This blog is just to record for the future my wonderful menu for the week that was. Without describing further, let me start listing!

Monday 25th Feb: I made More-Kootan and stir-fry vegetables. Mor-kootan is a Kerala dish, made with curd and coconut and some vegetable. I used brocolli to good effect. Oh, it tasted and looked awesome:) Stir-fry vegetables sounds really hep, its nothing really. On Monday I had gone or a walk with a purse in my hand, and ended up buying things to eat worth 19.20 pounds. Stir-fry vegetables was just one packet of lots of cut vegetables ready to be stir fried for 4 or 5 minutes and not more, so they dont lose their crispiness. Indians dont enjoy plain stir-fried vegetables, and I used these for something more innovative in one of the days that followed!

Tuesday 26th Feb: Yes, that was the simple day of Dal and capsicum and rice of course. I have made full use of marrying a South Indian by cutting down on my roti making efforts and cooking rice everyday!!! :) Nothing special, but atleast I cooked! The dal had 2 tomatoes in it, making it slightly more tangy! (tuar or arhar as Northies call it)

Wednesday 27th Feb: This is the dinner day I am really proud of. It represents a high-point in my culinary career as a housewife! This day, wednesday 26th of February 2008 to be exact, I hit upon an innovative scheme to use the remaining packet of stir-fried vegetables consisting of white onions, green peppers, cabbage, carrot, broccoli and probably other things I cant remember. Anyway, I decided to make vegetable fried rice by mixing these vegetables which I stir-fried dutifully for 5-6 minutes with cooked rice for which I used my brand new rice cooker which I had (or should I say we to sounds less mememe types) bought over the weekend. (Now I am sounding like one of those teleshopping network salesamen or women going gaga over any product that comes on screen) After the mixing and turning, I ended this by adding some lime juice (or is it lemon juice, I couldnt care less). So that was that. I also made raitha with onion, cucumber, tomato, green chillis and even radish, the red round variety types which were all cut or diced and mixed into smoothened yoghurt. And my friends, (Indians, romans, britons, countrymen) this was not the end. In my cheffy enthusiasm I also decided to make alu ki tikki to go along on the side! For that just adding boiled peas infused the mixture with a lot of color and interesting taste! (I just wanted to use another cheffy word infused). Those were shallow fried on the tawa, and this was our dinner of the week! I will look back on this day as a glory day of mine, and relate this boring story to all but me to all but me. (to all but me to all but me twice is deliberate)

Thursday 28th Feb: 28th was Papa's birthday and though he is in Bombay or Mumbai we decided to celebrate it by making rasam and bhindi or vendakya or lady fingers or lady's fingers or okra. Of course he doesnt know about it, and of course these are not his favourite dishes but I just wanted to relate the food to an event to make the day and food seem more special. Aha, the only variation I can say I did was use Ponni rice instead of Basmati rice to go along with rasam, logic being to use South Indian rice with South Indian cuisine, and North Indian rice for food of the North variety. The bhindi was made with onion, and the rasam was decent, though still not top-grade, but I am proud of my menu variation the whole week.

Friday 29th Feb: So today is the happy leap year day!!! yeahooo!! To celebrate today, and to nicely wrap up what was an absolutely dreamy foodie week, I made rajma chawal and gobhi-brocolli!!! Of course cooking up an interesting variety throughout the week requires some intelligent forethought, and I had soaked my rajmas yesterday! So we have had our dinner, pati has slept with a smile on the sofa, and I am still gloating about my achievements. I will look back on this blog and remember these days with sweet fondness, especially when there come times of low achievement and boring repetitve, unimaginative cooking and eating.

and a glimpse into the future.... There is rajma remaining, and I plan to use it for tacos tomorrow:) Imagine that!!!!! I love fooooooooooooooooood!!!!