About Me

Cooking is sheer pleasure, especially when you are cooking for someone you love. Add to it the excitement of making something new, something delicious, something popular and sometimes, even creative, and you have an expression of happiness and triumph. At times, it can be a useful avenue to keep yourself occupied – a welcome break from some drudgery. Cooking can bring you a sense of satisfaction, joy, achievement or exhilaration – or at times, even despair. Cooking can just satiate your hunger, whet your appetite or make you plain delirious. Cooking can be a chore or a hobby or just simply something you do for people to cheer them up.

For me, cooking is a little of all of the above. My first foray into hands-on cooking (and by ”hands-on”, I mean being completely on my own with no help) was only after I got married. Till then, I would happily gobble down whatever my mother, Pachi (aunt) and Bapama ( grandma) would cook, slurping down the last morsel and asking for more. And why not? They are all wonderful cooks. One’s mother is always one’s favourite cook on earth, and it is no different with me. As kids, all of us - me, my brother and my cousins - would sit around the table with our huge plates waiting for the ‘specials’ that mom and Pachi would make for us chatting away till the food appeared, at which point we would instantly pipe down and concentrate only on the food!

My ‘hands-on cooking’ did not get off to a particularly flying start - it was not very easy for me to begin with. My first attemp at making chapatis, for instance, brought tears to my eyes! Looking back, I have no doubt come a long way. That said, I’m NOT an expert. Just having a food blog, doesn’t make me one. So if you are looking for an expert, please look elsewhere! My chapatis aren’t perfect yet and I still have a long long way to go.


During the first year of my marriage, I, more often than not, would make frantic phone calls to my mother or mother-in-law, when I was in the middle of my cooking to ask why a certain dish wasn’t quite “behaving” the way I wanted or expected it to. My mother-in-law who is a wonderful cook has given me handy tips on cooking in general and troubleshooting in particular. She also has a great collection of recipes - most her own, others passed on from generations, some from national and regional cooking shows and more recently, from the internet.

The S.O.S calls graduated to proactive instructional calls, but the calls continued.  After relocating to the US from Bangalore, the difference in time zones meant help and support wasn’t always just a call away, so I had to turn to other sources for backup. That’s where food blogs came to the rescue.
Soon, I became a big fan of food blogs and would spend countless hours poring through them, jumping from blog to blog gazing at the wonderful pictures,  admiring their cooking and writing skills. The thought of starting my own did occur to me, but always with a sense of trepidation. I’m not new to the blogging world – I did blog for sometime at Apy Time. My primary concern was whether I would be able to maintain it, what with my naughty li’l  toddler always wanting my attention. My husband constantly encouraged me and finally I decided to come up with one. I still don’t know how far along I will be able to maintain it, but I do admit that I’m glad I started it.

I’m often asked how, with a baby in tow, I get the time to cook dishes with elaborate procedure AND blog about it. The answer is, I do it for me. However busy a person is, I feel they should have a hobby and make time for it.

So that, in a (huge) nutshell, is why I blog. Cooking inspires me to blog. And definitely, blogging inspires me to cook. After I stepped into the blogging world, I have come across several useful nuggets of information. Tidbits that left me enthused. New ingredients that I hadn’t heard of, dishes whose names were a real mouthful, and  techniques that I am still digesting. I’m slowly expanding my horizons and trying to ingest all these new ideas into my cooking.  I find myself in a whole new world of cooking. Especially when it comes to baking – be it vegetables, bread or cakes.

Before I conclude: knowledge only increases when shared, so feel free to make good use of the content in my blog and share it as you like. However, to nurture and encourage the spirit of creativity, please abide by my Creative Commons license – when you share, attribute to Apy Cooking! and share for non-commercial use only. 

Welcome once again to my blog and (H)Ap(p)y Cooking!