Divine Spice Box wishes all its readers a very hearty and warm new year !! May this year brings in lots of good food and conversations around it in company of lovely people for each one of us 🙂 Let us all welcome the year 2015 with a promise to keep dreaming big and be creative !!
The year 2014 has been a really eventful year. This year DSB took bigger, bolder steps and got more encouragement from all you lovely people which made the journey, both, for me and DSB, a lot more simpler. When i started this blog in 2013, i hardly knew that this blog was about to completely transform me as a person and change my perception about life. In the last 1.5 years, my interaction with food increased many folds and i started living my life around spices and ingredients. This is probably the best thing that has happened to me in along time.
Being a designer by profession, i have dealt with colors/textures/forms all my life and I would usually perceive everything around me with a different and varied sensibility. When i started my journey as a home cook, i would often find myself getting mesmerized with various attributes of the ingredients i worked with. Attributes like colors, smell and shape of the food would take me back to my design school days and i would invariably spend hours, almost doing a design research, figuring out the best way to embrace the quality of a particular ingredient. I enjoyed this on a daily basis and this helped me open my mind to new cuisines and experimentation in general. As we do in design, i started experimenting within the cooking techniques and food cultures and this helped me discover ways to combine techniques, ingredients and recipes to create something unique but with roots going back to their respective cultures 🙂
I always believe that things look their best when they are tweaked just enough, not too much … If they lose their roots, they lose their identity and then its just meaningless.
The year 2014 brought a lot of goodies for DSB. We went through series of cooking workshops which attracted many people from various countries and cultural backgrounds into our kitchen where we cooked up storms of Indian delicacies like Coconut Laddoo, Shammi Kebabs, Dahi Vadas and so on. It was all so much fun ! We shared good time and energy- cooking, learning and sharing our experiences around food. The best break though came along when DSB decided to participate in a pop-up restaurant for a day. The event was called “Restaurant Day” in May . DSB decided to go along with its roots for the food and prepared Indian delicacies like Vada Pav, Carrot Halwa barfi, mango Lassi and assorted chutneys. Oh it was just ecstatic ! Not only did DSB had customers coming in like crazy for trying out DSB’s flavour, i ended up meeting some real great people and made some friends ! The food got sold like hot cakes and we were all sold out in 3 hours flat ! It was an enriching and mesmerizing experience, both, for me and for DSB 🙂 I smile every time i think about it 🙂
Shifting to Montreal changed my life forever! I found my creative outlet in cooking and started this blog which i am so glad i did. The blog started in me, a zest for food and now that travels with me where ever i go. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Montreal for being so nice and embracing me with good food and friends.
With a heavy heart DSB and I bid a good bye to Montreal in October 2014 and shifted our base to the sunny city of San Diego, California, USA. Life has been super hectic since then but is as adventurous and more 🙂 2 months have gone by and i am loving this place. San Diego has a Mexican food influence .. so i guess more recipes from the land of Mexico are in order in the near future !! Keep a lookout because some good stuff is about to come to your plate, REAL SOON !!
Before i end this post, i would like to thank all of my lovely readers who have given me constant support by motivating me to pursue my love for food and cooking. Your love and encouragement makes me better each day and gives meaning and life to DSB. Thank you for being there !
And now for some good food…. i would like to bring you all together with me and celebrate this year of DSB’s food frenzy with some of my favorite recipes from the Divine Spice Recipe Box :
Appetizers : Click on the pictures for the recipes.. trust me you want to !
Main Course : Click on the pictures for the recipes.. After the appetizers, this is just awesome !
And now for some sweet cravings !!
Desserts :
Lets keep the merriment going. Browse through the food pictures and pick a recipe or two 🙂 Enjoy your week !!
New recipes coming up soon 🙂
