mayurisjikoni

Back To Normal Routine    Its after a very long time that I had a very relaxing holiday. Relaxing means no cooking at all, no blogging and just lazing around doing what I want. I slept, I read, I walked a bit and spent quality time with my eldest son, daughter in law and her parents. Visiting Bali was a truly a surprise for me. When I use to see postcard pictures of Bali, blue seas, sandy beaches it was not really on my wish list. When you have sandy beaches and blue sea and sunshine in your backyard, Bali was not that alluring. I think if my son and daughter in law had not decided to settle there, hubby and I would probably not have visited Bali.  However, I am so glad that we went there last December. Though we were not able to see much of Bali because of my daughter in law's accident, we managed a few day trips.     Bali is a predominately a Hindu island. However, their customs and rituals are so different from the Hinduism practiced ...

Let's break bread internationally    What is bread? Bread is basically flour and water mixed together and then either baked, roasted or fried. Different parts of the world use different flours and different ingredients are added to make it soft, with crumbs, with flavor and to give it a required texture. Most part of the world considers some form of bread as their staple diet except for East Asia where the stable is rice and some African countries where the staple is cornmeal cooked into a porridge like consistency. We have the more famous brioche, baguettes, rye breads,naans, parathas to less heard of breads like dorayaki, kaya,lahoh. The list of different breads all over the world is endless.    For the month of September, our host Wendy who blogs at A Day in the Life on the Farm suggested we make International Breads, preferably from another country and not your own. Wendy thanks for the exciting theme. It was really diffic...

Spread the Fragrance     Did you that flowers have been used world wide as a part of cooking? Usage of edible flowers can be traced all the way back to the Roman times, its a major part in the Middle Eastern, Indian Sub Continent and Chinese culture. Use of edible flowers became a vogue during the Victorian period usually used to decorate cakes and desserts.         Flower culinary is fast coming back into 'fashion' with high end flowers and fine dining restaurants are now using fresh flowers right from making starters, in soups and salads to main dishes and desserts. And not forgetting infused teas and drinks. The options are endless.         Growing up I'd seen my mum and aunts use rose petals to decorate shrikhand, kheer and gulab jamun. We would pluck the flowers of the fennel plant and eat them as they tasted like fennel seeds.  Rose jam(gulkand), rose essence and fresh petals are used in a lot of Indian sweets, biryanis a...

Thinking healthy     For the January Shhh Cooking Secretly challenge, my partner Veena Krishna Kumar of Veg Nation  challenged me to cook with bell pepper (sweet pepper) and poppy seeds. I nearly asked her change the bell pepper. No don't get me wrong, bell peppers are so versatile that one can make anything with them. The only reason I wanted her to change it was because hubby dear is allergic to them. Well, he doesn't break out into a rash or anything but feels that it upsets his stomach. But I love bell pepper, so thought that I really don't have to make something that he will like or appreciate; some day it has to be my choice too. So I decided to work with the given ingredients and was trying to think of something healthy. Salads are healthy, but I had this crunchy cauliflower bite recipe bookmarked for a while. So decided to make both sweet pepper and cauliflower to make the wonderful healthy bites.Cauliflower ones for hubby and sweet pepper ones for me :) I baked t...

I am missing Star Plus!    Yes, I am. I love watching the series on Star Plus. Suddenly our cable provider decided to not air the Star channels from 1st May. Obviously its a way to get more money and that too from the Asian viewers. Though I don't watch, actually watch all of them, I have the telly on while I am blogging, checking mail, doing my sudoku , crossword etc. Its like following the stories without actually paying much attention to the series. I watch Yeh Hai Mohabbatein, Yeh rishta, and Diya aur Baati hum attentively. So for now missing the series.. okay, do try and catch them on the internet, that's if the connection is good. I pity all those retired and old people who have been following these series and suddenly have nothing to watch, nothing to talk about and nothing to speculate about. I sometimes wonder why the sports channels, children channels, Nigerian channels etc are suddenly stopped? Its amazing how cable providers can remove programs without asking the v...