Diwali came by and went on in a jiffy as usual. But along with that came flurry of activities, cooking, hoarding, more cooking and packing of caloriesJ. Diwali is just an excuse, but frankly the hoarding starts a week before when the preparation of sweets, snacks starts and ends a week later with goodies brought from guests. This festival involves preparing so many different varieties of eatables that it is hard to resist the temptation. Why do inviting, decadent, tasty stuff have to be so bad for health? I wish I were transported to some unknown planet where oil and…
Hayagreeva (Chana Daal Jaggery Dessert)
My plan for Ganesh Chaturthi/Chavthi pooja was to prepare the usual kadabu as a sweet offering to the Lord. Kadabu in Kannada also called as “Ukadiche modak” in Marathi is prepared by first stuffing sweet coconut mixture in a rice flour covering and then steamed to create a unique tasting decadent dish. This requires lots of fresh shredded coconut but is considered to be Ganapathi’s favorite dish. So we got coconuts from the Grocery, some for the pooja and one to prepare the dish. But much to our dismay discovered that the coconut had gone bad. We usually pride ourselves…
Vegetable Upma / Uppittu Recipe
Those were the day when I used to dislike Upma to the core. I used to eat it along with yogurt, sugar to overcome its vapid taste and grumble constantly about its lack of taste. My poor mother would then make some special alternate like poha for me to take to school/college. Fast forward few years and I have learnt to appreciate things, value the effort that goes into making any dish. Also thanks to my MIL I have learnt to add ginger, cloves and coarse rava to enhance the taste of Upma. This is called as Upma…