About

Hi Friends,

I am Lavz, writer and photographer of this recipe blog. My real name is Loveina Christopher. It has been a while now since I’ve always had this inner feeling of blogging and I thought that if you want to know more about me, I should introduce myself to you all…  I am also like most other house wives, who learnt cooking only after marriage. When I was left alone in the kitchen post my marriage, I was zero in cooking. Zero means I literally didn’t even know to recognize the ingredients used in a particular recipe.

I never entered the kitchen before getting married and I never even helped my mom in preparing small meals. My mom and dad, never complained and I was always treated like a princess who used to get everything on a platter and the only work I had to do was eat and N’joy!!! My mother is a perfectionist in cooking, I should say. She does everything neatly, perfectly and in an organized way, which I adore the most.

Even after marriage, I was not cooking regularly as I had my Mother-in-law who was the Queen of her kitchen. There was a huge cultural difference in both the houses as my Mother-in-law was a typical South Indian Cook who always relished her typical Kerala food. I was impressed by her standard of cooking and managing the kitchen and I used to help her in cutting veggies and doing the small things which I could manage all alone.

I have been appreciated by my family for the way I have picked up this culinary skill set. For each and every appreciation I get, I owe it to my Mom and MIL who taught me the art of cooking and have shared some treasurable recipes! I gained my knowledge of south Indian everyday cooking from my MIL and partly through my hands on experience. I do call my mom many a times to gather info on some recipes which I have still not mastered but which my Mother prepares in a blink of an eye. With my very little knowledge of technology, I started exploring the virtual world of blogging and learnt a lot in different cuisines, be it regional or international.

And then I started cooking and developed an interest in it. I started blogging and thought of recording all my experiments & creations of authentic recipes from my mom and MIL, so that it will be easy for me in future. Sometimes, I try a dish once and it comes out nice. Then I forget for a while and if I want to try it again, I cannot recollect exactly what I did the last time and at the same time I am tired of the age old tradition of writing down the recipe in a diary and preserving it. So this blog helps me a lot to record exactly what I did.

It’s been a learning process till now and I can say I have come a long way since then and if you are admiring my food, it’s also because I capture it the way it is…..delicious! 🙂
And if you ask me if my pictures are photo-shopped to look good, I would say not much. I do edit my pictures to brighten, sharpen and get the professional look.
I must say a few words about my twin kids (I mention them as H&H in my posts). They are the best critics of my cooking… and their criticism will always be the truth and I agree with them most of the time 🙂  They too know that I blog here and they will check with me whenever they like any dish I prepare for them, if it has been published here.

Baking is my new venture. I am still not into it but am learning and am at the experimental stage of just trying out the recipes without any changes. I use a microwave oven with convection for all my Baking.
Besides cooking, I love dance in any form. I have very few friends, so I love spending time chatting with them over phone or on messenger.

Comments and feedback are precious to me. Nothing can brighten my day than when I hear positive feedback about the recipes my readers/friends have tried. So let me know if you feel I deserve an appreciation through mail. You can contact me at joelavi@gmail.com. Even if you have any doubts regarding any recipes here, you can ask me through mail, I will be glad to help you.