Tomato Rice | Thakali Sadam

Tomato Rice is a simple yet very delicious dish. This can be made in less than 20 minutes including chopping the vegetables. Simple to make on days when you want quick dish and wouldn't want to strain yourself.

Potato Sandwich

We were getting bored with regular breakfast items like idlies, any dosa variety, poori or pongal. So we decided to go for potato sandwich. We were having it after a really long time. My DH is a person who does not like to experiment much with food. Hence generally at home, its the traditional items that get prepared. But somehow he agreed to go for sandwiches for breakfast. So I was happy :)

Spinach Rice | Baby Food

Here's one more simple baby food. These days I have only been preparing baby food while the regular cooking is being taken care by my cook. So don't be surprised if you see baby food recipes often. :-) But I am planning to post some regular cooking recipes sooner.

Dal-Carrot-Rice Cereal | Baby Food

This baby food includes dal and a vegetable to the rice cereal. It may be advised that you might want to start the baby with just dal water in the initial days and then progress to this combination.

Ajwain Rice Cereal | Baby Food

Pranav's Annaprasanah ( function to introduce semi-solids to LO) was held on 4th September 2011. My mom prepared the traditional pal payasam and my LO loved it. :)

After his annaprasanah, we started to slowly introduce him to semi-solids. The docs advised to introduce semi-solids only after he completed 6 months. But I started about a 10 days earlier. I decided to only give him homemade food instead of the commercially available food like cerelac, farex or nestum. Preparing food for him is a enjoyable task on its own :) And feeding him is even more fun :D

Idly Podi | My mother's recipe

Idly podi or Uppu podi as I call it, is my favorite of all the podis I can think of. I probably named it uppu podi coz this might have been the first of the podi varieties that I had tasted first in my childhood that had salt in it. :) So now everyone in my house calls it uppu podi. :)

Ragi Dosa

Ragi also known as Finger Millet or African Millet, is highly nutritious and is very easy to digest. The fact that this millet does not contain gluten makes it an wonderful alternative for people with diabetes. Ragi is rich in calcium, fiber, protein, iron and other minerals.

Ragi aids in bone development, reduces high glucose levels in blood, aids in weight loss, lowers blood cholesterol and has many more health benefits. Its good to include ragi in some form or other atleast once or twice in a week if not on daily basis. A word of caution for people suffering from kidney stone. High intake of Ragi is not advised for such people.

Ragi is called Kelvaragu in Tamil, Ragi in Telugu and Kannada, and Mangal in Hindi.

Besan Ladoo | Microwave Cooking

For Varalakshmi Pooja this year, I was at my mom's place. Mom and I decided to go for simple sweet dishes for prasadam that do not consume a lot of time yet are delicious. So we made almost 3 ladoo varieties. Can you believe that??? :) We made rava ladoo, besan ladoo and oats ladoo the previous day of the pooja.

Vinayaka Chavithi | Ganesh Chaturthi Celebrations at home

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi to all my friends. Hope all of you had a great time during this festival.

We had a great time at home. With DS around at home, it was pretty hectic this time. The pooja at home went on very well. I started the day with a ganesh special kolam (courtesy:www.ikolam.com).

Cooking was taken care by our cook. Since the cooking part was taken care I could breathe a little easy. I looked after the pooja preparations and also the LO's needs. Had to get him ready for the pooja too.

my DS sitting for pooja

Everything was set and we started the pooja around 11 in the morning and finished it in about an hour. Coming to the recipes for the occasion, our cook made kudumulu, undarallu, purnam, plain dal, bhindi fry, payasam, medu vada. I made panakam, panchamrutam and vada pappu.

We also have a Ganesh Pooja in the apartment. The previous night after bringing home the idol and all pooja items, I had to decorate the mandap for the common Ganesh Pooja in the apartment. We have the celebrations on in the apartment for 11 days. On September 11th, we are having the 'Nimajan' in the evening. Daily evening we have the pooja. Each day people from each floor get to sit and perform pooja. Thereafter we have the prasadam distribution and play few games till 10 or 10.30 in the night. On the last day, there is annadanam and lots of games and more interestingly there is the auction of the ladoo. :)
Update: This year we won the Ganesh ladoo in the lucky draw. :-)

Will post the recipes for the kudumulu and undarallu soon, Till then, have fun and a great time.

Erra Karam - my version

Erra Karam or Ulli Karam is spicy onion chutney which is usually served with Dosas in Andhra Pradesh. Its one of those unbeatable or lethal combinations to say the least. :) Erra Karam dosa is my husband's most favorite breakfast. Ulli Karam is smeared on the inner side of dosa and is served hot.The chutney might sound hot but is actually not that hot. This chutney makes good condiment for idly, kuzhi paniyaram/ gunta pongadalu.

Home Remedies

In this section, you'll find simple home remedies with the things easily available at our homes.
If you google, I'm sure you would find more. But my motive is to give you the remedies which I have tried and found to be working wonderfully.

Food can cause few illness and has extreme power to cure illness when right food is taken in the right amount. There are several simple home remedies for various illness with just the things that are available in our kitchen shelves.


Common Cold

Veg Paneer Cigar Rolls

Imagine this...its a rainy day and you are sitting in the balcony with a pipping hot cigar!!! No no no...I'm not talking about the smoking one. I'm talking of a edible, very tasty and yummy snack. :) If you are a paneer lover you sure would fall in love with this snack. It gets its name since the rolls look pretty much like cigars. No prizes for guessing that ;-)

Kala Channa Curry

Kala Channa (black chickpea) belongs to the chickpea family; has a thick dark brown coating. Hence the peas take a little longer cooking time when compared to the regular kabuli channa (garbanzo beans/ white chickpeas). The kala channa is usually used for making sundal or for distributing as prasadams for vrats.

Bobbatlu a.k.a Puran Poli

There is a tradition in our community that we make and share poli once the baby falls flat on his tummy "Borla padithe bobbatlu". But people these days are forgetting the old customs. I wanted to do all the things that are traditionally done on different occasions for the new baby. Like "navvulaku nuvvu undalu" (sesame seed laddus for the smiles), "borla padithe bobbatlu", "un ki uggu ginnalu" (when the baby starts making the "un" noise, distribute uggu ginnalu wiz indian style milk/syrup dropper), "palukulaku chilakalu" (parrot made with sugar for the small words they start speaking), "adugulaku arisalu" (athirasam for the first steps), "gadapa dhatithe gaarelu" (when the baby steps out of house, vada) etc. So I decided to make the bobbatlu when Pranav fell flat on his tummy on 4th July 2011 at 7.10PM.

Nuvvu Podi

Nuvvu Podi aka sesame seed powder is very delicious powder that can be had with steaming hot rice or can be used to flavour curries. Nuvvu Podi is one of my favorites ofcourse after the traditional andhra gun powder.

Sweet Corn Tikki

There was a packet of sweet corn lying around in the fridge for a couple of days. As I was browsing through various food blogs, I hit upon a very nice recipe "Corn Tikki Patties" on http://www.flavorsofmumbai.com.

I decided to try it out with sweet corn instead of the corn cob. I also added in few additional spices that weren't used in the original recipe. The tikkis came out superb. They tasted heavenly. Tikki is definitely a very nice evening snack.

Capsicum Pepper Rasam

This is a very delicious rasam. I saw the recipe on a TV show and tried it with little hesitation coz the preparation did not require rasam powder at all. Being a big fan of rasam, i tried it and just fell in love with it instantly. I'm sure anyone who tastes it will try it again.