MyHomeMantra receives two Liebster awards :)

This was truly a special week for MyHomeMantra. My Tiramisu picture received a compliment from Serena Palumbo, born and raised in Italy, she was a contestant in Next Food Network Star season 6. I was very happy to see an Italian chef liking my Tiramisu. It was as good as winning an award.

On a very next day to my surprise, I did win a very precious blogging award – the Liebster award. I am proud to receive the award twice by two lovely  bloggers – Preeti and Janani whom I really admire for their wonderful blogs and amazing recipes. Thank you ladies!

Liebster is a German word and it means sweetest, kindest, nicest, dearest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing and welcoming. The Liebster Blog Award is given to upcoming bloggers who have less than 200 followers.

The rules for receiving the Liebster award:

1. Each person must post 11 things about herself.
2. Answer the questions set by the tagger.
3. Pass the award to 11 more bloggers.

Here are few things about myself:

• I have never had tea in my life and I didn’t know how to prepare tea until I  got married.
• I started real cooking during my masters and I feel I have found my new passion.
• My mom is my role model, I wish I could cook like her, it’s still a long way to go.
• My husband (fondly referred to as S on this blog) is a great food critique; though it helps me improve my skills, sometimes I wish he didn’t know anything about cooking.
• My friends call me geek and they are not lying. I spend more time learning new languages than I should.
• My technical blog is more active that this one.
• I want to learn photography, for now I have outsourced the work to S.
• Ganapati festival is my the most favorite festival.
• The three things I miss about Pune are Alphonso mangos, pushkarni bhel & mom made food.
• I am a big fan of coffee and chocolate and mangoes and ukdiche modak.

To answer Preeti’s question, the inspiration behind this blog came from many wonderful blogs (some of them mentioned below) and my mom. What I thing about Preeti’s Kitchen Life? I love your blog and honestly, I am jealous about how much you have achieved in such a short amount of time, you have a great collection of recipes. Your passion and zeal really shows in the variety of your posts. Keep up  the great work!

I am very happy to nominate these folks for the award –

• EvolvingTastes –  I stumbled her blog while searching for “Ruchira” long back. Since then I have fallen in love with her writing style; very elegant and very personal. I have found some of my childhood favorites on her blog.
• My Cookbook – Shweta is a wonderful person and an amazing cook.  We were flatmates for a year. I’ve learned many useful tricks from her.. She has excelled the technique of “fast cooking”.
• Vadani Kaval Gheta – Though I don’t know her personally, I often visit her blog. She has a great collection of recipes and mainly Maharashtrian recipes.
• My Diverse Kitchen – She is my inspiration for learning photography. Needless to mention a great cook with a large variety of recipes. I have a huge list of bookmarks from her site.
• Sailaja’s Recipes – I know Sailaja through my dance class. She is a super woman. She is a software engineer, a mom, dancer, an artist and a cook! Hats off to her energy and her creativity.
• Travelicious !!! – A blog that talks about travel and food. Love the name. I have been thinking of writing about our trips for a long time, happy to see Rupsha doing a great job.
• It’s better to burn out that to fade away – It’s not a food blog but will definitely serve food for thought. He pens his candid opinions and in a very effective manner.