Sometimes I feel like thanking the Westerners for classifying muffins and cakes as breakfast. It makes our life so much easier. 😀 I mean, would our mothers ever agree to eating cake as breakfast? No way! But then with ways of incorporating all kind of “healthy” ingredients into your cakes, you can very well have a delicious baked breakfast. I have a few lovely bakes that I had made specifically for breakfast, like these Apple Flax Muffins and the Blueberry French Toast, among what I can remember. So when I was considering making something with egg as my breakfast – because eggs are default breakfast material for me since very long – I remembered these muffins I baked recently, which can easily be eaten for breakfast since it has a lot of goodness in it. So after the simple Jam and Cheese Sandwich and the Upma, here is a…
Upma | Easy Rava Upma
As the second recipe for this week’s theme of “Breakfast” in the Blogging Marathon #110, I have chosen to make a recipe, that is considered to be very simple but can drive you up the wall! Please let me know if you agree or disagree. 😀 Upma is considered to be one of the easiest breakfast dish that can be prepared in no time. Being a basic recipe, I have always struggled to make it the way I like it. In fact, I have a “love-hate” relationship with this dish. I never liked upma when umma would make it for breakfast. Hers is usually a little dry and used to get stuck in the throat. Each time I would see her large kadai with a lid on the stove top when I would walk the kitchen, the frown would start from the heart to the face. Hehe… It…
Jam and Cheese Sandwich
For the second week of the Blogging Marathon #110, I have chosen the theme of “Breakfasts”. Even though everybody would say that breakfast is the most required meal for the day, I am really not a breakfast person. I can’t eat really early in to the morning, neither can I have a heavy meal. Hehe… You can find some easy breakfast recipes already on the blog over here. Adding three more to it… Bread sandwiches are a repeat for my kids’ lunch boxes. They love bread, and they love it with any spread. Nutella and Biscoff is always welcome, and Rasha prefers peanut butter over jam and Azza is viceversa. I am someone who doesn’t like to have jam on its own. Either it needs to have thin slice of cold butter in it (are you salivating? I am!) or a nice slather of cheese. The saltiness of…
Kofte Dejaaj | Middle Eastern Chicken Meatballs/ Koftas
I really haven’t felt this empty in the near future. My head is just refusing to cooperate with my fingers, it feels. The current situation on the world, thanks to all the violence and virus, makes the mind feel disoriented. Is it just me, or do you all feel the same? When such instances happens, it points out to the fact again and again that we as humans are just helpless. There is a limit to what we can do. We may go on and on about the strength of the mind and the infinite capabilities of human beings, but when it comes to something as minute as a virus, we are nothing in front of it. We do not have the eyes to see it nor the capability to feel it. Anybody can catch it. The irony of the situation is that there are much more deaths…
Falafel {using Chickpeas}
While deciding on the recipes to try for this week’s chosen theme for the Blogging Marathon #110 of “Middle Eastern”, Falafel was surely on top of the list. I don’t know if you would find it a shocker but back home in Kotakkal, a little shop called Salsabeel sells such amazing Falafel sandwiches that sell like hot cakes! In December when I had gone home, we were on the way back after the doctor’s appointment for the TMJ, and D suggested we stop over to eat something. I am sure we all do that on long drives – at least one stop for a cup of chai and some munching. I was in this outlet for the first time so I let him do the ordering for me. We were served with hot falafel sandwiches, that were so mouthful and delightful – I am typing with this with…
Moutabal/ Mutabal | Middle Eastern Eggplant Dip
I have always been vocal about the reason why I love to be a part of Valli’s Blogging Marathon. It is actually a great push for my sagging cooking moods. Her themes actually make me think a little and push me to try recipes that I have been wanting to make for a long time and get them onto the blog. For this month’s version #110, one of the themes was “Middle Eastern”. I love their food, however it is not something I cook that often as I would love to. This theme gave me the chance to try out something that I would love. I have been taking a back seat with trying new recipes, since my girls are not very receptive. However, with my SIL with us now, she is backing me full on to try new recipes and I am hoping that push will slowly get…
White Chocolate Sago Pudding
Do you see the flow in this week’s Blogging Marathon #109 theme “Anything and everything with chocolate”? It is going from dark to milk to white. 😉 Just saying… So after the French Hot Chocolate and Milk Chocolate Brownies, here is the final recipe for this week’s theme… Initially I had decided that I would make a white chocolate rice pudding with a jam topping. I remember seeing it on some blog eons ago and it had such amazing clicks that it stuck to my mind. I have to agree that food, if clicked beautifully, does stick to your mind. I have not achieved that level and there are so many reasons to it, first being my lack of patience and my lack of interest too. I feel I do take decent pictures but I am just not able to push to the next level, or rather not…
Milk Chocolate Brownies
Haven’t I always mentioned that my girls are hard to please? And that applies very much to my bakes as well. If you thought that kids would eat any brownies baked, then you are wrong. My girls won’t. They seem to have a criteria for their brownies – shouldn’t be too dark in color, shouldn’t have any bitter cocoa taste, shouldn’t have anything to bite in between, etc. etc. My problem is I tend to like more of dark chocolate and the girls end up not eating my brownies. I always tell them that everybody loves my brownies but not them, but they care a hoot. So while thinking of what to make for the theme of “Anything and everything chocolate” for the Blogging Marathon #109, I had decided to make these brownies that have been on my to-do for quite a long time. There is a reason…
French Hot Chocolate | Paul style Hot Chocolate
Here I am with the next week of recipes for the Blogging Marathon #109. I chose a theme that I totally love. There are no points for guessing – it has to be chocolate! The theme is aptly called “Anything and everything with chocolate” and I had no qualms about choosing this. After all, chocolate is something that we all love and would love to incorporate it into our daily eating, if life permitted. Thankfully, scientists have declared that dark chocolate takes care of your happy hormones, so that gives us permission to include at least one square into our daily eating. What say? 😉 The first post is a recipe I have been wanting to try since ages. I always enjoy my home made hot chocolate, either made this way with chocolate chips or simply with cocoa powder. When I am haunted by outdoor cravings, there is…
Chemmeen Choru – Malabar Prawn Rice
Here is the final recipe for this week’s theme of “Rice Dishes” under the Blogging Marathon #109, after the Pulao and the Egg Biriyani. Malabar has its fair share of one pot rice, just like the pulaos of the North. That is where our Erachi Choru, Kozhi Choru and Meen Choru all belong to. However, considering Malabaris have a little soft corner to prawns, being a delicious shell fish so rarely available, there should be a “chor” which will use only prawns. 😉 I have already stated before that I have a prawn allergy and hence I don’t cook it much, especially if I need to handle it. If it comes shelled, then I may give it a try. There are already few delicious prawn recipes – like this roast and this Thalassery style biriyani – that I make, but I don’t eat, yet the family loves it…
Simple Egg Biriyani | Mutta Biriyani
After the Simple Pulao, here is the second recipe that is going to be a part of the theme “Rice Dishes” for the Blogging Marathon #109. I love posts which have stories, don’t you? 😀 OK, so egg biriyani was one of the first biriyanis I tried when the cooking bug had hit me. I have always mentioned that I never cooked prior to marriage, and even after marriage, it was an adjustment of sorts. HD was quite cooperative and he would cook curries most of the time, which we would simply mop up with store bought khuboos or bread. Once I had Rasha and moved in to stay with my parents, umma was the caretaker for the kitchen and my work didn’t allow me to get involved into the kitchen. Or should I say that it made me so lazy that I would shy away from cooking. Hehe……
Pulao made in Mutton Bone Stock
Time for participating in the two weeks of Blogging Marathon! If there is something I do not want to miss, then it is the interesting themes that Valli comes up with every month to leave us a little bamboozled with choices! Hehe… This month, it is BM #109 and the theme I have selected for these three days for this week is “Rice Dishes”. As Indians, rice is a very important part of our carb eating habits and not even a house doesn’t have their huge stock of rice. Having said that, I do not have a rice loving population in my house. On any given day, we would prefer the chapathi, poori or porotta over the rice. Having grown up in a home where rice is our staple for lunch, there are times when I really want to put up a full platter. My girls are not very…
Aloo Gosht ~ Meat and Potato Curry
After posting the Batata Harra and Aloo Raita, here is the final potato recipe for this week’s Blogging Marathon #106 theme of “Pick one vegetable, cook dishes from three states/countries”. I have moved from Lebanon to India and now to our neighboring Pakistan to select a humble potato dish. In fact, this dish is cooked in Muslim heavy areas of northern India as well. My first tryst with Aloo Gosht was at a nearby Pakistani restaurant, adjacent to the building we used to stay during our school days. We would go there for eating their huge thick oil laden parathas and order sides of dal fry and this aloo gosht. It would look the same all the time – a dark brown color gravy with a couple of inches of oil floating on the top, which we used to pull out by dropping a couple of tissue on…
Aloo Raita ~ Potato Yogurt Dip
After the Batata Harra, here is the post no.2 for the Blogging Marathon #106 for the theme “Choose a vegetable, prepare three dishes from different states/ countries”. I decided to do three recipes from three countries, so after a Lebanese recipe, we come to our very own India. 🙂 If you thought potatoes are loved in my house, then I beg to differ. HD, I and B are the ones who love to eat potatoes. My girls scoff at it unless it is in french fries form. Believe me, I sometimes really admire my level of patience with them when it comes to eating – they are way too fussy. *leaving a cry out* Anyway, one Friday, as I was cooking fish biriyani for lunch, I wanted to make a different type of raita. The posts for this theme was pending and it was perfect time to cook…
Batata Harra ~ Lebanese Skillet Potatoes
This week, I am doing three posts related to the Blogging Marathon #106 for the theme “Choose a vegetable, prepare three dishes from different states/ countries”. I have no clue why I chose this theme, but I am sure it was with the good intention of making some nice vegetarian dishes for the blog. I first pondered around using eggplant as my ingredient and even mentioned three recipes I would try. Alas, nothing materialized and to make sure that I have posts ready for this week, I went with the easy to work with, world famous tuber called potatoes, which was incidentally Valli’s example for us to explain the theme. 😀 I was supposed to be doing another dish to start off these three weeks. But I skittled through last moment, and realized I only had saved up the pictures of this post in my pen drive. I…