Cookies are my favorite thing about the holidays. I love to bake them and share them with friends and family. This year I almost didn’t get around to the holiday baking though. Since we spend Thanksgiving and the two following weeks in India, it didn’t even feel like the holidays to me.
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Why haven’t we posted in a while? For the simple reason I think most of you are all too familiar. Life gets busy!
Even though I love to cook, it’s been so hard at the end of the day to get it together to make something interesting, and to photograph it, and to write it up. So it only makes sense that my first post after this little unplanned mini-break is a slow cooker recipe! (more…)
This weekend is the San Diego International Kids Film Festival. One of the short films showing will be “Failure Groupies,” which explores the themes of racism and terrorism through the eyes of 12 year olds. I was very excited for the chance to speak with the film’s director, Mandira Chauhan. Mandira grew up in Mumbai just like me. She moved to New York in 2012 to become a filmmaker.
It’s no secret I love Indian street food. Potato sandwiches are definitely one of my favorites, and they are amazingly simple to make at home! Really they are just a step up from grilled cheese sandwiches, but so full of flavor. (more…)
When I opened our CSA box this month the first thing I saw was a huge bunch of green– carrot greens. I normally throw out carrot greens because you pretty much have to use them right away or they dry up and become useless, but with all of these greens I knew I couldn’t let them go to waste. (more…)
Happy Raksha Bandhan!
It’s Raksha Bandhan (Rakhi), a day to celebrate your siblings. Every Rakhi, I make a bracelet for my brother and tie it on his wrist. The bracelet is supposed to provide protection for a brother in battle. Rakhis were tied to the wrist of warriors when they would go off to battle. The rakhi is a promise of protection from the brother to his sister as well. (more…)
Did you know the San Diego Museum of Art has world-class collection of over 1,400 pieces of Indian Art? Steve and I met with Marika Sardar, the Associate Curator for Southern Asian and Islamic Art at the San Diego Museum of Art. Marika gave us a personal tour of the three galleries of South Asian art that she is in charge of.
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I have a special place in my heart for farms. I spent many of my childhood summers surrounded by mango orchards and farm land. My brother and I would wander through the farm for hours with our dog, Shimbo. We spent hours inventing games, naming trees and including our favorite trees in our games.
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When people come over to my house for Indian food for the first time, I often serve Potato Shaak. I like it because it is so representative of the flavors of Indian cooking, and it just feels like a homestyle meal.
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Kichidi and chaas is my all-time favorite comfort food. My mom used to make kichidi for me whenever I felt a little under the weather. The combination of steaming hot rice and lentils with a cold glass of chaas always made me feel better.
Chaas is a simple combination of yogurt, salt, water and cumin. It’s sort of the Gujarati version of salty lassi and holds a special place in my heart. It pairs perfectly with kichidi, another staple in a Gujarati household.
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If you could tell the history of rice pilaf, you could tell the history of the world to at least as far back as Alexander the Great. It’s a dish that is ubiquitous across most of the world’s cuisines. This is probably because it is such a great dish for large gatherings. To make a large pot of rice pilaf is not much more difficult than to make a small pot.
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