Tried and Tasted - The week that was

Its exactly a week since my in-laws came here. To showcase my newfound culinary talent I am doing different dishes in the evening. We usually do normal South Indian food for our meal. Since they haven't fully recovered from jet lag ,while they are asleep during the afternoon, I silently sneak into the kitchen and finish up everything before they get up.
So everyday its a sweet surprise for them.

One day I did 'Coconut Raisin Oats Cookies'. Its my husband's all time favorite. My cookie box will never go empty. This cookie is a must item when we go for a long drive. I tried this recipe from the Madhuram's eggless cooking . For our PA trip, I did oats cookies - 4 times of original measure.

Whenever I see any stew recipe in Food network channel I like to try it once without the meat. I was waiting for an opportunity to do a colorful vegetable stew. The time has come to try it. Oh yes, I did last week for dinner. It was so colorful and rich in taste, here and there the stew had the Indian touch.

Aren't these cut vegetables looking cute ? Similarly, my stew looked very colorful. Since I was in over excitement I didn't take the picture of my stew :(

Tuesday morning, I received my new Mandolin Slicer from Amazon. Can't wait to try that, wanted to slice something to know how it works. My husband warned me before leaving to office not to play with that. I wanted to surprise him also. Without making any noise, took some potatoes, did a thin slice and baked it in the oven for 400 Fahrenheit for 20 - 25 mins. That's it my Potato Chips were ready. I tried this baked chips from Divya Vikram's 'Dil Se'... This is again a recipe where I was waiting for a nice slicer to try it.
Unfortunately I didn't click this too, this all because of my husband. He didn't gave the chips bowl to take a snap :))

Yesterday, I did a very new recipe, which I didn't heard before at all. Want to know what ???

Tadaan, Its Mango kesari. When I was looking for a sweet recipe in Mango, I got this Mango kesari recipe from Priya's 'Easy N Tasty' recipes.  The original recipe had a pinch of food coloring, but I didn't add any, since the natural colour itself looked nice. Bright warm yellow !!!

I am rocking in my kitchen. Thanks to all food bloggers.

Sweet Surprise

After the food mela event, I was bit busy in other work, so took a break for a week from my blogs and was doing some cleaning and clearing work to welcome my in-laws. Oh yes, they are here with us now. I am so happy :))

The chocolate cake which I made last week for the Food mela tasted good. It melted like ice cream in the mouth, everybody enjoyed it and appreciated me a lot. End of the day nothing left for us. I decided to do the same to give a sweet surprise to my in-laws when they come home.

 Instead of chocolate cake I tried cup cakes. The recipe was exactly the same, instead of baking in 8" pan I baked them in a muffin tray with reduced timing. With the store bought frosting I decorated them.

After a tedious 24 hour journey, as soon as they entered I gave them a good coffee and surprised them with these cupcakes.

Food Mela

We  conducted one more food mela last Thursday. This food mela is a part of a fund raising program for the construction of a free hospital in Coimabatore, India for Women and Child care. The 'Shiva Shantha Mother and Child Health Centre' is run by volunteers who are devotees of Swami Shanthanada Saraswathi. In addition to providing service at the hospital they also frequently conduct rural health camps and vaccination campaigns
This hospital had its humble origin as a single room clinic around 20 yrs ago and now being expanded as a 3 storey building to provide full range of health care services for pregnant women and new born children.

 CLINIC - 20 years ago

MODEL OF THE HOSPITAL

HOSPITAL BEING CONSTRUCTED - FEB 2009

As usual I cooked some of our favorite dishes for the food mela dinner
**Start with appetizer - Spinach cheese swirls
**Main course :
 -- Adai served with Green chutney
 --Sambar Rice with oven roasted Taro root curry
 -- Appalam for a crunchy bite
 -- Curd rice with Mango pickle
**Dessert - double layer chocolate cake

One of our friend's son was so happy playing with Wii games. And another kutty girl, she was playing with all the soft toys which I had. Everybody enjoyed the food and had a very good time. Also generously contributed for the good cause.
We both are very thankful to all who helped us to keep this work moving.

To know more about this organisation you can visit us here http://shivanjali.in/ . If you would like to give us a hand to help them please contact us.