Carrot Apple Ginger Soup

Tags

Apples, Carrot soup, Carrots, Ginger, homemade stock

I have been in something of a soupy mood all this month. Food just doesn’t warm me up the way a nice steaming bowl of soup does. You will have noticed that most of the soups I have been making, including my older cream of broccoli or the latest spinach soup have been the very epitome of simplicity. And yet they all pack a punch and in some cases are so filling that we make a meal with a bowl of soup and some garlic bread. Or if there are leftovers from the previous day’s meal, but not quite enough for both of us, then a big bowl of soup added to the meal does the trick. So Yay! for soups, for helping me survive this winter!

The clear chicken soup with lemongrass and veggies that I shared with you a while ago, as also today’s soup, both call for a vegetable stock. Well, it’s very easy to buy the stock of course (though even the low sodium varieties are still very high on sodium as far as I am concerned). I remember that my mother never used to buy stock but used to make it at home by chopping up vegetables and giving them a good boil and a long simmer. But that always left behind a bunch of soggy boiled vegetables, which we didn’t know what to do with.

Pink Lemonade

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Lemon Juice, Lemons, Strawberry, Sweet

It was boiling hot here in Toronto last week. No, seriously! It really was! No one outside Canada ever believes how hot it can get here. But it was like a sauna out there. In fact Wednesday’s temperatures broke some record set in 1949. The weather people even issued a humidex alert and the city of Toronto opened a few air conditioned centers for weary folks to cool down when it got just too hot to be outdoors. Again, I kid you not! And lest you think this is the desi-living-in-phoren syndrome where the NRIs complain of the heat and dust, let me assure you, it isn’t. Even my cousin, who is a pakka Bambaiyya and has come to Michigan (a measly 350 kms from here) for a month, expressed shock at how hot it was.

Now the heat doesn’t affect me so much, since I am sitting at home these days, hunting for a job and waiting like a good little wife for her husband to come home. But when he gets home, he turns the house upside down cribbing about the heat, cranking up the cooling and turning on fans full blast. And this on normal days when it isn’t even that hot. So when the heat wave set in last week, I thought I’d have something cool and spiffy waiting for him when he’d step in.

Fried Apples and Onions

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Apples, Spicy, Sweet

When I was a little girl, one of my cousins introduced me to the Little House series of books. She had just returned from a spell in the US and had brought along the entire set with her. I was completely and totally enthralled as I read about Laura Ingalls and her Pioneer family, about farm life for the small family while America’s wild west was still being settled.

My love affair with the Little House books started once again when I came to Toronto and browsing through the shelves of the public library, found one (I’ll tell you more of my library obsession in another post). The original books had all been written by Laura Ingalls Wilder about her own childhood in the 1930s. Other authors then took up her mantle and after much research, they enriched the Little House series further by writing books about Laura’s great-grandmother Martha’s childhood in Scotland, her grandmother Charlotte’s childhood near Boston, her mother Caroline’s childhood in Wisconsin and her daughter Rose’s childhood in the apple growing areas of Missouri. A total of 32 books.

Strawberry Cake

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Eggs, Strawberry, Sweet

You know what they say about birds of a feather. The people I really connect with are those who are passionate about books and reading or are foodies – those whose eyes sparkle whenever food is so much as mentioned. I implicitly trust these people’s recommendations – whether about books or food. When Aditi, who is such a friend to me, mentioned a certain heavenly strawberry cake on facebook, it stayed in my mind for weeks and I knew I had to, had to try it. But I still kept putting it off, waiting for a special occasion for a special cake. Actually, this cake classifies as an every-day cake, so I needn’t have, really. But then, I (ahem) shouldn’t be eating cake everyday!

Baked Blueberry Oatmeal

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Bananas, Blueberry, Eggs, Oats, Sweet

Tanmoy wanted a new TV. Admittedly, the old one was a big fat antiquated piece, but as far as I was concerned, it worked and I put up considerable resistance to replacing it. After all, what chance does a girl stand against a 47″ LED HDTV when it comes to catching anyone’s attention? But Tanmoy wasn’t giving up, no siree. He wheedled and argued and bargained and went around telling anyone we met how much trauma I was causing him, and I finally had to relent when he made this proposition. The deal was to have home-made breakfasts and lunches on workdays as often as was possible (he very gallantly offered to share the cooking responsibilities).

Apple Pecan Cake

Tags

Apples, Olive oil, Pecans, Sweet, whole wheat flour

Who does not know how to bake a cake? Who wants to be a Cake Goddess (or God, as if such a thing could happen)? Raise your hands. (Or like this post.) Ok. Good. Now that the intention has been declared, lets set about doing it. All you need to do is bake this scrumptious Apple Pecan cake. Seriously, it’s that simple. 1. Read post. 2. Follow recipe. 3. Become Cake Goddess (or God, if we continue to grant the benefit of doubt.)