It’s funny how our mode of shopping changes at every major turn in our lives. When my son was born, my shopping was baby-centric. When I started blogging, the energy shifted to the Home section and vegetable section of the store.

So with 9 food bloggers, it’s hardly surprising that a good portion of Day 3 of our meet was spent in vegetable shopping, clicking pictures and again tasting wonderful food.

I bought home some veggies which are not easily available locally. Like the fresh pigeon pea (fresh toor dal) in the above picture. I froze it first, then took it out to click pictures :)

I also brought home the juicy, bright red Delhi carrots.

Colocasia leaves are pretty common in Kerala and in fact our backyard was full of them when I was growing up. Now that I know what to cook with them, I find that the leaves are not there anymore…hmmpf

The fresh green garlic was something totally new to me, I haven’t seen or even heard about it before. So, naturally,  bought a bunch.

Colorful chilies and beautiful strawberries too made into the shopping bag. I bought eight (yes, eight!) packets of strawberries. They were my sweet-scented cabin luggage during my return flight. I had to guard it from being crushed by other passengers’ luggage. I was worried through out that the strawberries would be ‘strawberry crush’ by the end of the flight!

Luckily for me, most of it survived and I froze the rest, as Archana suggested.

 

There was a demo on how to make rotlas on Day2 and I brought those home with me. I loved it and finished it off in the next couple of days. For lunch the next day, I broke them into small pieces, drizzled some yogurt on top, mixed some nice chutneys, added a bit of farsaan and had a lipsmacking meal!

After vegetable shopping, Vaishali took us to an outlet where they served amazing vada pavs. I totally loved them! I saw this ‘I LOVE YOU” heart-shaped chocolates in one of the shops there. Archana had to remind me that I have a kid waiting for me to go back home and that this would make a great gift for him.

And she was right. My son totally loved it! Here is a click of it before it all disappeared. Thanks Archana :)

The next stop was at a farsaan shop. Vaishali again helped me pick some specialities of the place. Most of these are deep-fried and so are not healthy at all.

So I was really sure my husband would LOVE these.

The melt in the mouth kind fafdas paired with the papita chutney was a hit at home. I bought different kind of chutneys. I don’t know the proper pairing of it, I just had them with everything and totally loved it.

The thin crispy cheese butter dosas were something totally new. Vaishali recommended these. They tasted so good! Look how thin they are! I bought khakras, some farsaan and some chips & pickles too from the shop.

While all of this was being stuffed inside the suitcases, the Cream N Crunch guys delivered fresh kulchas we ordered the day before. I made this for our dinner the next day and the kulchas were nice and soft and yummy! I bought some soup sticks, cheese sticks and some other items too from there the day before.

In short, I carried back home a whole of lot nice memories and a heavier suitcase.

At Chennai airport, the minute I saw my son peeping through the hand rails, looking for me – I forgot everything else – even to bid goodbye to my friends. I just ran and hugged him tight and told him that mommy loved him a lot and missed him. (I was having too much fun to miss him too much :D, but please don’t tell him that.)

I don’t think I have put everything about BM 25 Meet into words.

And I don’t think I can.

There were just too many sweet moments of long and short conversations, moments of laughting out together, of watching and catching(literally) the kids, yacking till the throat aches and this act of trying to thank Vaishali and never finding enough words! I don’t think that I can do it even now :)

I never felt that I was meeting everyone for the first time. It was as if we have all known each other all our lives! And I hope it stays that way forever :-).

Happy BM everyone!