I started this blog as I really began to take interest in food and cooking – it was a discovery years after literally being “spoon fed” by my mom and her amazing cooking. I don’t remember really cooking much while I spent my 23 years living at home (yes much to the shock of many teens today, that was and is probably quite the norm in India, where I grew up).
I was surrounded by many foodies in the family though, who were all, in their own way, connoisseurs of the cooking and the tasting of good food. The food at home was mostly traditional South Indian, or Tamil Brahmin (TamBrahm for short) cuisine. We traveled all over India when I was growing up as my father was in the Military Engineering Services, which exposed my taste buds to the many flavors of Indian cuisine (Kashmiri, Avadhi (Lucknow), Andhra, Hyderabadi. But I got my true initiation into the world of food outside India thanks to my foodie uncle. My first ever visit to Singapore (where he lived) when I was 16 was a mind and palate opening experience for me that also gave me my first global food experience. There was no looking back after as I traveled around the world, savoring many cuisines and always being fascinated by the many flavors. I know I have so much more to taste and explore within India alone and hope to fulfill this dream soon:)
I became quite obsessed with food, eating, cooking and collecting recipes, when I moved to the US for my studies, but it was only after I got married and had my own kitchen that I started to really experiment with food. I am a vegetarian by upbringing and now by choice and love to taste and try anything vegetarian in my cooking. I eat eggs so you will find some egg dishes and many cakes and cupcake recipes that use egg, but I am increasingly experimenting with egg-less baking, thanks to some very inspiring bloggers out there.
This blog took birth a few years ago, when I was living in the US, more as a means to capture traditional south Indian dishes of my mom and my grandma’s — recipes I could never find easily back then. It has since morphed into all things vegetarian though I still give precedence to TamBrahm recipes that are family “heirlooms” – my mom’s recipes, my mother-in-law’s, my sisters-in-law’s, my foodie Uncle’s and my husband’s. I told you, we are a family of foodies😀. My son is now experimenting with food and is vying for a mention too — he is getting to be a budding food critic – so most of my blog entries usually have to have his thumbs up😀
Over the years the essence of the blog has remained but I’ve realized that while I still want to record traditional and ancestral recipes, I tend to experiment with healthy and nutritious twists to traditional food. The connection between food and its effect on the mind and body is a fascinating topic. And it’s relationship to the history of food, to the ancestral recipes that our moms and grandmas used to conjure up in their kitchens.
You can call this more of a food journal of musings from my kitchen and others. The recipes here are inspired – some original, some borrowed, but mostly a reflection of my experiments with food.
The Mindful Veggie comes to you from Dallas, TX, now from Singapore, Dallas, TX.