General

Hi friends,

Here’s a new design that was in the pipeline for quite some time. Finally it is live. I’ve tried my best to give a unique identity to Aayi’s Recipes with a matching color scheme, a header and more.

Please leave your comments if you experience any problems with the new look.

I also invite you to provide your feedback and constructive suggestions. Thanks to those of you that have already provided your feedback. Thanks a lot.

As always your support and encouragement is the backbone of Aayi’s Recipes.

UPDATE:

Friends, I appreciate all your comments, feedback and suggestions. I’ve fixed a few problems with the new design.

It’s so fulfilling to see so many of my regular readers, who normally wouldn’t leave comment, – come forward and comment since last few days. It’s really getting more interactive by the day. I love getting feedback from all of you who visit Aayi’s Recipes and try out recipes posted here. Please keep sharing your thoughts.

And yes, ofcourse, I get encouraged immensely by my blogger friends who make the food blogging community a better place.

Thanks… 🙂

After the persistence of the previous ‘Watermelon’ theme for so many months, it was time for a change. Aayi’s Recipes has a new look and feel now. The redesign is an effort to improve neatness and reduce clutter. At the same time improve usability.

Still there is lots to do and fix a few missing elements from the earlier theme. That will be done in a phased manner.

The design is still in beta (as they say), so any constructive suggestions, comments are most welcome.

I am noticing that some people are blatantly copying images as well as recipes from this blog along with exact text and description and posting on their blogs. This is seriously disappointing. Especially when thousands of readers have benefited and appreciated the effort that has gone in to developing, maintaining and creating content for AayisRecipes. So many of you have written to AayisRecipes appreciating efforts and time that is spent here. The testimonials in the form of emails and contents have been huge and I highly appreciate that gesture and feel encouraged to continue posting content on AayisRecipes. No one would want to discourage this effort, as far as one can think. Copying this effort would certainly be discouraging.
It is neither respectful, nor appreciative of copying the content of this blog in any form without acknowledging or crediting the source. While this is not a claim for 100% ownership/copyrighting of the content here, I expect that the effort on AayisRecipes should be recognized,respected and attributed.
It is a sincere request to those who copy content, to delete the copied images and text immediately and stop copying in future. This would also mean that I continue to work on improving and adding recipes you like to AayisRecipes. Please take copyright and attribution seriously.

Read more on Manisha’s blog on why you should take this seriously.
It is also a sincere request – If you are regular reader, occasional and/or you have benefited from AayisRecipes in whichever small way, then please do not support copying content and continue your encouragement and show your support.

Please stop blog piracy.

Our dear friend Meeta is doing a great job with The daily tiffin. She updates it regularly with amazing pictures of her kid Soren’s lunch boxes. Now as she is busy with work, she needs co-administrators to continue regular updates to the blog. Read more about it here. If anyone of you is interested in sharing your ideas, please feel free to contact her. It would be a great help for all the mothers out there.

Read some great lunchbox ideas here.

Please have a look at this(you can find this link, ‘lunchbox recipes’, at the top) and I hope you all will actively participate.

Thanks.

Today is a very very important day for me. Yes, you guessed it right. Aayisrecipes completes its one year today. So I thought of writing a few things about it in this post.

Aayisrecipes is a small way of saying thanks to my mother. Yes, I feel she is the best mother in the world. if anybody knows me personally, they would also know that my world revolves around my family. (Well, I do not want to continue talking about it, I would become too emotional). She is the master of innumerable mouth watering dishes. When I started cooking, though I could prepare few dishes properly, I was pathetic in the traditional cooking. I would add whatever came to my mind, whether it is necessary or not. Finally I would end up in a mess and still I would expect all to eat it quietly and if possible appreciate :D.

So we (meaning my brother and I) always thought of preserving those delicious recipes in some way. We thought a lot about opening a restaurant, but we both were very busy and there was no way we coculd get capital investment for our restaurant. I thought of publishing a book, but that too required a lot of work. Finally I asked my mom to write down all her recipes in a diary so that I would get them easily. Since she was always busy in one thing or other, she hardly found any time to write 🙁

Last year, my interest in cooking reached its peak. I started watching all the Cooking shows on TV. My brother and hubby repeatedly told me to send my entry to a Kannada TV show, but I was all too hesitant. Mainly because, I thought people would say ‘what is this kid going to cook?’, that was the thing my friends said when I told them about my culinary interests.
Before my marriage, I never knew anything about blogging. It was my hubby who introduced me to the blogging world. But yet, I didn’t know about foodblogs. So when I refused to go to TV shows, hubby started telling me about starting a food blog. But I was never interested in a blog. I told him, I am fine with a recipe site, but not blog. One fine day, without my knowledge he started a blog for me. He casually asked about ‘site name’. I first thought naming it after my mom, then I thought it wouldn’t give that impression as ‘aayisrecipes’ would give. It would be my tribute not only to my mom but to all moms in the world.

Though we had created a blog, I never knew what to write in a post. I started by posting some of the easy and very famous recipes (like cauliflower-carrot pickle, coriander gojju, pav bhaji, appe, potato dosa, ankre tambli, soyi polo, cabbage vada, egg pepper and many more) . I never had time to take pictures. Few friends were very happy to see this blog. Then, one fine day, I got a comment from Courtney of Naughty Curry and I felt on top of the world!!!. She was the first outsider (I mean a person who didn’t know me personally) to comment on the blog. Next was VKN from My Dhaba and it continued from there. I still don’t know how they came to my blog. VKN suggested to post pictures of the dishes. In my busy schedule, I couldn’t take even a minute to take pictures. So I continued posting without pictures until I came to US.

In US, I got much awaited break from my career. So I got all the time to develop my blog. I started reading other blogs too. When I started getting more and more visitors and a lot of mails from my readers, I thought of moving to my own domain (again it was a forcible move from my hubby, who had bought a domain and moved the entire contents to the new domain).

I had never thought ‘aayisrecipes’ would get so much attention. The entire credit goes to all my readers and fellow bloggers. I get a lot of encouraging mails daily from all around the world, sending recipes, requesting recipes etc. It is such response from all of you which encourages me to keep going. To tell the truth, I have learnt a lot of recipes(to be precise, traditional recipes) in last few months and I have become a better cook, if I can put it that way. Whenever I get a request, I call my mom to get the recipe and I am trying my best to post all of them.
I hope all of you will continue to support and encourage me with all your feedbacks/comments and suggestions.

Thanks again.

Sonali tagged me for this meme. I felt this meme is very unfair!!!. Only 10 things??? How do I pick up 10 things, there are hundreds of them :). I miss each and every dish that my mom makes. I wish I was in India, I could have run to her whenever I wanted :(.

1. Pathrode and ankre tamboli – This is the best combination I have ever had. I am a big fan of this combination from the time I was a kid. Its a must whenever I go to visit my parents at my native. Since we have a big garden, we find all the ingredients easily.
2. Pickles – There are atleast 10 types of pickles I can remember. Few of them are the traditional mango pickle using tiny mengoes(appi ambli nonche), diced mango pickle (HinDi), ready to eat mango pickle (karmbi nonche), cauliflower-carrot pickle(flowera nonche), lemon pickles(with and without masala), bitter gourd pickle(karathe nonche), Chilli pickle, cooked and mashed gooseberry pickle (avale hindi) etc etc.
3. Masala dosa – There are two types of bhajis that I love the most. Amma’s bhaji (fondly named after my grand mother), my grand mother was an expert in making this. Now my mom makes it exactly same as her. This is the BEST bhaji I have ever had. I could literally eat 2-3 dosas more than my limit :). The second is Pattal bhaji which we call as Aayi’s bhaji to just distinguish between the two. Though both bhajis have the exact same ingredients, there is an amazing difference between the taste and both are SUPERB :).
4. Pani puri – I still wonder where my grandmother learnt this. She prepared the best pani puri. Since I come from a very small village, there would not have been any chance of tasting this chaat at my place. But my grandmom and then my mom always knew about my cravings of this chaat. So they prepared it whenever I asked for. Unlike the pani puris that we get in bigger places like Belgaum, Bangalore, this home made pani puri had sprouted moong stuffing.
5. Kolmbo and Jeer-meerya kadhi – I am a big fan of Kolmbo from my childhood. My mom used to ask me “what do you want for lunch/dinner?”(because I always created a lot of fuss about eating my food!!! I was a bad kid when it comes to eating). My stapled answer would be ‘Kolmbo’, all others at home had got bored of eating Kolmbo. Since I would eat quietly when my mom prepared kolmbo, they all would tolerate it somehow. But after sometime, all used to protest and vote against Kolmbo!!!. Once my grandfather, who was irritated because of this, told my mom to “prepare kolmbo and dry it in sun. whenever she asks, dilute it in water and give her!!!” that clearly says how they all were fed up of this dish :D. Of late I have picked up the taste of Jeer-meerya kadhi. This, rice and pickle, what else anyone needs in life??
6. Crab gravy(kurle ambat) – I was always the ‘Kurle’ kid at home. Even the person who catches the crab knows about it. Because whenever I go home, he brings a bucket full of crabs!!!. I learnt cleaning of crabs at an early age. I would tell my mom, ‘I will clean it for you. You just make the curry’ and she always agreed happily. Isn’t that a good idea? she felt, my kid is taking so much of troble, so let me make the gravy :D.
7. Mumbri and smoked eggplant(vayngana bajji) – Mumbri is one kind of rice flour rotti(akki rotti), prepared by spreading the rice flour batter on banana leaf and then frying it on tava. From the time I came here, I am searching for banana leaves so that I could make this dish. This combined with the smoked eggplant is a amazing breakfast. This one is not liked by everyone, but once you like it, you can eat it continuously. My mom used to make the mumbri and my father helped her in making the smoked eggplant.
8. Chicken gravy – This is the traditional chicken curry with lot of masalas and lots of coconut. It has an amazing taste and an amazing smell. The entire house would smell of this even after 2-3 days!!!. Since I have stopped eating chicken now, I dont think I would taste it again. May be next gime I will tell her to make it with eggs or potatoes :D.
9. Kalva ambat – ‘Kalva’ is a kind of sea food found in the big rocks near sea shore. These are similar to shell fishes but have a different taste. Once my mom had to go to meet my grandmother and I was alone at home with my father. I din’t know a thing about cooking then. My father prepared ‘kalva ambat’ and that is the best ever ‘kalva ambat’ I have ever had in my life. I still can feel the taste on the tip of my tongue. My mom gets annoyed when I tell her Pappa’s Kalva ambat is the best :D.
10. Biscuit pudding – This is my Pachi’s dish. I am not a very big fan of sweets. But when it comes to biscuit pudding, I forget everything. Just amazing!!!. I can go on eating this dish forever. This is very very easy to make. I remember, I always had fights with my cousins to get a bigger share. Since I was the guest at there home, I was the one who got the biggest share. (This is the next recipe I am going to post on this site, so keep watching).

It was very very difficult for me to pick these 10. There are many many more of them. But already I am feeling too emotional. So I would not break the rule, and stop at 10 :D.

I would love to tag Sudha, Sury, Reshma for this meme.