Sunday Snapshots: Of Coconut Milk as well as Spring Flora and Fauna

Spring has been a mixed bag this year, flip-flopping between summer and winter.

I made coconut milk at home using frozen shredded coconut and I'm never going back to canned coconut milk! Read my column on Whole Foods Market Cooking on How to Make Coconut Milk.

How to Make Coconut Milk at home (Whole Foods Market Cooking)

Read on...

The Good Things in April

So much happened in April. So much. I decided to focus on all the good things, mostly family, friends and celebrations.

We kicked off April with Holi celebrations at Boulder Balvihar. Not my favorite festival but I do enjoy taking pictures of everyone else, especially the little ones.

Happy kiddos at Holi!

I have never made puran poli, the sweet treat that is traditionally made for Holi. I wanted to but since my plate spilleth over, I put it on the back-burner yet again. I didn't make thandai either, even though we had really enjoyed it last year at this time. And, you know what? It didn't matter. That's not to undermine the importance of food during festivities and the stories that go hand-in-hand; instead it's more like celebrating on our terms rather than doing all the right things and being miserable as well as stressed at the same time. The special Holi prasad at Boulder Balvihar more than made up for all the fun treats that I did not make.

Some of my friends really get into the act!

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Pressure Cooker Winner and Raji's Brinji

April 1 may not have been the best day to close my pressure cooker giveaway! But, I promise you that it was not an April Fool's joke.

Thank you all for your wonderful comments. I loved reading more about all of you.

To all my readers who delurked: I am indeed humbled that so many of you have been reading along for almost as many years as I have been blogging. You have helped me grow.

To all my regular commenters: you know I think you are awesome! Some of our conversations border on insane and that is what keeps me going and encourages me to share some of the randomness in my life.

And I was very tickled that all of you appreciated not having to go blab to the world on social networks about this giveaway. While I get the need for that kind of marketing, it's not what this blog is about. I much prefer organic growth to in-your-face marketing. My content remains driven by my thoughts and my experiences rather than what drives these networks.

Here's how I chose the winner for the giveaway. I asked for three numbers between 1 and 1000 on my Facebook page, added them up, calculated the mod with the divisor set to the number of participants (67) and matched up the answer to the comment number that I assigned in ascending order. That's random enough, right?

SO WHO WON THE PRESSURE COOKER?!

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Celebrating 10 years of IFR with a Giveaway

You know you're lucky when you look out at your driveway in the middle of a snowstorm to see your neighbor's kid shoveling the snow that you were doing your best to ignore.

a welcome sight

You know you're lucky when a package arrives all the way from the upper mid-west with home-made nocino, Indian pickles and Kashmiri veri masala.

Hot and boozy gifts

You know you're lucky when Shilpa sends you fragrant organic tirphal, along with mace, nutmeg, kokum from her father's property near Bangalore and two very special pickles made by her mother: kochle nonche and ambli pickle.

Fragrant and relatively rare spice: tirphal

You know you're lucky when Aparna sends you flavors of your childhood with more kokum and tirphal, dagadphool, dried red chiles, vanilla pods and famous Goan cured pork sausages.

Gifts that remind me of my childhood

You know you're lucky when there are so many things to be grateful for, on a daily basis. I know I am.
From the magnificent beauty of where we live to the supportive neighborhood where we make our home to the friends and family in our lives.

I also know I'm incredibly lucky when I look back at the ten years that I have been blogging and realize that I have met some of my best friends through my blog. My very first post was on March 12, 2003. It was as clueless as I was about blogging, but I was also very clearly testing the Blogger platform, then owned by Pyra Labs. I was never a prolific blogger nor do I intend to be. I blog at my own pace, on my own terms and without succumbing to the pressures of the blogosphere, especially the food blogging community.

Read on...

Under Pressure

Pressure cooking is suddenly in the limelight again. It looks like it's the next new wave after slow cooking in the crockpot. If you grew up like me -- in a home where beans, legumes and pulses were eaten on a daily basis -- you're probably grateful that an efficient and effective cooking method is finally being recognized, and you're possibly also quite aghast at the various myths that are being repeated ad nauseam, especially the one that pressure cookers are dangerous because they explode in your face.

releasing pressure

There's no doubt that they used to explode and there were two reasons for that: poor manufacturing and user error (which, unfortunately, continues even today). Modern pressure cookers, especially the kind that don't open until the pressure has subsided, are much safer but so are the old-style ones with a weighted pressure-release, if used properly. If you continue to hear stories about how they explode, then more often than not, it is user error.

This reminds me of the recent article that said that immersion or hand blenders are dangerous because many people have almost lost their fingers to the blade. Well, it's only common sense that if the appliance is not unplugged, a blade that is jammed will start spinning as soon as the obstruction has been removed. But, since common sense is rather rare, it is easier to tarnish the appliance with the label: Dangerous.

I am still wondering why the author of that particular article was using an immersion blender for butter that was meant to go into chocolate chip cookies, and how an article of that kind made it into The New York Times. And, if she will ever be able to live it down.

I must say that I am rather surprised that such people still drive cars.

Or use a knife.

Read on...