Palakoora Pachadi

Ingredients for Spinach Chutney

Indredients :

Two big bunches of Spinach/Palakoora
One Onion ( cut into big peices )
A little tamarind
1 tsp of Coriander seeds
1 tsp of urad dal
6 or 7 red chillies
1/4 tsp of mustard seeds
1/4 tsp of cumin seeds
A pinch of turmeric
3 or 4 fenugreek seeds
salt to taste
6 tsp of oil





Method :

Remove the stems from spinach and wash it. Cut spinach leaves into pieces and keep aside. Heat 5 teaspoons of oil in a pan. Add coriander seeds, uraddal, redchilli, fenugreek and fry until golden red. Remove them to a plate. In the same pan add spinach, tamarind, turmeric and fry them on low flame for 5 minutes. Stir and cook till spinach is completely cooked. When they turn light green, take it out. Grind the fried ingredients to a fine paste. Then add spinach and grind into a fine paste. Lastly add onion pieces to the spinach mixture. Blenderise it again. Take it out and add salt. Heat one spoon of oil in a pan for seasoning. And add mustard, curry leaves one redchilli and cumin seeds. Let it sputter. Add this popu to the chutney and serve with hot rice.

I love Love Bakery

I've been meaning to check out Love Bakery for months but everything has conspired to keep me away from it but today we finally made it to the Kings Road to get some lovely cupcakes from them!

The shop is very cute with lots of lovely flavours to choose from and a couple of daily specials. We got a chocolate with chocolate frosting, a chocolate with cream cheese frosting (both for Manny), and a vanilla and a rose for me! The people working there were really nice and asked what decorations you wanted on your cake and the girl serving us agreed with me that it's all part of the fun of a cupcake to get to choose the decorations. As you can see I plumped for the butterfly covered in glitter - the girliest one they had there.

To the cakes...WOW! The base was soft and very fresh on both my cakes, and Manny's. The frosting was divine and melt in the mouth. Definitely straight into the top five for the Love Bakery!

Vicious Cupcakes

According to the ever cute David and Goliath "cupcakes kill!" - only available from the US D&G - for some reason not available on their UK site!

Not sure about the knife imagery in advertising - I like to think she's using to cut a cupcake in half!

Cuppy Cakes I love you so!!!

Just fabulous - another cute tshirt from Hot Topic.

Unicorns poop cupcakes!

The Pilsbury Doughboy may poop croissants but according to the new cute as hell tshirt from Hot Topic cupcakes are pooped by unicorns! Cute overload!

And also available in larger sizes for those of us who have eaten all the cupcakes ;)

charmed life.

today i came home so stressed and exhausted from my first day of clinicals and guess who...

a. made me dinner

b. rubbed my feet and achey knee

c. cleaned up the dinner mess while i took a snooze

and

d. will probably make me a treat tonight

yep.

you guessed it, mr. isaac westwood.
he is my favorite person in the whole wide world.

isn't this picture a dream, my sister-in-law erin took it. so talented. see more here...

Vegan cupcakes take over the world

A friend of my works for Phoenix PAWS animal rescue and kindly bought me this lovely (brand new!!) book for a measly quid the other day from their shop in Clapham!

It's got some lovely pics in it and I plan to make the margarita one for sure - shouldn't be too difficult to get the ingredients in London as I've had a squizz through them so keep an eye out for my vegan offerings!

Thanks to Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World for the pics - you can check out their old blog here

Radish Sambar ~ Mullangi Pulusu

Ingredients :

One full Radish
One cup Red gram
One chopped Tomato
a little tamarind
1/4 tsp of Mustard seeds
1/4 tsp of Cumin seeds

1 tsp of Sambar powder

1 tsp of red chilli powder
Salt to taste
a pinch of hing
a pinch of turmeric
Oil for seasoning


Method :

Soak tamarind in 1 cup of warm water for 10 minutes. Then squeeze the tamarind extract out of it and keep aside.
Wash and boil the dal with 2 cups of water in the pressure cooker...and cook till 3 whistles.
Then turn off the flame and wait untill the pressure go off. Remove cooked dal from cooker .
Wash and peel the white radish. Cut the radish into medium slices and cook separately.
Heat oil for seasoning. Add Mustard, cumin seeds, red chillies, curry leaves and a pinch of hing. While it pops, add tomatoes, turmeric, sambar powder, tamarind juice and one glass of water. Mix well and cover with a lid. Let it boil for 10 minutes.
After that, add boiled dal, radish, salt and red chilli powder as per your taste. Mix well... Let it simmer for about 5 to 10 minutes.
When it comes to a stage of nice aroma take it out, and garnish with fresh coriander leaves. Good with Rice and Idly..

p-p-p-preview.

here is the first pic our photographer nicole sent us and i'm in love...with my hubster and this picture. i can't wait to see more, in fact i'm dying to see them.

another exciting happening in the life of i&e...

i got a 90% on my first pathophysiology II test.

booya to your grandma.

Tea and cupcakes

Yesterday we made it to the Covent Garden food market, mainly to get our hands on the Crumbs and Doilies flavour of the month - earl grey.

C&D describe it as a subtle and slightly citrussy taste of the English summer, and I have to agree - the flavour was very subtle but very moreish and the frosting was fab! As usual Crumbs and Doilies make the perfect cupcake :) They're only available for June so make sure you go grab one asap!

Pilsbury Dough Boy cutenesss

Last time we featured the Pillsbury Doughboy he was pooping croissants (click here if you didn't see it, its v.funny!) - this time he's part of an ultra cute salt n pepper shaker set! I love the Pillsbury Doughboy (its ocassionally my pet name for Manny as you can poke his little belly just like the doughboy and he hee-eee's just like the doughboy!)

Click here to buy.

Betty Boop cupcake goodies

I saw this really cute t-shirt in Asda today and it led me to doing a bit of a google search on Betty Boop and cupcakes and it seems there's quite a few things out there featuring the cuteness of Betty and the cuteness of cupcakes so thought I'd share a couple of bits.

The perpetual calendar is available here and the cute girlie slippers (only up to size 5-6 girls) are available here or from your local BHS.

Boop-Oop-A-Doop

Bell Pepper Halwa

yes, what you heard is exactly correct. This is not a spicy recipe as you think. It's a very delicious and yummy sweet. I have prepared this recipe with Green bell peppers. You can use other bell peppers also. Here is the recipe..

Ingredients :

Green bell peppers : 6 medium size
Sugar : 1.5 cups
Milk : 1 or 2 cups
Ghee : 50 gms
Cardamom : 2 pads



Method :

Wash the peppers and grate it. Squeeze the water from the grated capsicum / peppers and keep aside. Next.. Soak the grated peppers in the hot water for up to 5 minutes. Now wash it in separate water. Squeeze the water out and keep aside. Melt the ghee in a wide pan. Add and fry cashews to golden color first, and then add raisins to golden balloons. Take it out..In the same pan, add and roast the grated capsicum in it for 10 minutes. When color changes add a desired amount of milk. Boil the milk on low flame with constant stirring to avoid scorching and breaking of milk. When milk evaporates add sugar and cardamom powder. Stir properly.. Love that aroma of the cardamom... When a little water evaporates, add 1 table spoon of ghee. cook for sometime till the sugar dissolves completely. When little syrup remains in it remove it from the flame and spread in a greased dish. Decorate with cashews, raisins and chopped almonds..Now It's absolutely Yummy..

If mawa has to be added, add it after all the water of sugar evaporates. The mawa has to be roasted a little..

This recipe goes to AFAM - Bell Peppers guest hosted by Priya, event started by Maheswari... :)

and also goes to JFI- Chilli .... event started by Indira ...

Lovely Blog Award... :)

I am very happy to receive this award from Sailaja and Sowmya ... Thank you very much sowmya and sailaja.. I am surprised... I would like to share this award with..

1. Ann of Happy and healthy cooking
2. Chaitra of Aathidhyam
3. Gita of Gita's Kitchen
4. Kittymatti of Preethi's online cookbook
5. Mangala Bhat of Recipes 24X7
6. Padma of Padma's Recipes
7. Renu of Renu's Kitchen
8. Sowmya of Creative Saga
9.Vineela Siva of Vineela Siva
10. Vrinda of Sankeerthanam

Please accept this lovely award. Once again Thank you all for your lovely comments and wonderful support... :)

Gesundheit!!!

If you've got the sniffles what better way to cheer yourself up as blow your nose so often you look like Rudolph than the cupcake tissue holder!

I've looked for a UK supplier but not luck, so if you want it you'll have to order it from Perpetual Kid in the US. Good news, if you do order it means you can get cupcake floss and cupcake bandages (plasters) as well! I've found the cupcake plasters in the UK but for about £9 which is just extortionate!

Johnny Cupcakes stud earrings

how cute are these? After all the trouble with my stretching in my ear recently (which I wont go into here but suffice to say keloids=yuk=hospital operation with many surgeons=never again!) I probably wont be having any new piercings but am just wondering if these may be too big to put in my nose - or maybe into one of my existing ear piercings....they're cute and I want them! And they're named after cake flavours....how sweet. Even sweeter is the packaging which gives you the nutritional value for the earrings - calories=zero :)

Each individual earring is about the size of a popcorn kernel. Stud earrings come in 6 delicious flavors: strawberry sprinkle, key lime (glow in the dark!), blueberry cream cheese, chocolate raspberry, black forest and red velvet.

Available from Johnny Cupcakes store for the bargain price fo $15.99.

Thanks to JC for the pics.

Horray!

After trying quite a few store bought cupcakes such as Waitrose (choc mint..yuk and lavender..double yuk) and M&S (vanilla -fairycakes not cupcakes and strawberry..yuk) I FINALLY chanced upon a yummy store bought one last week...from Waitrose. I wasn't going to let a couple of bad 'uns turn me off when I spotted the banana and toffee cupcake, as after a stressful day shopping I was in need of one and was nowhere near a good cupcake outlet.

I got it home - a bit squished, and was suprised when I took off the case of a rather plain looking cake to reveal the huge frosting to cake ratio....this would be Manny's dream ratio if only it were chocolate (he's odd and not fond of anything with a banana in!). The cake was really moist and banana'y and the frosting was fab with chunks of toffee and really melt in the mouth...yay for Waitrose!

Cupcakes with Rosie

On Wednesday we headed to Brixton nursing a wee hangover to try some Franco Manca pizza (FAB!) and popped into Rosies Deli just around the corner for a coffee and a cupcake. Thankfully she had a couple of cupcakes left (she was in the process of baking more when we paid up) as they were really cute and very tasty. Rosie has a book out as well which you can buy here.

I highly recommend popping over to Brixton to try some of Rosie's cakes and coffee and a pizza from FM too :)

Please check out my sketches

Hi, here i am giving few sketches of my own. Please see and give your valuable feedback .

pineapple express.

our third day in hawaii was definitely one of my favs. isaac's parents rented us a jeeper and we drove up to the north shore.

i love the north shore.

first stop: the dole pineapple plantation.

we got quite the kick out of the pineapple express. as you can see isaac is enjoying it...a lot.

these fish!

i could not get enough of them. they grossed me out so much yet i couldn't stop looking. they had a little vending machine of fish food and i dug around in my purse for a quarter but no quarter was to be found. they were sucking, sucking away waiting for some food and i failed them.
what if you fell in there with these slimey creatures!

*if you remember from my previous hawaii post my camera broke, ike's phone saved the day!

a world famous treat! pineapple softserve. yum yum yum.
one of our favorite beaches. we had a picnic here and floated in the waves.
we're in love.

next stop: matsumoto's shaved ice!

this is quite possibly one of my favorite places in the whole wide world. these snow cones are a-mazing. they put ice cream in the bottom and its like no iced treat offered here in utah. trust me, i would know.

our second huge treat of the day. it was the bomb.

we made a stop at the temple and it was beautiful. we toured the visitor's center and guess who gave us the tour! mark eubank, the old weather man from channel 5! yep, retired from reporting the weather and is serving a mission in hawaii. gotta love him.

after our day on the north shore we drove back to honolulu and feasted on hawaiian food.

i miss you hawaii.