French cheesy-sauced eggs baked in toast muffins | The Novice Housewife

While I do have a recipe for this french lunch time snack of a bread muffin cup with a cheesy egg filling- to share today, I also have some news. The reason for my absence after my last post.

Two weeks back I lost my grandmother. Even though she was old and had not been keeping that well for years, the news of the death was unexpected. I was to visit her on the 20th and had my travel planned and tickets booked accordingly. Now I wish I had first come to her and then gone to visit my brother, but I guess that’s how it was supposed to be.

My grandmother loved and took care of all of us the best she could, and believe me she could.

For her, feeding us was the best way to show her affection, and she thought us polishing off everything she made was the best way we could return ours. And since most of my summer vacations during my school years were spent at my grandparents place, in two months of our stay it was a norm that my brother and I would at the least gain 10 kgs; the highest for me being about 18 kgs and and an increase in jean size from a respectable 27 to a not so healthy 36 inches. No doubt my grand mother was a great cook. I had plans during this visit to learn from her her chocolate ice cream (made from bottle gourd/ giya ), her sesame seed potatoes and her lip-smacking pickles. She had given me the recipes for all on the phone, but I thought I will ask her to show me once as well. But I guess that too was not meant to be.

Her recipe for dal paranthas is my go-to recipe when I can not think of anything better to make for V and me. And it will always remind me of her now.

Although growing up, my grandmother showed a slight preference towards my elder brother, once I was in college both of us became closer. The 6 months I spent trying to set up a baking venture, living at my grandparents place before I got married, got the two of us even more close. So when I got married she did not like that I was staying so far away and would constantly be worried and checking whether I was happy in the US, telling me that I have gone too far away.

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(This is Post 3 in the series Cooking with the Books.)

I started the “Cooking with the books” series to reacquaint myself with the hoards of cookbooks I have on my bookshelf. And I am so happy that I did.

All the cookbooks that I have bought (new or second hand) have been bought after thoroughly going through their reviews on amazon or other sites. So I knew I have a good collection of cookbooks. But I never took too much advantage of it- always trying recipes on other people’s blogs ( I blame pinterest!) or recipes that I have come up with after eating something I like or one of my mom’s recipes. The cookbooks, as a result, always ended up eating dust.

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