Yasmin

Diet Vanilla Pepsi is really good too, other than the A&W Diet Cream Soda is my favorite also.

My family loves the very popular "un Indian" Green Bean Casserole made with cream of mushroom soup and green beans, soy sauce, salt and pepper, topped with Durkee french fried onions. I myself love fresh green beans cooked with any recipe.

Is there a way to use less ghee to make this Yasmin? You can use as little ghee as you like, or as I mentioned before use shortening instead, any "light" brand of margarine or unsalted butter can be substituted also but then we are back to the "what is considered Dairy" controversy

Sooji Halwa made with ghee (shortening can be substituted) water, cardamom, saffron, and sugar is also a very popular Indian sweet, specially offered as prasad in all the mandirs here.

The favorite chutney in our house is green cilantro chutney. I mix cilantro, dried coconut (fresh can be used too), sugar, lemon juice, salt, jalapeno or any other hot peppers, salt and enough water to blend in the blender, fast and easy, I make a big batch and keep some in the refrigerator and freeze the rest in individual containers.

I own about 50 including some from India in different languages, the ones I refer to most are the ones compiled as fundraisers by churches, temples, employee committees, there are some wonderful "Down Home" recipes in these cook books. Recently when my niece got married I bought a blank book titled "My Favorite Recipes" and hand wrote some of my best recipes in it and the ones passed on to me by family members - grandmothers, aunts, neighbors, friends etc. and gave it to her for a shower gift, there are blank pages for her to add her recipes over the years, she tells me that she refers to it all the time.

Most Parsis drink their tea the English way, hot water poured in a kettle with loose tea and a couple of (leelee chai stalks - lemon grass), almost all my friends and relatives have it growing in pots in their gardens, whenever we had tea someone would go out and grab some fresh "Leelee Chai" literal translation green tea and sometimes we even added fresh mint, I have several friends in the USA who grow it in their gardens or in colder climates in their houses but it just doesn't do that well. Milk and sugar are added after you pour the tea in your cup, some people add sweetened condensed milk or half and half for a richer tasting tea. For some reason the taste just isn't the same here as it is back home. Every time I visit I just can't wait to have my first cup of tea and miss it terribly when I come back