Pinku-Enchanted Life

Let me start with saying I hate bananas. Always have. Somehow its a fruit I can never get myself into eating in any form and that includes even with ice cream.   So when I said I want to bake a banana bread my household was in splits. Me and bananas just didnt match up. I was however adamant that bake the bread I will. The fact that it was whole wheat, no sugar and very little oil convinced me that try I must. As part of the plan I forbade anyone to eat up three bananas I had kept aside for ripening to the fullest. And on Sunday got down to baking this bread whose recipe I had found at Chef At Large from a fellow member whose name I have forgotten. Ingredients Milk ......................... 2 cup ( I used toned milk) Banana ................. ....... ..3 well ripened Flax seeds .................. 2 tbsp Pure vanilla extract....... 2 tsp Coconut oil ................. 4 tbsp Honey ....... ................. 6 tbsp Whole wheat flour....... 2 cup   Baking powder ............... 4 tsp Baking

For Diwali this year we planned that we would attempt to make sweets at home instead of buying ready made.  Now the partner is the one with a sweet tooth and I only nibble at sweets once in a while. My one weakness however is the rasmalai.  I can have 3-4 of those lovelies and for someone who as a rule doesn't eat sweets, that's a lot. So it was decided that we will make rasmalai as it would be a pity if the maker herself wasn't inclined to eat.  I got out my recipe notes and pulled out my trusted rasmalai recipe.  It iis fairly simple and the only real concern is the timing for taking it off the gas, as over heating tends to break the balls.  This is what you need for it: 2 Litre full cream milk 1 cup sugar - as I mentioned I don't have much of a sweet tooth so this quantity works for  Blanched pistachios and almonds cut into small slivers - half a cup Half a cup cream Few strands of saffron 1 cup milk powder 1 tablespoon all purpose flour/ maida 1/2 teaspoon baking po

Neil French is one of the most amazing advertising legends and his book 'Sorry About The Lobsters'  on advertising is what inspired the post title today. Leaving the tried and tested in order to set out and do something different and exciting needs courage and loads of inspiration, hence reminding myself of Neil French pretty often these days. There have been many advertising greats...but this is one - who is alive and kicking and on my FB friends list to boot (there I have said it...cant stop gloating you see). Neil's work life has been unpredictable and colorful and am sure Neil would agree these are understatements. You may wonder what exactly does Neil French have to do with this post on a food blog so here is how I see the connect: 1)  his booktitle has lobsters - so does this post 2) his life has been about seizing a situation and making the most of it - so is this post Now that I have explained the connect lets get back to the business of Heads...Lobster heads to be

A three day weekend, nothing much to do, a hubby who thinks the only vegetable worth putting in his mouth is a potato and my weekly challenge of feeding him some veggies culminated in a Chinese style dish...whose highlight was the amount of vegetables that went into it. It went pretty well with rice and with bread and did its jobs of putting some veggies in the hubby’s tummy, so thought I should share it here as well. I usually do these food experiments and then forget what exactly I had done and then am at a loss when asked to repeat any of it – so am using the blog as a self note as well. Ingredients: For marination: Boneless chicken half kg,   Ginger paste 2 tbsp, vinegar 2 tbsp, soya sauce 2 tbsp and Tabasco 1 tbsp. Mixed all these well and let it rest for   4 hours. 3 medium size onions chopped into big chunks, 1 tbsp garlic, 250 gms each of tomato, capsicum, French beans and carrots, had fine cut the beans and carrots while the capsicum was cut into bigger slices. The tomatoes w