Creating new blog...

I am debating on creating a whole new blog on just cooking ideas, recipes and experiments. It will host only food related blogs. Let's see what happens. Right now I have a hard enough time coming up with writing anything at all! But I am always whipping something up in the kitchen...

Fruit Desserts

For Eid I ended up making 3 fruit dishes. Why? I over estimated and had a surplus of fruits so had to do something with it.

Main - Leche de Fruit (ok - i made it up-- have a better idea?)

Combination of soft and hard fruits cut to bite size pieces.
I used: red apples, bananas, starfruit, guava, pineapple

fresh grated coconut shavings
Can of sweetened condensed milk

In a large decorative platter make a thin layer of coconut shavings. Dunk all the fruit in the condensed milk and make layers of fruits and top it all with coconut shavings. The starfruits looked so pretty that I had small toothpicks inserted and the pieces standing like stars around the dish. The kids loved it =)

Fruits 2:

Mix of fruits sprinkled with sugar, garam masala and black salt. I had put it inside a emptied watermelon turned into a bowl.

Fruits 3:

Mix of fruits with salt and kasondi. Kasondi is a mustard seed concoction. It was a nice kick of spicy and and sweet. Kasondi is like a preserve so it keeps if fresh hard fruits.

Eid in Dhaka

Eid in Dhaka and with C and his family was completely a different experience for me. I haven't celebrated Eid in its true sense in many years. This year – we started the festivities off with a Mendhi Night with all the women in the family. C hired two mendhi artists so that everyone could relax and enjoy. I made food to keep all full. It was a hit. Everyone had the hands adorned with mendhi for Eid. Games were played and general good time. Our first “party” was a success. I have always wanted to have such a party and in Dhaka it was possible. The food was a spread of Indian, western and Bangladeshi food – a lil something unique for the palate – a welcome change from the month of pakoras and haleem of Ramadaan. Maybe it will become a tradition for us?!

Food:
Fresh fruit with condensed milk and fresh coconut
Fresh fruit with mustard dressing (served in decorative watermelon)
Fresh fruit chaat w/ black salt (also served in decorative watermelon)
Deviled Eggs
Fresh chutney sandwich
Ground beef kababs
Potato Tikkis (kababs)
Chips with homemade salsa
Fresh watermelon juice cocktail

Yes - a lot of fruit - just ended up overestimating and had to do something with the surplus!

Recipes and Pics are going to be posted soon.

Rainy Day

Its a gray, wet and rainy day in Dhaka. I sat down after almost 10 days of no writing. I had a head full of ideas on what to write from the excitement of Eid in Dhaka to other mini adventures. But, here I am, with nothing to write. Kind of seems pointless. I started this blog, as a online diary, to keep in touch and friends posted on my life away from NY but who has the time to actually read blogs? Unless you are an active part on the online community, why would one read this? To be fair, a few friends read up on my day to day boring stuff. My life has become dull! No amount of creative writing is going to make it any more exciting. For the first time I have a very long period of no activity. Oh, there are things to keep me busy... but nothing to write home about, literally =)

I guess I'll post a couple of recipes and maybe some reviews.