Tanjore Marathi specialty Ambode

This time when we were in India, a friend was coming to visit for lunch and we decided on  ambode and kadhi for the lunch menu.

Now, this is a dear friend from Ann Arbor and the kids were very excited to see a familiar friendly face, but were also confused and asked "Why are you in India?"

Once they settled down, the boys had a lot of fun showing off their new toys, chota bheem t-shirts and had Bourbon chocolate biscuits together.

We said bye to the friend with some sadness knowing we won't see him back in Ann Arbor when we are back. 

Coming back to the lunch menu, ambode is a mixed dal vada which can be made two ways - usually without onions. You can add onions then it becomes more like masala vada. You can also add curry leaves, or methi leaves to add a different taste.

It makes its presence during festivals when ambode and kadhi is a popular combination followed by payasam.

Ridge Gourd and coconut salad and tales of India travels

Hello friends! We are back from our India travels. It was a hectic month traveling with both kids to India for the first time.

We spent time in Bangalore and Delhi for most parts. Then, we did little trips to Mysore and Rishikesh. It was a month of visiting friends, spending time with family and of course eating. Before we knew, a month had flown by and we are back in the US.

There is no doubt that one of the big highlights of the trip is that we got to eat Indian mangoes. Both the kids and us devoured all the different mangoes that were available.

The choices were immense. There was langda, dusheri, chausa, banganpalli, sindoori and many little ones for which I cannot recollect the names. Oh it was just delicious! Sweet as sugar, the kids loved it. We probably had one if not more everyday!


During our travel we also had a chance to savor local, traditional meals and thalis whether it was North Karnataka thali or a vegetarian thali at the famous "Chotiwala" restaurant in Rishikesh in Uttarakhand.

There will be a separate post on my India travels. In this post I want to talk about all the good homemade food I ate. Delicious, simple, or complicated, they were made with so much love for us. Rice rava upma, mirchi ka salan, katla macher jhol, multigrain dosa, mishti aamer achar (sweet mango pickle) are just some of them.