Foodpanda ~ The online way to order food in just 3 steps!

I came across an an online food ordering website called Foodpanda.  It is an up-and-coming website
that operates by delivering food from a wide range of restaurants to homes and/or offices in 11 cities in India, namely Delhi, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, etc.

As an author of a food blog I can tell you blogs like mine mainly focus on cooking ideas and recipes. The whole idea interested me because I am sure there would be lot more readers who live in cities and really don't find or cannot afford solid time to cook at home. A hectic day, drives many exhausted and makes them impractical to go out and eat.  Grabbing packed food on the way back home makes many of us rather impatient because of the detour, traffic and vehicle parking issues during busy evenings in city centres.

 Foodpanda covers favourite restaurants of your area as well as fast food joints. Type your locality in the home page to know the options. The cuisines are varied; Chinese, Mexican, Punjabi are to name a few.
 Enter your area, select your restaurant, browse the menu, order and and pay cash online.The food is on your way, while you chill out at home!

Have a lovely weekend, friends!

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Blueberry Lemonade ~ Sister blogs for me :)

My sister Nags, of Edible Garden, needs no introduction. Seeing no regular updations in my space lately, sis offered to do a guest post for me during one of our chats past week. Since I don't have much  fruit drinks to my credit, I wanted her to do one for me. She found just enough time to buy the fresh berries and do this post for me, inspite of her much busy weekend. She was a little worried about the poor lighting in her photography though I felt perfect and squealed in delight!
I honestly love shadowy/dull lighting than brightness for photo shoots these days.

Tight hugs and over to you, sis... :)

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Picture of the Week ~ Budha @ Gangtok

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Torcettini di Saint Vincent ~ Sugar Crusted Twisted Cookies from the Valle d’Aosta

April is over within a week!  " 'We Knead to Bake' something different, so we’re baking yeasted cookies", decides Aparna! Since this particular biscuit/cookies are yeasted and involve a bread-like dough, it qualified perfectly.
So according to her,
Torcettini are smaller versions of Torcetti (meaning small twists), and these pear/teardrop shaped twists are made of a dough of flour, yeast and butter which are shaped and then rolled in sugar before being baked. These biscuits are synonymous with the town of Saint Vincent in Valle d'Aosta, a small mountainous region in North-Western Italy. They’re well known throughout the Piedmont region as well.

The origin of these biscuits is believed to be from Grissini (breadsticks) which were made from the leftover scraps of bread dough. According to one story, a Grissini baker had some leftover butter which he needed to use up. Inspiration struck and he decided to add the butter to the last batch of his Grissini dough for the day. To be able to differentiate this lot of “breadsticks”, he rolled them in sugar and shaped them into loops, and the Torcetti was born. Torcetti/ Torchettini taste even better when they’re flavoured with lime/ lemon zest or anise.

It is said that Queen Margherita, the wife of King Umberto I of Savoy, liked the cookies in one pastry shop so much that she knighted the owner on the spot. A certificate attesting to this still hangs in the pastry shop in Saint Vincent. During her stay in Valle d'Aosta, that she gave her servants enough provisions to bake an abundant supply for her consumption.

Torcettini di Saint Vincent
Adapted from 'A Baker’s Tour' by Nick Malgieri

Makes 24 cookies
(I halved the recipe and baked 12 cookies)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup warm water, about 110F
1 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (or 1 tsp instant yeast)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp lime/ lemon zest
40gm unsalted butter, cold and cut into small pieces
About 1/3 cup sugar for rolling the cookies

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Tender Coconut Mint Cooler

Coconuts are nature's IV bags! I vaguely remember reading somewhere about this.
During World War II and the Vietnam War, hospitals used coconuts as IV drips to rehydrate sick and unconscious patients. The hospitals with limited supplies of medicines, particularly during the war, sometimes run short. At one time they saw a bunch of soldiers come in with partial bodily paralysis and high fever. One of them was unable to take in fluids, and soon became severely dehydrated. The hospital was running low on IV bags. Somebody scaled a coconut tree and fetched a coconut down, careful not to crack the outer husk. Part of the husk was peeled away, exposing the eyes of the coconut. Doctors jabbed a large needle through one of them. The needle came out full of coconut meat, and so a new needle was inserted in the existing hole, and, presumably, sucked a little nutrition out of the original needle. The coconut was connected up to the IV tube, which was jabbed right into the patient. The man stayed hydrated with coconut water for two days, after which he recovered and regained his health.
I believe many of you would would have come across this story, but it reminds me of this every time I gulp down the nature's best water.

Hence, apart from the medicinal properties of coconut water, the intracellular fluid or the plasma best matches with the density of salts present in coconut water.
The glucose is easily assimilable and refreshes you instantly once consumed orally!

I can go on and on about the heavenly goodness.
 The peak summer is on in T.N, the temperature touching the perfect 40 deg and today I flavoured the tender coconut water with mint, for a change.

Tender Coconut Mint Cooler

 For one serving,

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