Ladled

Olympic sandwiches and Pascualina

Goodcheapeats Pumpkin biscuits, Cornbread Waffles, portobello Mushroom in place of bun, Cobb salad (at home, ooh..), pesto Bread sticks, Spiced pita chips, last-minute pizza sauce, Pita Bread pizza, French Bread pizza, red pepper hummus, cranberry- carrot salad, Herbed Polenta are all recipes with a spin that can be made quickly and still feel special because they are different from what you would cook normally.

How about lemon curd or custard in these  Baked pastry squares stuffed with jam recipe  ?

Barley Soup When the Costco ran out of the trifecta of frozen mixed vegetables - green bean, carrots and peas, I had to buy the Normandy version of it. They are huge chunks, so there is never a weekend I think when I put the vegetables to fry a bit while making sooji upma or semiya upma, I will wait till these big pieces cook a bit. Few days ago when I got tired of waiting for the bananas to ripen, I boiled the diced banana and made a curry of it. I stored the boiled water for soup. This quick Barley  was a snap to put together. I let the barley and vegetables to boil for upwards of 40 min and then they turned to pearls. Makes me think that Barley Bellam payasam will be great. While adding pepper to the soup, I found a pop tab can of tomato sauce. how convenient. Since I had way too much polenta in the morning and didnt feel hungry, so I could wait all the time the vegetables and barley needed.

This Damak chocolate with green pistachios on the white wrapper just called to me. The chocolate has a puffy look  and is filled with plenty of pistachios. Only problem is that its too sweet for me. next time I will go for a bittersweet or dark chocolate version if there is one.

berry pulav Vegetarian India: A Journey Through the Best of Indian Home Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey has lots of recipes. But with the pictures and variety of locations, Ms Jaffrey has done something wonderful. She's cracked the code of how to turn a cookbook into a travelogue. Taking the readers into kitchens grand like Falaknuma (when there's a spin like asking for a pomegranate Margarita to be made non-alcoholic. These kind of incidents paint a little picture about the author, bartender and the place) but also going to places where the good food flows like the Bombay dubba walla. The book focuses on different parts of India, so even if you are a vegetarian cook from India, you will still appreciate the ingredients and special mixes in the other parts of the country - eg Kasthundi. The berry pulav with its pink astonishing colours, looks so great that I want to try a variant of it with pomegranate.  I am going to try naan khatai too. It is more involved than a simple reci...

Delallo Instant Polenta cooks very quickly. It needs to be cooked just like the sooji upma. "Polenta is family food. Mama feeds it to her baby when his teeth are coming in. Papa feeds it to his mama when her teeth have fallen out". - Teresa Lust in  Pass the Polenta :  And Other Writings from the Kitchen