Happy New Year! :)

And cheers to a year with more plant based meals!

Hello folks! A very Happy New Year to you all! Hope your 2024 is a splendid year, especially with good health and good food! Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. It has been a while since I showed up here. Life has been busy.

FAMILY trip to Mumbai and Phuket

I took a break from social media and went to India, specifically Mumbai to spend time with my lovely dad, my brother and his family, and meet my dear friends. Mumbai is where I was born, grew up, spent my school and college years before I came to the United States to pursue my Master’s degree in Computer Science.

My kids had visited Mumbai 5 years ago, and now that they are older - 12 and 14, it was interesting to see them observing Mumbai as teenagers, taking it all in, and understanding how their mom - I grew up in the hustle and bustle.

Mumbai has a wonderful food scene, more diverse and eclectic, creativity shines here in terms of the restaurant decor, ambience and the food - I would say definitely more interesting in many ways than San Francisco! I was able to take my family to a bunch of new places to enjoy various cuisines from around the world.

I also had the opportunity to take them to the city side of Mumbai (since I live in the suburbs), to show them various landmarks such as the Gateway of India, Taj hotel (where the dread 2008 Mumbai attacks took place), Kala Ghoda, Victoria Terminus Station - all landmarks that were built during the British empire from the 1900s. There is so much history in the city of Mumbai - and if you get a chance, it is worth exploring the city with a historian guided tour.

Here are some snaps from our trip to Mumbai. I will have more detailed posts to the restaurants that I visited in Mumbai on my travel Instagram account called @thewanderingfoodiediaries .

1) Flora Fountain, 2) Victoria Terminus Train Station 3) Gateway of India

1) Beach view from my home in Mumbai by day 2) by night 3) home cooked meals!

We also did a family trip to Phuket for a few days, which was absolutely wonderful! The people there are super kind and friendly. Food is cheap, actually everything is cheap. The weather was 90 degrees F, and the water was absolutely bliss and blue! Here are some snaps from Phuket as well. I will be sharing details of Phuket on my travel Instagram account as well.

1) Thai cooking class 2) things I made 3) 7/11 convenience store goodies 4) fruits of Thailand

1) Phi Phi Island Tour 2) Buddha Statue 3) View from the resort 4) Mandatory passion fruit margarita

More vegetarian and baking recipes for 2024

I have been in sort of a rut with food lately. I have lots of ideas, but due to social media being a b****, I have lost my mojo to share recipes, which is truly my passion and something that I immensely love sharing with my community.

I hope to get into the groove of things slowly but surely. One thing that I have been wanting to make since we visited the Fabrique Bakery in New York, are their Swedish Cardamom Buns. They were simply the best buns that I have eaten - so cardamomy, fruity with the orange zest and melt-in-your-mouth delicious! The recipe is shared in NY Times Food and has been on my list to try. That is my baking project/agenda for January.

I continue to have my Modern Vegetarian column in S.F.Chronicle, which keeeps me motivated to share new recipes every 2 weeks. I have a new recipe for an amazing Butternut Squash Soup coming out on 1/26/2024 online, as well as in the Sunday newspaper. I will be sure to share it on my Substack next week.

I also have a new recipe on my blog that I wanted to share with my Substack community - Vegan Broccoli Soup with Masala Kale Tempura. The soup is really easy to make - I add alliums and earthy Indian spices like cumin and coriander that make it so delicious. I top it with a Masala Kale Tempura - which in my mind is truly the star of this soup! The tempura is crispy, has an amazing flavor to it because of all the spices in it, and is made with a combination of rice flour and all purpose flour.

I also share tips on how to get the tempura right. And I share the pottery that I use in the photographs as well. I always get asked questions as to where I get my pottery from, so I decided to share that moving forward, for all my blog posts.

My hope and plan is to share more and more plant based recipes, to get people to eat more vegetables and fruits, which can be made delicious by spicing it correctly and enhancing the flavors with supplementary ingredients.

I also hope to keep sharing baking recipes, and learn some new baking techniques for my self growth as well.

Thank you for sticking around and hope you all have a wonderful week ahead!

XO

Amisha