This is the 500th post on this blog. So thanks to all my readers who have given their immense support to me for last 2+ years.
I always wanted to do something about bringing my aayi(mom)’s culinary skills to people, since I knew every person who tasted her food had praised her. Her pickles were not only popular at my home but also my relative’s relative’s relatives knew about them. We thought of creating a website but that looked like lot of work at a time. When I got married, my husband suggested to create a blog and created ‘Aayi’s Recipes’ for me. Thats how it all started about 2.5 years ago. To begin with, I never thought this blog would be anywhere close to what it is now.
I started posting regularly after we moved to USA. The reason for the regularity could be attributed to the fact that, I was missing my aayi’s cooking a lot and wanted to keep track of the recipes so that I could go back to them whenever I wanted. Like a reference. Slowly but steadily people started to visit this blog, and I took more and more keen interest in it.
Over the last one year I received huge number of emails from readers who benefited from this site in many ways. I also started getting success stories of people who never cooked before and had tried recipes on this blog. It is an amazing feeling that this work has brought happiness and fond memories of their favorite food to those who live away from their home, from all over the world.
How to efficiently browse Aayi’s Recipes?
Let me explain each and every feature of this blog. Please read on.
Search – There is a search on the top which allows you to search for a particular recipe. So when you want something like ‘ moong ‘, enter it in the box and hit ‘Enter’. Select the one that you need. I am writing this specifically, because I have seen some readers almost ‘never’ use search. They ask me for a recipe which they could have got to, in seconds. If you try using search first, you might get to your favorite recipe much faster.
On the top navigation bar –
About – On this page you can find answers to questions like – Why did I start this blog? Which is my home town? What do I do for a living?and more such.
Cooking tips – These are some tips I have learned from my aayi, Varada and also collected from different sources. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section of that post and I will try to reply.
ArtCampus – This is a place where I have posted some art work from of my hobbies like painting, knitting and crocheting, drawing etc
Contact – If you want to contact us, please use this page.
Kid’s lunchbox – These are collection of recipes from different blogs/sites which can help moms in creating great lunch boxes. If you find any interesting lunch box ideas, please leave the link on this page. If you have any ideas of your own, please leave them too. It will be helpful to others.
From other blogs – These are few recipes that I tried from other blogs and I loved them. I don’t make separate posts about them on AR, as I feel if it is required, I can directly go to original and try them. These are only a few of the lot I tried. I try my best to keep this page updated. There are many more which I need to add here. I wish to do it more regularly hereafter.
Glossary of ingredients used in my recipes is built right in to the posts, with links that take you to a glossary page with picture of the ingredient with description.
I have tried to create an extensive user friendly glossary. The main intention of this glossary is to make everyone understand an ingredient easily. It will have a picture of the item along with it’s name in different languages. This is an in-built glossary, that means, wherever an ingredient appears in the post, it will have a link to the term. For example, urad dal, avrekalu etc, just click on the link to read about the ingredient. You need not go searching for it.
This feature requires a lot of time and it’s laborious so I am working on it whenever I get some free time.
Recipe Index – I have created the categories depending on the type of dish. I think that is the easiest way to search because it is more convenient. I see that people don’t use this feature a lot. Please use it, it makes searching for recipes (names you don’t know) much easier.
On the right side bar –
Revisited recipes – These are the recipes that I had posted long ago. As and when I get time, I rewrite these posts and update pictures. This is done mainly because when I started blogging, I didn’t know how to write a post. Primarily, I change the pictures, correct mistakes if any etc.
Latest posts – These show the latest 10 posts on this blog. Click on any to go to particular post.
Request –
– I can hardly speak 4-5 languages. So when I am writing the glossary, I can write the translation mostly in these (or few of these) languages. Please send me the translation in your language, if it’s not listed, so that I can make it more useful for everybody.
Thanks for reading…
Again, I thank each and every one of you.
THANK YOU !!!
Few days ago, I got a mail from my dear friend Swapna of Swad asking if I would like to have some Amish friendship bread starter . I knew very little about this starter and was interested to know what it was, so I requested Swapna to mail it to me. After replying to her, I actually searched and read about it in different blogs, then I mailed to Swapna for some more clarifications. She was very kind to answer all my questions.
According to wikipedia ,
Amish Friendship Bread (along with Amish Cinnamon Bread) is a type of bread designed to be baked and sent along in a manner similar to a chain letter. The idea is very simple: a friend gives you a cup of yeast culture (also known as “starter”) and a copy of instructions. Following the instructions, you add sugar, flour and milk and it rises. Eventually, you end up with 4 cups of the starter. You use one cup to make bread (the instructions provide you with the recipe), keep one cup to start a new cycle and give two cups to your friends. Each of your friends also gets a copy of the instructions for what to do with the yeast starter. The latter part makes it somewhat like a chain letter.
I received my batch on the 5th day of the starter. It had an instruction sheet with it. According to instructions, I had to add 1 cup milk, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour to the starter on 6th day. Mash the bag. Do nothing on 7-9th days and on 10th day, I was supposed to add few more things to the bag. It would yield 5 cups of batter and 4 of them I was supposed to mail to my friends. With the 5th cup, I was supposed to bake something. It was also mentioned in the instructions that “ Only Amish know how to create the starter, so if you give them all away, you would have to wait until someone gives you a starter back “. That was a bummer :(.
On the 10th day, unfortunately, I reached home too tired to do any baking. But I didn’t know if it was okay to keep the starter for one more day. So I thought I had to bake it that day. Lets just say, I prepared muffin batter and after 10 mins of popping them in oven for baking, I realized I had forgotten to add baking soda/powder. The muffins became hard and it was total disaster. So it again proved that in the department of planning things ahead, I score a big “O”. I could have used the second bag and baked something else, but I was completely drained of energy and was in no mood to try again.
Anyway, I had already missed the round and I was feeling pathetic because I had seen all my blogger buddies had created master pieces with the starter. Probably I am the only one who messed up. So I decided to give it another try. I nurtured one bag for 10 days and on the 10th day I baked these almond cookies. That day was Sunday and we had painting classes at 10AM. So I had to get up early and bake the cookies, otherwise I would have missed another cycle. The cookies were awesome, though they were not “good looking cookies”(I chose the perfectly round ones for picture). I made the cookies very mildly sweet. They were crusty from outside and bit soft from inside. They were one of those kind, where you eat one and you keep on eating next one before realizing you had emptied the whole batch :). We finished the whole batch in record time. The cookies were inspired by this chocolate chip cookie recipe .
Thanks a lot Swapna for sending me the starter. I have passed this on to Manjula of Dalitoy and dear friend Aruna. I still have one batch with me, I am thinking to make something again on 10th day :). I made a cornbread with the remaining batch, which didn’t turn out that good, so it won’t make it to AR. Next time when I am out of starter, I am thinking to make the starter from the recipe given here .
Ingredients: 1 cup Amish friendship starter 3/4 cup coarse powder of almonds 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup butter 2 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour 1 tea spn vanilla extract 1/2 tea spn baking soda 2 eggs 1/4 tea spn salt
Method: Sieve together flour and baking soda. Mix sugar, butter (at room temperature), vanilla, eggs, sugar, salt with the starter. Add flour little by little into the mixture and mix well. Add almond powder and mix. Preheat oven to 375F for about 10mins. Spray a cookie sheet with baking spray. Keep about 1 tea spn of dough on the sheet separated by about 2 inches (the cookies expand considerably when baked, so leave enough space). If possible, shape them into rounds at the ends. Bake for about 12-15mins.
Makes about 40-50 pieces
Some amazing creations by my blogger buddies, Swapna’s Cranberry-nut upside down muffins Nupur’s Chocolate-Pecan Friendship Bread Mandira’ Amish friendship bread Suganya’s Amish friendship bread Cynthia’s Friendship breads Jai and Bee’s Friendship Chelsea buns Sharmi’s Amish friendship bread Sig’s pumpkin loaf Lavanya’s Salara
If any of you have tried something with this starter, please leave me a comment and I will update this list.
