My mom is in US of A!

Yohoo people! how are you all doing? Its 10:30 right now. My mom was supposed to land at 10:00 pm. I'm so excited she's here! It's been 5 years since I last saw her. Excited as she is to see us- she's also apprehensive about how I'll see her. She's in her mid 60's and says she looks older now and not like I last saw her in person. I tell her that I've grown older too and she'd have to tell me how I have changed. She lives alone in Southern India in Mysore with my brother just a few blocks away from her. When I was a kid, my dad was the dominant personality and he pretty much took care of everything outside the house. My mom was a stay at home mom taking care of us. She didn't know much how to operate in the outside world. So to be like my dad was to be smarter, dynamic, energetic, funny and we did not want to be like our mom. But after dad died, I'm impressed with the way mom has taken care of things. He was heavy into the stock market with such complex dealings which was hard and very time consuming. Mom learnt all that she had to do to unlock our money without any help from us and did it. Talking to her on the phone every week I've got to know my mom. She is smart and funny too and not as naive as she appears sometimes. She does a great job of taking care of her health which is a huge comfort to us. All of us kids have always felt very protective towards her. My mom is gentle and has sensitivity. She introduced me to a lot of good literature, movies and music and I really appreciate that. I want to cook for her because other than accessory help I've never cooked major meals for her. I have a feeling she will like where I live because she loves nature. I want to show her the OSU campus, Columbus Metropolitan library, RPAC, Franklin park conservatory and other places depending on her inclination. Moms are moms- you get made at them, irritated at them, fight with them, but in the end they're there for you.
Events after the last blog post: I had a potluck at my house on Saturday with my African friends. This was really a bad day for me because the potluck got decided very fast and I wasn't ready for it. Originally I had planned for just 3 people, but it turned out to be 5 and I simply was not in the mood for it as it was the first day of my period and I was in huge pain. But I had committed to it so I pulled myself together and decided to give them a taste of South India. I made rasam, cooked beans and rice. Rasam is a sweet, sour and tangy pulses soup made of split pigeon peas. This is a pretty common lunch/dinner and its comfort food for South Indians. Since it was a potluck, somebody bought a pizza so people loaded up on that and did not have much of an apetite for my food and from what little they ate of what I'd made, I'm not sure if they liked it. I have noticed it though- most people outside India prefer North Indian food over South Indian food. South Indian food has less fat, more rice and vegetables, more coconut, different spices, breads made of different kinds of healthy grains whereas North Indian food is richer. People eat more wheat, meat, tomato onion ginger garlic based curries, more kidney beans, chick peas. Personally, I think my taste buds have become international. I can eat tasty vegetarian food and a little bit of chicken from any country. Rice is not a daily need for me anymore, nor is roti or our lentil soup for that matter. I was a little disappointed though because in my opinion everything was tasty and they did not seem to like it. Oh well!

Here's a picture of rasam courtesy pachakam.com



This is how split pigeon peas look like



Sunday, I spent my day sketching the creative genius Freddie Mercury! here it is



This was very hard for me before because I was never able to align the eyes and I got angry and gave up. But I had drawn one eye and still kept it open on my bedroom floor hoping someday I'd get around to it. Then this sunday, it ocurred to me that the eyeballs should be in alignment and slightly slanted coz his face is slightly tilted. So using a scale, I got an estimate of where the eyeball should be and then drew the eye around it. I'm not superpleased with it because eyes are still not perfectly aligned and Freddie has attitude in that picture which I haven't captured. His eyes are darker too. I need to get blacker pencils. But I'm happy with the nose, lips and chin. I posted it on my facebook in case anybody had any new input for me which I hadn't noticed. I'm glad I got at least this far with it. Maybe it will be good when I draw it a second time.

Sunday Nancy dropped by to pick up the books she'd left behind. I love Nancy. She's so interesting with a wide variety of interests. She had attended an 'Art of living' workshop. Since the organization was started by an Indian guy, she wanted to know what I thought of it. Personally, I'm not very comfortable with any organized groups. To me, each person has a different way of dealing with stress and anxiety and it has a lot to do with being able to handle ones emotions. For some its journaling, working out, talking to friends and for some the techniques taught by the organization might work too. I don't have anything against them as long as they don't push it down my throat. I gave Nancy an Indian dessert called Kheer which is rice pudding. It's so supereasy to make! I boiled milk (approx half gallon) threw in a handful of rice and sugar to taste and let it thicken on low heat. Keep stirring it every few minutes so that the milk doesn't burn. The milk did get burnt a bit but the burn added a nice caramelized flavor to it. So it was really good.
Nancy got us some crossiants from Whole Foods. They were so buttery and chewy! awesome! Today we made crossiant sandwiches.



We cut a crossiant in half, slathered mustard on one end, placed some spinach, sliced tomatoes, golden browned zucchini slices, cheddar cheese slices and on the other end of the crossiant we slathered basil flavored mayo. It was really good!

Tomorrow I'm going to the Ohio State Fair for the first time with Nancy. I'm guessing its gonna be a lot of animal petting and I'm really curious about the butter sculpture and the machine which gives my percent body fat and of course food!

So long folks and good nite, sweet dreams!

Love from Smita

Garden fresh

Hello people! Thank you for your words of encouragement. I really appreciate it. I just realized only thing I have in my hands is to try my best. I really have to learn to calm down and not worry so much. As Oscar Wilde said,'The secret to a good life is to never have an emotion that is unbecoming' and I intend to practise just that. Yes m'am!
Our garden is really giving us the fruits of our planting these days. There is a distinct pleasure in eating homegrown vegetables. Everything seems tastier. The other day we had a spinach salad with marconi peppers. These are long tapered sweet peppers. We didn't know about these until we planted them. They taste very good when they are green and are super sweet when they are red. We haven't waited till they turned red but green ones are really yummy!



Our tomato plants have been quite prolific, but the tomatoes are still green. One of my friends told me to pluck the really huge greeen ones and let them turn red inside the house by letting them absorb the sun by the window. Otherwise they bruise because of insects and animals on the plant. We experimented this with a couple of tomatoes and it indeed turned red! Jamie says she likes a tomato when its all red from the inside and it was. So today was a tomato rich dinner. Jamie made bruschetta and I made tomato basil pasta with linguini noodles. I think linguini is my favorite noodle.
We had brought nice thyme bread from the farmer's market. Slice em and toast em and when hot rub some garlic on it. The aroma is simply amazing! Then place fine chopped tomato and basil, parmesan cheese on top and melt the cheese. This is simple and quite tasty. I think my next topping for bruschetta would be red marconi peppers. I have a feeling that will taste great too.



My dish- pasta- it was okay because we were impatient for the sauce to be done. So the sauce was a bit raw tomatoey. I think I would want to cook it more. I put 3 tbsp of olive oil, 4 cloves of garlic, tomatoes- a can of crushed tomatoes and one large diced tomato and towards the end a handful of basil. We grew basil too this time. One of these days maybe we'll make a basil pesto. Pour over al dente linguini pasta and, some moz cheese and voila!



For quite sometime, Jamie had been craving zucchini bread. We decided to make some and got a humungous zucchini from the farmer's market. It was a good size for 2 dollars. We wanted to make it healthy because this bread was gonna be our breakfast. So to lower the fat content, we used homemade applesauce and instead of all purpose flour we mixed one cup of wheat flour with half a cup of flaxseed powder. It's quite easy to make-

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup flaxseed powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 egg
1/3 cup canola oil
1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 tbsp plain non fat yoghurt
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup grated zucchini
1/3 cup fine chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 325 degrees farenheit. Mix the dry ingredients (flour, flaxseed, spices, baking soda and powder, cinnamon) and wet ingredients (applesauce, yoghurt, oil, egg, vanilla, sugar) separately. Mix both wet and dry ingredients and finally fold in the zucchini and walnuts. Bake for 50-60 minutes.

We made homemade applesauce. It was really really sweet- we didn't add any sugar
Peel and dice two apples (we used gala apples), cover it with water and cook covered. Remove when apples are soft. Mash.



Here's the finished product.



Quite moist and tasty. But I have to admit, I did not taste the zucchini flavor. Next time, I'll add more than a cup.

Jamie also wanted to make granola. She mixed 3 cups of rolled oats with half a cup of maple syrup, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp salt, 2 tbsp canola oil, and 1 cup nuts (peanuts and almonds). Mix and place in a preheated oven at 325 F and cook for 30-45 minutes. This was the base. After this was done, she divided it into 3 and first third with raisins, second with chocolate chips and third with both. Very nicely toasted oats and nuts. Mighty good it turned out to be!





I remember I told you about a garden burger from the farmers market. This had interesting ingredients like spelt berries, kale, balsamic vinegar, thyme, ginger, apples, carrots, garlic, onion, black beans oats, salt and pepper (writing this is like a memory test for me- how many ingredients can I remember? umm...I remember half and remaining I cheated). We had this with green beans and bread with sweet mustard salsa



Interesting cancer facts for the day: I met a cancer researcher at RPAC. He told me that within the digestive tract, previously like in 1930's-70's the predominant cancer used to be stomach cancer, but now it has shifted to colon cancer. I asked why? He said because the chemicals we are using these days in foods are different. I never noticed this trend, so it was interesting for me.
Then I'd read about how some cancer researchers believe that there will never be a cure for cancer. He said he was one of those folks and explained why. This is what I understand. At the most basic level, cancer is a disease when cells divide and multiply but do not die. For this to happen mutations need to accumulate (~15-20). For instance, take apoptosis, there are multiple gene products in the pathway of apoptosis. Mutation in one or more than one gene can impair the process and the cell does not die. For two people with the same cancer, the mutations can be in totally different genes. So, in majority of cases, no two people have the same cancer. A question occurred to me as I was typing this, can apoptosis be impaired and oncogenes be activated at the same time? I guess that will be a really rapid spread of cancer. I hope I am clear in my explantion. I really try hard to have clarity in my explanations. Feel free to ask any questions and I can bug this guy.
Researchers/professors I have noticed are very precise and accurate in their conversation. I like this. This guy is a freak though. He has run 20 marathons, broken his knee ligaments thrice, ankle ligament once and got them repaired and still keeps running. He said I should run outside too. I think I have a block against running on a hard surface like roads bacause the impact from it is hard. He said one of his favorite surfaces was snow. I said aha! he is one of the persons whom one sees running in winter and thinks 'what a jerk!'Golly! the things that pop out of my mouth!
I'll end here. Have a great day!

Farmer's market goodness

Cheers Folks! how is everyone doing? I'm doing okay. I have to admit that my spirits are kinda low coz of the constant reminders of how bad the job market is and I should be doing this doing that and the job descriptions that I see on the web seem dull. My sister reads the NY Times stories of gloom and tells me to move in with her and save my money. It's a great offer- she has a nice house, I wouldn't have to worry about rent or living, but I love my space. I function best in my space and I'm hesitant to move. My sister is great and comes up with some very nice suggestions for me, but she can be very intense too and has an effect on me and sometimes, what she wants for me is not necessarily what I want for me. At least for sometime now, I've been trying to break free from my siblings influence, so you have no idea how worried I get at the thought of moving in with her. Even though I know what I should be doing, I'm not doing it. I need something invigorating to look forward to, something imaginative, lively and fun. I'm not averse to working hard, but it should be fun hard work. Then there's another thing I do, believe the negative and question the positive about me, even when I do get positive feedback on my work. Some days, I can really write a book on how to sap your energy. But enough of that, I know if I can affect my moods this bad, then the converse is also true, I can and have pulled myself out of it too. So I need to learn to relax, think positive and not worry so much. All this worry is my creation, my emptiness, and I have to figure out a way to fill it with my imagination.
On saturday morning, Jamie and I went to Clintonville farmer's market. It was cloudy but fortunately, it rained just after we got home. There were sunflowers everywhere- these are some of my favorite flowers because they're big and bright. We bought a small bunch of flowers. Here's the kitty sitting by it..

The bike path has some really pretty purple weeds and white flowers. After the current bunch wilts, I plan to get some weeds. Evening we made some Indian bread called roti and used it as a pita. Look at it swell!

Then we made some hummus with roasted garlic and made this..Roti layered with hummus, fresh cucumbers, boiled egg and diced tomato. It was pretty good.

Then we also got some haverti cheese from the farmer's market. It is so creamy and delicious. We had it as a snack with crackers and tea.

We also got a jam- this is made of peaches and chillies. Its yummy. The chilli hits you in the end in your mouth and its not like your mouth is on fire, but you are aware of its presence.
We saw Schlinder's list on Sunday. I really liked it a lot. It's in black and white. It's about how Oskar Schlinder- a Nazi bussinessman, creates wealth and then uses this wealth to free 1100 jews from concentration camps. It just boggles me how Hitler convinced so many people to commit such horrid crimes. I'm guessing most of you have seen it already. Did you know Steven Spielberg did not accept any money for this movie he made? I love Liam Neeson too. He has a goodness about him that I really like and I think he is sexy. Who are your favorite movie stars?

The cutest cat ever!

Yohoo people! How are you all doing? I am doing great. It was awesome to have Gina-the Candid RD, Emily- the healthnut and Nancy over yesterday. Its much fun cooking when people are open to trying new things and I enjoy cooking for friends. Thanks for all the good things you said about the food on your blogs. I think you've covered pretty much everything. FYI, the snacks I made in order are -Bhelpuri, Dahi (yoghurt) puri, Aloo tikki(potato patti) with garbanzo bean curry called chole, Paani puri and the dessert is called Falooda. The conversation did raise a few questions in my head, like, why is Indian street food called 'Chaat'? Chaat means 'lick' in hindi-the national language in India- so I'm guessing it means licking good food. The other question was why does ever dish have the suffix 'puri'? I haven't been able to find the definition for it yet. First, I thought anything puffed is puri- because the fried Indian bread made from a wheat flour dough is called p00ri and here the rice in Bhel puri is puffed and the puri in paani puri(the puffed water filled one) is swollen( I'm tired of using the word puffed). However, this definition could not justify the flat crackers in dahi puri. I'll let you know when I find out.
Veering off to a totally different subject, I adore Jamie's cat Enky! He is one of the nicest cats I've met- a great innocent playful companion, non smelly, a sweet mew and this is used only when we accidently step on his tail or when he wants to get in from outside. I have to really control myself from picking him up and making him sit with me. Here are a couple of pictures


Enky lazing on my bed


Observation of my each and every move from his vantage point


All out!

Today, we had leftovers from the party. Jamie made a nice cucumber sandwich for dinner- toasted buttered bread, slices of cucumber, fine chopped onion chopped cilantro and mint, salt and pepper and a dash of ketchup. It was sooo good. Most of the times, the simplest, freshest foods are so damn tasty. For dessert we had cake with a dollop of ice cream and raspberries. you really can't go wrong with a dessert like this- it was very good.



Today, Emily had forgotten her gift from Turkey at home. So she came home to fetch it. We were watching Nancy's picture book on Greece sitting on the floor. Of course, the cat tried to be the center of attention by sprawling himself smack in the middle of the book. He was pushed aside unceremoniously. The turning of pages was bothering him I think and he bit into a page! Now the book has two tooth marks on the edge. I was quite surprised. He'd never done that before. It was a nice afternoon with Emily though. I'll miss her very much when she's gone. I really like and enjoy my friends a lot. They make my life happy.
Other than this, I applied for 2 jobs, read about food allergies in the 'nourishing traditions book', listened to a 'Concert for George Harrison' DVD while reading. This was a concert for George Harrison by all the greats like Eric Clapton, Ravishankar, the remaining Beatles (Paul and Ringo), Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Monty Python folks (apparently George was a huge fan of these folks)and Tom Hanks was there too. George Harrison was such a nice soul. I miss him. His son Dhani Harrison looks exactly like him! Jamie introduced me to this. You know you can get music concert DVD's from Netflix. I got a 'Queen live in Montreal' DVD and it was sooo good! Then I also saw one of Planet Earth DVD on Seasonal forests. I confess I slept in the middle. We usually turn our lights out when watching DVD'sand I guess that's what makes me sleep. Then I saw a little bit of Prez Obama's live press conference on Healthcare reforms. I'm not really sure of the details, but from what he says it seems like the reforms will enable doctors to make decisions with the patient in mind such that they do not prescribe treatments with their profit in mind (like prescribing a tonsillectomy, where a treatment with antibiotics will treat a case of sore throat). He also thought highly of the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland hospital. I apologize for my utter naivete in this area- it's so complex with so many tugging forces- doctors, patients, the insurance companies, republicans and democrats disagreeing, and even democrats among themselves disagree. Being a prez is hard- but I guess it's satisfying if you really want to solve problems and get some success. I have good feeling inside about Prez Obama. I'll end here.
Ciao folks! Have a wonderful day tomorrow

Indian comfort food

6/24/09 Good evening people! It's 11:50 in the night. I'm comfortably ensconced on the couch watching scrubs on tv. Life post graduation is being spent on catching up on sleep, taking care of paperwork, learning some more lab techniques from the adjacent lab, plus doing some lab work of my own, working out, watching movies and trying to figure out what to do next with my life. I just need to find that 'yess! this sounds exciting' future plan for me to focus all my energies on it. It's hazy right now, but I'm sure it'll clear up in a week (it has to!).

I met a friend at the gym yesterday who's been trying to lose weight. I gave her tips that work universally-more calories out than in and no need to give up on any of the good stuff- portion control is key. It just got me thinking that stuff that I take for granted, people may not know and need to be informed. Eating healthy is so ingrained in me, that my body gets sick if I eat too much of bad stuff. Like yesterday, Jamie and me went to Easton to buy some stuff for her brother's wedding. We got a piece of cheesecake from cheesecake factory, we split it and eating even half of it was feeling like too much. Oh, we went to Victoria's Secret too and I got an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot panty! So on that note, in addition to recipes, I'll try to include more nutritional information.
Today for dinner we had a typical North Indian spread. This meal felt so good and comforting. I love potatoes and so does Jamie. This time we got yukon gold potatoes and they are really waxy. We had Indian bread called roti, seasoned pigeon peas commonly called toor daal in India and spiced spinach and potato, also included is left over colocasia from yesterday.



Pigeon peas are one of the most popular pulses in India. Nearly each state in India has a unique way of cooking it and it is a staple. Nearly every other meal has to have these pulses in one way or another. The pulses by themselves cook to a creamy texture and taste well either spiced or just plain with salt and butter. These are the source of protein for vegetarians. I cup of this provides 203 kcal, 11.36 gm protein, 39 gm carbohydrate and 11 gm dietary fiber. It is rich in potassium, phosphorus, sodium, calcium and magnesium and also provides a lot of B vitamins.

Roti is a carbohydate source made with whole wheat flour. One roti is less than 100 calories. Colocasia is not a very common vegetable. Its a starch rich tuber. It is gooey when it cooks and takes on flavors well. Ideally, this meal would be accompanied by a cup of yoghurt in the end. But we didn't feel like it. In India, yoghurt signifies the end of a meal- it is the last course because it is supposed to cool your insides after all the spices.
This time, I made my own yoghurt. On Monday, I was invited to an Indian friend's house for dinner. I got some yoghurt for culture from them. You boil milk and cool it to lukewarm and then add approx 2 tbsp of yoghurt and place the container in a slightly warm place like the top of fridge or wrap it in something warm if its too cold and let it sit for 4-5 hours. It may take longer/ shorter time depending on outside temperature. The way I understand the process is that yoghurt contains the lactobacillus bulgaricus and milk acts as a culture medium in which the bacteria grows. Homemade yoghurt also has more water in it ( whey) and this is supposed to be very rich in B vitamins. Here's a picture...

How to make all this stuff?
Daal..
Pressure cook 1 cup of pigeon peas with 1 can diced tomatoes and three cups water.
Seasoning: Take some oil, when hot, add cumin seeds, onions and wait till onions turn traslucent and slightly brown, add 3 cloves of garlic, and grate about a tbsp of ginger. Add a dash of red chilli powder and asafoetida (this is a spice which adds a nice flavor, you need just a dash of this).
Mix it with cooked pulses and tomatoes. Give it a good whisk, add salt and a tsp of sugar and add fine chopped cilantro in the end.
6/25/09
Potato spinach...
2 tsp tsp oil in a pan, add cumin seeds when hot, add potatoes( I used 4 medium sized ones) and let it cook. When 3/4 cooked, add ginger garlic, saute, then add a packet of frozen spinach, let it cook a little and towards the end add 1/2 tsp garam masala, 1/2 cumin powder, red chilli powder to taste and 1 1/2 tsp coriander seed powder and salt to taste
Day before, Jamie made this portobello sandwich..she had some homemade sweet mustard salsa. She cooked the mushroom with the salsa on the pan and placed it on marble bread..pretty good..

Indian cooking is tasty but it does involve a lot of cleaning later.Just look at this..guess what our evening is gonna be spent doing..

I saw 'rainman' the other day. I really liked it. I like both Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. I love Alfred Hitchcock movies. I love the suspense he builds with music, the camerawork, the stories are great too and his actors are very pleasing to the eye. I have two short stories DVD that I plan to watch today...
Workoutwise, I've added swimming to my list. I took a swimming 101 class at OSU and liked it so much that i named one of my email ID's as swimmingfan. At the end of the class I was able to do freestyle but now the breathing facedown is hard for me. I swim on my back which is quite fun. Water makes me nervous and I love it at the same time. I want to include it in my routine of treadmill,elliptical and biking...I did two laps today after workout..quite fun..I also practised underwater breathing on the deep end...
A new thing that we've been doing lately- we've been adding sliced orange to our water pitcher in the fridge, so we drink orange flavored water.quite nice and refreshing...

Hello again!!

Hello people! Its been such a long time. Sorry I've been so quiet but when your nose is in the grindstone and pedal to the metal....well you get the picture. Phew!!! I finally defended my thesis on 12th June and submitted my thesis to grad school on June 19th. I tell you I've never done so many all nighters before. One day I was surprised myself when I was working till 7:30 in the morning and even then I wasn't supertired but I felt I should be and slept for an hour. It's interesting how we are so wired to sleep at night. But I never forgot the blog and kept taking pictures to post coz there have been so many good eats that I have to tell you about it. So brace yourself, this post is gonna be looong. Feel free to read it in sections. I'll proceed in the sequence in which they were made. Then there's our blooming garden which is a source of so much pleasure..ooh let's start!!



First, Jamie made this Cawliflower with almonds and lima beans. It was very good. But the flavors are so subtle that it took some zen meditation from me (whose taste buds are spice hardened) to appreciate the hint of flavors. This recipe is from a cookbook by Madhur Jaffrey. This is what went in:

Approx half a cawliflower
1 cup lima beans
1.5 tsp cornstarch
1/2 cup whole blanched almonds
2 cloves of garlic- fine chopped
2 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp dry sherry
2 quarter sized fresh ginger
11/4 tsp salt

Put cawliflower in cold water for 0.5 hour. Add lima beans to boiling water and cook them for 5 minutes and then drain. Then mix cornstarch, sherry, sesame oil and 2 tbsp water. Heat oil and saute almonds. Stir fry garlic and ginger in the same oil. Then add cawliflower, lima beans and almonds. Add 2 tbsp water and cover with a lid. Cook until cawliflower is crisply tender. Remove lid and add the cornstarch mix made earlier. Saute for 30 seconds and its done. Jamie made pasta with this- shell pasta with tomato sauce topped with bread crumbs.



This is another dish with orzo pasta, sauted broccoli, mushrooms pine nuts, a red chilli, julienned carrots and salt and pepper. Its been such a long time since I made this- I don't completely remember the recipe, but its about 7/8 right.



OMG!Don't judge a dish by the way it looks! When we were making it, both Jamie and me were like this is gonna be a disaster, but it turned out to be soooo good. This is sweet and sour tofu
I made the sauce Jamie fries the tofu.
Make a paste by mixing 1/4 cup cornstarch with approx 2 tbsp water.
Cube extra firm tofu (This is where we went wrong, we chopped it too small)into 1 inch cubes and fry them in 1/4 cup oil.
For the sauce, 3.5 tbsp white vinegar,
1/4 cup water,
2.5 tbsp sugar,
1tbsp soy sauce,
1tbsp ketchup,
1 tbsp brown sugar,
1/4 tsp ginger powder,
1/2 tsp salt,
11/2 tbsp corn starch mixed in 2 tbsp water.
Mix everything except cornstarch on medium heat and add corn starch after everything has dissolved. You have to keep an eye after adding cornstarch coz the sauce thickens and can burn.
Mix the sauce with fried tofu and garnish with toasted sesame seeds. My mouth is watering even when I'm writing about it...mmmmm
We had it with garden fresh bok choy. This was a first. I'd never had this leaves before. We grew them in our garden

In the garden.....



On the plate...



Bok choy has a cabbage like taste. It has a pungent flavor which I did not expect..like parsnips.Anyways, we made stir fried bok choy. Take a tbsp of oil, 1 clove of garlic- fine chopped, 1 tsp ginger, 2 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tsp sesame seeds and we used about 2 heads of bok choy. It turned out to be really good with sweet and sour tofu.

and here's the salad....



One of our dinners was a garden burger. Jamie bought the patties from the Clintonville farmer's market. It was awesome. The ingredients in the patty were so unusual- I'd never have thought to combine these ingredients for a burger patty. It had spelt berries(wheat), black beans, carrots, onions, oats, kale, apples, garlic, ginger, balsamic vinegar, thyme, salt and pepper. I first thought this is store bought patty- nothing much to write about, but then I had a bite..my eyes opened wide and I knew it had to come here..



I love eggs. These are so good when you're busy- they cook fast, good source of protein and you can season them in so many different ways. We made Koo Koos. This is from a recipe book. There's no way I would've thought of pairing together cawliflower and eggs.



Take a couple of cawliflower florets. Put them in boiling water for a few minutes. Then under cold water. Give it a fine chop and saute in oil with a dash of salt and pepper. Meantime, beat eggs with a pinch of baking soda, add salt and pepper and the cawliflower mix. Pour it in a pan. Cook it covered on low flame for 20 minutes. We had it with fage yoghurt.



Have you folks ever had tempeh? We got some from the Indonesian store. I did not like it very much. Maybe because it is fermented soy and it doesn't have a very good smell. We fried the tempeh after coating it with a mix made of 1/2 cup water, 11/2 tsp coriander seeds powder, 2-3 cloves of garlic and 1 tsp of salt. We had it on top of salad made of bok choy, cawliflower and boiled eggs with gado gado dressing( remember? the peanut based Indonesian dressing?). Doesn't even sound appetizing, does it? Well, I think tempeh is an acquired taste.



Deviled eggs! I love it. Jamie makes these. When I was a kid, I hated cold eggs. Now I can eat them. She boils eggs, cuts them in half, takes the yolk out and mixes it with mayonnaise (to taste- if you want more creamy, add more and vice versa), salt and pepper, blends the mix with a fork such that there are no lumps and spoons it on the egg white. For decoration she sprinkles some paprika on it. They were absolutely delicious!

I'll end this section of recipes with a dessert. Since there was a lot of cake around my B'day, we decided to make this cake when we didn't have any cake in the house. This is Low fat tiramisu, totally made by Jamie. Frankly, this is so so yummy, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference from the original and yet it's so low in fat. The recipe is from heart healthy cookbook. The picture is a tad hazy, but I'll give you the complete recipe

Cherry Chocolate tiramisu
You'll need
1 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp instant coffee granules
1 tsp vanilla extract
6 ounces ladyfingers
8 ounces fat free/low fat whipped topping, thawed
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
16 ounces frozen unsweetened pitted dark cherries; thawed and undrained
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp almond extract
1/4 cup slivered almonds, dry roasted

In a small bow, stir together water, 1/4 cup sugar, coffee granules and vanilla until sugar has dissolved.
To assemble, dip ladyfingers (sugar side in coffee) in coffee sugar mix prepared above and make a layer of this in your dish. Spoon whipped topping over it, covering evenly and sprinkle with cocoa powder. Repeat. Cover the dish with a plastic wrap and refrigerate for 8-24 hours.
Meanwhile, halve the cherries(Jamie had bought fresh cherries, she froze it, cut it in half and threw the pits)add 2 tbsp sugar and cornstarch until cornstarch is dissolved. Bring to a boil over medium high heat. Boil for a minute stirring constant. Remove from heat and cool it. Stir in almond extract and store in refrigerator until serving time.
When serving, spoon cherry mix over individual servings. Sprinkle with toasted almonds too.
Nutrients/serving: Calories: 246. Total fat 2.5gm, sat fat 0gm, polyunsaturatedfats: 0.5gm, monounsaturated fats: 1gm. Carbohydrates: 51 gm. Sugar: 32gm. Fiber 3gm. cholesterol 4mg. Protein 3 gm; sodium 69mg.
Okay, the sugars are still high, but hey this is a dessert and if you work out and eat this, I'm sure the sugar won't get stored as fat.

Our garden is really growing well. We harvested bok choy, radicchio lettuce so far. Radicchio was very crunchy but very bitter. We made a salad and I had to take bites of bread in between to mask the bitter. Cucumber vines are spreading with yellow flowers, cabbage is growing. We had to get harvest all of radicchio to make room for the spreading cucumbers, tomatoes? look at them!!



Our single strawberry harvest..

..

Jamie got this cute Cleveland Browns grill from home..isn't this cute? We plan on grilling some portobello mushrooms and corn on this.



I got a noodles and company menu from RPAC. Plan is try some of their recipes at home. Will let you know how it turned out. I'll end here. Hope everyone is having a great summer! Cheers everyone!

Smita

Where is Summer?

Good afternoon people, How are you guys doing? Aww Gina I'm so sorry you had to through that heart in your mouth experience with your poster, but you took care of it, awesome! How is Emily's ankle doing? I hope it gets better soon. You must be missing running. Hasn't the weather been cold lately? Yesterday, I didn't get a jacket and it was freezing. I hate to feel that way in June!
Moving on, for me, I am done with the major chunk of writing and today I am doing the bibliography. I want to be done with it today. Side by side lab experiments are also going on.

Its been just 4 days since I've missed out on writing here and it already feels like such a long time. I've been reading, writing, doing experiments, tending garden, working out, watching a movie here and there and cooking.

These 4 days, Sunday I made this black lentils and kidney bean soup. I'd made it for you guys the first time you came to my house, but it got burnt during the reheating process. Does that ring a bell? Well I made it again coz I really like it, its yummy and very nutritious. Black lentils contain a high level of protein, including essential amino acids isoleucine and lysine, however they are lacking in methionine and cystine. Apart from these goodies, it is loaded with dietary fiber, folate, vitamin B1 and minerals like molybedenum, manganese, Iron, phosphorus, copper and potassium. The dish I made translates to 'Buttery lentils' It has

1 cup lentils
1 can of kidney beans- cook the lentils first and then mix the kidney beans.

For seasoning,
heat vegetable oil (2-3 tsp)
add cumin seeds (1tsp)
4 tomatoes (I chop into cubes and roast it in oil and then puree it in a blender)
1/2 tsp red chilli powder or 2 small dried red chilli
4 cloves garlic
2 tsp coriander seed powder
1/2 tsp garam masala
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp ketchup
1/2 cup fresh cream (I used half and half)

Roast all the seasonings upto garam masala first- heat oil, then add cumin to a light golden brown, tomatoes- when tomatoes are roasted then add coriander seed powder and garam masala, red chilli and add garlic last. I prefer not to overcook the spices, that's why I add them in the end so that they roast just for a couple of seconds.
Blend all this. Mix it with the cooked lentils, add cream and butter and give it a gentle boil. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve with rice. Its very filling and tasty. But beware! It can cause gas! so Gina- Beano beforehand!





Monday, Jamie and me walked to Columbus metropolitan library to get some DVD's she'd requested (Monty pythons- the meaning of life and the life of Brian). We were starving when we got back and made this sandwich. It was absolutely delightful.

Whole grain bread
Dill dip from grocery (Kroger)
To the dip we added red and yellow bell pepper, some fine chopped cucumber, onion and we sauted some zuccini and pine nuts
Mix everything together and place this between the slices of bread.
We also had oven baked fries with this.









Tuesday, I was having a craving for these South Indian rice pancakes with potato curry and coconut chutney. I get the mix for the pancake from the Indian store. It was okay from the original standards. The homemade pancakes are golden brown in color and very crispy. I feel that most westerners do not like south Indian food as much as north Indian food. I don't know why. The coconut chutney was damn tasty.
I took a handful of frozen coconut, 1/4 cup roasted peanuts, 1 green chilli, coriander leaves, a small piece of ginger. Blend it away and season it with mustard seeds roasted in a tsp of oil. The pancake tore but I took the picture anyway.










Wednesay, Jamie created another lovely dish from orzo pasta. I always thought orzo was rice. Apparently, its pasta shaped like rice.



Cook orzo pasta
Olive oil- 3tbsp
Red bell pepper..1/2
Large onion ¼
Mushrooms…1 small can
Red beans….1/2 can
1 can diced tomatoes
Seasoning..basil, Italian seasoning, minced garlic, salt and pepper
Grated parmesan, parsley topping





It was very very good. I hadn't eaten much the whole day, so I thoroughly enjoyed this.

I saw 2 movies in these 4 days - The color purple and Monty Python's the meaning of life. The former was a great movie, but it was kinda sad to see how the black women were treated by their husbands in the early 1900's. Oprah was there in the movie too.
Monty python don't even get me started on it! it was SUCH a drag! I had higher guffaw expectations from monty pythons- but I just managed to get one big one. So one of the teachers is giving a sex lesson to this bunch of boys and is quizzing them in between. So he asks one of the students, how would he start foreplay? The student says by rubbing the clitoris. The teacher then screams 'Why do you want to stampede to the clitoris? why not just start with a kiss?' I guess this was kinda an unexpected response and caught us off guard. Both Jamie and me had a rollicking laugh at this one. The movie has 10 parts where they take you through the ages to finally arrive at a silly meaning of life- live in peace and harmony. I would've been really mad if I had to put myself through this movie doing nothing else. Thankfully, I was doing some thesis work on the side. So it was bearable.
I'll end here. Good luck with your poster tomorrrow!