About me

Cooking is like Love, it should be entered into with abandon or not at all - Harriet Van Horne
Story of Sattva..
Welcome to my blog space. Sattvaa (~Purity of food, ingredients leading to a healthy life) is a vegetarian food blog. 

Who am I?
I am Nagashree, born and brought up in the idyllic city of Mysore many years ago, currently live in the Pacific Northwest with my husband, daughter and dog. I work full time in the IT world with interests in many other things (more about that to come later).

I am born Kannadiga and married into a Telugu family, so my recipes go across these two states in addition to recipes from other Indian states and world I have learnt. Started cooking when I was in school and cooking and feeding people is a passion of mine. I have collected recipes from old magazines, food  shows and blogs in addition to what I have grown up eating.

What do I do on this blog?
This is mainly a food blog that has home cooked, healthy vegetarian recipes. Recipes are from my family, friends, other bloggers. I try to cook with fresh and locally available ingredients. I consider cooking as an art more than measurements and following a recipe. To cliche it, 'if your heart is in what you are cooking, the dish turns out well'.

In addition to the food related posts, it might have postings about general happenings from my life & surroundings. In addition to recipes, I will talk about techniques of cooking, guidelines that you can adopt and adapt to suit you, I will also provide tips for easy, healthy cooking from time to time. 

Why another food blog?
I asked myself that question many times before actually creating the blog, deliberated many days. I have been a visitor to many of the blogs in blogosphere and respect all the talented cooks out there. I do cook well (even if I say so myself :-)), and have been a foodie for as long as I can remember. Well, I love to write too though so far it has been bits & scraps of my moods, I am looking forward to fusing together these two interests of mine on the blog. 

This blog is a chronicle of food recipes and some stories that I hope my daughter will find useful some day..

Where do I get the recipe content and pictures from? 
As I said before, the recipes are from family, friends, magazines, some I created based on my family's taste and other blogs. Whenever I have reproduced a recipe from another blog, I give credit to the original author. All pictures on this blog are mine, taken in my kitchen or another kitchen of a family member with permission. R takes most of the pictures you see on this blog along with me, he has always been interested in photography and now starting to get involved in food photography :-). If I use a picture from the internet for an ingredient I am using in the recipe, I give reference to the original web site/material.

I love to share my recipes and pictures with others but don't forget to let me know before using it.

Who do you see on this blog?
Since I will be referring to my family on this blog, I thought a little introduction is on order. You will see reference to my better half as R, BH or DH popping up very frequently who is the quality tester and technical help on this blog. Little N referred to as DD is my daughter for whom I am collecting these recipes. Flora is our dog who loves food and has many favorites from my cooking. My main recipe sources are my two ammas - nannamma (namma~my/our, amma~mother) is my mother and amma is my mother in law (just so there is no confusion :-)). Another big influence on my cooking is my BIL (brother in law) who just like me loves to cook and innovate with recipes and my akka (~sister) inspite of not being in love with cooking can whip up dishes to die for. I will continue to introduce my rest of the family as we make progress on the blog :-)

I love to hear from you when you visit my blog, so please take a minute to send me your comments. If you have a question and prefer me not posting it as a comment, feel free to write to me directly at sattvaa2012@gmail.com