Hats off to all women

So 2020 has been mostly spent being locked in your homes. Needless to say, most of the burden of managing the house, kids work, food, etc has fallen upon women. Not to mention they might have their own jobs to take care of. For some the job might be saving the entire planet as in the case of our health care workers. Despite that they are at the forefront when any imbalance happens at home. It is rewarding to see the kids run to mom for any problem but I have to admit it can also be taxing. Have been talking to various people on why that is the case and one of the conclusions I have come to is that women have more inbuilt empathy and sacrifice. We sacrifice our own needs for that of the family. Hats off to all the women working silently to save their families.

It takes a village..

to online teach a child. Also takes moving out all distractions from the room, larger screen, no touch screen to avoid playing around, removal of all other apps from the computer, removing the mouse and at times even letting go and let the child do some pranks :P

Hello world!

It's 2020 and the world is locked up due to corona. I thought it might be a good time to revive this blog and write about thoughts -good, bad and random that come to my mind. At first I miss so many things - travel, parents, friends get together and eating outside. But I am also thankful to be in an industry where I can work from home and I also love the additional kids time I get :-). Here is to new beginnings and new experiments with words!

Grilled eggplant sandwich with basil pesto

Alright its back to cooking season! Cooking cooking and cooking like never before. With mom gone and Alaina moving on to a preschool, I have to take up cooking. I am always on the lookout for short cut recipes that I can quickly make and relish. Today I prepared grilled eggplant sandwich with basil pesto for dinner totally loved it. I had come back at 6 pm after picking up Alaina. The traffic was a total mess today and it took me more than an hour to do 8 miles! Anyways, the recipe is as follows -

For the grilled vegetables -
Eggplant
Zucchini
Bell pepper
Grill for 20-25 mins at 425F.

For the basil pesto - 
1 cup fresh basil
1 garlic
2 tblspn pine nuts
4 tblspn parmesan grated 
Loads of olive oil
Mix it in the food processor and have it fresh

For the sandwich - 
Multigrain oat bread

Serve it with fruits :-)

Baked Vegetable Wrap

Yesterday I made Quinoa Biryani recipe by Vegan Richa . This one turned out to be really great. I made a minor modification to the recipe as I did not have cashew cream. Instead I took a half ripe tomato, added a few black pepper and 1 tsp yoghurt and put it in the blender. And then added this to the gravy. I really liked it. Today I thought of making a vegetable wrap recipe. I had a few broccoli in the fridge and they were drying out. Also I dont like carrot vegetable made the Indian way (which is my husband's favorite) so I thought I could use them and bake them to make both of us happy. Here is the recipe -

Ingriedients -
To Bake -
3-4 floret Broccoli chopped
3-4 floret Cauliflower chopped
1 small eggplant cubed
1 carrot sliced into rounds

Toss a little olive oil and salt. Preheat oven at 425F. 
Put parchment paper on the baking tray and heat the veggies for 20-25 mins.

For Wrap -
whole wheat Wrap
Avacado diced into small cubes
spinach

In the wrap put the spinach and the avacado and then put the baked vegetables. 

This turned out really well and my hubby liked it as well. I think it is a good way to eat the broccoli and the carrots ;).

Mau Mau

Toddlers have a funny way to communicating and a strong observation. I have seen kids different words for simple things like water, milk, etc. My daughter uses mau mau for water and one day when I closely examined her water bottle I realized there is a small cat on the bottle and a cat says meow meow..

Mushroom Avacado sandwich

These days, every morning I am hunting for breakfast ideas to try to please my daughter and ofcourse my husband who cant tolerate a lot of deviation from the normal. I also do not want to spend a lot of time preparing the breakfast as my mornings are generally jam-packed until I step out for the office. At the same time, I want the breakfast to be a nice healthy start. This is one recipe that my hubby liked but did not get an ok yet from my daughter.

Ingredients -

Multigrain bread
Avacado thinly sliced into long pieces
Baby Mushroom chopped
Spinach a bunch
Tomato diced into fine cubes
Garlic powder
Salt to taste
Olive oil

Method -
Bake the mushroom. Or lightly saute them in olive oil. 
Put spinach and tomato for a minute. 
Add a little garlic powder and salt.

On a toasted bread put the mixture and avacado slices.
Add parmesan cheese if needed.

Vegetable Wrap with Hummus recipe

Mom's recipe!

For the Hummus
1 cup chickpeas
1.5 tblsp Tahini
1.5 tblsp lemon juice
Little black pepper
1/2 tsp Jeera Powder
1 tsp Olive oil
1 garlic
Salt to taste

Method: Soak chickpeas overnight. Pressure cook it for 3-4 whistles. In a blender, put olive oil, tahini, garlic and lemon juice along with the chickpeas and blend it.  

For the Wrap
1 Grated Carrot
1 small cut zucchini
1 cup moth (or moong) sprouts
1 cup spinach
1 small red onion chopped
1 small bell pepper thinly sliced
1 Avacado cut into small pieces

Method: Heat the wrap and spread the hummus on it. Put all the vegetables in it. That's it!

Pasta Pasta

Here are two pasta recipes I liked. The first one is what I tried last weekend. Here is the recipe -

Cook Penne for 10-15 mins (as per the instructions on the box)

In a pan fry -
1/2 onion chopped
1 tomato
1 cup mushroom chopped
1 cup spinach
1 zucchini

Mix pasta in it and add 2 tblsp Pesto sauce (I like the one I got from Whole foods) Serve it topped with Parmesan cheese. Here is another one that I had in office today. I had it just before my presentation so did not get time to decipher it properly but I will try it this weekend to see how it turns out

Cook Penne (or any other pasta you like)
In a pan add olive oil and sundried tomato
1 cup spinach
1 cup mushroom (if you like)
2 tblsp pine nuts lightly toasted

Add pasta and serve it with feta cheese.

First

First blog after the birth of my baby. What a bundle of joy she is. Life has changed so much - diapers, feeding, burping now rule my day. There is so much to write, so many feelings to share and so many moments to talk about and so many new learnings that I discover each day to brag about, but right now 6 weeks post baby I am just falling short of words to describe the miracle of life! Right now I am just exhilarated that she has outgrown the first set of clothes - actually diapers. Yes she has outgrown her newborn N sized diapers and has moved on to size 1. Yippie :-) PS: You learn the real meaning of sleepless nights only after a baby!