Food and the third kid

S and I have a standing joke, that the amount of food wasted on a daily basis by Ads and Y would comfortably feed our hypothetical third child.

Last week, after the kids had finished with dinner, S looked at the soiled dishes stacked near the sink and said: Our third child is getting pretty fat.

Sigh. While our first two children only grow lengthwise! :)

Krishna Jayanthi

I'm not religious in the least and nowadays I find that I celebrate festivals only to feel good about concocting some of the traditional recipes. 

Seedai and aval payasam for Gokulashthami this year :) Needless to say, I was the only person who consumed the seedai (Disclaimer: it tasted good! But Ads doesn't care for fried stuff and Y copies him in most matters culinary :))

Papad ki sabji and misc.

When the breaking dawn sees you in the kitchen, having already finished baking a pound cake, mixing the batter for chocolate cupcakes and the cooker whistling away in preparation for a batch of sweet pongal, then it's party time for my kids :) It has been raining cats and dogs here since yesterday and so I magnanimously decided to keep the kids home from school (had to extract a promise from them that they would play amicably together and allow me to work for a few hours, otherwise I was driving them to school myself, rain or no rain!). 

Sweet or chakkarai pongal is one of my favourite sweets, and no one makes it better than my mom. After years of practice, I guess she can make this dish in her sleep and it tastes absolutely delicious even though she does not add dollops of ghee to it. Warm and mushy or cold and firm (which is the way I like it), it is the perfect comfort food as far as I am concerned. It's been frustrating for me that I can never get my sweet pongal to taste as good as my mom's (it doesn't even come close). I always console myself by blaming the quality of the jaggery, rice and dal...everything, in short, except my culinary talent :) This year, 2013, I am going to crack this recipe!!!

Today, the kids had requested burgers for lunch so I was wondering what to whip up for myself. Something really quick and non-fuss. Aha! Papad ki sabzi! The first I heard of this strange dish was from my Marwari friends who claimed it was a lifesaver when you were short of time and/or there were no vegetables in the fridge. Having tasted it once, I was hooked. The recipe I used today was different from what my friends told me (they skipped the curd but added tomatoes) but the popular internet versions all seem to incorporate dahi. I finally used Sanjeev Kapoor's recipe here.

As expected it was absolutely yum and I definitely plan to make more of this dish. It may be a mundane dish for a lot of people but it's definitely a novel delicacy for me! Here's a pic of all the ingredients simmering away :)

PS: The only thing to remember is to go easy on the salt. I forgot that the papads themselves have salt so the dish was a tad saltier than I like...but my salt tolerance is very low so it might be quite ok for most people.
PPS: This is to be eaten hot with rotis. The besan can make it pretty smudgy after a bit, but I guess that can be rectified by adding water and boiling again. I saw several recipes that did not use besan so that's another option.
 

 

Pastalicious, apparently

I simply had to share this because never ever in my life have I got such glowing compliments on ...of all things.....my cooking!

Oh well, my kids praise my baking every now and then and my alfredo sauce or basil pasta is always a favourite with them, but they are my kids and I have to discount whatever they may say.

Yesterday was pasta for lunch, for all the three of us. I was in a rush in the morning so I did what I thought was a very haphazard job, throwing spices and tomatoes and milk and cheese into the dish along with some chopped veggies. In fact I even managed to over-cook the pasta. When Ads came back home, he pressed a very grubby piece of paper into my hand. Amma, my friends have written reviews of your pasta, he said.

Reviews?? 4 kids had written their opinion, along with their names. Here they are.

Advaith's mother cooks very very good food.

Awesome, best in the solar system.

Your mom's food is very nice.

Advaith's mom, you are a great chef.

Gosh!!! I had this HUGE smile on my face that hasn't been wiped out even 24 hours later :)

Friend#2 has given me the best compliment I've ever received. Considering that I am a competent chef at the very best and nowhere close to great or awesome, I feel good that I can atleast satisfy the not-so-sophisticated taste buds of a bunch of hungry 7-year olds :))

Ragi cake - taking healthy to a whole new level!

Another baking experiment with a Ragi cake! I was a little apprehensive about how it would taste. Of course I've done whole wheat cakes with jaggery before and they tasted good but ragi was taking health to a whole new level :) I did not have plain ragi so I used the stuff I use to make kanji  or porridge for Ads. It's a ragi-based sattu maavu or health mix. We both love it (while father and daughter will not go near it!).
I followed the recipe to a T, only adding a little more curd than was recommended since I felt the batter was too dry.

The cake got me a lot of compliments. It has a nutty flavour (because of the almonds and cashews in the health mix) and it is something I'll definitely be baking again. A colleague at office who normally shuns super-healthy stuff helped herself to seconds and thirds and that really made my day :)

No pictures, unfortunately. But do try this recipe and let me know how it came out! Litebit.in has come lovely recipes and I can't wait to try out the ones for the kids lunchboxes. Look out for more cooking updates in this space :)

Paneer Barfi

Making barfi is something that has always sent shivers down my spine. I've seen my mom slaving in the hot kitchen, stirring constantly until the mixture separated from the sides of the pan...whew...!! It just seems like so much work with fairly dicey outcomes even in this day and age of microwave recipes. I know for a fact that it's after many years of practice that my mom is now able to dish out scrumpilious barfis.

However, a few weeks ago, a colleague who has a sweet tooth and entertains a lot, shared a Tarla Dalal recipe with me. She confided that her paneer barfi was her staple dessert to be whipped up when people came over. Today, I decided to try it especially as the milk has spoilt for 2 days running now and consequently I have a lot of fresh home-made paneer just sitting in the fridge.

I used the same recipe as above....except that I am really bad at following recipes to the T. So I substituted condensed milk for milk powder and sugar, used far less ghee (just 3 tbsp for 200 gm paneer) and dropped ground almonds and cashews into the mix since I know my kids would balk at whole nuts in the sweet. Of course, could not resist popping some of the hot mixture into my greedy mouth. Pure ambrosia!!! You can't go wrong with condensed milk and ghee, can you? :)

Shape the final cooled mixture into flat rounds or even spheres if that's easier. I lost interest once I tasted the final product (as I knew I would) and hurriedly formed the mix into lumpy flat rounds. Aesthetics and patience - not my strongest points!!!

Anyway, I feel thrilled that I finally got to make a proper barfi. Next trial - this!

Easy snack - buttered beans

Another easy snack and super-healthy to boot. Ads loves these buttered beans with almonds and has been requesting these for snack for the last couple of weeks. I wasn't able to get just the right beans - the one at our local sabji-wala looked so tired and wilted in the monsoon heat! Finally managed to get some good fresh beans yesterday and packed it for Ads' short break today. Y won't have it as-is, I know, so dressed hers up with some corn, paneer and yellow peppers and hopefully those will get consumed.

Cut the beans julienne. Immerse in boiling water for a few minutes. Grate or finely cut a few almonds. Drain the beans and saute in a pan along with a generous dollop of butter (I use Amul table butter). Add salt, pepper (if required) and oregano. Add the almonds, give everything a good shake to mix ém up and it's done! It's crunchy, buttery and yummy :) This also makes for a nice side dish while entertaining.

I remember the first time I ate this. It was on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. We were having sourdough bread and clam chowder and ordered beans just to see what it would be like. One of the best meals I've ever had, looking out over the beautiful bay :)

 

Snack menu today

Working from home (which...sigh.....is not happening that much nowadays) means I have the time to do stuff, like...

Baking. Started with wanting to bake a rainbow cake but then realized I was out of food colour. I made do with orange and yellow-coloured whole wheat muffins.

And being able to plan ahead. Soak the dal and get my cook to grate the veggies for the evening snack - beetroot vadas. I love these because of the protein and vitamin kick. These don't look that fabulous (am blaming it on my camera and my photography non-skills!) but they tasted yum :)

Giving thanks

This New Years day, I gave thanks for:

1. Adventurous kids who obligingly trooped off on the 1-hr metro ride to Chandni Chowk for street food lunch, inspite of some serious jet-lag.

2. Young, affectionate aunts who pamper and play with my kids and give them a break from me! :) Two of S's cousins were visiting and the children had such a blast with them.

3. The awesome street food of Delhi which allows me to consume the entire days' calorie quota in one sitting. Steaming Bhindi parathas, flaky khurchan, super-light daulat ki chaat and spicy aloo tikkis for lunch - does it get any better than this? 

2012 - please please - may you continue to be all about good kids, wonderful family and great food!

Focaccia bread on a griddle

I read this lovely recipe for making a focaccia-like bread on a tawa/griddle (Thanks, Sangeetha, for this and other great recipes!). I did a little tinkering around - I did not have wheat bran and I mixed the wheat flour with maida in about a 1:1 proportion. I'm not sure how the original recipe would have tasted (it looks GREAT, doesn't it? :)) but mine did have a distinct focaccia-like look and feel. The best thing is that there is no baking required and it takes very little time and effort to make this bread. As always, my children are opposites in everything they do. I made the dish specifically for Ads but he didn't like it whereas Y wolfed it down and asked for more :)

It's easy....just don't eat

I posted this on my facebook page some days ago. The caption was "And this is how we maintain a steady size zero" :))

Food....Y's worst enemy

The "picky eater" - it is a nice name for someone who drives their mother nuts!! Y has never been a great eater, right from the time she started solids around 5 months. She weighed a good 3.8 kg at birth but it's all been downhill from there. At one point she was at the 5th percentile for weight. I kid you not. From 3.8 kg to the 5th percentile. I asked her pediatrician (we lived in the US at the time) what he thought about it and he said he didn't see a problem. I wanted to conk him over the head. She had been dropping steadily from 50th, to 30th, to 25th, to 10th and now 5th percentile and he was ok with it???!!!! Pray, when would he start getting concerned? Rationally, I knew enough not to worry. One, she has the skinny genes. Ads for all his voracious eating has his ribs showing, stick-like arms and legs. Their father is slender. I don't put on weight that easily. Y will thank us for this genetic bonus when she is older. Two, she is super-active and I know that over the course of a week, she is probably getting most of her nutrient stock. Three, breastfed babies gain weight less rapidly than exclusively formula-fed babies, babies who are on a diet of breastmilk AND formula during the first 6 months of life, as well as babies who start solids before 6 months. This is something I learnt much after the 5th percentile episode. I wish I had learnt about it earlier since it would have saved me a lot of worry (and guilt, and having to counter unsolicited advice from people)

She is 2 and a half now and mealtimes are my least favourite part of the day. There are precisely 5 items that I know for sure she will eat - omelettes, roasted potato curry, plain white rice, chips and Haldiram bhujia. Except for the omelette, and I concede the potato as well, the other options are so unhealthy! And oh, she will eat anything that's savoury and fried. Murukku, thattai, seedai - all par for the course. I'm not one of those moms who will make a huge effort to churn out creative foodstuff for their kids. You know, the sandwich with the smiley face, the red pepper cut in the shape of a flower, that kind of thing? My rule is - no separate meals prepared for the kids after they start on real solids. They eat what I cook for the adults and if they don't like it, they just stay hungry. So Y has frequently eaten a meal of just rice, or just potato and I compensate by getting her to drain a glass of milk or Pediasure later (half of which she vomits out to spite me!) 

She's growing - more so in length - as well as can be expected. She's very bright and very active. So I shouldn't be worried, and I'm not, except that I think the need for moms to feed their children, and see them eating well, is such a strong emotional need that it takes a huge effort to break out of that mindset. Every now and then I succumb and feel guilty that I must not be trying hard enough, or I'm a lousy cook. Every now and then someone makes a comment like this: She must have developed a squint because she is underweight. Now that's a whopper to lay me low for the rest of the week!

Maybe I can go to more night shows now...?

Exactly a month before her 2nd birthday, my littlest one has finally been weaned from mother's milk. I was a little anxious, anticipating a repeat of Ads' non-stop 3-night crying sessions when he was weaned (at 16 months). However it turns out that since Y is much older now, she can be offered reasons on why she should not demand milk and offered alternatives instead, so it's been unexpectedly easy. Whereas weaning Ads was a relief (I was a working mum at that time and pretty gung-ho about getting my "freedom" back); with Y all I feel is a deep sense of sadness (even depression). My baby is not a baby any more now that she does not depend on me for sustenance and physical comfort. Anyone can feed her now, anybody can hold her in their lap and cuddle and soothe her. But there is also a very tangible satisfaction in having successfully breastfed her for long beyond the mandated 6 months. I suppose I went that extra mile with her simply because she is a girl. Girls (and women) have so many demands placed on their bodies, so many stresses through out their lives, that I just felt I had to give her immune system that extra boost. I had to do my extra bit to shove her firmly along the path to lifelong good health. 

Now - if only that stubborn toddler would not refuse to eat anything that is NOT junk, I'd feel much much happier about her prospects!

Of food and other things

An important lesson I learnt after moving to the States and observing American moms at work was that the sooner you teach your toddler to be independent, the better (for you mostly, but also for your child). I still have a big problem with the western habit of plonking a 6-week old child in her own crib and room, far away from her parents; but other than that, there's a lot of be learnt from the super-efficient way in which American moms teach their children to feed and dress themselves from a very early age. It was a little too late for me to implement these ideas with Ads, but I am trying to remedy that defect now that I have Y to practise upon. She has been a most willing and eager student.

The first thing to know about Y is that, she loves to eat. Period. I've been lucky that Ads is a good eater too, though his menu of choices has gone down but it's still large enough for me not to worry about what he's going to eat when we are on the road. (So why are both my kids so skinny????). With her good motor skills, she is able to grasp a plastic tumbler filled with milk and gulp it down with a minimum of liquid tricking down her clothes. She has been snacking on an assortment of finger foods - paneer and cheese bits, cheese puffs (her favourite), cookies and crackers, slices of apple and banana, and frosted cereal. Not content with what is offered to her on the highchair tray, she insists on snacking from my plate. In the last few days, she has gobbled down a quarter of a roti, bits of bread with nutella and sunflower seed butter, a couple of grapes, and some pulao. With such a cooperative ward, I would be incompetent indeed if I didn't teach her to feed herself by the time she is 18 months old.

She has picked up a few more words like Yeah (she uses it all the time, mostly in context!), Bye, Hi. There's a lot of babbling going on all the time all of which means something I am sure but which is all quite incomprehensible. She is still pretty clingy but doesn't have as much stranger anxiety as earlier. She is constantly trying to find out how things work. Having noticed how we point the remote at the TV screen, she walks around pointing my cellphone at the TV, willing it to spring to life. She points the car keys at the car and my house keys at the elevator button!

Here is a snapshot of Y working hard at some munchies.

Mini-pizzas at 6 am

I decided to make mini-pizzas for Ads' lunch today, and I took a picture of them before I popped them into the oven because they looked so colourful.

Drat -- still can't get perfectly round rotis or pizzas!!!

A new school year

School has started from Wednesday and this year, Ads stays in school for an hour longer i.e. until 1 pm which means he has lunch at school. There were a couple of reasons I needed him to be out of the house for an extra hour.

a) It gives me an additional dose of one-on-one time with Y.

b) He has lunch at school, which crosses off one major task on my to-do list. Hopefully he will learn better table manners as well by observing other kids.

c) He doesn't come back home starved and half-crazy at Y's lunchtime. Managing two hungry and cranky kids was a nightmare.

Thanks to this new arrangement, he has been coming back home full of beans (the result of a satisfying meal ). The only struggle we have now is to get him to nap. He is clearly transitioning to a no-nap schedule, a fact we exploited to the hilt during our recent vacation.

Now that I have to pack lunch for the little fella, I have been looking for recipes suited to packed lunches and nifty presentation ideas for the same. I stumbled upon the Bento lunch and have been completely sold on the concept. I'm going to try it one of these days.

Y starts solids

Y is now five and a half months old and I started her on solids a few days ago. She has been ready and willing for solid food for atleast a month now, but I kept putting it off. It is so convenient to nurse. No sterilizing utensils and spoons, wiping spills, mixing and measuring, dish-washing....Plus a part of me is unwilling to let go of that precious mother-baby bond. But anyway, she started on rice cereal a few days ago and I am planning to introduce apples next week; so in a couple of months I will be lugging around baby food on top of everything else. My heart isn't in it :)

I remember how I slaved over Ads' first feed. Family and friends strongly recommended 'ragi' as the first food. So my mother and I procured fresh ragi flour, cleaned it by seiving through a thin cotton cloth, stored enough for a few feeds then carefully cooked it with milk and a little jaggery. All in the quest of being the perfect mom feeding her perfect cherub the perfect first food. What a waste of time and effort. I must have been the typical paranoid first-time mother, inexperienced and bowed down by the weighty and often unsolicited advice of others.

For Y, I condescended to go to Target and pick out my choice of cereal (instead of leaving that job to S!) and that's all the effort I was willing to take. I am sure she will grow up to be as healthy as Ads even with store-bought food products :)