Awaiting Your Arrival

My baby, here I stand awaiting you…

beneath the tree singing songs to you.

Counting months, counting weeks, counting days…

Truly, your existence has brought in such amaze!

My baby, here I stand talking to you…

about all the love and care I have for you.

Counting every single kick and move you make…

I know you are listening to me... you are still awake!

My baby, here I stand dreaming of you…

making all motherly plans for you.

Looking at those shining stars…

I sometimes wonder are you from Venus or from Mars!

My baby, here I stand praying for you…

may God shower all the joy, luck & good health on you.

Child, I consider you as my treasure…

You are now the source of all our pleasure!

My baby, here I write a little note to you…

this is just my way of welcoming you.

With your arrival, comes the moment of utmost glee…

I'm so delighted to say we are soon going to be three!!!

                                                                                - Sunraysgs

Note: This was an entry to one of the contests that I participated online (thanks to Divya for introducing me to it!). Very pleased to say that I won Runners-Up in the contest!

Would love to see ur remarks and suggestions on this :)

*Happy n Excited*

Neer Unde

At least a few of you would have heard of "neer dose". The ingredients of "neer unde" are similar to that of "neer dose". Just that the preparation method is a little different.

Well, I am sure most of you reading this recipe, wouldn't have tasted this before. It is a special Malnad recipe passed on to me from my mom. Try it out when your taste buds crave for something new.

Ingredients:
Dosa Rice - 1 large cup
Coconut gratings - 3-4 spoons
Chili - 3 (or as per taste)
Jeera - 1 spoon
Ginger - 1 inch
Asafetida - for aroma and flavoring
Salt - as per taste
Sufficient water for grinding
Oil

Method:
- Soak rice for up to 4hrs. Grind the soaked rice with all other above ingredients in a grinder until it becomes smooth. Add sufficient water as needed.
- Now transfer the watery mixture into a large bowl and let it ferment overnight (Neer Unde can be made instantly without fermentation. Fermentation give a sour taste which I love, but it is totally optional).
- The following day, smear a large frying pan with just 2-3 spoons of oil and heat it. Now pour the batter into it and stir continuously. It wont take too long for it to thicken. The consistency should be like that of thick whipped butter/sreekhand or like the akki rotti/papad/sandige dough.
- Smear little oil or water to your hand and make flattened balls out of this thick paste when hot.
- Place the flattened balls on oil-smeared-pan and heat it with a covered lid. Your neer unde is done once both sides turn golden brown. pour a spoon of oil if needed.

Neer unde with coconut chutney + coconut oil is my fav combination. Try out and enjoy the Malnad taste. :)

Imp. Tip: Just in case if u mess up with its consistency while preparing the dough (which is tend to happen for a beginner :D), dont worry. You can make round balls, place them in a large bowl & cook in cooker (like idlis). Even that tastes pretty good.

Scrummy Spring Rolls

Yet another Amma's recipe down here.
I prepared it a few weeks back, and it definitely suited the weather. Try it out on a rainy evening. I bet you will love it. :)

Ingredients:
- Vegetables: 1 Carrot, 1 capsicum, 1 onion, beans, cabbage
- Minced ginger & garlic
- oil for frying
- powdered pepper (as per taste)
- salt (as per taste)
- a pinch of soda (optional: makes the dish crispy)
- maida (all purpose flour) - 1 bowl

Preparing the fillings:
- Cut all the vegetables long and thin. In a pan, pour 4 spoons of oil. I used olive oil. Once its hot, put chopped onion, ginger and garlic. Saute until it turns color for 1-2 mins on high flame.
- Then add carrot and beans. Lastly add capsicum and cabbage as they are soft and thus take very little time to get cooked.
- Make sure the vegetables are semi cooked. Add pepper and salt as per taste and mix well. Now you are done with the stuffing.

Preparing the Dough:
- Mix maida, salt and a pinch of soda with water and bring it to the consistency of poori dough.

Preparing the Spring Rolls:
- Make round balls out of the dough and press them flat like that of poori size with a rolling pin.
- Now at the centre of the flattened dough, place the vegetable fillings. Wrap the dough on all sides and seal them by pressing carefully at the edges. (check the image below to see how the wrapped dough looks like). Do the same for all the flattened dough.
(Note: Be extra careful to seal well. Else, it will leak out while frying and you will end up with a messy snack.)

Frying the Spring Rolls:
- Pour sufficient oil into a deep pan for frying.
- Once the oil is hot, put the stuffed dough into the pan and fry either sides on medium flame until it turns golden brown. Repeat the process for the rest of them and you are done.


Spring Rolls: Click on image for a better view

 Serving Suggestions: Cut the spring rolls at centre and serve with tomato/chilly sauce. Serve it hot.

Aloo Palak

Ingredients:
1 bunch spinach - chopped (approx 1 big bowl)
1 Potato - semi cooked
1 tomato - cooked, with skin removed
2 chillis
2 pods garlic
1 onion - chopped
1 spoon Jeera Dhania powder
10 Cashews - soaked in water
Garlic, ginger - minced Garam masala
Ghee, Salt, Turmeric

Method:

• Keep the chopped spinach, potato (cut into cubes) and tomato in seperate vessels and cook in cooker (1 whistle).
• After it cools, peel the skin of the tomato. Blend the tomato + soaked cashews in a blender. Keep it aside.
• Using the same blender, blend the spinach + chilli + garlic together. 
• In a pan, put 3-5 spoons of ghee. After it heats up, add ginger, garlic, dhania, jeera and chopped onions. Saute for 3 mins. Add turmeric. 
• Add the pureed spinach and tomatoes. Cook for 2 mins and stir well so that they blend together. Add salt and garam masala as per taste.  
• Finally add the potato cubes and mix well.

Switch off the flame and here your are done. Aalu Palak suits best with Chapati/Roti and alike.

(Note: After cooking spinach, remove excess water in it and use it if the gravy looks too thick. even otherwise, do not waste the water as it has the grean leafy nutrients in it. ;) So use the remaining water in preparing chapati dough).

Beetroot Halwa

Another Healthy-Bhi-Tasty-Bhi recipe down here: 

Ingredients:
Beetroots(2-3 large beetroots): i.e; 2 large bowls of grated beetroot
Sugar: for 2 large bowls of beetroot take 3/4th bowl of sugar (Note: if you love sweet then you can take beetroot:sugar in the ratio of 2:1)
Milk powder: 3 spoons (optional)
Ghee: Around 8 spoons
Dry nuts for seasoning (Cashew, Badam, Dry grapes) & powdered Elachi for aroma.

Method:
Grate the beetroots and cook it in cooker (without adding water). 1 whistle is more than sufficient. If possible switch off the cooker even before it makes its 1st whistle. After it cools down a bit, try to remove the excess water in the cooked beetroot. Remember not to squeeze as that will spoil its structure.

In a pan put 4 spoons of ghee to roast the dry nuts (Cashew, Badam, Dry grapes, Elachi) until they turn golden brown. Keep them aside and to the same pan add 4 spoons ghee and add the cooked grated beetroot. Stir on medium flame for 5 minutes. Then add sugar + milk powder to the pan. Stir so that they mix well. Once the sugar melts you will notice the content becomes a little watery. So, you will have to stir occasionally until all water evaporates (on medium/high flame). The consistency should become like that of Carrot Halwa - took me around 20 mins of stirring. Once done, turn off the flame and add the roasted nuts.

You can serve the halwa hot or refrigerate it and serve chilled.

(Note: If you think you added too much sugar and halwa turned out too sweet then you can alter it by adding some grated kobri at the end and stir for an additional 5 mins.)

Vanakkam!!!

The journey from Bangalore to Chennai was a smooth one. It was 6:30 in the morning and the bus driver began to scream that this was the last stop and everyone started alighting. We got down the bus and noticed that we were in front of a huge messy market near Chennai Bus Station.

We were supposed to call Puttu Mama (Adarsh's uncle) who was then to pick us up in his car. As luck had its part to play, we found that our mobile phone was switched off due to low battery. Before we even began to look for public phones, a group of 4-6 auto drivers came towards us and greeted us "Vanakkam". They tried to converse with us in broken English/Hindi. All they knew was "yes", "no" and a few other Hindi words which almost meant the same.

We assumed that they were trying to get us into one of their auto rickshaws and so we avoided them. One of them came closer to us and was showing us his mobile. I was not at all comfortable with the whole idea of chit-chatting with auto drivers so we simply indicated that we needed no taxis/autos and began looking for phone booths. Only then it struck to us that they were actually trying to tell that there were no public phones nearby and so one of them was offering his mobile phone for us to make the call.

Let me tell you, all these years, friends told various stories about Chennai/Tamil Nadu. I heard that no one there responds to strangers if they talked in English or any other language than Tamil. Tamilians were in romance with their mother-tongue that they would reply (if at all) only in Tamil. We thought they would not be so helpful to people like us who understood very little Tamil. 

And here, we get to see a group of auto drivers trying to help us and offer their personal phones to make STD calls!!! Yes, we had to call back to Ujire (my in law's place) and get our uncle's phone number as our mobile was switched off and thus had no access to contact numbers. We told that we will pay back them the cost of the call and made phone calls back home, took our uncle's phone number and then again dialled back to Puttu Mama informing him about our exact location so that he could come and pick us up.

By the time we hung the phone, we realized that the driver's balance had become zero. He had a very low balance remaining in his pre-paid phone, yet he had offered us help. Upon that, he simply denied the cash we offered. With his Rajini style and his mixed Tamil-cum-English words, he intended to say that it was a small help and wanted nothing in return. We felt guilty that we used up his remaining balance and could not repay it.

Helplessly, we stood there waiting for Puttu Mama. We were expecting him in 10 minutes and it was almost 20 mins of waiting, and there were no signs. We did not want to make yet another call from the driver's phone and so we simply continued to wait.

Nearby, was a huge hotel and we thought we could get some help in making calls at its reception. The reception was huge, and there were 2 men dressed in black suits. I told them my situation and requested if I could use the reception phone to make a local call. The brute reply that came out of the sophisticated receptionist was: "Sorry Madam, we cannot help you with this. We cannot let you make calls nor charge you for it". Phew... and there it ended. I walked out with thoughts of the extreme behaviour of the helpful average auto driver at one end and the posh-yet-blunt receptionists at the other.

After waiting for another 10-15 minutes, we felt that it is no point waiting for this long, as our uncle could be waiting at some other end trying to find us. So we decided to use the drivers phone one last time, but right away pay them back the cost of all the calls. Since that driver had no more balance remaining in his phone, he looked for other drivers and came back with a mobile phone so that we could make our call. Our uncle was waiting for us somewhere close by and we could spot him. After returning the phone, the drivers again denied to be repaid and we had a deeper sense of guilt now.

We had to repay their gratitude somehow. So Adarsh took out a sweet box out of his bag. We gave a box of our favorite Dharwad Peda to them and immediately we could see the expressions on their faces and a sense of relief on our faces too. They were delighted at it and a bigger crowd of auto drivers gathered in seconds and finished the sweets in no time. We soon sighted Puttu Mama and hopped into his car with a feeling of satisfaction and smiled at each other at the whole episode.

Heerekai Chutney

Well, I would like to call it fibrous chutney because its made of vegetable's skin and thus very fibrous and healthy. Its called heerekai sippe chutney - more famous as samandha in south kanara.

Ingredients:

1 big bowl - Heere kai sippe (thick skin of ridge gourd)
2 spoon coconut gratings
1 spoon urad dal
1 green chilly, 1 red chilly
tamarind - 1 small lemon size
a pinch of asafoetida (ingu)
2 spoon oil
salt to taste

Method:

(1) Semi cook the skin of ridge gourd and keep it aside. (can be cooked in cooker or in a pan with closed lid).
(2) Take a pan and put 2 spoons oil. Add urad dal to it. Once it turns brownish, add green & red chilly. Add asafoetida powder. Switch off the flame and then add coconut gratings.
(3) Mix (1) and (2) in a blender/mixie to form a consistent paste. Add water as needed.
(4) For seasoning: add mustard seeds and some urad dal in oil/ghee.

And there you go! Who said "all that tastes good is not healthy and all that is healthy tastes bad!" In this case: its healthy bhi... tasty bhi!

Serving suggestions: Serve it with curd rice or Dosa/Chapati/Idli.

Now you must be wondering "I use the fibrous peeled skin. well and good. But what do I do with the vegetable!!!" No worries. It can be used in making Dose. Follow my Khara Dose recipe here which shows you how to do just that.