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I have mentioned on my about me Page about my Dad’s Spaghetti Sauce and how good it is. And not that I have tried plenty of other homemade spaghetti meat sauces to compare with (I have only eaten his version), but still believe me, will you please, when I say its really good. My dad hardly ever gets in the kitchen, probably because my mother is an excellent cook, but when he does, he does a darn good job of it.

My dad is in the Indian Air Force and when I was in first grade he came to the US for a course. After he completed the course my dad took some time off so that we could travel around US and also visit my mom’s brother in Canada. Now in Canada they release this annual Milk Calendar, where they feature recipes which are “ready in 45 minutes or less, include at least 1 cup of milk, and meet the recommendations of Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating”. My mom, being the avid cook she is, flicked many Milk calendars from her brother’s house. And the recipes from these calendars made way into our home. The spaghetti sauce recipe I am sharing today is one of them.

I do not know how it got to be that my dad started cooking this recipe from the Milk Calendar. I don’t remember him cooking anything before he started making this spaghetti sauce. Like I said, he hardly ever entered the kitchen to cook. But somehow he decided to try this recipe out on his own. And then from that day onwards this recipe was his thing. If I remember correctly my mom made the same sauce once, but I think I told her that Papa makes it better. I know, I was a mean kid to my mom. :/

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Mexican Pasta Salad

A cloudy and windy Saturday (Sadly, no rains though)

A walk to the theatre to see Man of Steel (which I enjoyed watching)

A lazy Sunday spent meal planning and grocery shopping (my first time doing a meal plan for the week)

And, eating this mexican pasta salad for lunch today. All of this and more made it a weekend well spent. 🙂

The first time I made this easy pasta salad was for my coffee group friends and everyone enjoyed it. In fact it got my friends’ kids’ approval as well, and one of them is only 15 months old. And I think anything that gets a kid’s approval is a recipe to keep. Just make sure you reduce the spice to make the recipe more kid friendly.

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quinoa bread-6

I had pinned this recipe for Quinoa bread quite a while back. The recipe was in French (or that’s what google says) but it intrigued me quite a bit, and with the help of google translator I could figure it out more or less and seemed like an easy recipe.

And it IS easy.

Not much of kneading, though I did knead it a little more than what the original recipe suggests. Well, the original recipe just calls for mixing everything with a wooden spoon. Maybe because I used slightly less water than called for I did have to knead it a little by hand to make it into a smooth dough. But that was it.

Also, I was a little wary of adding the walnuts before the first rise, because my knowledge of bread baking tells me that any additions like seeds, nuts weighs the dough down and thus inhibits rising so they should be added after the first rise. Luckily the dough still rose but since I was in a time crunch I did not wait till it tripled in size, as the recipe states but baked it once it was double in size after an hour and a half.

quinoa bread-3

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