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.