Blog Bites 9: The Holiday Buffet

Towards the end of last year, in a moment of temporary insanity, I declared that I would try 40 new recipes in 40 days and post about each one until the new year. It was a crazy and exhilarating experience. This year, I have better control over my impulsive behavior. Still, I am keen on making the best of what's left of 2010 and cooking and baking to my heart's content.

The rest of the year is

Warm up with One Dish Meals

October's Blog Bites challenge was to look through your favorite blogs and try a recipe for a one dish meal. Here it is, a big dose of tasty comfort in six different categories. Please click through and read the entries and their sources of inspiration- you might find some terrific new blogs to follow.
The goodness of grains and beans can be the base for so many hearty one pot meals.
Anu makes 

The Radish as Comfort Food

It's a sambar...it's a rasam...it's a dal with features of both; a totally inauthentic recipe but so tasty that you should try it anyway.

I owe a great debt to food bloggers- really I do. It is very nice to learn how to make impressive desserts and elaborate dishes for special occasions. But the coolest thing is when blogs teach me fresh new ideas for everyday meals and different ways to cook

Self-Saucing Cabbage Curry

I love low-maintenance recipes. The ones where I don't need to hover over the pan watching like a hawk, or stir the pot constantly until my arms muscles quiver in protest. Where I can put the ingredients in, say "see ya later" and come back to something good and tasty. This is one such recipe.

It uses cabbage, the inexpensive and unassuming vegetable that can be dressed up in a hundred different

Summer's Last Hurrah

One of the happiest things that happened to me this summer was the direct result of a policy at my workplace. Every Thursday (this started in August and will continue into November), local farmers were invited to set up tents and tables and sell their fresh produce right in the courtyard, in the shadow of offices, hospitals and research buildings, in an urban setting where thousands of employees

Cheesecake Brownies

Has it really been a couple of weeks since I posted anything new on this blog? Time sure flies when you are having fun- and I've been busy knitting myself a sweater, reading some interesting books (more on this at the end of the post), teaching and learning fun new things and generally taking a short unplanned break from blogging. Which can be ever so refreshing and an antidote to blogger's block