Rotti/Dose/Dosa

Now that Mom’s here, we are getting to eat a lot more of Mangalorean dishes, the way they are to be eaten, not like how I make them, all modified and with tons of short-cuts. Which is good, for the time-being. And I know that once she leaves, am going to miss all of it, and go back to my dessicated coconuts and ready-mixes of Rasams. Sigh.



So this morning’s breakfast was Rotti, also called as Dose or Dosa. This is like your regular South Indian dosa, but with slightly different ingredients, and its not left for fermentation. Its eaten with the regular chutney or with Hindi, a Mangalorean mango pickle/chutney or with Kodakene also. Like the Dosa, this is another staple dish in our households.

New Home, and some Thanksgiving!

Yep, for me, Thanksgiving has come a little early. :-D There is a long list of people I have to thank for something big on this blog!

Did you notice the URL? Yes… I bought the domain – TheMealAlgorithm.com, mainly because I wanted to know how it feels to have your own domain, what with everyone having one of their own, and I having no clue on how to go about it. Well, for starters, it feels great. :-D Its been two days and I haven’t been able to get over it till now. :-)

There was some major confusion, cluelessness and mayhem before I actually bought the domain. I wasn’t sure how to start about it, and what to do and all. GoDaddy.com was recommended by everyone, but when I actually was about to buy the domain off it, there was some problem with the payment options, and I had to cancel my order.

Then I asked Nags of Edible Garden [which you should totally check out if you want to understand the nuances of food photography. Check out her blog for the tips. I did all my prop-shopping after reading how she uses her props] what she did for her domain. After talking to her and figuring out if I can host the domain on Azure, I went ahead and bought the domain from Google, which again was powered by GoDaddy.com, but the process was easier.

And then came the problem of the template. All the food bloggers’ templates I like are based on white, and I knew that was what I wanted too. But my non-existent HTML and web-designing skills didn’t let me pick and choose any template I wanted and could customize. After checking atleast ten different templates and trying them all on the blog and not liking any, I turned to Twitter. I asked for folks how they design their blog templates, and got plenty of help.

All of these guys helped me with template options, on how to customize the blog or a suggestion on how to go about getting a domain and I took the ones that applied the most to me.

Anita Menon
Mala Bhargava
Amit Agarwal
Saleem Pheku
Rads
Monika Manchanda
Shripal Gandhi
Maxdavinci
Thanks a lot, guys!

I went with Madhu’s suggestion of starting with a plain white template, and customizing it the way I wanted. And it worked great. Atleast I love my blog template, and feel comfortable coming here , to my own blog. :-)

Then came the header. I wanted a plain header, nothing fancy, but I wanted it to have a design which would imply what the blog is all about. Well, my creative abilities are again non-existed, and so I wanted to go with a simple flowchart, making something I am good at, but the husband thought of something better. Something which resembles me a lot more, and he customized it to suit this blog.

Yes, the code in the blog is his idea. He wrote it in the Visual Studio IDE, and I made the flow chart using Visio 2010. And I integrated them all using Microsoft Powerpoint 2010. And lo… the header was ready, and am in love with it!

Now that everything is ready and set, all I have to do is to get into that kitchen of mine and cook… :)

[Cross posted in my other blog – The Green Tea Evenings, which is where I write about everything except food!]

Weekend baking… Savoury Shortbread cookies

This morning I was craving for something savoury. And I wanted to bake it, coz Mom is around , so I wanted to show off my baking skills to her. :-)


Hence these cookies. I followed the basic shortbread method, but didn’t add sugar to this. The herbs I used in this recipe are indicative only, and can be replaced with anything your taste buds ask for. My next trial will be with Oregano and Rosemary , and different peppers for the spicy taste.