For some time now, I have been craving Jalebis– a popular Indian sweet that is made by deep-frying a flour batter in kind of a pretzel or circular spiral shape, which is then soaked in sugar syrup.

Growing up there was this ad for cooking oil that used to come on Indian television. The ad starts with this little boy who decides to leave his house because everyone shouts at him all the time. Somebody known to the family finds the small boy sitting at the station and the boy tells him that he doesn’t plan to go back home. To get the boy back home, the old guy tells him that his mom has just made hot, out of the oil Jalebis.

You should hear the excitement and the greed in the boy’s voice when he says “Jalebi”. The boy then thinks its a better idea to just go back home and there to greet him are these warm, orange colored spiral shapes, more popularly known as Jalebis. Because of the really cute boy who was the real star of the advertisement, the ad was one of the most popular advertisements of that time. But the ad also told the love Indians have for the very popular sweet Jalebi.

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Starting this month, the Recipe Swap will be posting on the first Monday of the month, instead of the first Sunday as we did in the past. Which in turn means a clash with Group A’s Secret Recipe Club’s posting date- which is also the first Monday of the month. So I knew I had a problem. Either I did two posts in one day or see if there was something from my assigned blog that I could fit with the Recipe Swap’s chosen recipe. And the latter is what I chose. Mainly because I am lazy, but also because a lot was happening. And also because of a little mailing error I got to know of the Recipe swap recipe quite late. Not that that made a difference because I’m such a procrastinator, but I am also a Capricorn and I love to shift blame from myself wherever I can. 🙂

For SRC, my secret blog was Fake Ginger. I have seen other SRC members having her as their assigned blog for past reveals and always coming up with great recipes from her repertoire. SO I was very excited to have Amanda’s blog for this month. And I somehow found a recipe that fit in the Recipe swap framework, and also something I knew I would really like.

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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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