Diya’s Fish Tacos!

All aboard with foodie blogging plan. Diya made Fish Tacos! Turned out so good that people started hoarding the next helping, for fear that we might run out! Super fun!

Aadi Makes Luchis (and writes the blog)

The Product

(... with complimentary aloo dum!)

The Process

The Presentation

2019 Resolution - Eat, Eat, Eat!

We are still in the afterglow of our first European Vacation together and can't seem to get out of the food mania it induced. Kids LOVED the food and the trip re-ignited their interest in cooking and exploring new dishes and flavors. So with that, we have made a resolution to make FOOD the focus for this year. Each week we will experiment with a new food - cook a new receipt or find a new restaurant or order something unfamiliar in the menu - and then blog it!

Good luck to us for to keep the commitment through the year. 

With that - the new dish of this week was "apple cinnamon pancakes". Aadi made these and Diya and I added some touches. The recipe was -

Take buttermilk pancakes mix and instead of water (as the default recipe calls for), add milk, egg, butter, finely chopped apples, cinnamon and nutmeg - and cook them on VERY low heat. Enjoy with whipped cream!

As with any good recipe, it took some trial and error. At first we managed to burn these - we had added some ginger syrup to sweeten the batter, but the sugar burnt right away. Another mistake we made was to cook on high heat - this left the batter around the apple pieces to stay uncooked. So basically the pancakes were burnt on the outside and uncooked on the inside. Yuck. But the kids kept experimenting and finally got to success.

It was so much fun to watch them work through this and also resolve conflicts among themselves - the batter is too think, too thin, you need to cook these longer, increase the heat, decrease the heat .... will you let me do what i need to do and stop telling me what to do? Don't give that to Mishti. If I make pancakes, can you make eggs? Should we make bacon with this or sausage? Hey you need to help clean up too ....

Totally loved it! 

Roman Holiday - Day 1.5

Landed in Rome this morning - Dec 24th, around 9:30 am local time. Kids of course are insisting to live in Detroit time. By the time we navigated the Taxi cab jungle and checked into our hotel it was 11:30am. Everyone was exhausted. The plan was to take quick shower and go grab some food and then rest and go out in the evenjng. While some showered, the others napped. The showers shortened and the naps became longer and pretty soon it was 2pm ... so we woke up sleepy kids and found ourselves on streets of Rome, looking for grub, with Help from our friend Yelp. We reached the first pick and found it was closed for holidays, the second promised 'No Stop' service from 11am to 11pm and the proprietor stood on the street explaining the menu- perfect! We had a very nice lunch there - we ended up ordering twice as much food as we needed and Aadi fell asleep after first course. Anyway, we enjoyed the food - and after a hunt for an ATM to draw cash, as no credit card was accepted, we paid and made our way back to the hotel, half asleep. 

4 hours later, it was though but necessary to wake up the kids so can start our transition into Rome time zone. After much whining and bickering we walked to the Colloseum- it was an amazing experience to see it at night. The streets were all empty (eerily so) given this was Christmas Eve and so was the Colloseum. 

We wandered through the streets for another hour or so, stopped at a mini market to pick up some snacks and wine, got some food at a fast food place and finally finished the days eating at the rooftop patio of our hotel - counting down seconds to Christmas! 

A Christmas Eve to remember for a long time. 

All is fair .... if it’s for a good cause!

17 inches off! Donated to 'Children With Hair Loss'. That is the only thought that is keeping Aadi from disowning his short haired Mamma. ,

Now I need to come up with a plan to somehow turn - getting a tattoo - into a good cause effort. Then maybe he will relent and let me do it. Hmmm ... or maybe not ...

The idea of getting a tattoo entered my head while we lived in Texas. EVERYONE had one !!!!!

I want one so bad ... a teeny tiny one, in a hidden spot will be okay too. Everyone in the family agreed - in fact Suvo wants me to get a big one - and why not THE Dragon tatto! Diya wants to design one for me - combining Suvo's suggestion of a Dragon to my desire for a small one ... she has an idea for a Dragonfly!!! 

But Aadi flatly refused and has not budged from his positon despite many many arguments and discussions in the last 2 yrs. He first took the tact of - "you are beautiful as you are, you don't need a tattoo" Awww... but I WANT a tattoo. When I kept pushing he finally told me "if I let you get a tattoo, then you would want a leather jacket and then a motorcycle and then you drive away ...." WHAT ??!!! (Maybe I read him one too many books about 'if you give a mouse a cookie ...'). And there is NOTHING I can say or do to convince him otherwise. 

And then came the resistance to letting me cut my hair short ... which he finally gave in to when I suggested the donation. But he has been struggling with it ... he has reminded himself several times since yesterday that this is for a good cause ... or as he calls it 'common good' ... 

I have realized that he basically does not want me to change in any way. We have had so many big changes in our life recently that he wants some things to be 'Constants' that he can count on. The way l look and act being one. It warms my heart, but also worries me ... I AM going to get old (some day in the far far far future) !!!!

And here is the secret- I don't want the kids to change either .... and they are growing up TOO fast. Somebody stop the clock ... and let me take this moment in and preserve it for eternity. 

Aadi making cupcakes!

Let’s Get HW Done!