My weekend starts with asking the same question to my family over and again “what do you want for breakfast?”

“Anything other than Idly, dosas, parathas, upma and sandwiches” the instant reply I get to hear from my children and hubby.

“Always take a picture for everywhere you go; if you don’t, then all you just lost was the precious memories and moments” ―Inspiracreatiflife.

It wasn’t too long ago that the only time I would pick up my phone was to just receive calls or send messages.

I am not a tech-savvy person, given a choice I would rather grind my spices old-fashioned way using mortal and pestle than switching on my blender.

I do operate my microwave occasionally and slide in a CD to listen to songs sometimes. But then, if I can get my children to do the task for me, all the better 🙂

There is nothing that heals the soul quite like, a hearty meal, vacation with family and time spent in the company of good friends.

We had a small get-together at our home some time back for which ‘traditional Indian dishes’ was unanimously picked by all families for dinner menu.

We selected some of the popular dishes from Indian cuisine and wrote down the main ingredients used to make those recipes. Tomato gravy, coconut milk, cashew paste, brown onion, yogurt, tamarind paste, no-onion and no-garlic and so on.

“Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it’s much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!” ~ Gaiman.

I received two beautiful cook books, ‘The Café Spice’ and Silk Road Vegetarian’ from Tuttle publishing sometime back .

I was intrigued by the name ‘Silk road vegetarian’. I vaguely remember reading about silk route in my Geography lessons and was eager to find the connection between a ‘road’ and food.

“Ehh..not this oil…wait a minute” mom said and moved away hurriedly only to be back with another bottle of oil in her hand.

She lovingly tilted the bottle and poured a thin stream of that dark coloured oil on my steaming hot savory Baafla baatis (steamed savory buns).

“Baafla Baatis must be eaten only with ‘Kachchi Ghani til ka Tel’ (cold pressed sesame oil)” she told as a matter-of-fact and sat down on the chair next to me.

Back then, I never questioned her food choices….not that I knew much about it either 🙂

My knowledge about Middle Eastern cuisine is very limited, its either a creamy Hummus, spicy Kebabs, handy falafel sandwich or a luscious Baklava. I always think that there is not much scope for a vegetarian to venture into the same. But the past couple of years of food blogging changed my perspective of food and I now enjoy cooking & eating out of my comfort zone.

Sometime in July 2012 when a dear food blogger friend Faith from Edible Mosaic mailed me that she is in the process of publishing her cook book and asked me if I would be interested to review her book. I was excited for her new venture and felt honored to be a part of her world of dreams. A wonderful friend who was the very first AFBLHS guest on Lite Bite and is a great support from the my early days of blogging.

The vast open Saffron fields in Jammu is worth a visit for any traveler in India. I was amazed to see these tiny plants with no prominent shoots and leaves, but just large bright violet flowers with crimson colored stigma or saffron as the main plant body. Acres of farm land could yield just a few grams of Saffron. No doubt the hard work that goes in cultivating Saffron makes this spice rare & pricey.

In India Saffron or Kesar as is called in Hindi, is extensively used in making milk based desserts and for cooking aromatic basmati rice Biryani. Though I don’t use saffron in my bakes, these popular Indian saffron cookies – Nankhatai are my favorite.

It has been long since I invested in a good cook book. I have been collecting cook books from my college days and have more than 200 plus of them crying out for space in my shelf. Somehow most of the books are mere hard copies I hardly refer to for my cooking.

Recently I came across a cook book ‘Cooking At Home With Pedatha’ written by the wonderful duo Jigyasa Giri and Pratibha Jain. The book instantly caught my attention with the elegant cover and the subtle colors giving it an aesthetic look. The simple grandma’s recipes with useful tips and perfect pictures to match up with easily connects with the readers at the first sight.