A tale of two chutneys...

We love having friends over at our house for simple no-fuss parties. Earlier I never quite understood why my other-friends-with-kids always preferred hosting lunch/dinners at home instead of going to that new and happening restaurant in town, even though it looked kid-friendly - well, that was until I had a kid of my own! It is just so much easy lazily cooking through most of the day chatting with friends over coffee than the fuss of dressing up, getting kids dressed up, making sure they behave at restaurants and guiltily paying the waiter extra tip for a food-throw party that happened around the high-chair. So while we still eat out quite often for a couple with young kid, slowly but surely many of our social gatherings are finally moving towards home settings.

Now a days I really enjoy hosting simple no-fuss meals with just one or two main crowd-pleasing dishes. It's less work for you and all the same fun. Some of my favorite such menus include a lunch over biryani/raita or a paav-bhaji and bhel day or a dinner over quesadilla or our latest favorite a simple idli-dosa party.

My husband is the official dosa maker of the household. Dosa making is one skill I never quite fully mastered - my dosas neither come out as crunchy or as thin as his; but we are happy with our arrangement; he churns out the best dosas and I make idlis and accompaniments such as sambhar and chutneys. So that brings me to the two absolutely awesome chutneys each of us conjured recently for a new years feast!

Aloha Pasta Salad!

Aloha! We had a wonderful week at Hawaii during thanksgiving. It was also my daughter's first birthday. There is so much pressure on parents now a days to make your kids birthday special - don't you think? There are all these theme based parties to host, games and entertainment to provide during the party, theme based tablewares, buy perfect gift to the birthday kid, favors to trade for her friends and cakes to order..... the list of chores is endless. And for a kid who goes to daycare, repeat all of that for a daycare party - phew, just thinking about it was taxing enough. But still, we wanted to make it special being her first - something she will look back years later through the pictures and fondly cherish, so after days of mulling over we decided that a quiet beach-side cake cutting in the beautiful islands of Hawaii with Mommy-Daddy was a perfect plan for the special day! Not to mention Mommy-Daddy also needed a celebration for surviving the first year of being parents ;)

We rented an oceanfront condo with a fully-equipped kitchenette. The pantry however was very light consisting only of olive oil, salt, pepper, sugar and a few cookies. We were expected to grocery shop in the nearby village market and farmer's market and cook in the kitchenette. It sounded a lot of fun! I packed carefully - allocating a large ziplock in our suitcase for the dry pantry items brought from home so we can get away with buying a few vegetables at Hawaii and have a wonderful week-worth of meals. I packed a serving of dried lentils for lentil soup, a serving of rice for my favorite vegetable spiced rice and two servings of dried bowtie pasta for pasta salads.

I kept pasta salad for last hoping to use various remaining ends and scrapes of the produce in the salad before we leave the island. A large bunch of cauliflower was sitting around so I thought I'll make roasted cauliflower pasta - but I guess the bountiful beaches and gardens of Hawaii had another plan in store for my pasta salad :)

Happy Holidays!

This has been a very special year for me. This year I cherished so many moments of my daughter's first year and all her subsequent firsts - her first smile, her first crawl, her first solid meal, her first word ("no" - can you believe it!) to her first wobbly step! When we welcomed 2012 last year, she was this tiny little newborn tightly swaddled in a blanket and look how grown up she is now, no more like a baby but almost like a little girl! The Mom in me is so proud and happy yet also silently saddened by how fast the time seems to be running. Just for a while I want to freeze the time and enjoy her baby days just for a little bit longer... I am so not ready to let go of her newborn smell or her gummy grins! hey, may be that should be my wish to Santa.. :)

2012 is always going to have a special place in my heart... but I know the next year will be equally happy and adventurous in it's very own ways and while I am not quite ready for her toddler days (read toddler tantrums!), I am happy for this holiday break in between - planning to just sit back, relax and slip in the happiness of the holidays spreading all around.

So many of you have kept in touch through emails, facebook and comments while I have been on an on-and-off blogging break - one thing I hope to do much better next year: blog more, write more!

I made this Edible Christmas Tree a few years back - ever since then it has had a permanent place in all the holiday parties we have been invited too! I am so happy so many of you liked the tree, made it, improvised on it and sent all those little encouraging words and feedback through countless comments, emails and links! Thank you also to all of you who have linked and credited the fruit tree on your pages and spaces and helped spread it's reach much farther - when I see each and every one of the new links, it never fails to make my day :) I know I will never be able to list out all of you but many thanks to Frugal Novice, Carlene Thomas, Cute for Kids, examiner, Welch's, Hawaii Island Garden School Network, El Pais newspaper, Canadian Family, Disney Baby, Amy's Kitchen and so many of you from Pinterest, Facebook and particularly all the bloggers for making my simple edible fruit tree a part of your special Christmas celebrations - a very happy holidays and a wonderful new year to all of you!

Instructions to make the tree are here

Roasting chestnuts...

(If you have never roasted chestnuts before, I highly recommend giving it a try this holiday season! Sure, there is some work in roasting and particularly shelling part, but what better way to spend your holidays chatting with friends or family camped in front of fireplace shelling and snacking on these delicious chestnuts.. give it a try if you can - it sure won't disappoint you. This post one of my very early 2009 posts; I had forgotten I wrote this until recently I was reading through my earliest posts and came across "Roasting Chestnuts" and had to re-share it again - 'tis the season after-all!)

Come December all of my car's FM radio preset channels seem to be falling pray one by one to the ever pervasive Christmas music. Now I love the holiday tunes and enjoy them most of the time, but there just isn't something right when I am driving to work burdened with an impending end-of-year deadline and the lady on the radio is cheering happily "its the most wonderful time...!":-). Anyway, one such morning I was driving to work and heard the song "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.." by Nat King Cole and I was suddenly inspired to roast some chestnuts at home in the spirit of Christmas!

I shared the idea with a friend at work who looked at me with a why-in-the-world-would-you-do-that kinda way. "It is just so much easier to buy pre-roasted pre-shelled chestnuts and they don't really taste that different from the ones from your oven, you know!". Well, I didn't have much of an answer to her other than "I have never roasted them before and I want to give it a shot". Sure thing, a little while and a lot of googling later I knew what she meant, it did look like a reasonable work, particularly the shelling part.

Undeterred on my way home I bought a pack of chestnuts at Trader Joe's. I put on my favorite CD, made myself a cup of Chai and got to work! Just as chestnuts were coming out of the oven my husband walked in commenting "something smells nice!". I was shelling the chestnuts and he decided to join me. This was a departure from our usual after-work routine of checking emails/blogs and watching TV. While shelling and eating the chestnuts we talked about how our day went by, gossiped a little and just had a good time in general... we shared some tricks to make the nuts easy to shell and we both shared with the other the ones that we thought were the best.. and while doing that I realized it is indeed worth the time and effort to roast & shell chestnuts yourself the old-fashioned way once-in-a-while just to give you that breaker from the always-connected always-busy world we live in and spend quality time with friends and family making new memories on the way :-) afterall, it is the season!

Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup

Winter has finally made it's appearance loud and clear. For last few days temperatures have been steadily dropping, evenings are chilly, mornings are frosty, my hot cup of chocolate is just that much more warming to body and soul - and that means one thing in our household, lots and lots of soups!

On many winter days our quick lunch is a pot of soup with some thick crusted sourdough bread brushed with olive oil and broiled at high temperature with just a rub of a fresh garlic clove. Throw in some salad (my favorites are couscous with butternut squash and dried cranberries salad or quinoa salad or a simple greens salad topped with some fruits and nuts dressed with an easy olive oil red wine vinegerate) and it's a perfect meal any time of day..

The recipe below is a slight adaptation of an old recipe I had posted earlier (but no new photos this time - what with a warm aroma of soup and garlic bread wafting your way sometimes all you can do is eat!). 

The early readers of Ginger & Garlic may remember I was in big favor of not adding creams to savorys as a rule (yes, I know I am the singleton who doesn't like alfredo sauces or cream based soups either!) However I have had some softening of my palette recently - I think motivated by my one year old's preferences ;) - so the cream lovers would be happy to know now that I am slowly edging towards their camps :) 

Banana Nut Muffins

The weather Gods have been quite unpredictable recently. It seems we can not quite decide whether to take that leap forward into chilly fall evenings or lapse into those gorgeous bright sunny summer days. I do not mind either. Rainy days like this week is just another excuse to spend hours cuddling with my little doll while the kitchen fills up with a wonderful heartfelt aromas that only bakers can rejoice :)

I was home early today and spent most of my early evening reading a book I have been planning to finish for a long time (Sister of My Heart - good read, not exceptional but very catchy). The weather was getting cloudier by the hour but once in a while sun would shine through the tiny pockets between the clouds basking the surrounding yellow hills with a warm glow. It was so tempting to just give up the book and take a nap for a while or just stare outside mindlessly. I lost count of how many times I refilled my coffee cup after two. Just as I was finishing up the last of the pages, a thought crossed wouldn't it be nice to have some snack baking right now to enjoy after the book? Telling you, its the weather making you crave all sorts of things. I figured a good old batch of banana nut muffins would be just perfect for the day!

Summer Lentil Soup with Garlic Bread

It is such a tick-off when you start feeling under the weather right on the eve of a long weekend... not to mention the _last_ long weekend of the summer and the one where you had plans for beach picnic and doing tourist-y things in San Francisco. But that is exactly what happened - right around Friday afternoon was when I started feeling some early onset of cough and sore throat. Not very surprising considering the little one was coughing on and off sporadically last few days. Before I became a Mom I used to wonder how grown-ups can have cold and cough multiple times a year, unfortunately now I know only too well how the chain of germ breeding ground moves from sharing toys to hugging Mommy & Daddy :)

Anyway, after my third cup of coffee on Saturday morning (all to sooth an itchy throat), I decided to make a large pot of hot soup - and that too my favorite soup, the one I always turn to  for comfort on cold winter nights or whenever someone in family has cold or fever. Lucky for us, we were about to do our weekly visit to farmer's market - so I quickly made a mental note to buy stuff for a lentil soup and for good measure also bought a loaf of freshly baked sourdough bread to go along with my soup.

This is a very versatile recipe - swap whatever fresh vegetables you have at hand. I used green lentils, you use whatever lentil is lying to be used up in your pantry. I used dried oregano and fresh basil, you can use whatever herb combination is crowding your backyard or suits your fancy for the day :) The trick to this soup is slow simmer - can't stress this strongly enough, once the soup starts to boil, reduce heat to as low as your gastop would allow, cover and forget about it for another 40mins or so. Then check the done-ness of the lentils by tasting a little bit and cook further as needed.

Romano beans sabji and A Year of Local Eating

It has been close to a year since I switched-over to buying and cooking local and seasonal produce. Mostly that means buying my week's fruits and vegetables at farmer's market and supplementing only as and when needed from Trader Joe's.

One of the perks of living in bay area is that there is an Indian grocery store right around the corner - doesn't matter where you are! So its always very easy to hop into car and buy whatever you need at nearest supermarkets or Indian groceries. Most of the produce here though is shipped from miles away and has the dreaded high food miles.

Right around when I was entering the second-semester of my pregnancy last year that I thought of making this big change in our lifestyles. Part of it was sustainable eating for ourselves and the environment we live it, part of it was supporting local farmer's community but the biggest part of it was changing our lifestyles so the new addition to our family would get to enjoy not the only the fresh seasonal tasty local produce but also the very enjoyable Saturday morning farmer's market family visits right from her childhood :)