Monica Bhide Tag

I am ambivalent about labels. They’re (usually) handy if you want to know if your shirt needs dry cleaning or how much fibre your bran cereal contains. They are less useful when applied to humans.  In fact, I’d argue they are misleading. I’ve known Monica Bhide for several...

Handful of green beans - TheMessyBaker.com I don't know if there are the Fortex pole beans or the Maxibel French filet beans. I suspect they are a mix. I can't tell because the vines are so thick the leaves obscure the labels. Plus, I was too busy picking beans to bother looking. Regardless of their official name, these are the first crop of beans from my section of  The Family Plot. Back in May, I planted them with one recipe in mind. Today I got to make it. A few months ago, Monica Bhide made me a variation of her Green Beans Subzi, a spicy vegetable dish with lots of flavour and crunch. She strayed from the version in her cookbook Modern Spice, and added coconut chips for extra crunch because she knows I like texture.  Since that meal, I have searched for coconut chips and come up empty handed. Unable to locate this ingredient, I substituted extra large coconut flakes. They aren't exactly the same, but I'm not about to complain.
Today I get to spread more joy. I think I could get used to this. It makes me feel a tiny bit like Oprah -- you win an iSpice, and YOU win an iSpice, and YOU win an iSpice!  The only difference? Everyone was expecting a mass giveaway. And the winners don't have to pay the taxes on their prize. Oh, and you can't drive away in your brand new iSpice. But you can drive with one in your pocket, so that's pretty neat (only don't scroll spices while driving!) Although, it took a few clicks of the button at Random.org,  we have our 10 winners. Are you ready? A big congratulations to:

This is the time of year I look over last years' resolutions, publicly admit defeat and prove my optimistic tendencies by giving it yet another go. This year? For the first time ever, I actually met all my published goals. Admittedly, they weren't grandiose, like...

I have turned into one of those hand-held-gadget people I used to mock. Once blissfully free of anything more technically advanced than a pen and notepad, I now find myself tethered to a library of tunes, a six-tiered calendar, five email accounts and a nest...

I'm still on a bit of a high. Last week, Monica Bhide came for lunch. With her family. On her birthday. Which just happened to be her son's 11th birthday as well. While I was thrilled she was coming and touched she would choose to spend her birthday with me, I was a bit nervous and funneled my fears into the menu, the dessert in particular. My fallback birthday cake is an unremarkable recipe brought to celebratory heights via copious quantities of booze painted onto its surface and a whole pint of whipped cream crammed between the layers. Not the sort of thing for children. In addition to kid-friendly, I wanted something decadent, something chocolate and something Canadian for my American visitors. The prefect solution sat on page 179 in The Harrow Fair Cookbook. Double-Double Chocolate Cake.

Cheryl Wilson called it when she wrote, "What a pregnant woman wants, a pregnant woman gets." Her saffron story won over Monica Bhide, the author of Modern Spice and judge for this giveaway. Monica says, "While I loved Amy's response, I think the winner is the...