Yesterday we celebrated Vishu, a holiday in Kerala to celebrate springtime, the new year, and new beginnings. I unfortunately did not do anything for the holiday in 2022 due to its being on a weekday and having to work, but I celebrated it for the first time with my own family in 2021. The day…
Category: Family
Our Trip to London & Paris
*Due to a technical glitch, this original post from October 2022 was reposted in March 2023. August was a fun month of more travel! After recovering from our trip to Singapore followed immediately by a family wedding in New Jersey, we had a couple of weeks to prepare for our family trip (minus my youngest!)…
One Month of Homemade Meals
My in-laws who live with us have been in India for the past month, so like last year, I made sure to create a weekly meal plan to eat the manrotjty of our meals at home! Meal planning may seem daunting to prepare for, and to be honest I did feel anxious about the daily…
Isla is 3 and a Mediterranean Dinner Menu!
It’s a bit crazy to think that Isla was born JUST before the world shut down from a global pandemic. She arrived on 3/17/2020 as our own little four-leaf clover! We visited her school on her day off to share a cookie cake with her school friends before the fun festivities that evening. Last year,…
Happy 2023!
Last year I made palappam, one of my favorite Kerala breakfasts as a treat for New Year’s Day. It is a bit labor intensive, and I haven’t made it since! I thought it would be nice to make it an annual tradition going forward. It’s fun to have the kids more involved in the process…
Holiday Traditions!
Kids of immigrant parents know that Christmas traditions weren’t typically a thing. That is why I am making it a priority to create memories for my kids around the holidays! They will remember the things they did with the people they love far more than the gifts they unwrapped. One tradition I want to uphold…
Mom’s Recipes: Spicy Fish Curry
Here’s another red hot recipe (literally). In full transparency, I sought some help from YouTube because following my mom’s verbal instructions never yielded the deep red color that she achieves when she made fish curry. The picture above is actually from when my mom recently made this dish using Porgy. The last time I made…
Mom’s Recipes: Kappa (Spicy Mashed Yucca)
Today I’m sharing another favorite dish that I consider to be some serious comfort food: kappa, or spiced mashed yucca. The hardest part about this dish is peeling the tough rind off the yucca, but you are welcome to buy pre-cut frozen yucca instead. The rest of the cooking process is super simple and, as…
Spicy Chicken Kebabs
When brainstorming weekly meal planning ideas, I try to come up with something that takes fairly minimal effort and utilizes ingredients I already have on hand. A few weeks ago, I had a craving for spicy chicken kebabs with a nice Greek salad. They were pretty easy to whip up for a weeknight dinner, not to…
Kabocha Squash Curry (Mathanga Erissery)
I used to call this a pumpkin curry, because I figured an orange fleshy fruit that tastes pumpkin-y was a pumpkin. I later learned that it’s actually called a kabocha squash (Japanese squash) which just sounds way more intriguing and exotic. Also, how fun is the word kabocha? I always loved this dish which is…
Mom’s Recipes: Palappam
I am beyond excited to share this recipe because it is absolute my FAVORITE Kerala breakfast! Idli sambar is a close second. Typically our breakfasts are savory/spicy, but sometimes we opt for mildly sweet breakfasts. The sweetness comes from, of course, coconut. I would not call this dish particularly sweet like American pancakes, but they…
How I Meal Prep
Nowadays, everyone can google “meal prep” and find countless examples of how to plan and prepare meals at home for a healthy week ahead. Ever since starting a new job where I no longer get free hot meals for lunch (those previous meals were mediocre at best and could hardly be called healthy anyway), I…
pen . paper . storm 