About Me


Hi there! That's me May. By now you would have figured out that I am camera shy..:D Well, I come from a little town Mangalore in Southern India. Post marriage, I lived in Bangalore for 10 years. We are currently stationed in Germany for a period of four years and then we are headed back to Ahmedabad in Western India. Life has turned out to be one big adventure for my family and me!!

My experiments in the kitchen began at a very young age. Being the eldest of four siblings, mum would entrust me to teeny tiny jobs around the kitchen. Few years down the line saw me reading cookbooks along with Enid Blyton and Nancy Drew. I loved giving an occasional, rare break to my mother who would proudly relish the delish meals that I(along with my assistant chefs) prepared. By age 15, I had baked my first cake (not in an oven, but in a pressure cooker) and could cook a full fledged meal. By the time I was married at age 22, unlike other young women, I stepped forth confidently into my well equipped kitchen(of course, done up by hubby!!) to start whipping up some delights for my new found love!!

I was fortunate to find a man who is a foodie!! And our daughter too has turned out to be just like the father. As you can see in the header of the blog that's a typical day in our household where the father daughter duo enter after their hard days work with the first question being "What's cooking today ?" than "How was your day?" While I adore cooking, I am a poor eater.....tsk tsk. And well, the sonny boy has taken after me!!

Since our move to Germany, cooking has been extremely challenging. We are living in a very tiny village called Lohr am Main where Indian ingredients are hard to find. Little things such as fresh curry leaves are simply non existent, fresh coconut has now been replaced with desiccated and we can go for months together without coriander leaves, all of which are very essential to our cooking. Hubby had warned me that we would have to make adjustments to our cuisine and two years down the line, I would say we have succeeded. While I do cook Mangalorean dishes once in a while, we also have an occasional german cold meal for dinner. Fresh fish curries and brown rice have been replaced with soups, bread rolls and salads, Idlis and dosas with fresh fruit pancakes, muesli/fruit yoghurt and german sausages, tea time chakulis/chips with berry muffins.

We also consider ourselves lucky to being able to travel to neighboring European countries and having the opportunity to taste local cuisine everywhere. From the swiss fondue to the Italian pasta and gelato, the german schnitzel to the French flambée, we love it!!

Things I love/doing: Mon cheri, rich plum cakes, coffee liqueur, ice cream, orchids, gold jewelry, weddings, cookbooks, movies that make me laugh, i love to laugh, digging up mud and sowing, buds, tulips, sunshine, biryani, songs of the years gone by, litchis, good housekeeping magazine, baking/cooking, spring, a good drive, walks with hubby, singing duets with my kiddies and of course, travels with the family

I began this blog in 2010, the result of a bored Indian woman stuck in a land with people speaking a strange language and with temperatures too cold for her body to venture out(we arrived during winter). Simultaneously I also began blogging about our daily life at With Love from Lohr during which time this blog went through a hiatus. What made me want to revive it again? Seeing the steady stream of visitors and the occasional surprise follower even though the blog was practically dead. Thank you all for encouraging, coming over, reading, and commenting. I hope you enjoy what you see.

And to conclude....why The Chef? Well, My culinary experiments began with my mum and Isidore Coelho's THE CHEF!!!



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