Flower fest is back and this time the theme is purplicious. These are some orchid flowers from my mother’s garden. Over the last decade or so, orchids have grown to be quite popular among Kerala gardeners.  This particular kind has palm like leaves and the flowers are at the end of long stalks. There are white and purple colours in her garden.

Scientific name: Spathoglottis Plicata

Sending this over for Flower Fest.

Blog fatigue has been prevalent. I can’t even remember the last time I regularly posted. I find that I hardly have the motivation to sit and type anything that I want to publish here. Taking photos of meals seems too much of a hassle. Yet I don’t want to give up on this space. As usual, I brought home with me a few vegetarian cookbooks from the library looking for inspiration. Hope it helps

As a household we want to include more veggies and fruits in our diet. We also try to get most of our weekly veggies and fruits from the local farmer’s market. Our local market is really small with few vendors but they have a decent selection.

Some pics from the market

Our local farmer's market

This week's purchase

Bi colour is the theme for the click event at Jugalbandi for this month. Thanks Jai and Bee for the oppurtunity to be one of the judges for this month.

Finding a bicolour entry has been a challenge. After a long time, I have started to cook regularly but bicolour foods weren’t easy to come by or didn’t photograph well. I made palappams, a cherry clafouti, paneer curry but nothing photographed well.

I finally settled on this paneer. This is some home made paneer with black pepper added to it.

Whole milk paneer with crushed black pepper- White & Black entry for CLICK bicolour.

The last two years seemed really long- first there was graduate school, then there was pregnancy and then came the baby. The full time job was present throughout. Not all pure delight! But I have now graduated and I am thinking of making cupcakes and roasting a chicken and making some kaalan.

Our garden has totally overgrown. Perennials have overtaken the whole garden. Weeds are flourishing. We are slowly reclaiming it. It’s not like we can go out an garden with abandon. The baby needs to be placed somewhere. We put him in the patio with his toys but can’t be left alone. Don’t get me wrong..it’s not like we were great gardeners before the baby, but we could garden at will. Even without any care, there are spectacular flowers on show. Imagine if they were cared for!!

My first attempt at a cupcake from here. Thanks Archana for the help.

If you have organic rose in your garden, make some gulkhand.

Our first pick of the season from our little veggie patch.

Two types of lettuces, arugula and pea shoots.

Tossed it with some lemon vinaigrette. Arugula was my favorite.

Sending this over to the Grow Your Own (GYO) event at the Daily Tiffin.

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These are soaked in water, drained and ready to be powdered.

It is recommended as a great food for infants. It is supposed high in calcium for the growing bones.

We brought back lots of ragi flour from India which finds its way into baby food and also puttu (like this). I know there are other ways to use this flour, but haven’t ventured to try any.

To make porridge for the baby, just mix the flour with water till runny. Cook over medium heat till it is cooked and thick. We don’t add any sugar. I save extras in single serve containers in the refrigerator.

This picture was taken while we were in Kerala. The clams come shelled which is a major convenience.

What a remarkable victory for Obama! Hope to see some real changes now!!

This year I was decided on planting some heirloom tomatoes. We planted Brandywine and Cherokee tomato. Along with these we also planted Green Zebra, a roma tomato and a grape tomato plant. The only plant that bore fruit so far is the Green Zebra.

Green Zebra is a tomato cultivar with characteristic dark green and yellow stripes, although there are newer variations that blush a reddish color instead of yellow when ripe. It is slightly more tart than regular tomatoes, and it is an unusually early breed.

Green Zebra was bred by Tom Wagner of Everett, Washington, and first introduced in his Tater-Mater Seed Catalog in 1983. Given its recent origins, it is not an heirloom tomato, despite often being mistakenly designated as one.  ( Link )

For lunch we made sandwiches inspired by this recipe. We used green tomatoes, basil and chives from our garden.

They were easy to make and so yummy. Since the Green Zebras were still not ripe, I did a quick saute in olive oil with salt and pepper before they went into the sandwich.

The ricotta spread was also a breeze to make. We had an assembly station and  from there the sandwiches went onto a skillet and I used a cast iron lid to flatten the sandwiches. We had fun making these!!

This goes to Jugalbandi who is hosting Grow Your Own event. Grow Your Own is a twice-a-month blogging event that celebrates the foods we grow or raise ourselves and the dishes we make using our homegrown products and is a brainchild of Andrea.

Related: Fried Green Tomatoes.