Magpie's Recipes: about

Hi!

I'm Rose a.k.a Magpie, and I am the cook, baker, blogger and photographer here at Magpie's Recipes.
I currently live in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area with my husband T, who is taste tester and bug fixer, my toughest critic as well as my biggest supporter. We are both originally from Kerala in South India, although we have each lived in and traveled to many different places from Manila to Madras.

We love food, and are thankful we get to discover and enjoy food from around the world, as well as a bounty of fresh, local produce at the farmer's market just a short walk away.

A sight I can never have enough of!

We have a naughty little ~~monkey~~ toddler who is always trying to knock down my props or run away with them. He is sometimes an enthusiastic hand model, although he has trouble staying still!

A little bit about me & food:

I spent the happiest days of my childhood, in Kerala, South India with my large and loving family, right in the midst of the growing, harvesting, preparing and cooking of food. My grandparents and many uncles are farmers and entrepreneurs growing rice, rubber, coconut, cashew nuts, pine apples, bananas, pepper, cardamom, nutmeg, kokum, mangosteen... My sister, brother and I spent many languid summers chasing geese ( ok, I admit I was mostly chased by them!) and petting cows, reading a book by the river, and going fishing with cousins and enjoying the fabulous feasts cooked by my mom, aunts and grandmom.

We also lived in several other small towns and cities, spending a major chunk of our growing up years in Tamil Nadu which holds a very special place in my heart. So for me comfort food means Appam and Stew as much as it does a hot crispy dosa dunked in spicy sambhar!

Although I have always loved food- the eating of it, I only learnt to cook when I moved away from home to study and work, and I learnt the hard way- through trial and lots of error, and many frantic calls to my mom and grandmom, and with the help of friends and roommates from all over India. Over the years and thanks also to the patient and supportive hubs who is as enthusiastic about food as I am, I would say that I have become quite a good cook, and I enjoy discovering and sharing new things to cook.

Why Magpie ?

I get asked this a lot. When I started this blog I chose to go by the name Magpie since my husband T often remarked that I am like a magpie- I get easily distracted, in my case by food, recipes, ingredients, kitchenware..and collect them like a magpie collects shiny things and most women collect shoes!

What kind of food do I cook?

I love to bake and cook food from around the world and love finding easy ways to cook up delicious feasts with simple, fresh, locally available ingredients and produce.

I especially enjoy cooking authentic and traditional recipes from my roots in India and my Malayali Syrian Christian upbringing, as well as creating modern, simpler and more convenient versions as well as dabbling in a little fusion cooking as well.

I am also the co-host of The Kerala Kitchen- an ongoing, online potluck featuring dishes inspired by Kerala to preserve, share and celebrate authentic as well as modern recipes from the cuisine I grew up on, along with my friend Ria and our awesome team

Since the little monkey has a couple of food allergies ( which I'm hoping he'll outgrow) I'm trying out some vegan, and other allergy friendly recipes for him and others in our circle of family and friends who have food allergies and this is a topic of great interest and a real challenge for me. You will find quite a few dairy, gluten or egg-free recipes here.

On Photography
I use a Canon Rebel T3i DSLR camera and am trying to improve my photography skills so any tips or comments would be highly welcome!

Can you use my recipes?
Yes of course! Please do! However, please note that all my content and photographs are under Creative Commons license which means that you are free to share or adapt my work, when you give me due credit for it. If you chose to blog about the recipes here, please do link to the original post on my blog. Recipe aggregators, please only link to the recipe on my blog and do not copy entire posts or recipes. If you are using recipes here for commercial purposes please do email me to ask. If you would like to use my photographs, please get in touch and do not use any without my permission.

This blog started out as a personal collection of recipes and a chronicle of my kitchen adventures but has turned out to be more and more of an obsession, a great way to meet fellow foodies and make some good friends!

Enquries, product reviews, other questions
I like to discover and occasionally share quality food products or cooking tools that I have used and liked. The opinions and views I express are strictly mine. If I have not used it and loved it, it will not appear on this blog.

For any queries, contact me at magpiemails(at)gmail(dot)com and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
For questions regarding specific recipes, do leave a comment on that post.

Thank you for coming, for reading my long rambling, for trying out my recipes and for your kind comments- you all make my day!