About Hema

 

hema2Hi – Let me introduce to you myself. I am Hema Raghavendra from Bangalore. Thanks for stopping by my website – Vegetarian Recipes. My website is full of mouth watering recipes, comprising very attractive photos and easy to follow step wise instructions. Here I very often post a number of vegetarian recipes that everyone will find interesting. My aim is to look for variety and try out dishes from across the globe.

I am basically from South Canara( Coastal Karnataka), but my parents settled long time back in Hubli which is Northern part of Karnataka. I was brought up in Hubli where I completed my education. Being the madhyama of 3 kanyas to my parents, I enjoyed every day of my living in Hubli. I love few of North Karnataka recipes and I used to try it in my kitchen. We usually prepare the Mangalorian dishes at home, with coconut and rice as the main ingredients. Dosa, Idly is the main breakfast item at my home.

I was interested in cooking from my childhood, but my mother never allowed me to enter kitchen till 10th standard, as she was scared that I might burn my hands while preparing dishes. I slowly started my Chef life. My first experiment in kitchen was Tea. One day, my cousin from US who visited us, told few of interesting recipes like Gobi Manchurian and Samosa. She also showed me how to prepare them. On that day my deep rooted interest in cooking sprouted. It grew to become a huge tree of this website with my Father’s encouragement. He always
praised me for whatever I prepared and however it was. I kept on learning from my parents as well as my grandparents. Even now at the age of 68, my dad prepares variety of tasty dishes especially North Indian. Whenever we all the sisters get together in Hubli at my parents home, it is a big feast. Me and dad together used to prepare North Indian dishes to feed the entire gang of 10 members. I love to cook North Indian dishes and baked items as special dishes.

After marriage, I quit my job to home making. But sitting at home idle was boring. I would watch only recipe programs on TV and write daily in a book. Every day I made new dishes which my entire family liked. Noticing my passion for cooking; my hubby Raghavendra insisted me to write the blogs. He created this website in Jan 2009. He is managing technical side. My job is to prepare the dishes, click the photos and upload in my website. First it was named as Sumanasa, later we changed it to Quick & Easy recipes and now it is Vegetarian recipes. You can see comments on Sumanasa as well as Quick and Easy.

With many recipes posted here, I have tried my best to keep things as simple and easy as possible. I would love to make you feel that the recipes on my blog is simple, quick and easy. The recipes posted here are few from my mother, mother-in-law, cook books, TV, friends, cousins, relatives, recipe class (which I attended after marriage) and also from other blogs. I never say that I am a good cook, I need to improvise my cooking skills in baking and many more recipes. Food industry is a vast sea. I love to learn from others which is the reason you can see some of my recipes are adopted from other websites. Frankly I have mentioned the guide of each adopted recipes. Earlier in my blogs, I used to upload one photo with ingredients and instructions. Now I give the step-wise instructions with images for the complicated recipes and for simple ones only the detailed recipe with few photos.

There is a lot of work before uploading the recipe, like preparation of recipe, clicking photos at each step, editing, checking and finally uploading. Before posting the recipe, my hubby used to read it and edit few words. Later he became busy with his work, so one of my friends Rupa is editing the recipes.

After my daughter’s birth in 2010, I became very busy with her and could not update more posts here. Now she is 5 and she demands me to prepare cookies, cakes and other bread items for her. She inspires me to do the baking. She loves Parathas and snack items too. She is very choosy, so I need to prepare separate dishes for her sometimes. Some of her favourites for daily menu are Chapati with simple curries, Jawar Roti with Chutney Powder toppled on Curd, Sambar with Rice and Curd rice.

Other than cooking, I am interested in paintings and other art works. I also love to collect wooden works. Started the Terracotta Jewelry 2 years back which you can see in Facebook.

I would like to thank my Parents, Grandparents for teaching me cooking and encouraging me at each step. I thank my Husband for creating this website and promoting me as a recipe blogger. I also thank other bloggers for sharing their knowledge with me. Not but never the least I thank all my readers for spending their precious time to my blogs.

I was using my Canon camera A590 IS and now upgraded to Olympus E 410 SLR to take the food pictures. Other than Cooking, I do Terracotta Jewelry and paintings.

If you like any of my recipes or have any comments / suggestions, try to leave a short note for me in comments column. Happy reading, cooking, serving plus dining …

You can also contact me through Facebook or through Google+