Caught in the act

It's been 3 months since we planted few saplings in our garden and watch them grow day by day. The green color of the garden gives so much peace to the mind. Every morning or evening I water the plants and spend few mins with them.  I generally walk into the garden as soon as I have my bed tea. These days I frequent the garden more often as our saplings have started blooming.  One such time when I walked into our garden I saw the petals of a flower were all downward…

I thought to myself….sad the flower has lasted just for a day or two and is going to dry out soon…. …After couple of hours when the sun was really high in the sky I saw the same petals were all up and the flower looked beautiful… I did not mind this change as I was deeply enjoying the beauty of the flower….

Today I dozed off of for longer hours and woke up bit late than usual….since my head was aching due to long hours of sleep I stepped into my garden to relax….I saw again….there was one another lazy fellow sleeping for longer hours :) …then I understood, the flower was not dying rather sleeping :)....

I giggled and thought to myself,  cool there are many other lazy fellows sleeping for long hours during winter…I am not the only one…I have a company now :)!

Just like the sun rays hit our eyes through the window and wake us up when we doze of longer hours during the day, same way the sun had to really come up high in the sky pass the sharp rays and wake this lazy fellow up…What a lovely sight to watch the flower sleep and wake….

Yellow beauty caught in the act!!

Cheers,

Akshatha

From our Garden to our Kitchen

It's been couple of years since I started cooking full time. During this period I enjoyed not only cooking but also enjoying the food I cooked by myself. I started reading more and more about cooking techniques, recipes, collecting useful kitchen  accessories etc. So on recently I took an online class on nutrition which emphasized more on home cooking and its benefits. Taking that class raised my inspiration level for cooking. There was a small section about the kitchen garden in that class which made me dream for a kitchen garden at my terrace and use the same home grown herbs and veggies for cooking.

 I immediately  got started with sowing  few fenugreek seeds. After about a month, I plucked the leaves today and made Vada out of it. Oh my! The powerful aroma of home grown fenugreek leaves left me amazed…I was so happy, thrilled and my mouth was watering to taste the same while the Methi vadas were getting fried. Just to share my excitement of my  "Garden to Kitchen" story, the result is as below:

The recipe I used to prepare the (Fenugreek) Leaves vada  :

Ingredients:

1. Finely chopped the fenugreek leaves (1/2 bunch if you buy from the market)
2. Finely chopped 1 large onion
3. Finely chopped 4-5 garlic cloves
4. Finely chopped 3 green chillies
5. 1 cup ( Besan )Chana dal flour
6. 1/4  cup rice floor
7. Salt as required

Method:

1. Mix all the ingredients together and sprinkle just enough water (few drops may be)  so that the mixture could be molded into flat round balls
2. Heat Oil and deep fry at a medium flame

Note: Since Onion releases water as soon as salt is added, add as little water as possible to get crispy vadas. Also fry as soon as the mixture is molded into flat round balls.

Hope you as well would enjoy  the result of my Garden to Kitchen experience!

Cheers,

Akshatha