New Recipes Invented by Chellu Early In The Morning

Capsicum Dressing:
Fry the capsicum nicely . Then take it out and take a knife . Cut the capsicum in two circles in the sides. Cut a straight line below the circles. Then make a smiley design on the bottom. Then cut the back of the capsicum into strips to resemble hair.

Birdie Wings:
First take a tomato and fry it. Take a potato and boil it. Take the potato's skin out . Cut the potato into thin wedges. In the tomato make 2 little straight cuts. Then fix the potato wedges in the tomato. The final product resembles a bird .

Coconut tidy-piles:
First take a coconut and grate it. Then keep it in the side. Take kothimbir and tomato & chilly and cut it little. Then fry the above with tondli. Then take the shredded coconut and put it in the coconut shell. Grind the fried stuff a little bit. And stuff it in the coconut shell above the shredded coconut. 

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Papaya Ice-cream

Another one of Chellu inventions :
Squash the papaya in a mixie . Add sugar and freeze it. Cut it and stick it with tooth-picks! There goes your papaya ice-cream.

The Art Of Gift-Wrapping

 Gift-wrapping of lollipop. She put it in a tea bag and then tied it with pipe-cleaners with a covering of gift-wrapping paper. Then stuck flowers on the side.

                                             Gift-wrapping of mehendi cone. She used her rubber-bands to tie it.

Chellu's cooking pursuits have off late kicked off another interest too- gift wrapping..Actually its been an interest since a long time. Chellu has always gift-wrapped her presents for her friends' presents. Presents to me, to her dad..I think its more of her urge to put an artistic touch to everything. She likes to present things well.

But recently when she started to look she has also been gift-wrapping them especially the ones she keeps for her cousin sister Dhriti. Yesterday she gift wrapped a lollipop, mehendi cone & a chocolate all in the same time.

Choco-mix pouches. The one in the background is for her cousin where Chellu tied the satin ribbon like a bag handle & carried it happily across to her mama's house.

The interesting part is that a lot of these gift wrappings have happened with "trash". Grocery packaging, plastic wraps, chocolate wrappings , strings etc..They are stored in a box in the toy-room and have been used  very innovatively. This has made me realize that nothing can really be trash..its how we present it to our kids. So much art can happen with what we throw. And artists like Dominic Anthony who is a world-renowned Trash Artist have proven that trash can be a gr8 medium for art.


This one was prepared by Chellu in Mumbai from left over chart paper. She sprayed it paint from an old brush and then tied it with a thing piece of cloth from the left-overs of her grand-mom's stitching. In it was packed jewellery that Chellu had made for her cousin sister. This packaging like others was done by her all by herself with no input from me whatsoever.

Cantaloupe Ice-cream

When Joon had visited us last month he gave us an interesting recipe to make cantaloupe ice-cream. One scoops out the cantaloupe and then fills it with ice-cream. Then add your own yummy toppings like chocolate shavings, jellies, gems etc..

Chellu then came up with cantaloupe lollies with the pieces that were scooped out. By freezing it then sticking it with a tooth-pick to eat it.

Self-independency

 Our open kitchen policy is reaping some benefits offlate. The girls are starting to get more independent about meeting their own hunger needs. For the past few weeks itself I've been noticing both of them going to the kitchen and cutting their own stuff and spicing it up etc to eat without asking me.

Yesterday caught Kunju taking a banana and slicing it nicely to eat it for a mid-evening snack. Today while I had a hectic morning the girls played "catering catering" wherein Chellu would order her stuff and Kunju would deliver it in her scooter. I observed that they were together eating sliced cucmbers spiced with salt.