Weekend snack fresh from garden.

The short spell of rains in B'lore has done well for my colocaesia leaves. There were almost 10-12 big leaves.We were expecting few guests next week, so before it caught thier eye, I decided to make Pathrode.
Pathrode is a coastal Karnataka recipe made mainly from Dosa rice and colocaesia leaves. As of I know people living in Western Indian Coastal area do similar kind of dish with colocaesia leaves.
Most of Colocaesia leaves when eaten produces itching in mouth. To reduce the itching remove the thick and thin veins at the back of leaves. My mom used to joke that those who are over smart, only they feel itching.

Well I am not posting the recipe here, but giving a good recipe over here. What I follow is almost similar except that I add more jaggery, cumin and coconut(almost double the quantity given).

There are many ways with Pathrode. For all these, the batter remains the same.

• You can either cut the colocaesia leaves to small pieces and add it to the batter. Dilute the batter and make dosa of it.
• You can paste the batter onto the leaves and then make small rolls. Cut rolls into thin slices, roast on heated tava applying lot of oil. 
• You can make rolls and steam them(healthiest way). Eat when still hot with dollop of butter.
• Steam the rolls, cut them to tiniest pieces,add tadka, shallow fry them using additional fresh coconut, jaggery.

June so far

I am been away for a while, reasons few.
1. My younger son has started schooling, and those were anxious days. Both me and him feeling sad for couple of weeks. Him sad, as he started to be away from me, and myself sad, I could not bear him sobbing and feel myself harsh for pushing such a toddler to school. Now both of us have got over it -:).

2. Dull, grey mornings and day, which makes me lazy and sit idle.

A recent visit of guests, who were all in praise for our little garden. That lifted my spirits up, and made me plant couple of Hibiscus plants. I bargained it for Rs 45 each from Bannerghatta weekly market.
This one, sure of surviving, but the other I think will die in few weeks.

It's literally raining lemons in my garden. So I am distributing lemons to all who visit my house, neighbours, etc.,. I don't see any new flowers so there may not be new lemons for sometime.

I told four families of Daily Dump, two of them hopefully should begin home composting.

Malabar Spinach growing tall. This was propagated from stem cuttings of the mother plant. We planted  in a patch of land where most of the plants so far refused to thrive. I am waiting and watching what happens to this.

Lastly caterpillar(Kambali hula in Kannada) destroying all my small plants. I simply smash them.

 So how was your June? Have a nice weekend...

Chenne Mane

I bought this Chenne Mane(traditional indoor game of coastal Karnataka, has different names in South India) from the car street of Udupi. People play this game in the rainy season when there is nothing much to do in the fields after sowing. People all over the world visit Udupi mainly being for  the darshan of Lord Krishna. But I visit Udupi for buying few traditional things like the below Chenne Mane. After bargaining for Rs 600 I bought it to B'lore. It was plain looking one and I wanted to paint and polish it.

This is how it looks after painting and varnishing. I gave a thick coat of varnish by mistake, so it looks too shiny.

Linking this to Colors Decor

Kumta Onions

If there is one thing common in the houses of coastal Karnataka it would be onions from Kumta. They are pink, medium sized and have long strands. These onions are sweet and less pungent unlike the regular ones.
These onions are grown in winter in few selected villages around Kumta, North Kanara. The coastal climate and the soil is best suited to grow these onions.
Since they have more water content they cannot be stored for long time unless one take lot of precautions to preserve them.
These onions come to market in the month of  April. They are available in most of the grocery shops in the coastal regions as well as few Mangalore stores in Bangalore.

Once we buy them from the shops, sun dry them for 3-4 days.

 Make a plait out of the stands.

 Tie them to any pole high near the ceiling.

These onions are a must when some non coconut dish is prepared at home. If you are from coastal Karnataka you would know what I mean -:)

What's blooming in my garden..

It's the season of spring-summer and my garden is yet to pick up the colors. Sharing with you are few small joys in my garden.

Lovely Blue daze. What I have observed is it thrives well when kept in a height, above the ground, may be give out best results when put in a hanging pot.

Mexican petunia. They have propagated all across the pot.

Crape Jasmine(Nandi Battalu in kannada). I could successfully propagate this from a stem/stick cut  from a large tree from the garden in our layout. It gives me one or two flowers per Week.

Kids crafts - 1

What do you do to keep the kids engaged on summer holidays if not send them to any camp? Well I am clueless just like you. I wish they didn't have such a long break during summer(cruel of me to think that way -:( ).
My son is not interested in drawing, crafting or any creative work, all he wants to do in play, play, watch T.V, eat junk.
Engaging such a kid in craft is a challenge. Half the way through he would get bored, abandon everything and go. With millions of kid craft projects on the Internet, I decided I would at least make him do something. Something short and cute.
So here is our first project together.

It's from http://krokotak.com/2013/02/paper-flowers-2/

Colorful fishes

With my son's exams finally over, some relief to me for another 1 and a half month on the study point of view. So this weekend I had a little bit of 'me' time and did this wall hanging. Inspired by the leather work of Andhra Pradesh, I drew out these fishes and colored them to my fancy. I had few wooden beads at home so used them and made a wall hanging. Welcoming spring in my own way, colourful isn't it?
Linking this to Colour's Decor Weekly Story.