My aayi keeps reminding me about nutritional values of almonds and suggests me to add it to my diet. Every time she told me about it, I would go and buy one pack of almond. Last week, I found I had a huge pack of almonds at home. So I thought of making cookies with them. I tried the first recipe that I found from here . I changed it a bit to suit our taste and also make them eggless....

For last few years, I have been making something simple like pasta, sandwiches, pulavs etc for lunch that I can easily pack for Ishaan. So I usually make Indian dishes for dinner. But lately once in a while the child asks “ ani sheet ? (rice again)?” or “ chupati nakka aaji (I don’t want chapati)”. So I am consciously trying to make something different. He also was asking for chicken, so I decided to make this baked chicken which I had seen many times on TV....

Lauki Thalipeeth Thalipeeth is a famous Marathi dish. It is prepared with a variety of flours and roasted till it is crispy. There is a specific way to roast the thalipeeth but I just make it like a akki rotti/pita bhakri . It comes out good. Traditionally little holes are made in thalipeeth after it is spread on tava and oil is added to it. I tried it this time but did not execute it properly!...

This is my first cake which I decorated in Wilton course 1 – class 2. I am not happy with my decoration, but for the first cake, I think it is okay. I didn’t make the rose which is in the center of the cake. Our instructor was teaching us making a rose and I just could not let her destroy that rose. I wanted to seriously work on my hobbies in my free time, but I don’t know when I will be free again, so I thought of taking a step towards it right away....

My brother visited us over this weekend. He came to US on a short trip for some office work and before leaving for India, he wanted to meet me and give me loads of home made stuff. We had amazing 3 days. As usual, we had loads of fun, we fought most of the time for silly things, but when he was leaving today, I started feeling so homesick :(....

My almost 6 years old goes through food phases where he wants to eat same thing over and over again, after few days he is completely done with that dish. I try to enjoy the excitement while it lasts!. Right now he is in chicken-chapati phase. Anytime I ask him what he wants, that is what he says. I try to keep a check on it by making it once a week and not more....

This is one of the most popular Konkani chivda/chooda (In Konkani we call it ‘chudvo’). There is a very popular(but very old) restaurant called ‘Alka’ in Kumta(they also sell munchies and sweets). Their ‘chudvo’ is one of the best and loved by all. During the wedding functions, people make this at home. This is served at the wedding and also served to the guests/relatives before and after wedding. One of the perfect accompaniment with a simple upma ....

Few years back, I saw this recipe in some book. What attracted me to this was, it uses garam masala which is usually available in every Indian home, unlike the special vangi bhath masala which is used in many other recipes. Over the years, I have changed it to suit our taste buds. Last time when we came to US, I prepared this frequently to send in my son-in-law’s lunchbox....

This recipe is inspired by baingan ka bhartha – roasted and peeled eggplant with spices. I was actually making bhartha , but last moment, I added a little twist to it by adding avrekaLu . It made a very tasty and quick side dish. Ingredients: 1 big eggplant 1/4 tea spn mustard seeds 1/2 tea spn red chilli powder 1/2 tea spn coriander seeds 1/4 tea spn cumin seeds 4-5 curry leaves 1/4 cup tomato 1/4 cup avrekaLu Salt Oil...

It is festival season with Diwali just around the corner. I miss the festivities here that we had in India. Over the years we have started celebrating few festivals in a small scale. Ganesh Chaturthi is one festival which we celebrate every year without fail. We think of inviting all our friends but that hasn’t happened yet. We completely focus on a nice pooja with a good spread of food....

Wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year. Here is a cake that I created today. Why this theme? Well, I wanted to create the famous Harbor bridge-Opera house in Sydney, with all the fireworks. Its my husband’s favorite place in the world(after India). He saw the new year celebrations there in 2004 and he is crazy about it. He still remembers each and every bit of it. So I wanted to have that on a cake (may be not a great idea)....

I have mentioned many times earlier that my aayi makes one of the best pickles I have ever tasted. They are usually very long lasting. The batch I brought with me in Jan last year, ended me whole year (well..I am very stingy when it comes to her pickles). Last year when I saw Manisha’s gorgeous lemon pickle and lime pickle , I immediately wanted to try aayi’s version also(Manisha, since we have a balcony now, I am going to try your both versions before summer ends)....

I know I have been posting a lot of cakes. April is birthday month at home. So we had a very busy schedule with two parties. First one was for Ishaan’s school friends and teachers. Then came the other party, a bigger one, for all our close friends and family. This time we celebrated both the kids birthdays. I am glad all the birthdays for the year are done and we can relax till next year :)....

We are back from a short Thanksgiving trip to Colorado Springs. Met few of our friends. We celebrated our very first Thanksgiving with a wonderful family. We got a very cute Thanksgiving gift from them. I cannot explain how happy we were to meet this family, but unfortunately because of no sleep due to an early flight and then roaming around at a high altitude, we were very tired and forgot to take any pictures with them....

These are two types of vegetables from our garden, both from Moraceae family(same family as jackfruit). These are two of the most popular vegetables used in everyday cooking, during season. PS: Some people call the first one as Neerpanas or Jeev Kadagi. We had a big discussion about this before on this blog , I am using the names that we use at our place with descriptions of why we call them so....

There are some dishes which remind me of my childhood. I will post these here, so that every time I read these, they will remind me of my mother. She has a aluminium sandwich maker with long handles, which looked somewhat like this . She used to keep the bread slices in these, and then keep the sandwich maker on that gas stove. Believe me, this procedure was not at all as easy as it sounds....

I am a huge fan of chaats . I never tried making them myself before coming to US, since I would get them easily in Bangalore. But when I came here, I started missing them. Though I don’t make them often these days, thanks to an amazing chaat center nearby my home here, I still like to learn how to make new kinds. We could get almost all kind of chaats in Bangalore but I never saw ragda patties anywhere....

Jackfruits are easily available in this season. Raw jackfruit is called pansa kadgi or Chakke kadgi in Konakni. It is one of the very commonly used ingredients in Konkani recipes. These phodis have a silghtly different method of preparation compared to any other phodis that we prepare. These are not as common as the other ones. But they have a distinct taste and liked by many. Recently, one of our readers asked about this....

I am using salmon a lot these days, because of the high Omega-3 content in this fish. Usually I bake it or make some spicy dry dish, something we both really enjoy. This time, I wanted to try it in this spicy gravy. This was inspired by a fish gravy I tasted at an Indian restaurant here 2 years ago. I have not seen this recently on their menu. We had a very satisfying lunch with rice and this gravy....

Do you remember the spicy stuffed breads we used to get in bakeries in India? Not sure if they are still available, but I craved for these buns when we moved to US. I used to search for these buns in bakery sections here and would get disappointed to see the sweet breads. Finally I deciced to make them at home. Sometimes with paneer, sometimes with eggs and other times with mixed veggies, they were always a hit....