Life As I Know It

Marley and I love food and we enjoy cooking. Growing up, my mother never asked either my brother or me to help her in the kitchen except of course to wipe the washed vessels dry. This I guess played a huge role in my interest in cooking as an adult. My mother has always treated chores as life skills; be it making our bed on waking up, drying the bathroom completely after use or instead of putting our vessels in the sink, just make a habit of at least washing our own plates after a meal. She hasn’t differentiated between my brother and me when it came to chores or cooking. We learnt the basics when we were ready to leave the nest and she later helped fill in our respective recipe books gradually with recipes of things we are fond of. Marley and his brother are also no strangers in the kitchen and both make really good ginger tea. Like most of my readers I have spammed Marley and his brother with my post links every time they go up. For the purposes of this blog let’s call...

In my family, my parents, brother, Fenny (25.02.2002 – 15.06.2010) and I all LOVE bitter gourd. My mom makes karele ki sabzi at least once a month and the sabzi disappears in no time. When I met Marley, I knew I had met a fellow foodie but you have no idea about the deep sigh of relief I let out when he said he hates Karela! All I could think was, “The entire kadai of sabzi is MINE!” My dad of course can’t imagine people not liking Karela. So, he introduced Marley to Karela chips (Coated with besan-chilli batter and deep fried.) Marley loved them. We now have to share our Karela chips. Then my mom made a typical Mangalorean Karela dish – Karathe Nonche, where you deep fry finely chopped karela and just before serving pour it into coconut gravy. Marley loved that too. A part of me is really glad that he has developed a liking for karela but somewhere deep down I feel a little possessive of my dear Karela. Now that you have read this tiny tribute to this dear green curl...

As kids my brother and I would always pester my mom to make noodles. We loved the way she made them and we called it ‘oily noodles’.   We all know Maggie is made with water and sometimes we don’t even toss in vegetables and somehow that has never gone down well with me and we called those noodles ‘water noodles’. I love noodles with crunchy vegetables with a hint of pepper and garlic and a side of sweet salad. The salad recipe that I have provided below usually has feta cheese in it but we improvised it with paneer. Putting up a cutting board picture after ages!!! In the lockdown the one thing we’ve been assured are fresh fruits and vegetables. I am extremely thankful for that. I made these noodles under my mother’s watchful guidance and she has approved the taste and hence it can go on the blog. If you want to make a complete meal out of it I’d like to recommend having it with any of these 👉 Gobi Manchurian / Soya Chunk Manchurian / Honey Chilli Potato / Chilli...

My dad and I aren't picky about our vegetables so I added everything in ours 😃 It was a case of ‘Ola Mexicana’ at our place recently. Due to the lockdown announcement so many stores got cleaned up overnight. We at home didn’t see the need to panic because we had made our monthly purchases and fresh fruits and vegetables were already stocked. As the days progressed we realised there were some things that we should be buying so as to avoid going out as much as possible. Our goal is to go out just once a week and not more. Hence began our quest on Big Basket. It was not surprising that most of the essentials were already out of stock so Marley decided to bag things that were available and that is how we landed with Tacos and Nachos. It was the empty taco shells that prompted me to indulge everyone at home and make some healthy Tacos. Ingredients: Yummy yummy in the making. For the double fried beans: 1 Cup kidney/rajma beans (200-250 gms) 1big onion finely chopped 1 tsp rajma masala ...

Guacamole! I had been busy and sleep deprived for most of last year and kept complaining about needing to just stop, rest and regain some balance. I spent the last 14 days doing just that. Now that I am all caught up with sleep and rest I thought I should start contributing to the blog. I hope the quarantine isn’t getting too bad for our readers and if it is watch this space for easy recipes, series recommendations and some really simple DIYs. Given the quarantine we are rationing vegetables and groceries. With the situation escalating I don’t see the lockdown ending on the 14 th .   I don’t want to make this post grim. So let’s get to the meal recipe below which is not just economical but also tasty and uses minimum ingredients, yet remains healthy. Guacamole Ingredients: (Serves 3) 2 ripe avocados 1medium sized onion finely chopped 4 big cloves of garlic finely chopped 2 tablespoons of finely chopped coriander Juice of 1 small lemon ½ tsp pepper powder Pink Salt Method: Cut the a...

Granola with yogurt and plums I am not a breakfast person and I don’t see myself converting anytime soon. Marley on the other hand is a breakfast person. This conundrum gave birth to the simplest and healthiest solution that I could come up with – Granola! Granola is an easy to make dish and has a shelf life of 1 month. You may add seasonal fruits and yogurt to it and you are good to go. It is also an easy item to carry with you to have it at your work place and isn’t messy at all. Furthermore in this heat, fresh fruits and yogurt can do wonders to one’s stomach. Lest we forget, this breakfast is packed with healthy fats, natural sugar, protein, fiber and doesn’t require you to sweat in front of a flame. Ingredients: 500gms rolled oats 50gms almonds 50gms cashews 50gms melon seeds 50gms groundnuts 50gms raisins 100ml water Maple syrup/honey   Freshly baked Granola Method: Crush almonds, cashews and groundnuts coarsely and mix it with the oats. Then add the melon seeds to the mixtur...

My cousin was in town for a bit and she wanted to take her kids to one of our all-time favorite places – Downtown. For those not familiar with Mysore, on Kalidasa road is one teeny tiny shop that’s been there for over two decades that serves some of the best burgers I have ever eaten. Whenever I go out of town and come back home I need to have a burger from there or if I have a friend visiting, a meal at Downtown is mandatory. One of the reasons for the popularity of this little spot is that, the couple that runs it makes the burgers themselves and every day we are served fresh burgers. They go by quality hence the moment the patties are over the shop closes. One of the unique things about their burger is coleslaw. They use coleslaw along with beans and a patty. In fact in all the variations of their burgers they serve coleslaw. I was to go with my cousin but work got in the way. Thus, one Saturday I decided that my family would have to eat my own “version” of the Downtown burgers for ...