Best of 2012

It is that time of the year again, time to celebrate the arrival of new year and think about the good, bad and the ugly of the past year, make resolutions so that that the bad and ugly don't repeat again in the new year.

2012 has been quite eventful, many ups and downs, both in my professional and personal lives. It has been a year with mixed bag of emotions, some really low moments that I hope never repeat. On the brighter side, biggest high of this year is the addition of our tiny bundle of love, Disha who came into our lives in September.

So here is my list of Best of 2012:

Best Ingredient: Silk Very Vanilla Soymilk is my new favorite. Its great in coffee, on cereals, for baking, and everything that needs a slightly sweet milk. I always keep my fridge stocked with this yummy beverage.

Best Blog Posts for the Year: Blogging wise I have to thank Valli for Blogging marathon. Without BM I'm not sure if I would have been as active with blogging as I was this year. Big Thanks to you Valli -- Wishing BM many many years of successful marathons.

Also contributing to the increased number of posts is Vegan Month of Food (Vegan Mofo) event in October. I surprised myself with 24 posts in October.

Coming to the best blog posts with the highest number of hits this year: Eggless Lime Cookies & Vegan Mug Cakes.

 

Here are some of the pictures of dishes that I loved making and clicking over the past year.

Dorie's Split Level Pudding: 

Grilled Eggplant Sandwich:

Bengali Bora'r Jhol:

 

Lapsi:

 

Kaju Badam Katli:

 

So here's Wishing all of you a very Happy & Prosperous New Year 2013.

Sending this over to Valli's "Best of 2012" event.

Bread Omelette

This will be my last and final post for Blogging Marathon for this year. Thanks to Valli for organizing these monthly marathon and also coming up with interesting and challenging themes every month.

Thokkudu Laddoo (Revisiting Old Recipe)

Merry Christmas to All of you. Hope all of you had a great time today. 
My mom has been cooking up some delicious treats for us. For this holiday, she made "Thokkudu Laddu" so I can update the old recipe with a new picture.

 

Kohlrabi Curry (Revisiting an Old Recipe)

My theme for the last week of blogging marathon for this year is "Revisiting Old Recipes". Very apt for this time of the year when all of us are reminiscing on what happened through the year and making new resolutions for the upcoming new year. 

Eggless Zucchini Chocolate Cupcakes

For the 3rd day of BM# 23 under "Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes & Muffins", I made Zucchini chocolate cupcakes with a fudge chocolate frosting. Even though these cupcakes are not technically considered "healthy", they sure pack a healthy amount of shredded zucchini. By substituting the white flour with whole wheat flour and reducing the sugar a little bit, these cupcakes can definitely make a healthy and delicious breakfast food. Since it is the holiday season, I didn't make any healthy substitutions.

Eggless Chocolate Vanilla Cupcakes with Mocha frosting

Today's "Eggless Chocolate-Vanilla Cupcakes" are a result of contradicting requests from the kids. When you ask kids what flavor cupcake they want, half of them scream "VANILLA" and the other half want "CHOCOLATE". But most of the time we only have time to make just one type of cupcakes and these two-in-one cupcakes seem to satisfy everyone.

Eggless Banana-Chocolate Chip Muffins

Today we begin the 3rd week of blogging marathon, BM# 23 and my theme for this week is "Egg less Chocolate Cupcakes & Muffins". With a chocoholic 5 year old at home, its almost impossible for me to not take up this theme, so now you know who is happy at home!!!

As I was thinking about this week's theme, I realized that I haven't posted many recipes that are eggless. Even the eggless bakes that I have posted usually use store bought egg replacer powder or some other ingredients that are not commonly available in an Indian household. So for the next three days, I'm going to post recipes that use ingredients that are very commonly available in any pantry, even those that don't bake much.

Lapsi (Broken Wheat Halwa)

For the 3rd day under "Traditional Dishes" theme for this week's Blogging Marathon, I made Lapsi. Lapsi is made with broken wheat, ghee (clarified butter), sugar and milk (or water). From what I gather lapsi is very common in Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Potato (Alu) Muruku

For the second day under "Traditional Dishes" theme, my mom made these crunchy and delicious Potato Muruku. I already posted 2 muruku recipes, one with dalia and the other traditional recipe with rice and urad dal. Adding potato gives the muruku nice crunch and you can definitely taste the potato.

Gujia

I'm excited about this week's Blogging Marathon because my theme for this week is "Traditional Dishes" and since I have my mom here with me, I was really able to make the dishes the traditional way. Valli wanted us to choose 3 dishes from the 10 she listed. I had only made 1 or 2 dishes out these 10 and so I was game to try the rest.

Carrot Kheer

As I was thinking of dishes to make with carrots, I realized that carrots are probably one of the very few vegetables that I eat in a dessert. I've seen a number of other vegetables being made into desserts like halwas with bottle gourd, green peas, etc, but I've never made them myself. May I should give them a try in the near future.

Carrot Patoli (Carrot Paruppu Usili)

Today's Carrot dish for BM# 23 is a healthy curry that incorporates veggie and lentils, one of my favorite combination. Being a vegetarian, protein intake is something that I'm watchful about and when a dish incorporates a healthy veggie and a protein, I'm super happy.

Paruppu usili or Patoli (in telugu) is a dry-ish curry that can be made with different vegetable like green beans, cabbage, cluster beans etc. When I saw PJ post her carrot paruppu usili, it looked awesome and I decided to try it today. My mom made this dish and here's how she made it:

Carrot-Coconut Rice

I can't believe it's December already and in few short days we will be in a brand new year. Today we begin 23rd edition of Blogging Marathon and my theme for this week is "Cooking with Carrots". 

I like carrots and I add them to rice dishes and mix them with other veggies to make curries, pasta sauces etc. But when I think about it, I don't usually make dishes only with carrots. So when I saw this theme, I thought of trying dishes that highlight and have carrots as the main ingredient.

Strawberry Ice Cream (Eggless)

Even though it's not technically winter yet in our neck of woods, temperatures have been hovering around freezing for the past few days. I have started to think about summer already and to remind me of the hot weather I'm posting my Strawberry ice cream recipe. This post has been in my drafts since summer but I haven't had a chance to post it, I thought it's better late than never. Also it's probably summer in some part of the world and I'm sure they have strawberries in season.