Life's small treasures....

Well, its been some time since I put a pen to the paper and I thought I need to vent myself again. So here I am now....lot has happened since I shared my thoughts last. I am now pregnant with our second baby and life could not have been better.

I have been truly blessed with a wonderful family who stands by me no matter what. I guess during pregnancy we women tend to get more emotional. I certainly feel more tuned to my life and what's happening in it. Its almost as if someone has kept a mirror in front of me. I can see more clearly that instead of cribbing about things that I am missing in my life, I should certainly be happy for the ones that I have.

I used to feel like I can't connect to my friends very well but I am good friend to my hubby, my Dad and my mum so that is fine. I have some truly unique friends who are not in the same country as me but are my true support and I can call them anytime.

Similarly I used to think, why am I not doing anything with my singing and now I am happy that I have taken the initiative and am not only learning classical music but even performing as a group and if I can say so myself, am a successful singer. So all it took was for me to really look at myself and see what I could do to reach my true potential. Its certainly there in all of us, its just that sometimes it takes you longer to find its true nature.

Now life seems to no more glass half empty but certainly glass half full...lol. Here is to wishing everyone can feel the same and reach their true potential no matter at what stage they are in their life.

My favorite Methi Bhaji Recipe

So out of so many vegetables, I have few favorite ones like okra, cauliflower, beans and in the leafy vegetables my personal favorite is Methi (Fenugreek) I cook this one often as not only you get goodness of the vegetable but also the taste that makes you feel like eating it all the time. So here is a recipe of my favorite vegetable.

Ingredients:

• 1 Bunch of Methi leaves
• 1 Medium Tomato
• 1 Medium Onion
• 3-4 cloves of Garlic
• 1/2 tsp Red Chilli Powder
• 1/4 tsp Turmeric Powder
  
• 3/4 inch of Jaggery
• Salt to taste
• Oil 3 tsp

Recipe: Heat the oil in a kadai and add pressed garlic cloves in it. Make sure you do not chop or cut them but just press them, this will get their flavour out easily in the oil. Fry till light brown, do not burn them. Now add the chopped onions and fry till onions are transparent. Add the red chilli & turmeric powder. Mix well and add chopped tomatoes (I chop them in chunks instead of fine) Fry till tomatoes are little soft. Now add the chopped methi leaves ( I add fresh ones washed but you can also use the frozen variety for this recipe). Cover with lid and let it cook for 10-12 minutes, stirring every few minutes to ensure it does not stick to the bottom of the pan. Once the methi is cooked, add the jaggery and salt. Mix well and serve hot with rotis or chapaties.

Healthy and Yummy....Methi Daal Recipe

Even though we eat Non-veg food, I have always been fond of simple vegetarian dishes. I usually love any kind of daals but this one is my favorite as its so easy to make and tastes really really good plus its very good for you too.

For this recipe I am not going to give separate ingredients list as you will see, only few things go in it and those I will tell you step by step.

In a pressure cooker add 1 cup of toor daal, 1 cup of chopped methi leaves, 3 cloves of garlic chopped finely, 1 medium tomato chopped, 1 small onion chopped, 1/2 tsp turmeric powder, a pinch of hing. Add sufficient water ( Make sure not much of water as you need the end result a bit thicker than normal daals) and cook this for 3-4 whistles till daal is soft and almost mashed. I mash this mixture smooth with a masher.

Now make a tadka. Heat 3 tsp oil and once heated add 1 tsp cumin seeds, pinch of hing, 3 sliced garlic cloves. Once the garlic turns light brown, add 1 tsp paprika or kashmiri red chilli powder(you can even add red chillies dry 2 broken in half instead of chilli powder if you like). As soon as you add this switch the gas off. Now mix well and add this to the daal mixture. Add 1 lemon juice, salt and boil. I sometimes also add a little piece of jaggeri to balance the spicy taaste out but its optional. Serve hot with chapaties or rice. We all love this daal at our home because you get so many good things out of it and it tastes yummy....Hope you all like this too.

I am no superwoman....

Me and hubby took our time deciding for this second baby as both of us believed in one thing, unless we were physically and emotionally ready for this baby, we should not bring a child in this world. I am not including financially in this because we are doing ok financially so that wasn't a big issue here. So now that our son is 4 years old, we really wanted us to have another baby and after thinking carefully we decided to go for it. I am glad to say everything worked out and I am now pregnant with our second baby.

So when I was talking to a friend of mine today who has recently had a baby and she said, I don't know how you are going to manage the second one, I can't seem to manage even one, I kind of knew this kind of questions were going to come some time or other. The best thing was though before this baby we really brain stormed lot of things and this was certainly the most important of all, how would we manage our second baby. The one thing that we both have realized from our first baby experience is to accept that we can't do everything all the time. I would be the first to say that my house after my first baby was born, did not look spick and spank for days. I really did not have enough energy to do anything apart from recover from my delivery and look after the baby. I certainly did not spend much time looking after myself or the house. But as time goes, you learn to do things more effectively or prioratize your tasks. We have had take-aways at times when we were trying to do too many baby things, LOL...But that has been fine too and that's the way to go...If you think you can work, look after the baby, cook every single day, clean every single day, have a bit of time for yourself to look good, give your partner some time then phew....you have my salute straight from the heart. In my case though I really had to try to accomodate as many things in my day as I can and still have some sanity left, so we gave up some things like ever clean house all the time or detailed three course meals on table every day. What seemed more important for both of us was for the baby to have happy environment which meant we needed to be happy and well rested so me and hubby took turns on who would wake up when our son needed a nappy change or who would give him next feed etc. This was the only way that we could both get some rest and yet spend some time with the baby and each other. So to all those new parents or parents to be for the second, third or even fourth time, just remember one thing, we are not all superwomen or supermen and we do not need to be. I am happy being myself and hey, just like everyone else, I have my flaws and I am fine with them.

So do not worry about everything around you. Ask for help from relatives or friends or whomever you can, its ok to need and ask for that help. I know that without my close family, it would not have been easy for me either. And from time to time, I had my doubts too but one thing that kept me going was the fact that my hubby always stood by me. There was no pressure about home made food, there were no sly remarks on the dirty laundry or the not so clean house. We both just thought we were in this together and we will give our best. And I am proud to say that he is my life partner as I would not have got a better life partner and I call him that here because he truly shares all my burdens, without complaning and considers me a human being just like himself. And that is why I say this proudly, I am no Superwoman and my life partner is also no Superman but one thing we both are....and that is proud parents to our children and loving couple, for me that's more than enough.

Daali Thoy Recipe

I am sure all the konkani people have this recipe for sure as we eat Daali Toy regularly in the konkani households. The interesting part is though, there are little variations that I have seen in different households so here is my version.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup of toor daal
• pinch of hing/asafoetida
• 1 inch piece of ginger (pressed with rolling pin)
• 1/4 tsp haldi/turmeric powder
• Salt to taste
• 3 tsp oil
• 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
• 7-8 kadipatta leaves

Recipe:

In a pressure cooker, add toor daal, hing, ginger piece, haldi and enough water. Pressure cook the daal for about 4-5 whistles. I like to leave the pressure cooker on the same gas hob once I switch it off till the steams is completely out. Now open the pressure cooker and mash the daal well. In a pan make a tadka of oil, mustard seeds, pinch of hing, kadipatta (add these once the mustard seeds start crackling) Add the cooked daal on this. Add salt and cover till the daal boils. Serve hot with rice.

Tip: In the authentic recipe, my granny used to use the coconut oil for tadka but as my husband does not like the taste of it, I use normal canola oil for tadka. Some people use either 1-2 green or red chillies in tadka too but in our house we all love it plain with taste of ginger and hing predominantly in this.

Tendli Bhutti Recipe

My husband is Saraswat whereas I am GSB so there are lots of dishes that are made in their home which I am not familiar with. One of such dishes is Bhutti. The first time I heard about it, I cracked up as I thought my husband was pulling my leg but later I learnt that there really is a dish called Bhutti and it can be made with different vegetables but the one that I am going to talk about today is Tendli (Tindora as its known from Indian Grocery Shops)Bhutti. My husband loves this one which is a surprise as he is an avid non-veg fan so whenever he says he likes any particular vegetable, I jump and try to make that one so that we get our portion of veggies too this way.

So this one was a real challenge for me as not only have I not heard about this one but not seen or eaten it before which meant I had to rely on my husband every step of the way. I called up my sister in law who lives in UK and she helped me out with this one. She is one of the few people I know who can cook just about everything and that too very well. Also she can eat something and guess what the dish will have in it and how it must have been made which is an amazing quality so having taken the recipe from her in detail, I decided to give it a go today. To my utter surprise, it actually came out very good and my husband said its just as he remembered it so a big thank you to my Bhabhi for this one...

Ingredients:

• 25-30 Tindoras/Tendli (cut in circles but not too thin, for those who haven't cooked it before you need to first wash them and cut the front and end before cutting these.)
• 3/4 cup of grated wet coconut (I use the frozen variety)
• 1 medium onion finely chopped
  
• 3 tsp Dhane/Coriander Seeds
• 10-12 Byagadi Red Chillies Dry (These are not very hot but give a good color, if you use normal dry red chillies then use very sparingly and add paprika or kashmiri red chilli powder later on)
• 1/4 tsp Methi seeds
• 2 tsp Urad Daal
• Salt to taste
• 1/2 tsp turmeric powder
  
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp tamarind pulp
• Oil (1 tsp to fry spices and 4-5 tsp for the actual recipe)

Recipe: Heat 1 tsp oil in a pan and add coriander seeds, methi seeds, urad daal & red chillies. Fry till the aroma of spices start coming out. Now grind these spices with coconut in a mixie. Do not add much water while grinding and keep the paste a little coarse as you do not want a very fine paste for this preparation. Now in a kadai add the remaining oil and once heated add the finely chopped onions. Once the onions become transparent, add the tindora and fry well. At this time, add turmeric powder and paprika powder (if you used the normal red chillies or if you want extra colour without much spice-I add 1 tsp in mine as we all like it red in colour and a little spicy as it should be spicy vegetable) Now on medium flame fry the tindora till its completely done. You can even cover the kadai with lid to quicken this process. But make sure the tindora is not burnt. Once the tindora is cooked, add the ground coarse paste. Fry some more till the oil starts coming out from sides. Now add the tamarind pulp, sugar and salt. Cover and cook for another 5 minutes or so. You serve this dish dryish with coarse masala so do not add much water in this dish. Serve hot with chapaties or Dali Thoy and rice, yum yum...

Hope you all enjoy this one too.

Egg Bhurjee (Recipe) & my childhood memory of it.

I am an avid food lover and you can see this by the fact that every dish has a certain memory attached to it from my past. So when I was in school, we used to get some help in the house and the lady who used to come to our house used to sometimes cook snacks for me if I was too hungry and there was nothing in the fridge waiting for me (which was not often I must say) so one day I came home from school and was sooo hungry, so I asked Kamal (who was our household help) if she could make something for me that would be quick and filling. My cooking horizon was not that expanded by then so I used to take at least an hour to cook and I was too hungry to wait for an hour. So she asked me to get some bread and eggs which I promptly did from our local bakery. She made this dish called egg bhurjee and I was hooked on to it like anything. Then on I made sure, she cooked that at least once a week for me and then I also learnt it from her so that I could make it more often.

Here is the recipe for all of you now, hope you enjoy it as much as I do, even today...

Ingredients:

• 4 Eggs
• 1 large onion
• 1-1 1/2 tsp red chilli powder (I use kashmiri chilli powder which is not too hot but gives the colour desired for this recipe)
• Salt to taste
• 1/4 tsp turmeric powder
• Coriander leaves chopped for garnishing (optional)
• Oil 2 spoonful
• Ghee/Butter 1 spoonful
• 2 medium tomatoes

In a kadai or deep pan, add the oil and butter and heat it. Kamal used to make it all in butter but I keep the taste by having some butter and using the rest oil so its not as fattening. Once the oil is heated, add finely chopped onions to it. Fry till they are brown on the edges, do not let it burn though you just want the light golden colour to edges only. Now add turmeric and chilli powder. Mix well. Now add finely chopped tomatoes and salt. Mix well till you see oil separating from sides. Now break the eggs in this and start stirring. You can even use the spatula to break the egg pieces in the pan while the mixture is getting dry. I make sure the eggs come out like a kheema (very small pieces). Now turn the stove on high heat and make sure the bhurjee is nice and dry. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve hot with paav (Indian bread).