Vanilla Ice-Cream.... my younger ones favourite

Its so hot these days here. Feels like living inside an oven :( None can escape it I know.Kids are also finding it difficult to manage. They want to enjoy something cold all the time to cope up with the scorching sun's heat

Every year we spend our summer vacation in Mangalore... the weather is way better than here. This year my parents shifted to Chennai so no long-vacation for me and my kids :( We miss those days when every day during our vacation we used to go to Pabba's - a famous Ice-cream parlour in Mangalore. Every day was fun day. Kids and me too used to enjoy ice-creams to our hearts content. Kids too started missing it over this vacation. So we decided we will stock up our freezer with homemade ice-cream and enjoy to the fullest and yes we did. All the time we have different flavours stocked up in various boxes. The basics of ice-cream making is pretty simple. Once we get that, making all our favourite flavours is just a few stirs away

I buy cows milk so everyday we have fresh cream available. Using fresh makes the end-result more tastier and creamier. Usually I collect it to make butter and ghee but this season it has been mostly used for ice-cream making. We make in small batches as each one of us likes a different flavour. This plain vanilla ice-cream recipe is my younger one's favourite. He loves it any time. 

Chilli potato

My family's favourite appetizer on the vegetarian menu. We all love this. Give the entire serving bowl to my kids and they will wipe it out in not time. They wouldnt even mind skipping lunch or dinner after that ;) Its a quick and super easy appetizer so I dont mind making it either

The crunchy potatoes are so yum that you can have them any time. You can pull up the spice level high if you want to and enjoy it. My younger one eats spicy stuff but he ends up drinking up a full litre water bottle before he would finish his appetizer. So to avoid that I hit lower on the spices and let him enjoy more

This is also a very quick appetizer to make if you have sudden guests and there's nothing much you can think about. Here goes the recipe for one perfect starter

Mango Panna Cotta

I never got to try Panna Cotta until last year when I came across this exotic creamy beautiful dessert.  As soon as I was home I had to look out for the recipe to recreate the speciality in my kitchhen. Got to know its an Italian dessert. I then remembered I had seen this recipe a few times on food network channel .... Giada's show long time back. Oh yes I used to love her shows

This dessert is super creamy. Made with cream and gelatin, it can be made in different flavours to win everyone's heart

Made it this summer to enjoy with the king of fruit flavour to get the perfect taste. I am totally in love with it

Egg pakoda...

Egg pakoda brings back memories from my hostel days during college. I had a very sweet friend in my hostel ... deepa akka. We were a group of 4 friends who used to have a lot of fun talking, teasing, going around, studying, playing and more. I used to hate hostel life but being with this set of friends made me feel at ease for some time during my stay

There used to be one special road-side shop near deepa akka's office. The egg bonda's ... yes bondas and not pakodas were so yummy there. It was made of whole eggs with spiced onion stuffing inside. They were just lip-smacking and we used to enjoy it every single time. Akka used to get for all of us once in a while and we used to enjoy them as evening snack with the less-than-average tea that used to be served. Ha ha ha .... fun memories ....makes me feel nostalgic

Last week when it was raining here for a couple of days, we had to stay indoors and do just nothing. Me and the kids were talking about a lot of things and then there was a little talk about me  telling them about my hostel life and this egg-bonda story. So they heard the story well and then ended up insisting me to make something hot to catch up with the weather. What something hot???.... why not mutta-bonda like you had in your hostel?????.... So we made this and had great fun

Iced tea... perfect for summer

Iced tea is a favourite drink in this hot summer weather. Its a refreshing beverage which is liked by everyone alike. Nowadays there are a lot of packeted powders available in the market. Kids are always on the lookout to buy something like that and enjoy. I am not in for such decisions so I ensure them that they will get to drink something better and tastier than what they are looking for. It happens everytime in the supermarket. They will pick something and I would ask them to put it back warning how harmful they are to our health

We can drink a tall-glass of this wonderfully refreshing drink any time of the day. I usually make it early in the morning and let it cool down. Then I leave it in the refrigerator to chill before we can enjoy it. By the time its post-breakfast its chilled enough to be served. The kids take charge of serving everyone.... us, their friends and whoever comes home :) Its not possible to say no to those smiling little faces when they serve you because they want to serve themselves :)

Try this instead of buying those bottled and packeted stuff

Ragi Dosa...

Finger millet or ragi is so well-known for its health benefits. Full of proteins and being a great source of minerals makes it perfect to start your day with an energy-packed breakfast. Try it in any form you like - say vermicelli, kanji, kool or dosa or else

Do you use millets in your diet??? If no then I guess you should try a few. Nowadays all the supermarkets are having a lot of  varieties of millets piled up. If not all, atleast we can pick up a few and try to include them in our diet. Here, try this super simple and healthy ragi dosa. A very quick and easy way to include a little healthy stuff in your diet. My kids love this so I make sure they have it atleast once in a week

My kids hate gothuma/wheat flour dosai. So if  I am on the lookout for some kind of dosa other than the reguar kind, also something which is easy to pull together without much effort then I go for this. No need to ferment so I find it easy to include it in our breakfast

Sweet Maida Biscuits...

Maida biscuits are a fun snack for kids. Pull in a few ingredients and you are good to go. Make and store them in an airtight container and the kids can pick a handful whenever they want to. They would love to munch on these small biscuits. Its is very easy to make except that it takes a lot of time for frying

Custard powder tutti-frutti cookies - Eggless

I had to use up the custard powder that was lying in my fridge for a pretty long time. Thought to make something else other than regular fruit custard which is my favourite though. Saw a recipe on tv that said custard powder cookies and I was totally in. Didnt get a chance to completely store the recipe in my mind but bits and pieces of info did fall into my brain 

Its simple to make like any another cookie. It has a beautiful aroma because of the custard powder, a perfect crunch and a beautiful taste. Loved it a lot. My kids who dont like custard like this instead :)

French Fries .... every kids favourite ...

Yummm.... french fries... who's in???? Everyone has to admit it.... this is the most loved recipe among kids. I have never seen any kid saying no this. In fact I have only seen and heard them asking for more. Same is with my kids too

Its not too much work but still you need to plan a little ahead of time. Make a big batch at one time and then stock them up in the freezer. Fry them directly without thawing and you can have them in not time

The simple trick to making yummy french fries is the double-fry method. That is all 

Potato Latkes...

This was a recipe that I came to know of from a tv channel. Not now but a very long tie ago. It was so simple yet so deliciously tempting that I knew I got to give it a try. Then as my wishlist goes on increasing my tiny brain keeps on forgetting most of the time. It was there in my mind giving an appearance nice in a while and then finally got a chance to make on a nice rainy day a few months ago

Potatoes are so delicious in every form and this one is a crown to it. My kids loved it more than I thought. Made a small batch to try out and it was too good. Next time have to double the recipe else I wont even get to taste it :)

Tawa Paneer....

Tawa paneer is a spicy and tangy sidedish made with paneer, onion, capsicum and tomato. It tastes great with rotis, naan and kulchas too. We have always had this at restaurants and my wish was to serve it at my kitchen table and give everybody a pleasant surprise. I make a lot of paneer gravies but I havent named them anything with the restaurant style name. They were all trials in my kitchen and recipe from friends that could not be tagged with a name. Decided to do a few more based on restaurant menus. Lets see how it goes

Last week when deciding on what paneer dish to make for dinner to serve with chapathis, my elder kiddo niks suggested we make tawa paneer. He wants spicy stuff these days. We checked a few youtube videos and well the procedure was very simple and we had all the ingredients at hand. Tried it for dinner few days back and turned out as we wanted it to be. It was so much liked by kids that they finished off more than half the sabji before daddy was home for dinner. Poor hubby he got to eat less curry than usual :)

Homemade fresh cream...

I buy cows milk for our daily use. When you buy fresh cream then there are a lot of added advantages other than the obvious health benefits. We get to use fresh cream for different recipes, make curd at home, get fresh soft butter and the best part a lot of ghee.  I have some friends who have been asking me how to make butter and then ghee. Posted recipe a while back. Now I have questions about how to get fresh cream for all this. My mom has been following this in her kitchen and this was nothing new to me. Sharing this for all those friends who wanted to know how I do it in my kitchen

Eggless coconut cookies....

Coconut cookies are crunchy yet soft with a textured bite and a wonderful smell. Well thats what a bite of these melt-in-mouth cookies told my  taste buds. Perfect I should say. A cookie well worth a try and recipe a keepsake

I was looking for a perfect and easy recipe to try these cookies. I looked into many of them, picked some stuff from this and some from that. Measurements were different in different recipes. So I had to settle down with something I was comfortable. First I decided to make just a small batch... did not want to end up with something thats not satisfacctory

Basic ingredients are the same but the way we mix it, baking temperature, baking time and the amount is all that matters. Well my stumbling upon the internet did bear good fruit :) Mine was perfect to my taste and we all loved it

Mozzarella sticks

Mozzarella sticks have been on my wishlist for quite a while but it just kept getting postponed because of my laziness. This time being holidays for the kids there is always a demand for different kinds of snacks. We keep making something for our morning and evening snacks

Made these couple of days back and they were given a red carpet welcome by the kids. It took them just a couple of minutes to gulp it down. They loved it to the core

Just a few ingredients and its ready in no time

Wheat flour and muesli cereal cookies

A cookie recipe that was just a trial in my kitchen and guess what ....."a perfect hit". It was crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside giving it the perfect cookie effect. I wanted to make something for my hubby but without maida , without sugar and without a lot of butter... though it does use some ghee :D

In fact it all started when I found  a packet of oats muesli cereal at my mom's. She had a lot so I picked one try it out. Well it stayed on the shelf for quite a while before I decided not to eat it as a cereal but it in something else instead. When making this cookie it found its way in.Now thats a little bit of added goodness.

Started making the cookies with a blank mind but then things went into the bowl one after the other and yes there it was. Made it and loved it. Sure a keepsake 

Sugar bread

A simple recipe that is all time welcome for breakfast or snack time. My mom used to make it for us when we were kids and even now :) I make them for y kids and there is never a "no" to it. It is a very very handy recipe for those lazy days when I have no mood to get into the kitchen to make breakfast or an evening snack. I would sit till the last minute that my hubby and kids start asking for food and am like "What shoud I make?" Oh yes there have been many a days like that for me and I dont shy away from that. Everybody has lazy days... rightttttttt??

I love this as the only time it takes is to put the breads together with a little spread. Toasting a few seconds gives a nice, aromatic, sweet and crisp sugar sandwich that you are sure to love..... oh only if you are a ghee lover though :D