mayurisjikoni

Red Theme/ Valentine's Day preparation   For the month of January The 'Shhh cooking secretly ' group decided to make something using red coloured food so as to give an idea to our followers what they can prepare for Valentine's Day.My partner for this month was Amrita Iyer a food blogger whose blog is full of colour and mouth watering recipes. Check out The Food Samaritan to find out exactly what I mean.   The colour red signifies many things. Love, warmth, danger, power,passion, determination, anger and desire.Red also draws our attention to danger. So as you can see its got its positive side and the negative too. Today we're going to think of the positive things, it means life, love and passion. As I always say Valentine's Day is not the only day your should be loving your friend, spouse, fiance with all your passion. We should be loving them everyday.    Amrita had initially given me cherries and red currants as my ingredients. Unfortunately I couldn't ...

Happy Holi everyone    It's #Foodiemonday #bloghop day already. A group of 12 that post every month on different themes. We are still continuing with the Holi festival as Holi is just round the corner. Last week it was thandai based recipes and this week we are allowed to cook with a riot of colours. Choose one, two or many. I am waiting to see what my co members of this group come up with. I decided to work with 2 colours orange and red for the 32nd theme #FestivalofColors.     It had to a quick and easy recipe as I had travelled to Malindi for my Club's(Lions Club of Mombasa Bahari) medical camp.Please do check out our website  http://www.lionsbahari.com/ The sweltering heat was made bearable by the lovely cool breeze from the sea. The camp was held for 4 days where patients requiring re- constructive surgery, normal surgery were operated on. The plastic surgeon was able to repair a cleft palate for a tiny baby and the mother couldn't stop praising ...

A hard nut to crack!   When one thinks of coconut, the first thing that comes to the mind is the cool healthy coconut water. However, there is more to a coconut than just the water or the succulent flesh. Coconut milk, coconut cream, coconut oil, grated coconut, coconut flour, are all used in cooking in many countries. Right from sweet to savoury dishes, coconut is used to add flavour, creaminess and a bite to any dish. Curries, desserts, cookies, cakes, salads, drinks etc, name it and coconut is used. Coconut milk is used in place of dairy produced milk by vegans. Coconut water is rich in potassium and is considered a natural hydrator. Coconut flour is made from the flesh of the coconut. It can be replaced partially in baked goods to reduce the glycemic index. Coconut oil is used for cooking, for treating certain skin disorders, for preparing beauty products and for luscious hair. The shell is used to make decorative pieces, used as dishes and bowls and to burn as wood for cooking...

Its time to jam     One of my hubby's friend owns a farm. He often comes to supply the surplus produce to the greengrocer that I usually go to if I don't go to the market. He gives me either vegetables or papayas whenever I go there. Last week he insisted that I take 3 huge papayas. They all ripened at the same time. Now there is so much papaya one can eat. So the next option was smoothie or a jam. Smoothie didn't sound too exciting, especially when the tummy is full. I am glad I made the jam. Its so easy to make it. I should stop buying the local jam as there is no fruit in it, its too sweet, full of colour and citric acid taste. I used less sugar, but it tastes just right. You may wonder why I have added cumin powder. Papaya for our family means papaya, a pinch of salt on top and a liberal helping of the cumin powder... yum! I have used a recycled jar. I usually keep all the glass jars. So I have a variety of them, coffee jars, olive jars, etc. I just dip the clean jar in...

    SWEET SQUARES   Almost all the yummy treats or snacks that are available on the Indian Sub continent are fried. Every Indian home you will find jars or tins of these snacks ready anytime. I too love these snacks or farsan as they are called. However they are very high in calories and as a result we have to eat them with caution. However, many a times you will hear people say that 1 - 2 tbsp of the snack does not satisfy them and before they know it they have had a whole bowlful of the snack.  One of the snacks I really like is sakarpara. Sakar means sugar and para is diamond. So its basically diamond shaped sweet dough fried. However, there is no hard and fast rule on the shape. I prefer to cut them into squares. I tried baking sakarpara instead of frying them. The first time I tried out the recipe, the sakarparas were a bit hard. So second time round added baking powder and they turned out really crunchy and yummy. Try out the recipe. Kids too love sakarpara. By...

Little Joys      Every time I log off from my hotmail account, the MSN new page appears. Its an interesting mixture of news, quirky happenings, lifestyle, finance, home etc. A whole package to take care of what interests you. Yesterday I read an article on what things kids of these days miss out on because of technology. Very interesting and I remember there was joy and a sense of achievement too when we used these things because that's all we had. For example, kids of today probably wouldn't know how to use a directory. Remember when we had to browse through the phone book to find contact numbers? I remember just for fun we use to see how many Patels were listed in the Kenya Directory or how many Njoroges were in Nairobi. During our trip to Florida we actually opened the directory to find how many Patels were in Orlando. We were missing our khichdi. Of course we didn't have the guts to call any of the numbers! That's a different story. Kids of today will probably never...