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Rustic Summer Plum Tart
I have been taking daily walks in our neighborhood during this work from home phase. Boundaries between the "work time" and "home time" have become hazy for so many of us, that it helps to set small rituals to remind you of just that. Our ritual is to go for long evening walks across our neighborhood right after I finish my work and before we start dinner prep.  There are so many things I am noticing about our neighborhood that I never did before! Like there is a beautiful creek and an old style footbridge tucked away merely a mile from us (I had no idea!).. and how many of our neighbors have fruit trees in their front yards - all laden with apricots, plums and lots and lots of apples! The apples are still small and green, but the plums are ripe everywhere.. we often see perfectly good plums lying on the sidewalks fallen from a tree laden with fruit. As you can imagine, we are over-flowing with plums at our house as well - some given by our youn…

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Easy Bread Loaf & Summer Home Activities!
I caught on to the COVID home baking trend pretty early on, I think. It started with a need to make a sandwich loaf at home but once I mastered that, I realized that baking bread, even without a bread machine, can be super easy and deeply satisfying - just as long as you have access to flour and yeast!  My mind has been set for a while now on learning to bake a crusty bread loaf.. the kind of loaf with thick crusty skin and soft fluffy bread inside that you can dunk into hot soup and enjoy. I came across this recipe on King Arthur Flour and true to it's name it was indeed a very easy bread loaf to put together.  I didn't change anything from the original recipe except halving it and making one bread loaf instead of 2. In the hindsight however I should have made 2 for the work of 1.. the one loaf I made in the morning was long gone before the dinner time :) I am sure to be making this bread loaf again and again now. A keeper recipe. Summer Home Activities: T…

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Flax-Seeds Chutney (Javasachi Chutney) & Reading Update
Javas (or brown flax seeds) chutney is a quint-essential Maharashtrian condiment. Easy to prepare, cheap due to the abundance of flax seeds in the region and super tasty. This chutney is a staple of farm lands, where fresh roti (or bhakri), this chutney with a glob of oil and some sabji can make a flavorful easy to prepare everyday meal. While flaxmeal (ground flax) is more common in supermarkets across US, for this recipe I prefer using whole flax seeds. You can find them at Trader Joe's or buy bulk from Amazon of this Bob's Red Mills brand. The "recipe" is super simple. Roast 1C golden flax seeds and 4-5 large peeled garlic cloves on medium heat stirring frequently until they release a nutty aroma and are starting to turn brownish. Often flax seeds pop while you are heating them, so be careful not to be to close to the stove. Remove from heat and let them cool completely. Once cool, add the roasted flax seeds and roasted garlic cloves to the bl…

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Zucchini Paratha & A Sudden Sweet Tooth
I love the changing seasons -- like now, a crisp and flowery spring is giving way to hot summers, just as the life we know it is inching back to what is likely a new normal for the rest of the year. The usual bearers of the summer events like end of school carnival, trips to local ice-cream parlor and visits to the magnificent California beaches were very much muted this year... but one thing screamed summer loud and clear - and that is lots and lots of zucchini and stone fruits in our CSA boxes! For last few weeks, our CSA box has been overflowing with zucchinis, peaches, plums, nectarines and juicy California apricots. We have no problems finishing any amount of fruit at our home but finishing loads of zucchini is another matter :) This year, along-with grilled zucchini, zucchini "spaghetti" and zucchini raita, one new thing I introduced in our rotation is this zucchini parathas.  The recipe is very similar to the methi and chard paratha I have posted …

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Spaghetti Pomodoro
One of the things we miss the most in this stay-at-home phase is going out to our favorite local restaurants. Sure, we can always do takeout, but it just doesn't feel the same without the anticipation of the evening out or the ambiance. So instead we have been cooking at home, a lot - but we also crave a few of our go-to restaurant dishes, like this sauteed kale with garlic from Din Tai Fung or the spaghetti pomodoro from Campo de Bocce.  Campo de Bocce is a lovely Italian restaurant chain in Norther California combining scrumptious family style Italian food with the appeal of outdoor bocce courts to play a few games! It's a lot of fun with a large group of family or friends, where you can combine fun of playing a few bocche rounds and nibbling on their amazing appetizers or enjoying a relaxed brunch! Anyhow, my favorite dish of their menu is the humble spaghetti pomodoro. I have been attempting to re-create it at home for a while now, but my att…

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Stay-at-home Food & Activities
It is hard to believe we are in the week #11 of stay at home here. Over 10 weeks of home-schooling, 77 days of not going out for sightseeing or dinner and over 230 meals made at home later, here we are!!  The cycle of the prepping, cooking and cleaning is endless! Managing work and home-school has been a bit of an adventure with kids sneaking on and off into work meetings and parents walking into school zoom :) but on the whole we are settling into the new rhythm well and might I say, even enjoying it a bit. It has been stressful to see the news; but personally also enjoying no daily commutes, no drop-off and pickups and just less juggling social commitments with everything else. With so many meals at home, our kitchen has been churning non-stop! I learnt to make a few things from scratch not being able to just go out and buy prepped ingredients - like this dosa and idle batter for example. We always bought dosa/idle batter, but now with the abundance of …

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Polenta with Ultimate Spring Vegetable Saute
Early in the lock-down days, I subscribed to CSA deliveries. So every week a box full of fresh veggies and fruits gets delivered to our home. It has been a huge source of respite and inspiration to see the familiar farmer's market fresh veggies during these lock-down times - not to mention I feel good about playing our part in supporting local farms who are feeling particularly challenged as local restaurants slow down. This polenta with spring veggie saute is a spur of the moment creation from looking at the CSA box and thinking of what to make. Last week we got fresh fava beans in pods, early asparagus shoots, celery, young garlic and some mint sprigs.   Preparing fava beans: To prepare fava beans, remove them from pods (get your kids to help with this step! :) ). Boil water in a small pot, add fava beans to boiling water for 2 minutes. Remove and drench them in ice-cold water to stop cooking. Remove from the icy-water and shell the beans to remov…

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Quick Lunch: Lavash Wrap w/ Roasted Veggies
I finished week 8 of working from home this week! Wow, but who is counting, right? There are so many things which are so heartbreaking about this current phase we are in, not to mention sufferings of so many; but just to look at the bright spot a bit, I find myself starting to like the perks of remote working too - like no commute to and from work (which in bay area traffic is saying something!), no waking up early in the morning to prepare for school drop offs and the best perk of all has been getting to spend sooo much time with my daughter.  We are always running around so much, this new forced isolation has helped us connect better as a family and just slow down the pace of the day a bit. Still not to say that the weekdays don't fly by! By the time Friday afternoon rolls, I am just about ready to shut the work laptop off and spend the next two days reading books, playing board games and baking some treats or just napping! Lunches have been especi…

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Home-made Pizza
At our home we do Friday pizza nights. The pizza is usually "home-made" but with store-bought dough. I have always used Trader Joe's dough which is convenient and makes good pizzas. However as is right at this time, we are trying to not hit the stores for every small thing and trying to make alternatives at home as much as possible.  So I decided to try my hands at making pizza dough. Surprisingly it was extremely easy and so tasty, making me go "duh" why haven't we made it before. Home-made dough while being very easy to put together was so much more flavorful than store bought one. It elevated our pizza 10x notches! I don't think I'll be going back to the store bought one anytime soon, atleast not on days when I have time to let the dough rise. I loosely followed this  Food Network recipe but changed the proportions to suite the amount we need and also tweaked to the ratios that had worked for me with the flour I am …

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Wild Rice Veggie Bowl & Kindle Love
I love eating veggie bowls for my work lunch. However I don't make them at home as often, so with this stay-at-home period I am hoping to add a bowl into the lunch rotation once a week! Bowls are super simple and super adaptable to what you have at hand - making them particularly attractive options these days. A good bowl essentially has a few components, each prepared separately and put together at the end customized to eater's taste: Cooked grain: this serves as the base. It can be plain cooked rice, wild rice, couscous or quinoa. Protein: baked tofu is my favorite but can also use roast chicken or boiled egg. Veggies: roasted broccoli, sliced onions, avocados, cucumbers, carrots, chopped cabbage, micro-greens all good :) Garnish: sliced nuts or sesame seeds A good bowl comes together quickly and is a healthy powerhouse. This version with wild rice is my particular favorite. The only other thing I would add to this is sliced avocado …

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Home-made Sandwich Bread Loaf
This social distancing is inspiring a new wave of home-bakers don't you think?! Along with the usual suspects such as hand sanitizers, wipes and toilet papers, it was interesting to see that even the humble bottle of yeast was out of stock almost everywhere! I guess during these uncertain times simple skills like bread baking can be deeply comforting. Or perhaps baking serves as a creative and therapeutic outlet to battle the anxious news surrounding us... whatever may be the reason, I am happy to say that I have joined the bread baking bandwagon as well :) So on a Sunday morning we set off making our first loaf of bread. I wasn't ready to attempt a sourdough starter, and besides we eat simple sandwich bread loaf a lot often than a crusty round loaf. I followed this recipe  to the T and to excellent results! The bread came out just as we expected and the whole process start to finish was very easy. A perfect recipe for beginners who don't have …

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Chocolate Bundt Cake & Another Week of Stay-At-Home
I now completed 3 weeks of working from home; and 2 weeks with family working from home. The second week brought with it much needed smoothness in our daily routines. We went for walks everyday; made simple dinners every night which served as left-over lunches for the next day and found us managing our work time with daughter's remote learning time without anyone having to pull their hairs apart - all in all, it was harmony and I think we are settling into this new normal :) I found some strategies which work well for us, the first is time limiting the news hour and coronavirus topic at home to evenings 5-7pm, which hugely helps manage stress/anxiety particularly as kids are always listening, even if we don't think they are! The other is shifting the kids school week so that she has no work on Mon/Tue two of my busiest workdays while she makes up for those days on our weekends.  We also set aside some time every week to just have family fun - cook…

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The No Fried Batata Wada (Potato Fritters)
One of the silver linings for me during this stressful stay-at-home period is that it's the first time I really spent so much time with my daughter at home! Otherwise it has always been daycare or school or summer camps - we took vacations together, sure, but those were generally time spent away from home.  It has been lovely spending more time and doing more activities with my 8 year old. One of which has been trying new recipes or making something we haven't made in a long long time.. generally by her "farmaish" or request. This is how one rainy and cold afternoon we decided to make batata wada. Batata wada is a crowd pleaser deep fried dish which almost everyone loves! However I am not a fan of deep frying and also at these times wasting a whole bunch of oil after frying seems a bit risque move, don't you think! So we settled on a plan B - which is using my trusted aebleskiver pan (or appe patra) which had been sitting catchin…

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Pantry Meals & Social Distancing
Here in California we finished our first full week of social distancing and shelter-in-place. It's an unprecedented time which calls for unprecedented actions and co-operation from everyone.  The usually overflowing bay area freeways were empty this past week and home streets were lined with parked cars as most of the residents stayed home and practiced social distancing and did the best they could juggling work from home with kids' school from home. It was hard to get going at first but I think I am settling into this new rhythm. Even as we complain about small inconveniences, I keep reminding myself that we are amongst the more fortunate ones - not having to worry about living paycheck to paycheck or having jobs to go back to or with elderlys or folks with special conditions to care about. Like others we spent a bunch of time getting groceries and pantry organized. We stocked our pantry with staples such as different kinds of rice (plain, w…

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Persimmon Smoothie
This weekend was the last weekend of Persimmon season in our farmer's market around here. Generally Persimmons are all over by end of December but this year winter has been mild and so we have persimmons for much longer as a delicious side effect of that :) But, sooner or later I suppose the persimmons need to give way to juicy oranges and then to spring berries. We devour persimmons when in season. The Fuyu variety in particular is our favorite. Persimmons are perfect for after dinner fruits - when ripe they are so sweet like candy that you won't miss desserts! However the fruit can be overripe soon if you don't finish it off quickly - when that happens this yummy persimmon smoothie comes to rescue. It is super simple and takes only 2 minutes to make.  Blend together: 3 ripe persimmons chopped into cubes (we keep the skin but feel free to remove skin if you prefer that way). 1C almond milk (or regular milk or soy milk etc) adjust t…

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