Beginning 2010

Wish you all a very Happy New Year. We all have lot to look forward to. Many hopes and dreams are resting upon the next twelve months. Hopefully there will be success for all of us in our endeavors and aspirations.

This past year has been tough. Some have survived and others are still fighting the war for survival. But we all have been and still are doing our best. Someone had said on the lines of, ‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger’. This philosophy holds true for me. I too have hit the wall of frustration many a times. Each time I wanted to give up but kept going because something was pushing me forward. It was a unique combination of the strong need to do my best without caring for the results and the belief of my friends and peers in me.

These past few months you have read my research over spices and participated in the cooking workshops. I thank you for your support and encouragement. This month, to mark the beginning of the year, instead of the spices, I’ll indulge you with how it all began and what it is that I plan to bring this year for you.

Over the past year, Flavors Of Landour has grown from a tiny entity to a small entity. My passion of baking fruit cakes had led to the formation of Flavors Of Landour. Christmas Plum Cake sold like hot cakes and also won a Red Ribbon in Strawberry Festival 2009. It was a very proud moment for me personally. A step forward from there was evolving the fruit cakes into specialty cakes which were frosted and decorated for special occasions. Truth be told, I am not much of a decorator. There are many cake decorators in Tampa Bay, professionals and non-professionals, and many of them put my efforts to shame. However, as my specialty is baking, not decorating, I have something unique to my cakes, the flavor beyond the regular vanilla and chocolate. My cakes have spices, fruits and nuts. My aim has been to make them a work of art inside out in their taste, flavor and texture. I thought it did not stand a chance but who knew there are those who wanted exactly this!

I am fortunate enough to have friends who thought there was a relation between spicy fruit cakes and Indian spicy food, as I myself had failed to see the correlation. Anyway, after a little coaxing from them, I started giving classes on a few famous Indian vegetarian dishes. What started as a few gave way to the full fledged cooking workshops which included vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes. It began slow, maybe once in a month but by the end of the year, I can safely say that I was teaching my students more dishes than I was making for my own family! As I recall, one of my pupil once told me that he wants to keep doing these workshops because it’s much more than a cooking workshop. It was a science laboratory! It took me by surprise. I knew my workshops are not definitely not a cooking show, they are hands on training for my students who get to cook with me and also learn the reason and the logics of cooking techniques, essence of spices, their culinary and medical use, recipes and proper storage, the significance of dish itself and its origin, ways of presentation and consumption. Each workshop has an introduction to the whys, whats and hows of the menu involved. But I had never thought them as a scientific research!

Since then a conscious effort began to research all the ingredients, process, techniques and instruments that I use in my cooking. Writing them down was the obvious second stage to it. Publishing them as my newsletters and offering classes related to that subject was yet another step forward. So far, I have written 5 newsletters on various spices. Hope you have enjoyed reading them and learned something new.

This year when I look back on 2009, I realize it has been a great year for me. And it has already started showing a promising future. Flavors Of Landour began 2010 by getting an article published in a magazine that promotes India and its culture. You can read it in their site by clicking here.

This article talks about many interesting relationships between your kitchen and a healthy lifestyle. It was an effort towards spreading the name and aim of the cooking workshops beyond the immediate geographical area.

As you can see, the old Flavors Of Landour website has undergone a change too. Earlier, it was focused on registering for the workshops but now the focus has shifted to include spreading the knowledge. I will look forward to your comments and suggestions. Cooking workshops can never be a success unless I get the feedbacks from you. Your participation is required at every stage. Also feel free to share your knowledge about Indian cuisine that I might have missed in my newsletters. Work is still in progress but hopefully, by the end of this month I’ll be able to provide a list and the photo gallery of all my cakes too in the site.

To sum up, I can say from infancy, Flavors of Landour has become a toddler. For this year, it hopes to grow towards being a super active kindergartener focusing on good food, spices and cakes. To keep you all intellectually stimulated, it will also keep publishing its newsletters once a month. By the end of 2010, let’s hope there will be many more publications in other magazines too and many more workshops involving much more spices. And also lets hope the ‘terrible two’ stage wouldn’t last long if we hit one.

Have a wonderful year ahead.