“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 🙂

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.

Festivals to me are to celebrate the happiness that family & friends share together. A perfect time to celebrate just living! In India we have celebrations all round the year. Festival of lights (and sound) – Diwali being one of the major festivals of India everyone look forward to.

Though the festival is same, people all over India follow different rituals to celebrate it. In South India Diwali is celebrated with a sacred bath before dawn followed by prayers, getting blessings from elders and bursting crackers. While in other parts of India it is more of a pompous fun fare with grand Lakshmi Puja during evening hours and buying gold & other metals on Diwali.

I am neither a sweet eater nor a cracker lover and left to myself will not indulge in both on Diwali day. But my hubby makes sure that I make sweets and he buys crackers for children on Diwali, so that they appreciate the importance of festivals & traditions in our culture.

There comes a time when priorities win over passion and you stand confused and run-down staring at the golden opportunities pass by.

When the equation of life changes…

A senior person from a popular holiday resort in India approached me to get involved in a photo shoot project some days back. A few phone calls and mails from them made it clear that it is going to be a large scale project. The project required more than a weeks involvement and a few out door shoots as well. I asked for some time to think over it, and from then started days of ‘should I’ or ‘ shouldn’t  I’ ordeal.

‘If there is no chocolate in heaven, I am not going‘  ~ Jane Seabrook   Oh no I am not jumping in the bandwagon of chocoholics. I enjoy my celibacy with chocolates barring a few occasional indulgences now and then. And given a choice between different flavors it is vanilla for me.

“Anything tastes good if it has chocolate in it” says my little princess as a matter of fact.  No doubt that this luscious, gooey and seductive food is defined as world’s perfect food by many. A tiny bar of chocolate can save many bad days and meals at home.
I used half of the pack by rolling out the chocolate Truffles and made this no-bake nutty chocolate cake with the rest. Thanks to my friend now I shop for more of these ‘once upon a time disdained’ cookies 😉

All good things in life are simple and I feel that it is our expectations and desire to get more from it makes it complex. The junk food addiction, chopping down trees endlessly to make paper marooning animals of their habitats, plastic menace….we are moving from simple ways of living to the more complex world. And to think of it, the idea of wrapping around leaves and eating apples straight from the tree as done by our ancestors could solve many a problems of modern day living 😉

A fresh fruit in its natural form is my kind of dessert any day and given a choice I would love to serve a plate of fresh fruits to my guests as well to end a meal. “This is not a dessert we will expect from the author of a food blog” is the answer to my query from my guests most of the time.

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.

“Gudia, I would like to eat our simple and traditional food” informed my paternal aunt during her first visit at my home. The very popular rustic treats from rural India Daal Baati and Lapsi (couscous dessert) are on her menu for most of the days. “But both the recipes are way too simple, your small Gudia of yesteryear knows to cook many varieties now, aunty” I tempted her with many food choices. “Some other day, this time lets keep it simple” and she changed the topic of conversation. Huh..of all the exotic desserts I know she opted for Lapsi, a simple 3 ingredient recipe!