A vegetarian food blog with unique and interesting recipes from all over the world mainly focused on South Indian Cuisine.
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.
I am hosting this event for two more weeks. So please if you are planning in to send recipes you can still send it. I will be doing the round up on Dec 16th. :-)
I know I posted about this event on November 1st. But as I am hosting these coming two weeks thought of doing a reminder post again and with some more information on pasta.
Pastas:
Pasta is the staple of food of Italy but they have crossed borders and it has become everyone’s delight, especially kids favorite. According to Wiki, “Both dried and fresh pasta come in a number of shapes and varieties, with 310 specific forms known variably by over 1300 names having been documented. In Italy the names of specific pasta shapes or types often vary with locale. For example, the form cavatelli is known by 28 different names depending on region and town.” Interesting huh?
I am happy to announce I would be hosting my blogger friend Valli’s event : Kids Delight from 15th Nov – 30th Nov 2015. The theme would be “Pastas For Kids”. This is the first time I am hosting an event and I would like all your support and of course recipes. I have already heard for few of blogger friends. Thanks a lot and looking forward for your recipes.
Why Pasta For Kids??
Pastas are everyone’s favorite. Like every other mother, I have the same worry in my mind too. “What to cook for my kid? Will he/she eat that? Will they like it? etc etc etc”. Color and shapes always fascinate kids and the same concept goes with food too. Colorful and different shaped food appeals a lot and with pastas we can incorporate all these and at the same time we can make it healthy too with the flavorful sauces and veggies.
So bring on your pasta dishes.
I can keep adding to this list. Sky is the limit. Let’s get into our kitchen and get started. I know October is the National Pasta Month but lets extend it to November too. Please send in your recipe link along with the picture to my email which is [email protected] Will do a round up post on Dec 1st.
Some important guidelines to follow when you publish your recipe,
The Blogging Marathon group is very close to my heart. I and my blog came out of hibernation mode only after joining the BM group. I have mentioned this before but I am repeating again – I learnt and still learning a lot from that group especially baking and recipes from other Indian states. A well organized blogging group and I am glad to be a part of it.
I am happy to announce I would be hosting my blogger friend Valli’s event : Kids Delight from 15th Nov – 30th Nov 2015. The theme would be “Pastas For Kids”. This is the first time I am hosting an event and I would like all your support and of course recipes.
Why Pasta For Kids??
Pastas are everyone’s favorite. Like every other mother, I have the same worry in my mind too. “What to cook for my kid? Will he/she eat that? Will they like it? etc etc etc”. Color and shapes always fascinate kids and the same concept goes with food too. Colorful and different shaped food appeals a lot and with pastas we can incorporate all these and at the same time we can make it healthy too with the flavorful sauces and veggies.
So bring on your pasta dishes.
I can keep adding to this list. Sky is the limit. Let’s get into our kitchen and get started. I know October is the National Pasta Month but lets extend it to November too. Please send in your recipe link along with the picture to my email which is [email protected] Will do a round up post on Dec 1st.
Some important guidelines to follow when you publish your recipe,
The last day of this mega marathon and yes I completed two mega marathons this year. This month was pretty crazy with lot of festivals and I was posting two recipes in a day which I would never do. I hope you all enjoyed the series and I will be doing the round up posts soon. Between October is going to be a slow month. As I did more cooking, loads of coding work is pending. ;-) But you can see my regular posts in my FB page and my weekly digest emails.
How many ever times I visit this city there is something new to look forward. Each and every trip is unique and different. I am talking about San Francisco – the home of Giants and 49ers. I have already written about SFO Ferry building this January. This month I became the tour guide of SFO as M was out of town. We were hosting his uncle and aunt and I was showing some places around bay. I took them by Bart only. I am not yet ready to drive in SFO and the other main thing is I don’t have patience to find parking in SFO. Bart and Uber helped us a lot.
I hope everyone know Mark Twain’s quote – “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” SFO will be always cloudy, windy and foggy. Thanks to the cold Pacific ocean. It was a very clear day and not many days are clear like this in SFO.
Now coming to the main part of this post – Golden Gate Bridge. Why so much hype about this bridge? It is the symbol of SFO. The golden gate bridge is a three mile long suspension bridge connecting the northern tip of SFO and Marin County. The golden gate is because as it covers the golden strait and it’s the gateway to enter into the SFO bay so hence the name.
The color of the bridge may look like red but it’s not red, it’s International Orange. (The hex code is #ff4f00) The interesting thing is the painting work is ongoing process. They keep painting the bridge so as to avoid the corrosion. For the first time I got the full view of the bridge without fog. Here are some ferry pics and other pics from SFO.
Fisherman’s Wharf, Crooked Street, Ferry Building, Golden Gate and China Town, City Hall are some of the famous places in SFO. This time I took them to Ferry Building, GG and China Town as we had only half a day.
Hope you all enjoyed this month’s series. Love to hear your feedback and will be back with the recap post soon.
Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 56
Loading InLinkz ...If you are in my Facebook group friends list you might have seen these pictures. But I am posting it here again – the flavors of South Tamil Nadu. This is how my India trip looks like – a visit to Chennai and a quick 3/4 day trip to Bengaluru (this time it became a weekend trip and I spent more time on roads) and then a trip to either my native or M’s native to visit the temple and then back to Chennai, visit friends and family. That’s it vacation gone. (Err it’s not vacation. India trips are always hectic) Last time I went to Periyakulam so this time we went to M’s native temple at down south. To be precisely the temple in a small village called Puliangudi-Kaaduvetti and the closest town is Sankarankovil.
This time we planned as 2 day trip so that we can go to Kutralam. It was amazing and I am visiting Kutralam after 15 years. The weather was awesome. It was end of the season so it wasn’t that crowded. We did enjoy the water and at the same time we did enjoy the street food – Masala chai, Masala Gooseberry, Pickled Green Mango, Hot banana chips and also lychee fruit. I couldn’t take any pics as it was drizzling the whole time. Pics in phone didn’t come that well.
That’s our temple and it is in the middle of the farms. Its Dharma Sastha’s (Lord Ayyapan) temple. Sabarimalai is in a straight line behind this temple. The belief is that Lord Ayyapan rested in this place when he came in search of Puli Paal (tigress milk) for his mother. Its a very small temple and they kept it in this way and we really enjoyed it. No big queue, no waiting time. It was peaceful.
Coming to main part and one my favorite city Tirunelveli – we always book our return tickets from TVL (Tirunelveli) so obviously the visit to Nellaiappar temple is mandatory and also Pothys. :-)
Me and my SIL go crazy and we pretty much complete all our purchases there and come back with our hands full. (We ignores the stares from FIL, M and BIL)
I didn’t forget the most important part – irutu kadai halwa. It’s dimly lit small shop which sells only halwa and it opens at 5pm and closes at 8pm, sometimes even before that. They serve the halwas in lotus leaves. This time I gave the camera to M and asked him to take the pics. The kids were with my SIL and in-laws. So me and my BIL stood in line and got 10 kgs of halwa after 15 minutes of struggle. Its worth the struggle for that yummiest halwa.
Here are some other food that we enjoy – Madurai famous jigarthanda and cane juice
Seems like my travel post became food post. :-) Hope you all enjoyed.
Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 56
Loading InLinkz ...I think I have bombarded you with enough recipes, so for the last week of this BM it’s going to be non-recipes. The next three posts will be non-recipes and I thought of writing about my recent travel and keep it picturesque. (I don’t know if my pictures are visually attractive but still let me use that.) Whenever we travel to India as a family, we tend to take mini vacation before going to India. So this time we stopped in Abu Dhabi. Hubby’s BFF was inviting us for a long time so we thought of stopping in Abu Dhabi and booked our tickets via Etihad. But just couple of weeks before our travel our friend got shifted close to Dubai – which means we got a chance to visit both Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Basically Dubai and Abu Dhabi are 150KM apart. It took us less than 3 hrs. to reach Dubai.
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These are my personal opinion and I have not received any remuneration for these.
Coursera and Udemy are my go to sites these days. These online courses make learning and our life easy. When I was browsing the courses in coursera, I found this course called “Child Nutrition and Cooking” offered by Stanford University. It is a self-paced and a free course too, so signed up right away. (It took me 3 months to complete a 6 hrs. course)
It was a great course and the title explains it all. The course starts with why home cooking matters and it gradually moves on to balanced meal and USDA terms and technologies associated with that and food allergies. The term natural food and organic food has become magic words but this course clearly explains what it exactly means and how do we interpret the labels. I really enjoyed the entire course and glad that I let Vaandu to listen and watch the course along with me. He learnt a lot too and I was able to explain about junk food and what a healthy meal is and especially about sugars. These sugars play a major role in kid’s health. The course had quizzes too and that was the fun part.
This course also has great recipe videos and here is a simple one that I tried – Berry smoothie. I never added yogurt and milk together. I have always added either one. But this recipe called for adding both and it came out really well. It’s a simple recipe. Take a handful of blue berries, raspberries, strawberries and blackberries. Blend it along with milk and yogurt. There are many more recipes like this.
The main thing that I learn from this course was how to eat in moderation. Portion control and balanced meal is the key to healthy life style. It’s a great course and worth the time. Ending the post with Julia Child’s quote –
You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces – just good food from fresh ingredients.
I have been posting in Euphoric Delights FB group for the past 2 years. Earlier it was known as Epicurean Delights and now its Euphoric Delights. But lets call as ED group as everyone calls it. This is a FB group which has 50K + members which is not only a group for foodies but as they say it’s for connecting and sharing. When they announced this SFO meet up one of our friend asked me to attend and I was reluctant initially as I wasn’t sure about hubby’s travel which would make group cooking difficult. But at the same time I wanted to attend as I post a lot in this group and get good feedback.
Finally I bought two tickets and pulled my BFF N also. I didn’t even ask her if she wanted to join. I took her for granted and informed her that she has to join. ;-) We both enjoy food and dance so this was a perfect party.
So what was this meet all about? Its a fund-raising plus socializing event. Basically its a potluck party with food and dance. We were supposed to take bite sized food. Can you believe 450 people signed up and showed up too. The hall was over crowded and so much food. Loads and loads of sweets and savouries. They had contests and dance towards the end. Unfortunately we had to leave early so missed the dance. But one thing I realized was, after that heavy food, dance would have been really difficult. Bite size vada pavs, dhoklas, ice creams especially paan ice cream, juices, chana chat, bhel puri, pani puri and what not? So many delicious dishes and well organized event/party/meetup.
Got a chance to meet lot of people and also the admin of the group Shalini Ramachandran. She was very nice and lovely. I still wonder how she manages this bring group.
So what did we prepare?
Why blue blue blue? Coz the theme was blue and we were asked to dress up in blue and I went a step further and decided to prepare my food also in blue color. ;-) ;-) When I told N and my hubby that I am going to prepare blue berry idlys they both thought that I went really crazy and backed up from being my scape goats. But they dint have a choice? I tried this recipe before the event and made them taste and they approved. To be true the dish came out really good. The subtle sweetness of blue berry was there but it didn’t over power. Its pretty simple recipe. All I did was adding fresh blue berry puree to the batter prepared mini idli.
Blue Berry Idli Recipe:
Steps:
I tried preparing dosa with the same batter and it came out really good. :-)
When I received this award from My little Rock, I was in a total awwww moment. The word elated can’t explain my feelings and its more than that and I am not able to explain how felt that day. Because this person followed me silently for four months and passed on this award. This is what she commented.
Hi! I just wanted to let you know that I’ve nominated you for the Liebster Blog Award because I love your recipes and blog!!! I’ve been following your post for a while now and love your work. You deserve the recognition. Thanks for taking up the challenge. I can’t wait to read your answers.
These recognitions from fellow bloggers are really a great boost and thought that people follow and read my blog regularly and appreciating is really awesome. Thanks a ton My little rock.
So the rules on accepting this “award” are as follows:
1. You must thank and link the blogger who nominated you.
2. You must nominate 11 other bloggers who you think deserve this award and link their blogs too.
3. You must answer the 11 questions posted by the blogger who nominated you and ask 11 new questions for your nominees to answer.
4. You must notify your nominees.
Nominating is always the difficult part. So this time I am nominating
1) Vidya – TMF
4) Mullai Madavan – Spice India Online
10) Charanya
I am passing these same questions to my nominees too. :-)
1. Why / how did you choose the name of your blog?
I want my name in my blog also a name which states what is the blog about. So my URL and blog title are different.
URL is Vidhyashomecooking – I was watching some food show and they were talking about about importance of home cooking thus it became vidhyas home cooking.
Title is Vidhyas vegetarian kitchen – I wanted the title to be self explanatory. So became vegetarian kitchen :-)
So finally it is Vidhyas home cooked Vegetarian food :-)
2. What’s your favourite dish to eat?
Being a foodie this is a difficult question to answer. I love to explore all the vegetarian food.
3. What’s your favourite dish to cook?
My favorite and comfort food Rasam :-)
4. Why did you start a food blog?
Basically I started the blog to record my mom’s recipes. My mom visited us in 2009 and I was asking her to write down the recipes for all chutneys and thuvaiyals. Then thought why not add them as blog entry so here I am blogging from 2009 :-)
5. How much time does it take in total to put a recipe online? This includes the cooking, photographing, writing, uploading etc.
Depending upon the recipe. But on an average I would say 3 to 4 hrs. I cook and take the photography which is approx 2 hrs and then adjust the size of the images and add water mark and writing and scheduling another 1 hour.
6. What type of camera are you using to take photos for your blog?
Till this march I was using my Samsung Note 3 and now my Canon EOS T5 rebel.
7. What’s the worst cooking disaster you’ve ever had?
I have had many disasters. I have separate category even for that – Sodappal Stories. The recent one which I haven’t captured here is baking pav buns. Instead of getting buns I got pav stones. ;-)
8. How long have you had your cooking blog?
From July 2009. I am going to hit a sixer soon.
9. Who’s your favourite cook / chef?
My mom. She is my inspiration and my favorite cook. Both me and my mom love Revathy’s Shanmugam and Meenakshi Ammal’s recipes.
10. What’s your favourite cooking TV program?
I would say all shows from food network especially Giada’s Everyday Italian and I used to follow Jaya TV’s Arusuvai Neram.
11. If you could give one piece of advise to another food blogger what would it be?
Have fun Blogging. I would like to share Julia Child’s quote here.
Learn how to cook- try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun!”
Thanks again for the nomination and enjoyed answering these questions.
IMC – just recollecting how I started my journey with them. I think I landed on IMC website through R’s Mom blog. I became a regular reader of IMC and the thought of writing for them started budding slowly. I still remember when my first post got published in Jan 2014. I was checking my article on the way to India at Singapore. I was super elated. That’s the beginning and that’s how my journey started with IMC as a contributor. After completing my master’s project I didn’t use my Android skills at all. I wanted to try some app but I unless and until pushed with a deadline won’t be motivated. Got a wonderful opportunity to build the android app for IMC and slowly started contributing in other areas of IMC and that’s it now IMC has become part and parcel of my life. It’s wonderful to be part of this great women’s team and my day starts and ends with reading our WhatsApp conversations :-)
From a parenting blog, IMC started to spread its wings and we launched the marketplace couple of months back and now this wonderful Treasure Box. An idea that started as a WhatsApp conversation is live now and to be true, the idea became product within 2 months in both India and US.
Preethi, the jet fast developer completed the development in less than 3 weeks. (Preethi I promise I will get my hands dirty in Ruby on Rails) Aarti and RM pitched in and helped with naming the product, marketing ideas and with other guidelines. Two wonderful crafters helped us to create awesome activities related to the books. Thanks to Gayathri and Poornima.
So now you might wonder what I did.
Err finding faults. ;-) ;-) He he… Actually testing and also helped with design. The chef in me thought of adding kids friendly recipes so helped with that also.
IMC’ Treasure Box is a monthly subscription and Door delivery of a medley of things to spark your child’s imagination! It is available for USA and India. We have the “Under The Imli” box for 2-4 year olds and the “Under The Banyan” box for 4-7 year olds.
What’s inside this treasure box?
1 A book which one of us has read and reviewed and recommended
2. A craft related to that book designed by the super talented women Poornima and Gayathri
3. A recipe suggested by the superchef Vidhya
4. An app appropriate to age group suggested by the techo queen Preethi
Get more details about the box here @ Treasure Box
Please do support and show some love to our new venture and subscribe :-) :-)
One more award and this time it’s from Swapna from Swapna’s Kitchen. Swapna is a new of mine in this blogging world and she has wonderful blog with lot of amazing recipes. And I would like to thank her for nominating me for this award. Thank you Swapna. :-)
For accepting the Very Inspiring Blogger Award everyone has to follow some rules these are :
So here are the 7 hidden facts about myself
Here comes the difficult part, nominating others. All the bloggers are very inspiring in or the other way but this time I would like to take the opportunity to nominate all my DFT team members and other two bloggers.
Tami of eatwhilestanding. – Love all her veggie recipes. Simple, delicious and calorie conscious recipes.
GB’s Cooking blog – I love GB’s art work and she started to post back in her cooking blog too. Hope to see more of her recipes :-)
And now DFT friends
Tag over and now coming to the awards. :-) Again Vasantha from My Sweet Nothings passed on this creative blogger award. I would like to thank her for this award. I really like these awards and tags as it keeps us motivated and help us do much better and also guarantees people do read our blogs and follow. :-) :-)
Thank you Vasantha ka for this award. I don’t know if I am that creative but sure will try be more creative in future. The rules are simple and here it is.
Rules
Random facts about me:
Now comes the nomination part. I am nominating
I am not yet done with my awards. Two more to come. Stay tuned :-) :-)
This is a long term pending challenge and finally got a chance to complete it. Vasantha from My sweet nothings challenged to write a poem about love in ten sentences. Me and poem??? Good joke huh.. So I am just writing about love in ten sentences. But any ways thanks to her for challenging me and this bought some good old memories and it was really fun doing it. When I showed it M, he was ROFLing Max.. I hope you all enjoy it too.
So here is the challenge and the rules:
Rules for the Challenge:
Before you read my poem (????) I will challenge other bloggers.
Errrr here is my so called poem and thoughts behind those sentences.
I would like to start with Mahatma’s quote.
Where there is love there is life.
And now my own
Where there is love there is music
Now love with related to tastes
Love should be sweet as honey so that it lets us to bond with our loved ones in our life
Love should be sour as mango so that it adds flavour to our life
Love should be salty as salt so that it allows chemistry in our life
Love should be hot as chilly so that it gives the perfect kick to our life
Love should be bitter at times like bitter gourd so that it gives a chance to retrospect our life
Now coming to the funny part..
Love is the weapon that helped Harry Potter to win Lord Voldemort.
So from Voldemort’s perspective
Love can be dangerous too
And finally
Love you like a love song baby is one of my favorite song ;-)
I love one of vaandi’s rhyme which says “Love is in air feel it”. Thats my favorite quote.
Hope I haven’t killed love. :-) :-) Err thanks for reading. Here is that beautiful love you like a love song baby by Selana Gomez.
Hi all,
This month is going to be a coding month not cooking month. :-) Here is the first step.
I should have done this posting the weekend before doing the hosting. Errr I missed ;-) Actually mine was hosted by wordpress or as they say it is wordpress.com site and I started to hit the maximum space limit and thats when I decided to move to self hosted site. Bought the domain from blue host and I was waiting for M to come so that we can do together but then the itchy software developer in my made me to try it out faster and I hope I did it correct and haven’t screwed it up. :-)
So here is the announcement.
Vidhya’s Vegetarian Kitchen or as I say VVK is now self hosted. :-)
Tried a test post and it all looked good. Not sure if my post will be visible on WP reader but I need to check on that. If you any information on that please add it in the comment.
I need to do couple category re organizations, plugins and theme changes which I will be doing one by one.
I just followed these steps for my move.
https://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-to-a-self-hosted-wordpress-site/
Between if you can any issues, please feel free to contact me at [email protected]
Thanks for your support
Vidhya
The blogging marathon group decided april to be its mega marathon month with baking as the theme. Yup so you will be seeing me posting 26 days in April except for Sundays. ;-) ;-) Coming to baking as I mentioned in my previous posts, I used to bake often. With three moves in the last 2 year I started using my oven as storing cabinet. ;-) Taking out things from there and baking and rearranging was so much pain and I didn’t do much of baking in the last year. But now again with the move, I have got lot of space and with this event I can get back to my baking spree again. :-)
When I was writing down 26 baked recipes, I realized I have 21 savory recipes and only 5 cakes and stuff. But if you notice you won’t find many baked dishes in my blog. The main reason behind is, I used to bake when I want to do something in a jiffy. So I won’t take pictures and stuff. That’s it, I don’t post. More than for preparing cakes, I use the oven for preparing savory items like Indian curries and stuff. Oh yeah, they are so easy to prepare. Mix everything and bake you are done. Oven helps to multi task.
As there was only 5 sweet items, I thought why not use this event and learn something new? So I will posting both sweet and savory items and some bookmarked recipes. Also we can post some microwave recipes. I will be posting one microwave recipe each week. Hope you all enjoy the series. :-) I don’t need to worry about my May month posts. Lot of sodappal/disaster stories are to come in May ;-)
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, my prep once serve twice got ended today at IMC. So cross posting those dishes here now.
These are the dishes I tried with that concept and the idea behind them. I know we can make a lot of similar ideas. I would like to hear from you also.
Please click on the titles below for the recipes:
Would love to hear your comments and ideas. :-)
All the above dishes are cross posted here.
I am completing my “Prepare Once, Serve Twice” series at IMC tomorrow. So thought of posting the weekend prep that I do before cross post those recipes here. (Mostly it will be a gallery with links as most of the recipes are from here)
Weekdays are really hectic for all of us. With kids pick up, drop, their homework, work, extracurricular activities we don’t have enough time for preparing full course meal daily. When I had the same issue, I started preparing one dish and served it different way the next day. Its a huge hit in our household. It may seem like a repetition but it isn’t. This is going to be a series of prep once serve twice dishes for the next few weeks that makes weekday dinners and lunch easy. Before that, I wanted to share what I have in my pantry and fridge.
Disclaimer: I am South Indian Vegetarian. The ingredients listed below reflect our choice and preferences.
According to me, a perfect weekend is taking complete rest on Saturday, grocery on Sunday morning and preparing for the week on Sunday afternoon. So what do I do on Sunday afternoon?
But as per the saying “Man proposes, God disposes”, not all my weekends go as per my plan. Some weekends are busy with travelling or some weekends are busy with social commitments or some weekends are busy with just laundry or some weekends are occupied with unplanned events. On top of all these some weekends I just don’t feel like doing anything. All I want is to lie on the couch and relax. (???). Bottom-line I may not be ready for the week 70% of the time. So I need to rely on semi home foods and carry over some dishes with some twist on the following day. I do cook daily at the same time I do use leftovers. (Somehow cooking for a whole week didn’t work for me)
I make sure I replenish these stuffs regularly. Also if I didn’t get a chance to prepare idli batter, I manage to prepare it even during the weekdays. (It’s a total life saver)
Apart from Milk, Yogurt, vegetables and bread, I need these ingredients for sure.
Please let me know what are your main ingredients in your pantry?
Cross posted this earlier here.
So here we are, the last day of the blogathon. Yayyyyy.. I completed it :-) It took me 5 years to write 100 blog posts . So writing 31 posts in a month is some thing big for me. Except for the kiddo’s bday post, I kept all my non-recipe posts around food too. It was fun doing food related post.
It’s only January but lot of things happened within this month. Not sure how this year is going to be. But this blogathon helped me to deviate from other worries and kept me going. I am really glad that I found some cool blogs, new blog friends and new readers. A warm welcome to my space and thanks to all :-)
Today, it’s going to be an informative cum recipe post. It’s all about Barley. (I am not going to talk about fermented barley, which is used in beer ;-)) One my friend was mentioning that barley water helps in weight loss. The word weight loss made me hooked to barley and I started reading about this grain a lot. OMG!!! I was so amazed by the benefits of this barley water. Weight loss is one among its benefits and you can read the other benefits here.
So I made a point that at least once a week we drink this amazing barley water and found a great idea to use the cooked barley also.
How to make barley water?
Steps:
Note: It’s an acquired taste. If you want you can add a little bit of salt. But I got used to without salt. It doesn’t taste that bad.
So now what to do with that cooked barley? Of course Idli and Dosa.
The cooked barley was approximately 2 cups. So I soaked 2 more cups of idly rice and 1 cup of urad dhal and grinded to get the idly batter. I just kept my 4:1 ratio of rice to urad dhal. 4 cups of rice became 2 of cups of cooked barley plus 2 cups of idly rice.
Both idly and dosai came our really good. There wasn’t any big difference in the taste. We really liked it. It’s always good to add more fiber to your food. So this barley water, barley idly and dosa became staple in our household.
Happy Birthday my dear vaandu :-)
It’s a Sixer!!! Our little vaandu turns six today. (To be precise, exactly at 00:03 AM and that’s the reason behind the scheduled time ) He is not a little fella anymore. Should I call him dude? Nahhh, he will be always our little bundle of joy. Our entire life revolves around him. As it’s a food blog, I haven’t posted much about him except for a couple, but you can find my parenting articles at IMC. He is growing fast, but I am not growing as a mom as fast as him. I have never let him stay without me for more than 10 hrs. I am very possessive about him. (If I explain the details, this will become a sentimental cum comedy post) I need to let go of these habits and grow up.
So what to say about him? As he is turning six, I am just posting some six random points about him.
Friends who follow me in twitter might have seen this.. But wanted to share this again. He is our gift for sure. Love you kanna.
Vaandu: Ma you know what’s your Xmas gift?
Me: What, I don’t know.
V: Me. I am your gift. For parents kids are the gifts. #kids #motherhood
— Srividhya Manikandan (@SrividhyaM) December 22, 2014
I am not baking any cake today, going to outsource from store. I don’t want any sodappal story on his birthday. Will be making his favorite food for dinner. Poori and chole. :-) Thats it. :-) :-)
I and M are movie freaks. Before kiddo was born, we had Netflix 3 DVD option and during weekends, we used to see all 3 movies on one day and return them back right away and wait for next 3 ;-) ;-). We are still movie freaks but with one difference. As I mentioned earlier we used to watch 3 movies in one day, now 1 movie in 3 days. That’s it. No big difference right??
**Spoiler ahead
My colleague recommended this movie and we rented it in YouTube. It’s a nice comedy-drama movie produced and directed by Jon Favreau, he also the main protagonist in that movie. He is professional chef in LA who gets into some issues with a food critic, resigns his job and returns to his home town Miami. There he finds a food truck, fixes it up and comes back to LA while selling cubanos. His son accompanies him from Miami to LA. There is some more drama to it but that’s the gist of the story.
After this Malayalam movie,” How old are you”, this movie made me think if social media is our friend or foe again. It is twitter in this movie. The first half shows it as a foe and the second half as friend. I am seriously worried how I am going to handle this social media thing when Vaandu starts using it.
Coming to movie the second half was so much fun. I really liked how they used twitter to inform their routes, menu and stuff. The passion the chef has towards cooking amazed me. I am very much fascinated towards this food truck concept. Simple menu, you can change your menu as you want, sell at different places (of course you need license). Kiddo was watching bits and pieces of second half and he was also fascinated by food truck. (First half not advisable for the kids)
We both started talking about our own menu and how we can sell and all those business tactics. ;-) ;-) It was total fun to discuss this concept with vaandu. I was so proud and hubby was looking at me and I know what he meant. My mom used to say the same too. “It’s in your blood right?” – this is what both my mom and M say. Yes my great-grandfather and my grandfather (paternal side) were running hotel and they had to close it for some reasons. (I haven’t seen both of them :-( ) My appa and my uncle got it into government sectors and that’s it no one thought about that. I don’t want to start that again either.. I enjoy coding as much as cooking. I need both. :-) I can be a chef but I don’t know if I can be a restaurateur.
Ok coming to the movie again we enjoyed the movie and a great time pass for sure :-) Let us know if you have any other movie recos.. :-)
We can learn a lot from kids. I love their imagination. Are we (parents) stopping or encouraging their imagination? In my case I would say 50-50. The main reason to say no some time is because of the mess he creates and the cleanup part would be on me. He will be asking some day-to-day kitchen gadgets and stuff. I am fine with spoons, plates and stuff, but no glass ware and toasters.
Last week, he kept on asking for brown and white yarn that I was using for knitting. I said no right away and we went back and forth finally decided to give him some yarn. So gave him non-soft yarn and asked him what he is going to do with that? He said, it’s going to be a surprise amma and he is what my little fella did. – Spaghetti.
He cut the pink yarn as spaghetti, drizzled some red paint on top which is the tomato sauce and soaked the cotton balls in brown paint and of course those are the meat balls. I would have never imagined this way. I was feeling little guilty for not giving it at the first shot.
Look here, he set up the dining table for dinner with his toy vegetables and fruits but took all the bowls and cups from kitchen. I felt so bad while cleaning it up but at the same time I can’t let it stay for a long time. :-) I ended up cleaning up.
As long as he is away from TV n iPad I am fine with this creativity but when it comes to cleaning …. Sighhhh.. God give me some more patience :-)
Between did you listen to this interview at IMC? It’s an amazing interview with Dr. Lalitha Appachu where she talks about kids behavior and education stuff.
I always get this question from my friends, how do you cook/have sambhar daily? Don’t you get bored? I don’t know how or what to answer for this. There are different varieties of sambhar. It’s just one generic word used for thick tamarind gravy.
I am trying to find if there is any exact word for Kuzhambu in english. Google translation gave me broth for kuzhambu. But I am not sure if we can say broth. I wish we could have different words in english to explain sambhar and kuzhambu. The different types of sambhar/Kuzhambu varieties that I regularly prepare in our house are,
Whenever friends and family come over to place, we take them to San Francisco. What to say about this city? It is the financial center of CA, restaurant city and the home of Giants and 49ers. :-)
I am not going to talk about this city, but just about one place – The Ferry Building Market Place. The Ferry building or the Pier 1 is the port of SFO. Every time we go with friends, we just see this place from outside and directly go to Pier 39, which is the fisherman’s wharf and from where most the city tours start.
When I saw this episode of Ina Garten, I was so surprised. The Ferry Building Marketplace is located along the Embarcadero at the foot of Market Street. I am living so close to this place and I don’t need to drive even. Take Bart (Train) and get down in Embarcadero and less than a mile walk, I am there at SFO ferry building market place. We started to go to SFO exclusively for this market place.
So what we get here or what’s the specialty? In short I would say its food lover’s paradise. Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday you have farmers market. You get locally grown fresh produce. You can find artisans cheese, breads, flavored olive oils, ice creams, restaurants, flavored vinegar, and of course fish and meat and more. I am sure I might have missed something. You can find the list of shops here. When you enter the ferry building you will be welcomed with the smell of cheese, fresh bread and cookies and freshly brewed coffee.
What we do here?
If you visit SFO, do allocate some time for this marketplace. You can even plan your brunch/lunch here.
See who I found in the building? The Father of our Nation. You can read about this statue more here.
