“With extreme joy, we thank Sanjeeta KK of Lite Bites for photographing the recipes in Indu Bokaria’s “Recipes from a Diary”. Her warmth and friendliness coupled with dedication and passion makes her a pleasure to work with. We look forward to seeing our 76-page, all-colour cookbook in the hands of our readers. If you think the pages look delectable, then you know where the credit lies! Thank you Sanjeeta.” Indu Bokaria, cookbook author.

These beautiful words of appreciation are written by the author of a cook book on her Facebook page for whom I did a photo-shoot last year.

“Desserts are made of sugar and love”  No wonder most of us like to round off their meals with something sweet.

A delicious meal is great, but a dessert is even better. A handful of fresh fruits, few biscuits, a little yogurt or cottage cheese and you are in for a refreshing and healthy treat everyday. Dessert recipes that are easy on the stomach are preferred anytime in my home to heavy & creamy ones.

“We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.” ~ Douglas Adams

Even though I am not a big fan of “Kitchen Gadgets’ per se, I have bought quite a few over the years. Some of which are an absolute essential in my daily cooking while some others live permanently on the shelf, unused and much neglected.

If only my ice-cream maker, juicer, coffee maker, electric kettle can talk…they would probably shout their heart out and tell you the misery of sitting idle for years in dark, lonely and claustrophobic loft of my kitchen 😉

There is no better time than now to be happy again to receive a mail from Natasha, feature writer of a popular Asian magazine ‘Better Photography’.

“I just had a look at your beautiful blog and I must commend you on your work. Your passion for food really shows! There is such love and care in the way you have arranged your food and props. Being a photographer myself, I really love the picture you have taken. There is a beautiful sense of composition and the colours are stunning 🙂 ”

She sent me the above mail a few days back and asked whether she can share a few photographs of mine in their website with due credits to me.

And then came the moment we all were waiting for. I almost held my breath and didn’t move a bit when my children took their first bite. They ate, looked at me and gave a mysterious smile which peaked my curiosity 🙂

I could not make out the taste when I scooped my first bite into Avocado Chocolate Mousse, but with the second bite I was instantly transformed into chocolaty haven. The rich, creamy and buttery taste of Avocado mousse seduced me into taking one bite and then another, till I was scraping the corners and reached the bottom of my ramekin.

The no-cook, easy and quick Avocado mousse taste exactly like how I expect my dessert to be. Food is the most delicious expression of emotions.

“Everything in your life is a reflection of a choice you have made. If you want a different result, make a different choice.” ~ unknown.

More than halfway through the journey of my life and I feel good about most of the choices that I made. Of tying the knot with the man I loved, leaving a lucrative corporate job for taking care of my children and then crossing the boundaries of my comfort zone to learning and reaching out for newer and richer experiences in life. And what a wonderful journey it has turned out to be!

The online journey which started with my blog Lite Bite in 2009 with a strong passion for food, few recipes, a pocket size camera and

A delicious meal is great, but a dessert is even better. A handful of fresh fruits, few biscuits, a little yogurt or cottage cheese and you are in for a refreshing and healthy treat everyday. Dessert recipes that are easy on the stomach are preferred anytime in my home to heavy & creamy ones. Nothing is more  rewarding than to see my children appreciating & preferring these home made healthy desserts over store bought ice creams.

These two desserts are now a regular feature on our dinner table, just that the fruits and the biscuit/cornflakes base keep changing to bring in more variation in the recipes. Cottage cheese and yogurt give that feathery touch and extra freshness to the recipes.

An Indian wedding is a perfect blend of traditions, grandeur, delectable cuisine and sacredness of celebrations. The unbound enthusiasm and the flow of emotions of all the family members have to be seen to be believed.

My children have attended many Tam Brahm marriages of their paternal relatives in Chennai but have never seen any Rajasthani marriage from my side. They were too small to remember anything about my brothers’ marriage in 2004, son was hardly four years and daughter was just a few months old.

During my recent  visit to Udaipur in May 2013, I got a chance to take them to a typical Marwari marriage.  And they were really amused to notice the stark differences between the rituals and proceedings of marriages of two states of India. My daughter quipped that she wants to get married in Rajasthan so that the groom comes riding a horse 🙂

“Desserts are made of sugar and love”  No wonder most of us like to round off their meals with something sweet. In my house most of the times it is a seasonal fruits or even a hot cup of green tea. During weekdays it is either Indian dessert, baked cheesecakes or just a simple and easy fruity dessert like this Pomegranate Mousse’ I made yesterday to end a cozy family dinner.

Mousse is normally made with whipped cream which is slightly heavy for my system. I tend to replace the milk cream with either thick yogurt or cream of coconut in the recipe. Pomegranate Mousse with coconut milk is light, airy and quite easy to make.

I knew very little about rice till I got married and Basmati rice was the only rice I ate and cooked with, as rice is not a staple food to the place I was born. Many households of Rajasthan in India enjoy cooking an occasional Pilaf, a Biryani or simple Daal Chawal (lentil-rice) at times to break the monotony of eating wheat based dishes the whole year.

It was much later in life that I came to know about boiled rice, brown rice, Jasmine rice and many other rice varieties. Now these varieties adorn my pantry and we all love dishes cooked with these nutty, chewy and healthy rice in our meal.

The other day during a house warming ceremony of a friend, we were served an unusual dessert which looked not so pleasant but tasted extremely delicious. I couldn’t stop asking my host about the same and was informed that this is a very special dish made during important functions using Black rice.