Simply Being | Simple Being

Category: Food (page 19 of 30)

Lara Bars

A few years back, my dear friend V introduced me to Lara Bars. And I was officially hooked.

Dried fruit and nuts have to be hands down the most delicious combination ever. I chanced on a raw food site where I found this lovely recipe for raw fig and date squares. It is oh-so simple to make but it does get terribly sticky and messy what with blending dates and figs into a paste. But delicious? Oh yes, so tasty.

Back to Lara Bars… this is one delicious fruit-nut bar. It has zero additives of any kind, just plain old-fashioned dried fruit and nuts. Plus it costs only $1.25 a bar!


There are a bunch of delicious flavors to choose from. I have seen Ginger Snap, Carrot Cake, Lemon Bar, Coconut Cream Pie, Banana Bread and others at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. My favorite? It’s a toss-up between Ginger Snap and Cashew Cookie. Hmmm, add Pecan Pie to the mix.

Enjoy the Energy!

Monsoon and Hot Chai

A Canadian friend of mine remarked, “Indians seem to be very fond of the rains.” I had to agree. Yes, we love our rains. For a country that is scorched by incredibly hot summers, monsoon is a welcome respite. Monsoon and the rains have been immortalized in classical poetry, music, art and literature since centuries. Bollywood has not been behind in adoring the rains as well. There are a million film songs shot in pouring rain (or a sprinkler!). An old classic is “Pyar Hua Ikraar Hua” from Raj Kapoor’s classic ‘Shree 420’ starring Nargis Dutt, Nadira and a host of other stars.

Another more recent “rain song” is a raunchy number “Tip tip barsa pani,” starring the gorgeous Raveena Tandon and hunky Akshay Kumar. The couple sizzles on the screen and the song is hummable too. I am positive the video is out there on YouTube delighting adolescent males everywhere because really, I doubt if that song was meant for any other demographic!

Ok, back to the rains. For so many Indians, a rainy evening implies chai-pakoda! Chai is tea and pakodas are dumplings fried in a batter of chickpea flour ((for want of a better description), spices, salt. Onion pakoras are a hot favorite. All you do is make the batter, dip onion rings in it, drop them into hot oil, fish them out (when done), drain the oil, and dig in. You can do the same using thinly sliced potatoes. In South India, we make bondas. These are essentially cooked and mashed potatoes, made into balls, with salt-spices-cilantro added in. As with onion rings, they get the hot-oil treatment and emerge, shiny and crisp.

Wish I could share some pictures! But I haven’t made these in ages. So I direct you to Kamran’s beautiful website with his pakora recipe and pictures.

But chai? That I can tell you more about!

I would think that each community in India has its favorite drink. I know that in South India, filter coffee enjoys much loyalty. Of course, over the last many years, convenience has made these loyalists to shift to instant coffee. I have fond memories of my Mom’s fabulous coffee served on Sunday mornings replete with a breakfast of idli-chutney and the Sunday papers. The Gujarati community enjoys its tea with masala, sometimes ginger. I make mine with masala (ground with the patient love and skill by my mother-in-law), fresh mint leaves (plucked from my backyard with my own loving hands!), sugar and milk.

Story in pictures (no, they aren’t in order!):

Here are the simple instructions (for a single cup of tea).
1. Boil 1/3 cup of water. Add sugar (to taste), chopped mint leaves, a pinch or two of the masala.
2. As the water boils, add a teaspoon of chai. I use the Lipton brand commonly found in Indian grocery stores.
3. Add milk to taste. I like my tea fairly milky and well-boiled. But this is not everyone’s cup of tea (pun intended). Some people like it with less milk and less-boiled too.

What can I say, I like my style of cuppa the best. As I take the first sip in, I realize why it feels so special. I enjoy tea but really, it has to be done my way… 🙂

Head over to Archana Srinivas’s lovely blog A Cup of Chai for some exquisite pictures of more cups of tea!

I scream, you scream!

It is the season for ice-cream in the city. In the last seven years, I don’t remember daily temperatures being so high in Atlanta. This is almost as bad as hot and sweaty Mumbai, as humid and muggy… Ugh. Last week, I was talking with my colleague and good friend Arvie telling him about Natural Ice Cream in Mumbai. They have the most amazing flavors – Watermelon, Chikoo, Tender Coconut, Fig, Custard Apple and more! The ice cream is incredibly light in texture; in fact you can eat two cones in a single sitting, one delicious flavor after another. It is definitely creamy but the fresh fruit flavor is the star in this ice cream, not the milk-sugar-cream combo, as one experiences often in most American brands of ice cream.

That being said, I should mention about Breyers Ice Cream. The reason I buy this brand most often is that it contains a short list of ingredients, all of which are easy to pronounce, and most of which I recognize. I prefer buying simple flavors; none of the Chips Ahoy or Reeses or Oreo flavors for me. Also, most of the flavors don’t contain egg. But I was beginning to tire of the same offerings – Neopolitan, Dulce De Leche, Strawberry, Butter Pecan. But my options were limited.

Or so I thought.

Then I peeked into the far corner of the rack and found the Publix Premium range of ice creams. I had always skipped over them, thinking that they’d contain egg and a host of other unknown ingredients. But this time, I looked closer. Maple Walnut… hmmm, that ingredient list didn’t look too bad. And egg didn’t feature in the list of ingredients.

I know ‘natural and artificial flavors’ don’t say much but I suppose I have to live with that lack of information.

How is the ice cream, you ask? Delicious! My father-in-law thought it too creamy for his taste. He also thought that there were way too many walnuts in there. I agree that it’s creamy but not overwhelmingly so. The taste and texture is a little like malai kulfi. Also, I found the proportion of walnuts perfect as well. There is a wonderful flavor of maple that goes very well with the crunchy nuttiness of the walnuts. I had to stop myself from taking seconds.

Now I look forward to trying the other flavors from this line.

Fresh To Order

The world of Twitter got me in touch with the lovely Sucheta Rawal from Go Eat Give, an innovative website/blog that combines three great passions of people – food, travel and service. We met for lunch at Fresh To Order. Despite it being Friday lunch hour, we got seats easily. If it wasn’t for the rain, we would have sat on the patio.

The conversation was illuminating, the food was nice too! The online menu didn’t show many vegetarian options (probably just one) but Sucheta pointed me to some others in the menu handout. She picked the Club Salad that combined mixed greens, toasted almonds, tomatoes, cucumbers, avocados, cheese, golden raisins and cranberries. The salad usually includes bacon but Sucheta asked for seared tofu instead. She mentioned that she orders it often; so I am guessing that it’s a good pick. I picked the Soup + Salad combination that included Wild Mushroom Soup and Tomato Mozzarella Sandwich (fresh mozzarella, roasted peppers, whole leaf basil, tomatoes, balsamic vinaigrette).

The soup was wonderful! I am happy that it was a half portion; eating an entire bowl would have probably weighed me down all day long. Mushrooms are heavy to digest. In fact, they are regarded as Tamasic in nature; they can aggravate all three Dosha imbalances, I have heard. In any case, mushrooms are an occasional indulgence for me. I don’t cook with them and hardly ever order them when we eat out. I have to admit, even with half a bowl, my tummy felt unusually heavy post-lunch. Not sure if it was the cream (assuming the soup contained cream) or the mushrooms themselves… But I thoroughly enjoyed the soup. The sandwich was nice as well. There was a generous stuffing of roasted red peppers in there, and the whole leaf basil added a fresh flavor to the sandwich. Neither was the balsamic vinaigrette too strong, and the fresh mozzarella tied all the tastes together with its creaminess.

At the cafeteria at my older workplace, the menu used to feature Roasted Red Pepper and Mozzarella Sandwich with Balsamic Vinaigrette. It used to be my favorite lunch option those days.

I can see myself going to F2O again, if only to sample the salad Sucheta ordered – it looked delicious!

Fresh To Order
1260 Cumberland Mall
Atlanta GA 30339
678-564-1400

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