :-) E.I.G.H.T years went in a blink. It seems like only yesterday I was holding him in my arms and I was changing his diapers and watching his first steps, first babblings etc. But time just flies and I am missing those years for sure. No matter how old he gets, he will be always our little Vaandu and Happy happy Birthday to my dear Vaandu.
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One more day and will be bidding goodbye to 2016. Like 2015, 2016 went in a flick too. Before welcoming 2017, following the tradition of 2015 and 2016, here is my retrospective post. Err precisely, a small recap of what happened in VVK in 2016. Before that, I would like to thank all the readers for all your support and encouragement and especially for trying my recipes and taking the time to click and send me the picture. It means a lot to me and it’s a boosting factor for sure.
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I would like to take this opportunity to thank all my friends and bloggers who shared their recipes in my blog as a guest. Being a food blogger, I admire and appreciate all the food bloggers out there. Food blogging is a pretty involved hobby and it requires a lot of time. In an attempt to share the work of my fellow bloggers to my readers, I started this guest posting.
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I am happy to announce the next kid’s delight event. Last year, I picked pastas for kids. This year I am going with cakes and cookies. Holiday season always calls for baking. Bake your child’s favorite cakes or cookies and please join me with your entries. Let’s make this holiday season more fun and cookielicious and cakelicious.
Please send in your recipe link along with the picture to my email @ daffodilshree@gmail.com. I will be doing a round up post before Jan 25th.
Guidelines for the event:
If you can use the below logo, it will be great.
Looking forward to your cakes and cookies. Thanks a lot.
It’s guest post time. I had to skip the guest post last month due to other commitments, but I am super glad to be back on routine with the guest post and I personally thank Beth Martel for this wonderful and very valuable article. She is a mother of two, a medical professional and a humanitarian. She blogs at HealthyRecharge.com.
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This year I got a chance to co-host the millet recipe contest along with Indian Moms Connect and Secret Recipes of India. Its time to announce the results. Thank you all for participating in the contest and making it a great success. More importantly, thank you for sharing your amazing recipes. Details about the other recipes can be found here.
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I am happy to announce that I am co-hosting Millets recipe contest for this Mother’s Day with Indian Moms Connect and Secret Recipes of India. Mothers hold a very special place in our hearts. This year, Mother’s Day falls on May 8th, 2016. This year we decided to celebrate Mother’s Day by combining our love for our mothers with our motherland :) A Recipe Contest With Millets which are native grains of India, our Motherland! So go on and call your moms and find out how they created magic from millets.
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Indian cuisine is a common term given to the food from India but in a larger picture it encompasses all the regional cuisines within India. India is known for its cultural diversity; also the cuisine is highly influenced by the region, traditions and occupation. The early invaders of our country, be it Greek or Mughals or Europeans have played a major role in shaping up our modern Indian cuisine. I have already discussed about the history of our food in the book talk – The Story of Our Food by KT Achaya.
Can I explain about Indian Cuisine in one single post? No. Generalizing becomes very difficult here. Each and every state in India has its own cuisine. Each and every district/region within the state has its own cuisine. The diverse regions, geographical locations and religion, culture, occupation all plays a major role in defining the regional cuisine. Then comes the fusion food like Indo-Chinese, Indo-Italian, Indo-American and this list keeps growing as the Indian diaspora keeps growing.
Today I am just going to share a few things about Tamil Nadu Cuisine. Tamil Nadu is one among the 29 states of India and it lies in the south most part of Indian Peninsula and the capital city is Chennai / Madras. Tamil Nadu is known for its classical music, art, temples, literature and the Dravidian architecture.
Coming back to the cuisine, Tamil Nadu is known for both Vegetarian and Non-Vegetarian recipes. I am just covering the vegetarian part here. Rice being the staple of TN, it’s known for the idlys, dosas, pongals, idiyappams and of course for the full meals or as we say in Tamil – Sappadu. The full meals or sappadu cannot be complete without a sambar, a rasam, a dry curry or Poriyal, a gravy curry called kootu, buttermilk or curd/yoghurt , a pickle, a pappad or applam and of course a dessert. This is a very basic meal. You can add zillion other recipes to make it into a feast. Then there are variety rice like biryanis, lemon rice, tamarind rice and other different gravies.
Tamil Nadu cuisine has its own regional cuisine, (this is not the entire list)
So why am I talking about Indian Cuisine and Tamil Nadu Cuisine? – Starting from tomorrow, I will be posting A to Z recipes of Tamil Nadu. It’s the “Journey through the Tamil Nadu Cuisine”. It’s April and Yes,I signed up for yet another blogging marathon (even after a difficult Jan BM) You will be receiving recipes from me every day this month. The talk about A-Z food challenge started in Jan and the blogging bug bit me again. I signed up right away. The theme was quite challenging. We should post A to Z recipes and we can pick any one cuisine or 4 cuisines for 4 weeks but the alphabet continuity should be maintained. My Amma pitched in at the right time and started helping me out. We started discussing recipes from all the cuisines and Amma was asking me to write down all Tamil Nadu recipes first before proceeding to any other cuisines. M joined in too and then finally I realized that I haven’t posted a lot of recipes from Tamil Nadu itself. There is a great saying, “katrathu kaialavu kallathathu ulagalavu” (What you have learnt is a mere handful, What you haven’t is like the world in its size) which means “Known is drop whereas unknown is an ocean”.
I had my list ready by February and when we visited our friends during long weekend I was discussing about this blogging marathon and she suggested and modified a couple of recipes and reminded me the recipes that I haven’t posted. I would like to thank JV for all her suggestions and encouraging me.
So you will be seeing A to Z recipes from Tamil Nadu and all these are day to day simple recipes. I will be explaining more about Tamil Nadu cuisine in the individual recipe posts. Hope you all enjoy this BM and hop on, let’s learn ABC via food. As this is A to Z challenge, I am joining in this challenge too. :-)
There is a famous saying in Tamil – “Thirai kadal odiyum thiraviyam thedu” which means seek your fortune/wealth by crossing seas. I think most of us follow that which makes us and our family to be spread across this globe. The concept of nuclear family is becoming more prevalent and we need to rely on phones and internet to communicate with our parents and grandparents and they help us to stay close and connected.
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Happy Birthday my dear Vaandu err dude :-) Seven Years!!! Jeez… Where and how did the time go? As usual I am scheduling this post at 00:03AM, the time when Vaandu decided to come out after stressing us for just 18 hrs.
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When the blogger friends are sharing their and their baby birth stories, I am here sharing my blog story. :-) I have posted about my labor briefly here. (You need to scroll down a bit though) A non- recipe post again… Vasantha of My sweet nothings nominated me for this blogger recognition award. Thanks a lot akka. You always surprise me with your awards. Thanks again and keep rocking. I am nominating all the blogathon friends for this award and now come on share you blog’s birth story.
Rules:
My blog birth story… I have already shared it in this tag. This year my interview got published here and I have given all the details there. So here are the links. (hey this is not a cheat post, okkk)
Errr advice – Just have fun blogging. :-) As I mentioned in the interview if you are into food blogging just organize the pictures from the start which I missed and now I am going all crazy. :-)
When RM, Preethi and Aarti asked me to write about my time management I wasn’t sure what to write. But it provided me an opportunity to do a self-analysis. I was analyzing my entire day and figured out I don’t have any set routine. I just take things as it comes. So this post is not going to be like tips for time management or anything related of that sort. I am just going to share what I do and how I tackle my tasks. The two main things that help me to manage all my work are:
These two things play a vital role in managing my rest of the time.
[pullquote]Seven years ago to come out of my depression I kept myself busy and as days passed it became my habit.[/pullquote]
There is a famous saying “An Idle mind is devil’s workshop”. That’s very true at least in my case. Seven years ago to come out of my depression I kept myself busy and as days passed it became my habit. Luckily I picked the activities that I am passionate about, so I didn’t feel it like a burden, rather I started to enjoy them and felt so happy about doing the same. I take Vaandu to all my classes (again I choose my classes where kids are allowed – be it exercise/gym or music or swimming or knitting/art) which gave him a chance to see these activities and explore and slowly he started to show interest in them. I am happy too that he stays with me and I don’t need to find someone to take care of him while attending these classes.
When I was analyzing my day I figured out two more things – I multitask a lot and then I am glued to my phone pretty much always. (That’s a sad truth) I have no idea if I am multitasking efficiently or if these multitasking are good for my health or family, But this is what I do,
I don’t consider all my days perfect. Some days are really hectic and crazy with unexpected things. I do panic, I do get over stressed especially when I hear complaints from my kiddo that “Amma, you are always working. You are not spending time with me”. I have melt downs but again Time takes care of it and I believe this shall pass too.
I don’t know if I am teaching the right thing to my kiddo by staying glued to my phone and my hubby was complaining the same too. So I tried to stay away from my phone and I did succeed in that mission. But I don’t know if I will be able to watch TV without doing any other work. I can only do that in theatre.
[pullquote]“The bad news is time flies but the good news is you are the pilot”.[/pullquote]
While I was searching for images for this post, I came across this quote written by Michael Altahuler – “The bad news is time flies but the good news is you are the pilot”. Yes we are the pilots and we need to manage the time that works for us and our family. Our office commute, traffic, and work pressure each and every small things plays a major role in this. Schedule and manage your time so that by the end of the day, you feel happy and content.
Wishing You All A Very Happy New Year…
The first post of the blogathon and is it going to be a resolution post?? Nah… I am done with the resolutions. The resolutions that I make doesn’t even last for couple of months. So I am planning to create a wish list and see if I can tick them off.
I wanted to start this New Year with a positive note. Luckily I remembered this three day quote challenge passed by Deepa of madraasi.com. She sent it in July 2015 but here I am doing it in Jan 2016. Better late than never is my policy. Thanks a lot Deepa. She is an amazing food blogger with loads of recipes and love her reviews too. I love the quote she posted for her day 1 – “BEHIND A BEAUTIFUL SMILE, FEMALE MIND IS A MYSTERIOUS PLACE”
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Three more days and we will be stepping into 2016. 2015 was yet another year with lot of ups and downs but for my blog it has been a great year again. Last year I did my retrospective post and this year too I wanted to follow the tradition and here I am with my 2015 recap.
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Today is Slow Food Movement Day.
So what’s Slow Food? It is the opposite of Fast Food that’s it. It’s as simple as that.
Slow Food Movement was founded by Carlo Petrini in 1986 and they started promoting it as an alternative for Fast Food. The Slow Food international movement officially began when delegates from 15 countries endorsed this manifesto, written by founding member Folco Portinari, on December 10, 1989. It is an international movement and according to Wiki, “The movement has since expanded globally to over 100,000 members in 150 countries. Its goals of sustainable foods and promotion of local small businesses are paralleled by a political agenda directed against globalization of agricultural products. “
Food, Clothing and Shelter are the basic and the same time important requirements of life. Gone are the days when we used to get farm fresh produce and cook fresh meals every day. We buy fresh food from grocery but who knows how long was in the transit? In this fast pace world, food also has become fast food. In order to balance work and life we opt for the easy and convenient fast food. Food Industry is one of the largest and complex industry and also controversial industry in today’s world. People discuss and debate the pros and cons of everything right from ingredient to the method of cooking. Some of the recent things that I came across was, Microwave cooking is safe or not? Cooking beans in slow cooker without soaking will release toxins? Is it safe to cook in aluminum pressure cooker directly? Can we warm honey? And there are many more questions.
Why do we need these movements, nutrition classes and what is the significance Does that mean do we need to go organic and natural? The next question that comes in our mind is, is it affordable to all? The slow food movement aims at rediscovering the local flavors and regional cuisine. When we buy seasonal vegetables and fruits from the local farmer’s market it is comparatively affordable and at the same time it helps the local farmers and promotes sustainable growth. ? In my opinion these movements brings in the health awareness and helps us to understand what we eat. The Child Nutrition and cooking course helped me to understand and interpret the labels. We need to understand the effect of junk food and sugar in our body.
Food which is the fuel for our body has direct impact on our health. As parents we need to understand what is MSG (Monosodium glutamate), refined carbs, blood sugar, fat and effects of fast food. Can we say no to fast food right away? No. When my work is hectic and when I am not able to cook I go for frozen food or fast food. But I limit it and keep it at the bay. As the proverb goes, “Too much of anything is good for nothing”.
On this Slow Movement Day, let’s try to understand and analyze our food and get back to our roots and see how we can incorporate the seasonal fruits and veggies along with healthy pulses and grains. A well balance diet and Exercise is the key for healthy life. Let’s eat healthy and stay healthy.
Couple of books that I read and reviewed,
Earlier Cross Posted here.
