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7:46
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A Mad Tea Party
Comfort food. Different things to different people. But always disarmingly simple. A few ingredients, a basic recipe, but the final outcome is something that satisfies a craving that nothing else will. A dish that wraps you around your home, your family, your culture, and many times, around the various stages of [...]
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22:40
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A Mad Tea Party
I am determined to cook this for lunch... and tell you about it too. Promise.
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9:35
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A Mad Tea Party
At the end of a more-than-full work day we all deserve to put our feet up and get the much needed rest. Recharge our batteries. Good wholesome food contributes much to this recharge. Many of us also admit to the therapeutic qualities of the act of cooking itself!
Roth - the baked kind. Crusty, you [...]
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10:36
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A Mad Tea Party
Yes, I know, I have been a terrible hostess. Terribly busy. It’s nice to have time to flit about and smell the flowers. Just like this butterfly. Yet, she is also hard at work. So, here I am, working hard and making time for the party.
Thank you, all, for so graciously making the time for [...]
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4:41
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A Mad Tea Party
If you have been seeing Batata Vadas appear in some of the food blogs you read and wondering what is up with that, here is what is at the root of it all - old fashioned indulgence. A year ago, while discussing this and that on this blog, I and my readers decided a party [...]
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3:59
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A Mad Tea Party
Happy Independence Day, people!
We are combining it with Raksha Bandhan celebrations here today. Raksha Bandha is actually tomorrow but there’s a solar eclipse, which is considered inauspicious…
Yes, I have a party on my mind - a batata vada party! Have you deep fried yet? Hope to see you at the party!
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11:24
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A Mad Tea Party
Last year, on the first blogversary of A Mad Tea Party, I got rambling on the matter of food and diet. As I had wished, it did get a life of its own and we did stray into other things…with food as a point of beginning. There was fun and trickery, food and drink, and [...]
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11:55
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A Mad Tea Party
Please don’t mention Caronda* for some time…it is in every jar I had spare! There is no room for any more pickles or preserves…As I mentioned last time, I made some caronda chutney a week ago, to use up part of my Dad’d harvest from a bush I planted about ten years ago in the [...]
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12:00
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A Mad Tea Party
I think I have hibernated long enough. And it is not even the season. ‘Tis the season to be out and enjoy the rains - which, after it having rained most of May and all of June, have disappeared since we officially entered the monsoon season. That’s the weather update for you.
A couple of weeks [...]
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11:45
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A Mad Tea Party
Every chance I get, I use. After locating my ride at Vadodara the first question I put to him was where I could get some good ’snacky’ Gujju breakfast! He knew just the place. We went to Payal Farsan Mart from where I got packed a bite of quite a few things [...]
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23:52
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A Mad Tea Party
Modern Western medicine has changed our lives with its clinical approach to diagnosis and treatment of disease. Along the way it became the mainstream approach with older systems getting the tag of alternative medicine. Of course, there are reasons to encourage and protect this mindset.
Practitioners of Western medicine, while finally admitting to the efficacy [...]
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6:50
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A Mad Tea Party
Most of us get addicted to reading blogs before we get one of our own. I wandered into the food blog world one fine day looking for some variety in my daily cooking. Nothing fancy, just everyday cooking that would show new ways with the same old ingredients.
Here are a few that have [...]
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7:59
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A Mad Tea Party
A big chunk of my readers live outside India. And all of them will appreciate how I have tried not to rub salt on their mangoes wounds this year. There has been no talk of mangoes, whatsoever, on this blog so far this year; no debate on which mango is the King, [...]
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14:18
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A Mad Tea Party
Usually, I love my time in the kitchen. More often than not, TH stays out, and is very appreciative of the food I put on the table (even when it is store-bought bread on days such as today when I am too rushed for even a 30-minute meal). But there are (many) days when I [...]
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15:51
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A Mad Tea Party
I was gushing about the April Fool’s Blog Swap to my schoolfriend. She was not very impressed and instead she drove the conversation in another direction:
So you meet these people on the Internet and they become your friends?
Um, yeah. Well, some of them even become very good friends…
How do you know if the woman isn’t [...]
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23:04
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A Mad Tea Party
I mean really. Aren’t you tired of brown? And pictures of desks? It’s time for a makeover. It’s time for fun. It’s high time for the real Mad Tea Party to begin. I asked Anita to please take a walk so that I can set things right around here. Once I get done with [...]
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8:08
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A Mad Tea Party
This month I have been mostly…
…buried deep in work. I want so much to surface, get a breath of fresh air, and share my notes with you. But work takes priority; it does, after all, help pay the bills.
I have been eating healthy…mostly. Fresh cooked breakfasts had been sacrificed for the convenience [...]
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12:15
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A Mad Tea Party
Spring is upon us! Temperatures are climbing steadily – we are already at 27 degrees C. But a nip still lingers at night and in the mornings. Therefore, the mustard family gets to reign for a few more weeks. I have mentioned mustard fields and I have talked about Punjab…but I [...]
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9:45
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A Mad Tea Party
I seem to gravitate towards strong tasting vegetables - the pungent and very-brassica smells and tastes my husband likes to categorise as oogra. Nothing brings out the link between all the diverse members of the brassica family (such as broccoli, kohlrabi, haak, cabbage, cauliflower, radish, mustard, kale, and collard) like their flowers and seeds. [...]
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11:45
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A Mad Tea Party
I am exploring my new camera… and it’s taking frustratingly long to re-learn the ropes. I really wish I could just use my ancient NikonF4 and have the film change into a chip somehow… Someday someone will do something like that I am sure. Till then I have to get used to focusing [...]
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23:45
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A Mad Tea Party
Snap, snap…blink, blink… Okay, I am really trying hard to snap out of it. The blog-lethargy that I have slumped into. Maybe it really is the cold (it was a freezing 2 degrees Celsius here in Delhi yesterday) and my brain has frozen over, in addition to my hands and feet. I [...]
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13:09
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A Mad Tea Party
Before Srivalli completely gives up on me, here I am with my experiments with the mystery powder I received through our very own Arusuvai Friendship chain last month. For all my professed past-life claims, the podi Srivalli sent me had me at a complete loss. I have already admitted I am not good [...]
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1:19
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A Mad Tea Party
I hope it has been a good year for all of you. If it’s been a mixed bag, as most years are, you’ll find yourself looking back at it with much nostalgia soon enough. The past has a way of turning rosy.
There was much that was good with this year for me too. [...]
