Wrapping up 2018, and a recipe for Sugar Plums

The blog has been silent but the One Hot Stove kitchen has been working overtime in the last two months. Read on to see some of the things I've been cooking and baking.

Birthday cakes: I've made 3 birthday cakes over the last two months, two for my work family and one for my darling spouse.

For V's birthday, I made him one of his favorite cakes- the tres leches or three milks cake. I used this recipe which is written for the vitamix. It takes the hard work out of whipping eggs by having you make the cake batter in a couple of minutes in the blender. The three milks I used to soak the cake were condensed milk, evaporated milk and coconut milk. For the topping, I whipped a cup of heavy cream by hand, and topped the whole confection with fresh blueberries and canned mandarin oranges just before serving. V shared it with his colleagues at work and I swear it served about 20 people. It is a rich cake and the pudding texture makes it a decadent crowd-pleaser.

Several people in my work family have gluten allergies so when I volunteered to make a birthday cake for one of them, I chose this recipe for gluten free sticky lemon cake. It sounded light and tasty and just the right thing to serve at a celebratory coffee break. The only special ingredient needed was polenta (the raw kind, not the cooked polenta in tubes); I checked a few stores and couldn't find this. In the end, I used a 50-50 mix of fine cornmeal and corn grits. As the birthday girl was poised with the knife, with everyone gathered around poised with their forks, I started to think that this was going to be real embarrassing if this recipe didn't come out right. Luckily it did and the cake was soft and tasty. I do think the corn grits were a bit too gritty though (yes I know that's why they call them grits) so the next time I make this, I will seek out proper polenta.

Buoyed by the success of my first gluten free cake, I stepped up to make the cake for another colleague and this was a bigger deal- a 50th birthday party. In conversations with her, it turned out that she is not a fan of the flourless chocolate cakes. They are the go-to choice for gluten free desserts but can be too rich and cloying beyond a bite or two. So I decided on this recipe for a gluten free apple and walnut cake. I simplified the recipe by baking the cake directly in a glass pan, not cutting it as directed, and simply drizzling the syrup on the whole cake. I used some cardamom in the syrup and all in all, it tasted like a baklava in cake form.

So now I have two stellar gluten free cakes in my baking repertoire and both of these are worth making again and again.

Diwali was a quiet affair at our home. Our grown niece visited with diyas, jalebis and chaklis. I made a dinner featuring saag paneer, and saffron kheer for dessert. The kids enjoyed whirling sparklers once it got dark outside.

Thanksgiving: We hosted a small "friendsgiving" with 9 people at the table. The menu was pretty standard. The main dishes were a portobello wellington and a mock turkey roast from Trader Joe's. For sides, I made mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, mushroom gravy, cranberry sauce and green bean casserole. Desserts were the chocolate pecan pie that I make year after year, and sweet potato brownies and assorted cheesecake slices brought by our friends.

Two Potluck Brunch Bakes

For the holiday brunch potluck at work, I made this hash brown breakfast bake. My only modification was to use 6 eggs instead of 5 and to use less cheese than directed. Using frozen hash brown patties and pantry ingredients, it was a breeze to assemble it the night before and bake it off before work. In fact, I'm making another one of these for a new year's eve brunch as we speak.

For yet another holiday breakfast get-together, I tried an apple oatmeal bake. I used a mixture of dairy and almond milk. This was also assembled the evening before and baked off the next morning. It was warm, hearty and not too sweet, with perfect winter flavors. We ate leftovers warmed up in the microwave for the next day or two.



Gifts from the kitchen: We don't have massive Christmas commitments and don't exchange gifts with family over the holidays (although we do get some small things for the kids) so I am free to focus on the teachers, mail carrier, garbage and recycling truck drivers, bus driver, co-workers and all of these wonderful people who make our life easier all year round. Some got gift cards, a couple got handmade scarves, some got store-bought goodies like giant popcorn tins and boxes of Walker's shortbread. I also made several batches of almond biscotti and buttercrunch candy to give as gifts.

My favorite homemade gift this year was also the simplest one. We had a great month at ballet class and my ballet teacher played lots of fun holiday music all December, including pieces from The Nutcracker- my favorite being the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. I thought it might amuse my ballet teacher if I gave her a box of sugar plums. Sugar plums are a classic holiday candy, but when I checked online, there are all sorts of versions of what these really are.

I decided I would make my own version, by essentially making no-bake fruit and nut treats and rolling them in sugar. Incidentally the (standard, cheap) granulated sugar I bought from Target sparkled very prettily and made it look very festive. I don't think the photos show that so you'll have to take my word for it.

(My version of) Sugar Plums

1 cup dates

1/3 cup dried cranberries

1/3 cup cashews

1/3 cup almonds

1/3 cup walnuts or pecans

Pinch of salt

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/2 tsp. cardamom powder

Pulse all ingredients in a food processor until you get a finely chopped mixture.
Form the mixture into balls.

Roll in granulated sugar and place in mini muffin cups.
Store in fridge.

This recipe makes about 15 sugar plums.

Instant Hot Chocolate: Here's a new recipe I tried that came through in taste but not so much in looks- see exhibit A to the left. They are cocoa blocks, designed to be mixed with hot milk to make instant hot chocolate. The recipe was easy enough but even after several hours in the fridge, I couldn't slice it into neat bars, ending up with knobbly truffles instead. Having said that, these are terrific to keep in the fridge to make hot chocolate on demand. That part of the recipe works as advertised!

A new favorite cookbook: I'm friends with the children's librarian at our public library. He is an ardent Indophile and we enjoy chatting about Indian traditions, languages and of course, Indian food. He told me that his all-time favorite Indian cookbook is Vegan Richa's Indian Kitchen. The name rang a bell for me; Richa has been blogging for a long time. But I hadn't read her cookbook. Mr E immediately obtained the book for me and I can see why he loves this book so much. I immediately flagged over a dozen recipes to try.

The first recipe I tried was for oats poha. It is one I've seen popping up on Indian blogs for several years, but had never quite mustered up the enthusiasm to try a savory oats recipe before. It turned out pretty tasty. But I think I still prefer oats in oatmeal and poha in poha!

Here's one I tried on Christmas Day, in a nod to our "Chinese food on Christmas Day" tradition of sorts. It is the well-loved gobi manchurian, only baked and not fried. Cauliflower florets are dipped in a marinade and baked, and meanwhile, a tasty sauce is made on the stovetop. We loved this and will be making it often. I will have to tweak the recipe a little bit to make the baked cauliflower more crispy but the favors are spot on.

The curry recipes in this books are very tempting. For years, I have been trying to get myself to like tempeh. It is a cultured soy product, high in protein and worth including in a vegetarian diet. But the taste and texture can take some getting used to. Enter Richa, with a great tip for boiling the tempeh in seasoned water before adding it to the curry. It worked! I used the tempeh in the do pyaaza (onion) curry and for the first time ever, I loved tempeh. 

Finally, here are a few pictures from the holiday market at Lila's school. This is an after-school event- they set up a few tables in the hallways and let students and parents sell holiday treats, crafts, ornaments, bath and body stuff and things of that sort. It is a really fun and festive event and allows the kids to be little entrepreneurs for an afternoon. Lila (age 7) was really excited to participate. We made 4 items to sell: melted snowman cookies, gift tags (a recycled craft made with pictures cut out of the uber-cute King Arthur flour holiday catalog!), elves made from wine corks (not pictured) and red and green hair bows sewed from fabric scraps. 

The melted snowman cookies were NOT a marvel of baking but they did look quite cute. In a last minute scramble, I simply bought a tray of plain sugar cookies at the supermarket. We made icing by mixing powdered sugar with a few teaspoons of milk. A puddle of icing on the cookie, a large marshmallow as the head, two pretzel sticks as the arms, m&m candy as buttons, and colored icing used to draw faces on. The icing hardens in a couple of hours. And, you guessed it, the snowman cookies were the biggest hit. We made a grand profit of $18 from the whole enterprise. The clever kid who made buckets of slime probably made hundreds!

* * *

2018 was a good year for books- and in no small part due to the Read Harder 2018 challenge. I picked up so many unexpected books thanks to this challenge, and although I came late to the party (starting only in July), I finished the last of the 24 tasks last week. The list of books I read for all 24 tasks is here.

The Read Harder 2019 challenge has been posted and I already have books picked out for a few of the tasks. Would anyone like to join me in doing this reading challenge in 2019?

Here are a few recommendations from my past reading for some of the tasks. I'll be looking for new books to fit these tasks, of course.

1. An epistolary novel or collection of letters
84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff,
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

2. An alternate history novel
11/22/63 by Stephen King about the Kennedy assassination being thwarted and world events following that.

4. A humor book
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
PG Wodehouse has many classics!

5. A book by a journalist or about journalism
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

6. A book by an AOC set in or about space
Books by Neil Degrasse Tyson would fit this task

13. A book by or about someone that identifies as neurodiverse
Books by Oliver Sacks would fit this task

14. A cozy mystery
The Miss Marple Series by Agatha Christie, of course. But my personal favorite is the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith.

2019 holds a milestone birthday for me, and I hope it brings peace and joy for us all. Happy new year, friends! 

Omelet meal prep, Halloween eats and Books

It looks like meal prepping is having a moment. Beautifully laid out containers of prepped and portioned meals are all over the food blogs, Instagram and other forums. Of all the food trends out there (looking at you, cake pops, bacon everything and salted caramel), meal prepping- preparing several well-balanced meals in one go- is a pretty useful one. Given access to a fridge and freezer, making several portions of a meal at once can save time and money and make it easier to eat in a healthier way. All while making one feel very wholesome in a domestic goddessy way.

I am not typically into large scale meal prep, preferring to make a fresh meal every evening with extra servings for lunch the following day. Breakfast is another story. The dash to school and work starts at an ungodly hour in our household and it is useful to have breakfast prepped and ready to go. No two people in our little family like the same thing for breakfast. V eats granola every single day- I make it in big batches every couple of weeks and can share our house recipe if anyone is interested. The kids rotate through a few simple breakfasts- pancakes, oatmeal, idli with ghee, avocado toast, boiled egg, smoothies, cereal with fruit. All of these can be made ahead or made in a couple of minutes. As for me, I like eggs for breakfast.

I'm sharing a very simple omelet and veggies meal prep that I have been doing pretty consistently for a few months now. Omelets don't sound like a typical make-ahead dish but in fact they hold very well in the fridge. You make omelets while a tray of vegetables is being roasted and portion the combination into containers. It makes for a filling and nutritious breakfast/lunch that can be warmed up and made piping hot in a minute or so in the microwave oven. For the final touch, I choose from Sriracha sauce and Valentina hot sauce that I have tucked away at my desk for dousing purposes.

My sister gave me a spice mix called "R-Pure omelette masala" that I love and use in this recipe all the time. But basic salt and pepper work beautifully if you don't want to go hunting for a special spice mix.

For the masala omelets

6-8 large eggs (depending on whether you want 1.5 or 2 eggs per serving)
1/4 cup  minced onion
Handful of cilantro, minced
1 small tomato, minced (optional)
Minced hot pepper or red pepper flakes to taste
Salt and pepper (or omelet masala) to taste

Beat the eggs until frothy. Mix in the rest of the ingredients. Make 4 omelets in a non-stick pan using a little oil.

For the roasted veggies

Raid the crisper tray in the fridge. Any combination of cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, potato, carrots, onion, peppers, mushrooms etc. will do.

Dice the vegetables and spread them out in a single layer on a baking sheet, season liberally with olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast at 425F.

I use the convection setting on my oven for 12 minutes. Then I turn the oven off and leave the tray in there for another 5-10 minute for perfect roasted vegetables.

Let the omelets and roasted veg cool down for a few minutes, then portion into four containers and store in the fridge for up to 3 days.

* * *

Some simple Halloween treats from last week...

Clementine "pumpkins" (celery for the stem)

Corn and black bean salsa

Lila had a hankering for pumpkin pie around Halloween. I found this recipe for impossible pumpkin pie- it was impossibly easy. You just put a bunch of things (all stuff I already had on hand) in a bowl, stir (or get your kid to stir, better yet), pour into a pie dish and bake.

This pudding-like pie turned out perfectly delicious and not too sweet. The recipe is eggless. I'd definitely make it again.

My adorable weightlifting instructor went all Pinterest mom on us and made us post-workout Halloween treats: white chocolate covered strawberry "ghosts" and peanut butter chocolate oat "bats" with blue tortilla chip wings. So sweet!

* * *

On the subject of my last post, I picked up a library copy of Lean Habits For Lifelong Weight Loss: Mastering 4 Core Eating Behaviors to Stay Slim Forever by a Canadian nutritionist, Georgie Fear. The four core eating behaviors endorsed in this book are to eat 3 meals without snacking, mastering your hunger, eating just enough, and eating mostly whole foods. No surprises there. Truly, there are very few surprises when it comes to losing extra weight. We all know what to do, more or less, but just because something is simple doesn't mean it is easy. This slim book (written in tiny font for some reason) has very practical tips to build solid habits, although each person will have to do their own work to figure out, for instance, what is "just enough food" for their own needs. The book suggests building each meal with 2-3 cups of vegetables, adding a certain amount of protein, some form of healthy fat, and carb-rich foods if there is room, depending on how your body can handle them. The book also has chapters on emotional eating, drinking enough water, not drinking liquid calories (soda, juice, sugary coffee drinks), getting enough sleep and so on. 

Continuing with the Read Harder 2018 challenge...

For Task #10 A romance novel by or about a person of color, I read a graphic novel, Bingo Love, written by Tee Franklin with art by Jenn St-Onge. Two teenage girls meet at their grandmothers' church bingo game in 1963. They are quickly inseparable and in love by the time they graduate high school. But the time isn't right for their romance; they are forced apart for the next several decades, marrying men and raising families before reuniting as grandmothers. The art in this slim graphic novel is incredible and the romance is sweet but the story-telling felt rushed and underdeveloped.

Task #15 is A one-sitting book, which makes me think of genres like kid lit and graphic novels. But for this task, I read a novella, The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett. If you read more than 30 minutes in a sitting, this is a one sitting book but I, ahem, read it over three nights. Such is the reading life of a tired parent. I enjoyed this book very much and highly recommend it. The Queen (yes, the one in England) stumbles upon a mobile library in a corner of the palace grounds and makes a new friend in a kitchen helper named Norman who is an avid reader and frequenter of the mobile library. In a matter of days the queen becomes a voracious reader, much to the chagrin of her advisers. Book lovers will love this cheeky and funny little novel which celebrates the pleasures of reading. “Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds.”

Task #18 was A comic that isn’t published by Marvel, DC, or Image. Now, I don't know a thing about comic book publishers but I am guessing this task was designed to encourage reading beyond the superhero comic genre. I chose Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol. Anya is struggling with high school, resentful of her immigrant Russian background and feeling quite blue one day when she falls into an old well and meets and befriends the ghost of a teenager from nearly a century ago. Again, I thought the artwork in this graphic novel was absolutely terrific and the story was just okay for me.

Task #23 was A book with a female protagonist over the age of 60. Here I turned to the tried and true beloved elderly spinster (what an archaic term that is) Miss Marple and read A Murder Is Announced (Miss Marple #5) by Agatha Christie. Because sometimes you just need to read an Agatha Christie and this is a terrific one that somehow I hadn't read before.

Happy Diwali to everyone who is celebrating it this week! We are deferring our celebration to the weekend when we will be sure to light a row of lamps and make a nice meal.

Do you prep your meals in advance? What are you reading these days?

Saved by the (Bar) Bell- Musings on Food and Exercise

From time to time, I feel the urge to write long, rambling posts about my eating habits and exercise habits, chronicling my attempts to stay fit and get fitter on this journey called life. It isn't always easy to write about these rather personal issues but it clarifies my thinking on the matter and also seems to resonate with many readers, so here we go.

When I say "journey", it really is one, with many twists and turns as life circumstances seem to change on a regular basis. Almost four years ago, at the tail end of 2014, I wrote an honest and heartfelt post about my experience with gestational diabetes and how it spurred me to make some changes in the way I eat. It was a lighting bolt sort of experience and my biggest takeaway (apart from a bouncing baby girl) was an increased awareness of my personal risk and a determination to be proactive and prevent the old diabeetus to the extent possible. Sometime after that I was stumbling into an exercise habit after literally a lifetime of inertia. Then I had my second baby and most established habits of the years before were thrown to the wind for a good year or two; I felt like I was back at square one. Earlier this year, I wrote again about my struggles to put a regular exercise habit in place.

The story since February: Over Spring, I participated in a nutrition research study. The incentive for participants was that we got 3 DEXA scans done over the course of several months. DEXA scans are non-invasive scans that are the gold standard for determining a person's body composition in terms of muscle, bone and fat. When I got my scan results back, I was pretty stunned. It showed that I was at a normal BMI (albeit at the high end of normal) but with a level of body fat that is high enough to be categorized as "risky". A "skinny fat" sort of situation which has the makings of metabolic syndrome and many chronic diseases including diabetes. This was another wake-up call right there and it called for some lifestyle changes.

Things I have learned or thought about since then...

Exercise is for fitness, eating habits are for weight control. "Eat less, move more" is a slightly misleading mantra. Diet and exercise don't have equal influences on a person's weight. Exercise accounts for only a small fraction of our daily energy expenditure and increasing exercise alone is unlikely to result in weight loss. Over Spring of this year, I was exercising regularly and quite intensely but was startled to see my weight creep up by a few pounds during that time. The reason was pretty simple- I was simply eating more than I needed to, and it wasn't being offset by the exercise. If a person is looking to lose fat (weight) and can change only one thing about their life, then diet would be overwhelmingly the right choice. You cannot out-exercise a poor diet.

Keep exercising anyway. Regular exercise has incredible benefits and is one of the best things you can do for your quality of life. It may not have proven results for weight loss but it helps in countless other ways, like building muscle, and improving sleep and mental health.

My current schedule: This August when the school routine started again, I pulled up our family's calendar and penciled in my exercise schedule. In my experience it is the only way to "make time" for something, otherwise it remains wishful thinking. In Spring, I took a strength training class called BodyPump and although the high-repetition nature of that class was not right for me, it turned me on to the idea of continuing strength training in a different format. Now I'm doing a small group women's weightlifting class twice a week and absolutely loving it. It is a serious, challenging workout but there is lots of support and camaraderie to go around. This class is my best shot at building some much-needed muscle.

Other than that, I swim twice a week and do a short run on the weekend. If you include my beloved weekly ballet class, I'm exercising 6 days a week most weeks. To my amazement, I enjoy and look forward to all of these workout sessions, even though I lack stamina and all forms of exercise are very hard for me.

Small humans don't need a lot of food. I barely scrape 5 feet in height, with a small frame. When they say that "the average person needs 2000 kilo-calories a day", well, I'm way smaller than the average person. It is easy to forget this fact. The small person problem is that you don't have to binge on whole pizzas and pints of ice cream to gain excess weight. A few unneeded second helpings and some extra snacks here and there are all that are needed to make the pounds creep on.

The extra pounds have absolutely nowhere to go when you are petite. For the first time in my life, I experienced joint pain and a couple of episodes of lower back pain. That itself was enough to convince me that I need to (a) lose fat and gain muscle and (b) stay at a healthy weight.

Don'd do anything to lose weight that you wouldn't be happy to do for the rest of your life. "Eat everything in moderation" is a terrific concept but when you find yourself gaining unwanted pounds, that is a clear sign that the moderation ain't as moderate as it needs to be. But I stay far away from temporary fixes and special diets, because I'm only going to gain the weight back once I go back to "normal". I am only interested in building some good habits and letting go of some others that aren't serving me.

Eating habits are a mental thing. For people who are well-fed and carrying around copious amounts of stored fat, we have never known true hunger. We are surrounded by tempting food in all directions and it is easy to get used to feeling full, and use food as a self-soothing tactic when we're stressed or bored. I'm trying to catch myself when I do that. I did a sugar free month nearly a year and a half ago and it has had lasting effects in weaning me from automatically reaching for sweets whenever I see them in front of me.

Use your foodie tendencies for a good cause. You can use your foodie tendencies to your advantage, making foods that are very satisfying and tasty but also wholesome and satiating.

Overeating is a form of food waste, and if there is anything I abhor, it is food waste. Even as I enjoy cooking and eating, I am trying to remind myself that food is fuel and primarily for nourishment.

Tastes change. This is something I have learned in the last few years. Salads were never my first choice for something I'd want to eat. Now I make hearty salads in a dozen different ways and thrive on them. Tastes can change and change is good.

Learn from others. This summer, our family went on vacation to the Georgia golden isles with my BFF from St. Louis days, Neighbor Girl. She is, and always has been, a fitness enthusiast. I learned so much from watching her eat all week- the snacks she chooses, the quantities and types of foods she eats. Incidentally, I am a $$ saver by nature and she is a spender who struggles to keep a healthy bank account balance. So I have a little something to teach her too. We pick up tips just by being around each other.

There are plenty of resources out there. You need to be discerning and pick and choose what advice to take, but there is a lot of inspiration out there. Other than books, recently I have been lurking on some Reddit forums like LoseIt and xxfitness. As an example, here is a weight loss compendium from Reddit. All the resources provide fodder for experimenting on myself and trying to find my own way.

My personal habits have ripple effects. I'm the primary grocery shopper and cook for my little family. I also regularly make meals for friends and visiting family, and bring dishes to potlucks and such on a weekly basis. Whatever positive changes I make in my eating habits also benefit my family and that in itself is a huge source of motivation.

I am only a few months away from a big milestone birthday- the big Four-Oh. I'm working on a fabulous birthday gift for myself- a chance to start this decade off in the best shape of my life, at a weight that is healthy for me and with an exercise habit firmly in place. Who knows what curve balls life will throw (as life does) but I want to be able to honestly say that I am grateful for my body and never take my good health for granted.

Note that I am not a nutritionist (or physician/ fitness coach etc.) and nor do I play one on TV. This is an essay of my personal experience and not to be taken as personal advice to anyone. 

Tell me your thoughts- what works for you, what are you struggling with? Inspire me with your stories!

Dumpling Salad with Peanut Dressing

I have a very quick post today, sharing a meal idea that we've eaten on repeat throughout the summer. This one uses a few staples from the fridge and freezer to put together a light and satisfying dish in a semi-homemade sort of way.

Also, I ardently love Chinese take-out and this salad topped with warm dumplings and a tasty peanut sauce easily satisfies that longing for take-out on a random weeknight. It does have a few components to it, but nothing that's labor or time intensive.

Component 1: Salt and pepper tofu

Drain and blot away liquid from a block of extra firm tofu. Cut into bite size cubes.
Heat a couple teaspoons of oil in a nonstick skillet.
Place the cubed tofu in a single layer in the hot skillet. Let it cook patiently until golden. Resist the urge to keep stirring the tofu! Then, flip the tofu cubes and repeat.
Once the tofu is fairly golden, add 2-3 tbsp. nutritional yeast and salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Keep turning the tofu cubes gently until they get a nice golden crust.

The salt and pepper tofu is so tasty by itself and versatile- it can be added to many different dishes. Set it aside while you make the sauce.

Component 2: Peanut sauce

I always riff on this recipe and don't think I have made peanut sauce the same way twice. Here is my "choose your own adventure" formula for peanut sauce.

The basic ingredients are
Peanuts (as peanuts, or as peanut butter or powdered roasted peanuts or whatever form you tend to stock)
Soy sauce for the salty taste, or tamari or teriyaki sauce or black bean paste
Sweetener (honey or maple syrup or sugar, say)
Something tangy (rice vinegar or lime juice or tamarind)

Other optional additions:
Creamy additions like coconut milk or tahini
Aromatics like onions, ginger, garlic, scallions, cilantro
Something for heat, like sriracha sauce or crushed red pepper or Thai curry paste.

Place ingredients in a blender, blend until creamy, then taste and adjust the balance of flavors. Peanut sauce can be stored in the fridge for a few days and used in salads, noodle dishes and as a dipping sauce.

Component 3: Dumplings. It is really fun to make these from scratch. More practical for a weekday, however, is to buy bags of dumplings and store them in the freezer. My favorite is Trader Joe's Thai vegetable gyoza. Cook as per package directions. 

Component 4: The salad base. This can be any mixture of greens and raw veggies. Our house standard is the 50-50 blend of lettuce and baby spinach that is commonly sold in supermarkets. Sometimes I'll add shredded carrots and sliced raw bell peppers to it.

Assemble the dumpling salad with the salad base on a plate, topping with cubes of tofu and warm dumplings, and finally a generous drizzle of peanut sauce.

What have you been cooking and eating on repeat lately?

Back After a Summer Break

Happy October, friends! My summer blogging lull led to an unplanned blogging break for a couple of months. September kept our family life humming as my parents were visiting over the month. I left you with a post about birthday traditions and birthday cake and theme of cake (and summer heat, incidentally) continued in September as we celebrated more birthdays.

For my mother's birthday, I went with a Southern US favorite, pineapple upside down cake, using this recipe, because it says the "best" right there in the title and also, it is made from scratch and not from a mix.

My modifications:

1. Use a 10 inch cast iron pan instead of a baking tin. A cast iron pan is traditionally used for this cake and results in a beautiful bake. The other advantage of using a cast iron pan is that you don't need to melt the butter separately in a bowl. Just put it in the cast iron pan and pop the pan into the oven for a few minutes while the oven is preheating.

2. I used 1/4 cup butter (1/2 stick) and 1/3 cup brown sugar instead of the generous amounts specified in the recipe. This was more than enough to make a beautiful syrupy glaze. If you don't keep brown sugar in the pantry (I don't), it is very easy to make by adding some molasses to regular white sugar. I also reduced the sugar in the cake batter to 1/2 cup.

The cake came together beautifully. I would highly recommend this recipe if you're looking for a small (8 servings or so) cake that tastes great, is not fussy to make and looks festive. We served the cake with some butter pecan ice cream on the side, because my mother loves ice cream. The birthday dinner also consisted of spinach lasagna (another of my mom's favorite meals) and garlic bread.

* A Birthday Tea Party *

Mid-September was a big day as our little girl turned 7 years old. It was a special one since her grandparents were here to celebrate with her. My parents always threw really fun parties for my sister and I, growing up, and they added some of their special magic into this party for sure.

Lila wanted a tea party for a few friends with a castle cake. I searched online for something doable and cute, and the inspiration for this castle cake came from this blog, written in French but with lots of detailed pictures which make the process very easy to follow. I thought this castle was cleverly designed and beautifully finished.

For the cake flavor, we went with a marbled cake for a nice mix of vanilla and chocolate flavors. If I had more time and energy I would have made a third pink color to marble into the cakes, just for princessy fun, but the basic two-color cakes worked fine.

I used this recipe and made two round cakes. We weren't sure how many parents would stay for the party so to have enough servings, I baked an additional marbled loaf cake using this recipe. I always reduce the sugar in cake recipes and it seems to work just fine. The cakes were baked the evening before the party and stored covered at room temperature.

The frosting was a whipped chocolate frosting- I used this recipe which makes a lovely frosting that is a delight to eat. It is a combination of butter, melted chocolate and a chocolate pudding all whipped up into a light and thick frosting. If you hate the greasy taste of conventional frosting then this is one to try.

A couple of hours before the party, my dad (an adept cake decorator) and I put together the castle. The two round cakes were layered with a thin filling of raspberry jam and the cake was iced with a generous layer of the whipped chocolate frosting.

Castle turrets: We made 4 small niches in the cake and stacked Oreo cookies to make the castle turrets. The roof of the turret is made of ice cream cones. We used some waffle cones but it wasn't exactly easy to trim and flatten their edges; I should have looked for flat bottomed sugar cones. The tops of the cones were lopped off just a little bit to allow candles to be stuck in.

Lila wanted to play a part in the cake decoration so she made a castle door with a fruit strip, and the facade with some cocoa batons and put some candies on the top. All in all, we ended up with a very homely but sweet castle that looked like this! I didn't get a really good picture but you get the idea.

Decades ago, for one of my childhood birthdays, my parents made paper butterflies and hid them in the yard for a scavenger hunt. We decided to do a reenactment. In the week before the birthday, my mom made a few dozen elaborate, hand-painted paper butterflies using paperboard from the recycling bin (cereal boxes and such). We hid them all over the yard and the party guests had a great time hunting for butterflies.

For the tea party, we set the table with an embroidered tablecloth, some paper doilies and pretty china plates that I found in a yard sale. Along with the cake, we served pink lemonade, a rainbow fruit tray (painstakingly made by my mom) and crustless cucumber sandwiches. 

I promise we eat things other than cake around here! 

Indian Chinese as made by my mother!
Veggie manchurian, noodles and sweet and
sour sauce.

A snacky dinner for watching the US Open Finals- I used my general formula here for putting an appetizer tray together:
(a) Nuts
(b) Fruit
(c) Crackers and cheese
(d) Chips and dip- in this case sweet potato tortilla chips with guacamole.

* * * 

As for the books I've been reading over summer...

Task #19 of the Read Harder 2018 challenge was A book of genre fiction in translation. I realize I don't seek out any translated books so I went with the mystery genre (my go-to genre for casual reading) and read The Snack Thief (the third in the series of Commissario Montalbano mysteries) by Andrea Camilleri, translated by Stephen Sartarelli. This series is set in the fictional seaside town of Vigata in Sicily. Inspector Montalbano is a salty Sicilian, irascible by nature but with a good heart and keen perception. He is a food lover and what truly makes him emotional are beautiful meals, usually consisting of perfectly cooked pasta and seafood. In this book, Montalbano ties together three seemingly unrelated cases- the gunning of a fishing trawler's immigrant crewman in international waters, the stabbing of an elderly man in his apartment building's elevator and the case of a five year old boy who is stealing other kids' lunches. Sicily reminds me of Bombay in a way, with its quirky personalities and messy politics and corruption.

For Task #12: A celebrity memoir, I picked up Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography. I've been a fan of Neil Patrick Harris right from his Doogie Howser, MD days to his role of Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother. This memoir was tremendously fun to read. It is written in a gimmicky "choose your own adventure" way, but what can I say? The gimmick works. It was fascinating to read about this phenomenally talented theater kid from a loving home who got a break working in TV at a young age, working on set in LA while still in high school in New Mexico. This is a charming and entertaining read, just as you would expect.

Found in a library book sale!

For Task #9, A book of colonial or postcolonial literature, I read The Financial Expert by R.K. Narayan. This tragi-comic tale is set, as with R. K. Narayan's celebrated stories, in the fictional town of Malgudi in Southern India, during the colonial era, in the 1930s and 40s. It traces the life of an ordinary man, Margayya ("he who shows the way"), a self-proclaimed financial expert (more like a loan shark) who goes from rags to riches to rags. This novel is a social commentary on money dealings in small towns in the British colonial era and possibly also in this era nearly a hundred years later. I would love to pass along my copy of this book (99% of the books I read are from the public library but I own this one), so email me if you're in the US and would like to read this book. Book has been claimed :)

Image: Goodreads

Front Desk by Kelly Yang is a newly published middle grade novel. I came across a  glowing and beautifully written book review for this book on Niranjana's blog and immediately went looking for a copy. Front Desk is a moving and heart-warming story (based on the author's own childhood) about a 10 year old girl, the daughter of recent Chinese immigrants, who runs the front desk of the motel that her parents are living in/ cleaning/ managing. My own kids are too young for this book but I know I will read it with them when they're older. If you are looking for a short and meaningful read, I highly recommend this book.

And finally, just for the sake of nostalgia and in need of some comfort reading, I read The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse. And it was as entertaining as ever.

How was your summer? Catch me up on your life!

Birthday traditions, and a splashy birthday cake

Our little boy turned two years old, and his big sister was excited for weeks leading up to his birthday. She is such a doting sister, and a very family-oriented kid. Where her dad and I are 100% not religious and very loosey-goosey with traditions of any kind, she insists that she would like us to have special family traditions.

We chatted a bit about this and decided to establish five fun family birthday traditions starting with Niam's birthday this year:

1. A big, colorful, festive birthday banner will be strung up in the dining room the night before each person's birthday. Years ago, I had bought a fabric panel designed to be cut up and assembled into just such a banner; Lila and I finally completed it earlier this month, so our family birthday banner is ready and was used for the first time for Niam's birthday.

2. On the morning of the birthday, the birthday girl/boy will wake up to a small surprise. For Niam's birthday, we inflated a few polka dot balloons the night before and left them around the living room. The toddler was indeed surprised and delighted and ran around madly with the balloons in his pajamas at 5 in the morning!

3. On the morning of the birthday, we will make the birthday boy/girl's favorite breakfast, stick candles in it and sing the birthday song before leaving for work/school or whatever the day brings. We made a stack of chocolate chip pancakes for Niam and it was a delightful way to start the day.

4. We will have a special birthday dinner where the birthday girl/boy gets to choose the menu or choose the restaurant if we decide to eat out. I am looking to buy/make a birthday tablecloth and a special birthday plate for the birthday dinners at home. For Niam's birthday, we made some of his favorite foods- mac and cheese, corn on the cob and roasted broccoli.

5. For the kids, I will make a special birthday shirt announcing their age that they get to wear for the day. I made one for the little guy using a plain striped onesie appliquéd with the number 2 with a bit of fabric from my stash.

The idea is to make the day special- both in terms of anticipation and happy memories- while also keeping things fairly simple and doable on my end. Because the fact is that while traditions are fine and good, they are a lot of work for the person who upholds them. To keep things organized, I have a box designated for the banner, candles and other birthday supplies that will be used time after time.

Apart from the actual birthday full of newly minted traditions, we hosted a small birthday party on the weekend for some of our friends and neighbors. A July birthday in Georgia can mean only two things- either you choose a venue where you can cool off in the water or you stay indoors with the air conditioner on. We took our chances with the weather and opted for a party outside, renting a picnic pavilion in a local park that has a splash pad- a playground with water features.

I made an under the sea/ fish tank cake to go with the splashing/ water theme. No original ideas here; the cake decoration was completely cribbed from various cakes I saw online. The nice thing about this cake is that it looks quite sweet while needing NO skills whatsoever to decorate. And you can decorate it in 5 minutes flat using a few items that you can buy in the supermarket. Read on for the details.

1. The cake: My sister recommended this chocolate cake recipe that she always makes for my nephew's birthday cakes. I wanted more servings so I took that recipe and this recipe, put the ingredients from both recipes together to make one big batch of batter, and baked it in 2 pans- a 8x8 inch one and a 9x13 inch one. Confused yet? ;) The idea was to make a big cake and a smaller cake so Lila and I could each have a cake to decorate and we would have enough servings to go around.

You can make any shape/size of cake as long as you have a flat surface for decorating.

2. The frosting: You need blue frosting for the water. We made standard buttercream frosting with 3 drops of blue gel food color + 1 drop green gel food color. Spread the frosting on the cake- it doesn't need to be smooth, in fact, a few waves and swirls give the frosting texture and the cake looks more realistic.

3. The sand: Crush vanilla wafers (or any brown/sand colored cookie) in a food processor to sandy crumbs. I sprinkled the crumbs/sand over the lower one-third of the cake.

4. The seaweed: Buy Fruit by the Foot and Fruit roll ups. Cut the candy into the desired length, twist and ruffle it and place artfully on the cake.

5. The pebbles: To make pebbles/ rocks at the bottom of the water, I used raisinets candy (chocolate covered raisins) with a few colorful jelly beans.

6. The fish: The "schools" of fish are cute little Goldfish crackers- buy the kind called "colors" which comes in a few fun colors. Other sea creatures include gummy fish and gummy worms.

7. Castle: Use a couple of vanilla wafers (the rectangular ones with the hatched pattern) and a few knife cuts  to make a castle.

This is Lila's cake- you can see that she is not a minimalist! Her cake tells a whole elaborate story where the castle is a school by the coral reef and the fish all have names and are going to school etc. etc.

If you make this cake for a party, I highly recommend serving the leftover candy in small bowls alongside because all the kids will want the slice with the gummy fish!

Along with the cake, we served lemonade, snacks (crackers and corn puffs), fruit (apple slices and watermelon cubes) and cheese.

Lemonade for a crowd: I'm jotting down the formula for future reference. Mix 4 cups sugar and 4 cups water in a saucepan. Heat until the sugar dissolves, then cool to make simple syrup.

• Fill a 2 gallon cooler two-thirds with water. 
• Add the simple syrup made above.
• Add 30-32 ounces lemon juice. This can be freshly squeezed lemon juice, but I took a short cut this time and used two 15-oz bottles of RealLemon lemon juice concentrate. 
• Stir the syrup, water and lemon juice, then fill the rest of the cooler with ice.

To minimize waste, we took along a plastic tote with plastic plates, plastic and stainless forks in a caddy, and plastic and stainless steel cups. All the dirty dishes got piled back into the tote to be brought back home and into the dishwasher. We did use a few paper napkins and a few paper plates but there was way less trash than if we had used all disposables.

Also, the birthday boy is too young to have an opinion about birthday gifts and party favors, so we were able to request no gifts and skip the party favors. Being in a park with a splash pad and playground meant that there was no need for additional party activities and all in all, this turned out to be a fun, simple and low-key birthday party.

* * *

The summer reading continues with the Read Harder 2018 challenge.

Task #3: A classic of genre fiction (i.e. mystery, sci fi/fantasy, romance). Mystery is my favorite easy-reading genre and I started reading a classic mystery, The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. Fifty pages in, I just couldn't get into the book and gave up. Around that time, I happened to read this New Yorker article on artificial intelligence, and it reminded me of an old friend from graduate school who loved Isaac Asimov's robot novels. So I happily switched genres and read Asimov's I, Robot, a classic of science fiction. Science fiction is not a genre I generally read but this one is a classic for a reason. A reporter is interviewing robot psychologist Dr. Susan Calvin as she retires- she narrates interesting cases from her career, and in doing so, traces the evolution, so to speak, of robots. This is such a fascinating story collection- it is based around the three laws of robotics coined by Asimov, which influenced not only subsequent generations of science fiction writers but also real life scientists working in the field of robotics.

Image: Goodreads

For Task #8: A comic written or drawn by a person of color, I chose The Best We Could Do, a graphic memoir by Thi Bui, a Vietnamese American writer/artist/teacher. Through her unique, sepia colored illustrations, Thi Bui narrates the story of her parents' childhoods, how they met and started a family against the backdrop of civil strife and war and the circumstances that led them to take their little kids on a harrowing and unpredictable journey as refugees. The amazing thing is that Thi Bui started chronicling the oral history of her family, decided that graphic art would be a good medium to tell her story and then had to teach herself how to draw comics! Incredible.

A lot of the memoir talks about how the trauma of growing up in unstable times reverberates across generations. Thi Bui ends the book with this gut-wrenching sentiment: "But when I look at my son, now ten years old, I don't see war and loss or even Travis and me. I see a new life, bound with mine quite by coincidence, and I think maybe he can be free." 

Back in grade school, history was an almost universally hated subject, and those dreadful history textbooks were chock full of disjointed events, wars and the dates to memorize. What a tragic lost opportunity that was. I wish we had learned history through memoirs and novels that told poignant stories from various points of view, the ones I'm discovering just now as an adult. Reading The Best We Could Do taught me more about the history of Vietnam that I ever knew.

For Task #11: A children’s classic published before 1980, I picked up All of a Kind Family Uptown by Sydney Taylor, first published in 1958. This is one of a series of books about a large and loving family (5 daughters and a son) growing up in 1910s in New York City. It is a warm and comforting series of stories about daily life in NYC in the days of the first world war, siblings and their little life adventures and Jewish family traditions. This would be a good book to read aloud with 9-12 year olds- I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one and will look for the others in the series.

Tell me about your family traditions and birthday celebrations!! What are you reading these days? 

Lemon Rice for Vegetable Lovers

Memorial Day- May 28 this year- is considered the official kick off to summer. Ours started memorably enough but not in a good way! We had the wettest May on record with 18 continuous days of rain. On May 28 at dawn, I awoke to a loud bang and in a half-asleep, dazed state, saw the ceiling fan going haywire with sparks flying out of it. No joke, and it was not a dream. It turns out that in the overnight storm, a large tree limb fell on our main power lines and sparked a dangerous electrical surge into our home.

The surge damaged our refrigerator, cooking range and microwave to the point of no repair. The refrigerator's water lines were damaged, causing the kitchen to flood, so the water mains had to be shut off. The surge caused the heating/cooling system to malfunction, and the power and internet cables had to be cut by the power company for safety reasons. In one fell swoop, we lost all the modern conveniences that we take for granted, during a holiday weekend. It took us almost 3 weeks to dig out of this mess. As expensive and aggravating as this month was, it could have been a lot worse and we are thankful that there was no fire and no one was harmed.


We were without a kitchen for several days. Friends came to the rescue in many ways. We were able to borrow fridge and freezer space from one friend to rescue some food. Others let us borrow a mini fridge, slow cooker and toaster oven so I had a makeshift kitchen until we were able to get new appliances installed. It was my first time using a slow cooker- I tried a few different things, including a tortellini (stuffed pasta) casserole, which turned out a bit mushy but edible, and rajma, which turned out a bit watery but also edible. The most successful was a simple red lentil dal with summer squash, Swiss chard and tomatoes.

Chantarelle mushrooms: The rain may have caused havoc in some cases (trees falling and all that) but it also caused a boom in chanterelle mushrooms. I wrote last year about foraging for chanterelles and this year this expert mushroom forager (and eater) Lila is at it again. We are enjoying them simply sautéed with garlic.

For a few weeks, lacking a functional kitchen, I gave my CSA vegetable boxes to friends. But here are some highlights from the veggies that I did end up using over the month.

Napa cabbage: For the first time, I bought some fresh Hong Kong style noodles from the Asian store. Not knowing any authentic way to cook these, I just pan-fried them, then topped them with roasted napa cabbage and mock chicken with a sweet and sour sauce. This impromptu dish was a hit.

Green garlic: I remember my aunt buying green garlic (they look like green onions but with a distinct, delicate garlic aroma and flavor) when it was available seasonally, and very rarely, in Mumbai. She would cook it in into simple scrambled eggs and it was such a delicacy. I was excited to get green garlic in the veggie box and that's exactly how I cooked it- into scrambled eggs. 

Tomatoes: For Father's day, we made a simple dinner of some of Daddy's favorite foods, including this deluxe bruschetta/caprese salad mash up with thin slices of baguette topped with tomato slices, mozzarella, fresh basil and chopped olives, all drizzled with garlic-infused olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Collard greens: What else but collard greens wadi- the very best way to eat your greens. 

Shishito peppers: Last week we got some of these mild peppers in the box. I had never tasted them; V remembered eating them in a fancy restaurant a while ago. We cooked them in a searing hot cast iron pan and enjoyed them as in, with a yogurt dipping sauce. 

Lemon rice for vegetable lovers

There was a bumper crop of cabbage and green beans in the CSA box last week and I inaugurated my new oven with this twist on a classic South Indian dish- lemon rice, a light, tangy dish just perfect for summer.

This version is a hybrid of lemon rice and cabbage rice. It fits in with the way I like to eat- with vegetables front and center, and the recipe makes a big batch.

1. Make rice in a rice cooker or stovetop and let it cool down. I used Jasmine rice because that's the staple in my kitchen, and this dish uses about 3/4 cup (1 rice cooker measure) raw rice.

2. Roast 1 baking sheet worth of vegetables at 400F until slightly charred at the edges and tender throughout. I used cabbage and green beans. Carrots, zucchini and summer squash would work well in this recipe, and steamed green peas or black eyed peas would be a nice addition.

3. Juice a couple of lemons and set the juice aside. In a pan, heat some oil. Temper with mustard seeds, chana dal, urad dal, asafetida, turmeric, fresh ginger and fresh curry leaves. Turn off the heat and stir in the lemon juice.

4. In a large mixing bowl, toss together the cooked rice, roasted veggies and spice-lemon mixture. Serve warm or at room temperature.

*** Book chat ***

Appliances may have let me down last month, but books did not disappoint. Oh, it was a glorious reading month.

Image: Goodreads

 For the Read Harder Task #5: A book set in or about one of the five BRICS countries, I read The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey. BRICS is the acronym for an association of five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and of these countries, I chose a book based not only in India, the land of my birth, but set in Malabar Hill, a neighborhood in South Bombay only a mile or two away from the place where I was born.

This book is a historical mystery based in 1920s Bombay but so many of the neighborhoods, landmarks, bakeries and foods mentioned brought back my own memories from the Bombay of the 80s and 90s. I will refer you to Niranjana's excellent review of the Widows of Malabar Hill and add only that if you are looking for a solid summer read, this one is worth picking up.

Image: Goodreads

For the Read Harder Task #6:A book about nature, I read Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Astrophysics- the science of nature at its biggest and most expansive. The book starts off with this quote:

"The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you."
- Neil deGrasse Tyson

But after declaring this, Tyson takes on the personal responsibility of helping ordinary mortals make sense of the universe. This slender volume features 12 essays, each of them highlighting some delicious feature of astrophysics. It is only June, but I am pretty sure this is going to be my favorite book of the year.

For the Read Harder Task #14: A book of social science, I picked up Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife by Barbara Bradley Hagerty. The author is an NPR reporter (religion beat) who interviews dozens of people going through midlife, and talks to many social scientists researching aspects of midlife, plus there is a memoir theme running through this book.

For all those who like me are staring midlife in the face (!!), some takeaways from the book.

Three themes to living richly in midlife:
1. Engage with verve.
2. Choose purpose over happiness- the concept of eudaimonia (flourishing).
3. Your thinking is your experience.

Two of the many suggestions from the author:

Aim for meaning and not happiness, and you will find both.
At every stage in life, you should be a rookie at something. 

They say not to judge a book by its cover, but sometimes I do just that- browsing in the library looking for covers that look interesting. That's how I picked up this book in the children's section. Frenemies in the Family: Famous Brothers and Sisters Who Butted Heads and Had Each Other's Backs by Kathleen Krull. This book is informative and delightful and very funny, a gossipy series of essays on famous sibling sets. It covers everyone from royalty, presidents, sports figures right down to the Gosselins. 

How was your month of June? Hopefully not as eventful as mine ;)