Foodie Santa Comes To My Town

The festive season is in the air. Everybody is sending gifts to secret Santee…I chose to be Santa in two groups.

December has been bad month for me,(health wise) therefore, I couldn’t go out to shop for gifts, but then I am lucky to know friends who help me to send out my gifts.

At my Special school, I just send out secretly to my Santee,(one of the teachers at school) through my friend.

For my foodies group I decided to make gifts at home. This was organized by my Foodie friends at #FBAISecret Santa group. The elfs were the group of five food bloggers @suchetajt @HungryBawarchi @TheBigFatShetty @toxicbaker @lovetolivetoeat who volunteered to deliver gifts on their reindeers( oops, private vehicle)

Two days before the event, we were supposed to deliver our gifts to @HungryBawarchi's  house. Unfortuantely I was not well, therefore I requested him to collect it from my house. Thank you so much Mohit for this extra effort.

Since I could not go out to buy food gifts for my santee, I decided to make it at home…as a foodie, I think personalized food gifts are best. I made carrot pickle, pesto and eggplant dip.

I just ordered three pretty colorful storage containers, packed them up creatively with gold feathers, added a handwritten note and sent

My special thanks to elf Mohit, who came to my house to pick up my gift coz I was unable to go out..

And this was my note for my Santee…

Dear Santee Ms Punjabi

Ho Ho ho

Here we come

Pickles, pesto’s, dips

A specialty from my ribs

All packed in cups, so true

Packed specially for you

From land of green chilies

That also has basil frills

Amidst nuts and cheese

A pesto if you please

The carrots sliced and mixed

With garlic and mustard seeds

Now, isn’t that nice pickle?

A perfect afternoon treat

A roasted, blackened eggplant

Churned happily with hung yogurt

That’s the dip you may relish

For sure, it’s delish

So here’s wishing you X’mas

From a very secret friend

One foodie to another

Santa builds a stronger thread

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Merry Christmas!!!

And well, my gift arrived too…Thank you Roshan and Jagruti…the elves who came to visit me…

This is what arrived

Two boxes of Cadbury chocolates… I was expecting home made stuff too…and a written note..with a personalized signature of Santa

 Well maybe my Santa was very busy..

But the festive season has just begun…. Seems like a fun Christmas this year… more parties next week with different set of friends.

Now off to twitter to enjoy the visuals of other foodies….

Food Hunt At Nature Basket in Bandra Organized by FBAI

It was a fun Sunday morning at Nature Basket in Bandra. All the food loving people gathered to participate in a game called ‘FoodHunt’. The participants were divided into ten groups, with each team comprising of 3-4 persons. There were eight venues where the teams had to hop, playing different games at different venues. For e.g.- at Mangi café they were guessing the 3 ingredients of the pizza, at Maroosh they were putting shawarma together, at Coo they were blindfolded and had to taste test 3 bite size desserts.

There were field marshals posted at each venue, who helped guide the participants during the game.

“We had to help the participants do an activity, tell them to take a selfie, post it on FB and then give them the next clue” says Mohit Chotrani, who was a field marshal at the venue at Maroosh

The whole event was organized by ‘FoodBlogger Association of India'. Sameer Malkani, the co-founder of this association, is the one who has brought the social media to a new level by building a platform where he co-ordinates the food bloggers with the restaurants and with other food enthusiasts. He has great ideas and is very compassionate about his work.

I did not take part in this event, but since the event was held closer to my house, I decided to go for a while. And I was in for a surprise

There was so much energy in the room, with some of the teams already having completed their task, were enjoying the variety of food displayed at the tables. I spoke to few of the participants and they were eager to share their stories. Some of them had hopped the different venues by car and some by autorickshaw. But travelling by autorickshaw was a better options, they said, because some of the lanes in Bandra are narrow and it is easier to move quickly in a smaller vehicle.

The atmosphere was vibrant with participants clicking group pictures. I was happy to meet some of my food bloggers friends like Rushina and Kalyan and they were to distribute the prizes to the winners.

The gifts hampers were attractive too and there were four team winners.

At the end of the session, some one shouted, 
“We want this event in South Mumbai too”.
 So, I won’t be surprised if we have such events on a regular basis. Everybody likes to have fun and with food and gifts, it gets even more interesting!!