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Spicy black eyed peas with kale: cooking your way to a happy and prosperous new year!
When I was a fourth-grader in a little town our school teacher once told us that whoever studies very hard on the new year's day gets excellent grades and wins all the academic prizes in the next year. You know how it goes, right? at that age a word from your favorite school-teacher is like a word of a God! We all took her very seriously and made it a point to study hard on the new year's day. It was sort of like a tradition that we followed in our class; the point of which was that the direction you give to the first day of the year, thats the direction your rest of the year takes :) Now I look back and laugh at the innocence with which we studied on 1st of Jan hoping that good marks and prizes will follow, but all along I think somewhere there was a hidden innocent satisfaction of trying to shape up the new year to be :) Such do-no-harm traditions are my favorites! I learnt of a similar new year's day tradition recently which is observed in the sout…

Beets and greens salad with mint, almonds and lemon
Last few weeks have been a sweet overdose for me.. You know what I mean, right? Cakes and cookies and chocolates and truffles and sweet breads: you name it and this holiday season I have ate it! Since I am one of those minority people who are low on a sweet-tooth, a sweet overdose of this magnitude is likely to take me off sweets for a while.. or may be just for a few days, we'll see, depends on how hard the box of cookies and chocolates sitting on my dining table stares at me (like that Geico add where the money stares at people!) :D Anyway, today morning I just wanted to eat a simple and light lunch to make up for all the desserts that I have had last few weeks (and particularly yesterday!). I looked in the pantry and saw a bunch of golden and red beets that I had bought from farmer's market last week. I instantly thought of my favorite beet salad! I started making this recipe a year or so ago; the origin of which comes from one of my most treasured coo…

Edible Christmas fruit tree and a wish for a very Happy Holidays!
Every year around this time the same question starts popping up into my mind: what should I make for the holiday gatherings? I think everyone has atleast a few dashing staple stars; these are the dishes that you can whip up with no worries at-all, with very less preparation and they are sure to please every tummy! I am always awed by all the fellow food-bloggers who whip up these delightfully scrumptious baked goodies; seeing the pictures of which make me wish I had more of a baking woo-doo :) But with my limited baking talent all I feel comfortable taking to any holiday gatherings is usually a banana nut bread or some fruit cake! This year though when I saw this  chocolate truffles post on Yasmeen's blog I knew exactly what I wanted to make! Chocolate truffles are a type of chocolates made with a chocolate ganache inside and coated with various coatings, the most ubiquitous of which is cocoa powder but powdered sugar and toasted nuts are common coatings to…

Hearty Lentil Soup for the Wintry Soul
My favorite winter evenings go something like these: come home early from work (hey it gets dark earlier!), pour yourself a hot cup of cocoa, put on something nice on TV and sit on the sofa cuddled in a shawl and do nothing! Now you might ask what happens to the dinner? and that's where this soup comes in.. this is my favorite one pot wonder meal. Wonder because its an absolutely delicious and healthy soup, cooks entirely with the pantry staples AND most of the cooking time is unattended. Now isn't that a win-win! I am usually game for any hot soup dinner during winter and this one being with lentils is even more heartier and feeling. I usually enjoy this soup with some make-do garlic bread which is just regular whole wheat bread toasted and then flavored with some olive oil and some fresh crushed garlic!

Baked Acorn Squash Stuffed with Apples and Cranberries
Is there something like a sweet tooth or is everything an acquired taste? I wonder sometimes.. pretext being that neither me nor my husband have strong sweet cravings. Even as a kid all I asked my mom to prepare on every single of my birthdays was a simple fruit-salad! So preparing desserts is a rarity at our place (special occasions or family friends over for dinner). Sweet dishes that I do prepare at home are either a) traditional Marathi sweets that we do crave once in a while or b) some light fruit based desserts (tarts, crustless-pies.. you get the idea). Its not so much about watching sugar or calories, but just that neither of us really crave sweets. Okay, now before you think that I am this saint person who gets no sweet cravings let me assure you that like everything else in nature there are exceptions to this rule :-) First, I do get my bulk-load of non-saintness craving fried snacks like samosas and kachoris and second, did you say Tiramisu, Chocolate mo…

Broccoli and Potatoes
If you are like me then you know what I mean when I say that sneaking broccoli into your diet in a "love-it" fashion has been sort of a challenge (well, atleast for me :-)). Don't get me wrong, I love the "concept" of eating broccoli; it's health benefits are well-known and pretty much any healthy cooking show you tune to now-a-days has the hostess screaming eat more greens with a background picture of spinach, kale and broccoli! Well, I love all my greens except for broccoli.... or may be that I just hadn't come across a recipe of broccoli that I really liked. This all changed one evening last week when my husband prepared this broccoli dish! Now to be fair, broccoli-potato with Indian spices is something I have cooked many times before but always either the broccoli would be too raw, too unwilling to mingle with Indian spices or the whole concoction would be mushy. In contrast this dish was a delight to eat (and not just because …

A savory snack - Saanja
I find it very interesting how our mind correlates food with memories and these correlations are so strong (well, atleast for me :-)). Warm smell of freshly made tortialla and spanish rice reminds me of my San Diego days when I used to frequently visit old town to satisfy mexican food cravings..... similarly thinking of Maggi noodles takes me back to my college days back in India preparing for exams late into the night and relying on Maggi for a larger part of sustainance! What a treat it used to be to enjoy hot Maggi noodles in the middle of a cold wintry night! Saanja has some similar memory lane associations for me: it is a very common marathi snack made out of semolina (rava). I find Saanja as a lesser-known but equally potent cousin of the ever-so-famous Upma! When I was growing up my Masi (Mom's sister) would stop by few afternoons to visit us. We used to look forward to Masi's visits because each of her visits would be filled with warm talks, laugh…

Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup
Winter has finally arrived! Evenings are chilly, skies are more cloudy and my good old thick comforter is out of its summer package... that means bringing back two of my favorite winter activities: scarf knitting and making big pots of hot bubbling soup! I am a soup lover; on many wintry days I am perfectly happy with a dinner of hot soup and a nice rusty bread. This one is one of my favorites. It has a lot of healthy vegetables, red peppers are full of anti-oxidants and vitamin A/C and roasting brings out a really nice slightly sweet flavor to them. I first saw this recipe a year ago on one of the recipe shows on TV (unfortunately don't remember which show now). Original recipe called for some cream and a dollop of cream cheese. I am not a cream lover so I made it first with no cream but instead added lemon juice and it still tasted great! Over the last year I have made this soup more times than I can count and everytime I switched a few things here and t…

Spaghetti squash with Sun-dried tomatoes and capers
"What!! this is not pasta??" I asked surprised to my office cafeteria vegetarian station server. I had just asked him for a pasta dish that a coworker in front of me had ordered and he was shaking his head saying "no pasta, vegetable only". He pointed me to the menu board written "spaghetti squash with pesto". Hmmm, I had never seen something that looks so much like spaghetti but is not! I was intrigued and ordered one. Well, like any other dish served in our cafe this one was barely appetizing.. pasta (or squash) was overcooked and to hide that fact the server was drenching it in pesto sauce. I could hardly taste the spaghetti squash but it looked interesting enough to give it a second try! The weekend after that I found myself roaming in our local farmer's market looking for spaghetti squash. I found one vendor carrying one. While I was staring at the squash trying to make sense of how I am going to make "pasta" out o…

Couscous mint salad
This salad (for lack of a better word!) was a very unexpected hit with us! It was one of those times when I found these really fresh bunches of mint in indian market and thinking of all the possible ways to use it, I overbought! These couple bunches of mint were sitting in the crisper for many days when I realized that there isn't much innovative I am going to do with these :-) Then I made what I knew: a simple mint chutney with lemon, cilantro and green chilis. The recipe is very simple: process in food processor 2 bunches of mint, 1 green chili and 1 clove of garlic (optional). Transfer to a blender and blend until smooth with juice of 1 lime and salt to taste. My favorite way to enjoy mint chutney is to mix it with some fresh rice & butter! yumm... but since I was out on rice, I decided to mix it with some couscous instead! I was a bit worried about how couscous and mint chutney would go together but they were perfect! I added some chopped tomatoes …

Whole wheat pita sandwiches
This is the simplest and quickest lunch possible -- and yet very delicious! There aren't a whole lot of ingredients and there is hardly any cooking at all so it really helps if the ingredients are fresh and of good quality. This is perfect for a takeout lunch -- to office or to a weekend hike! I love whole wheat pita bread but many times the whole wheat pita that I get from supermarkets are very cardboardish.. specially when eaten cold. If I eat the pita warm then it tastes much better but if you need to eat cold pita then I feel the quality of the pita really matters. Anyway, for some time now I have been buying whole wheat pita at Trader Joe's and have been really happy with them. This lunch is more of an assembly than cooking :) The ingredients are really versatile as well, its usually what I have at hand. 2 whole wheat pita dressing -- my favorite is Trader Joe's cilantro jalapeno hummus, but a regular hummus or a yogurt-cucumber-mint sauce …

Quinoa Salad
Recently we have fallen into this ritual of visiting local farmers markets every weekend. The good part of living in a large city is that we have two different choices for farmers markets: Saturday @ Sunnyvale or Sunday @ Mountain view! There is just something about the fresh produce and fruits that gets me the fuel to cook at home for the week ahead.... This is our lunch on most days after coming back from farmers market. This salad comes together so quickly and is so wonderful! The fresh produce is exactly what makes this quinoa salad so yummy! Recipe: Quinoa Salad 2 C quinoa 2 tomatoes 1 red pepper 1/2 red onion 3 celery sticks 1/2 C chopped cilantro or parsley or basil olive oil/lime juice/red wine vinegar/salt/pepper/lemon rind 1 tsp cumin powder pinch of oregano Cook quinoa per package directions. I buy my quinoa in stock from Bob's red mills which comes pre-washed; but if its not pre-washed, you may need to rinse it clear first. I boiled 4C water and…