About Tiffin box

Are you vegetarian? Do you live in small-town America with access to only a limited range of vegetables? Or are you simply in the mood to experiment a little with your food? If so, this is the blog for you!

Welcome to Tiffin box, your one-stop shop for all sorts of wonderful ways to cook vegetarian. And it’s all free
Why I cook:

I’m a vegetarian Indian graduate student living in the American Midwest. I love food and I miss home. There’s no “ethnic” market here to speak of, and I don’t have access to most of the vegetables and other stuff I need to cook real home-style Indian vegetarian cuisine. Which is a broad range of stuff, seeing as I am a Tamilian who grew up in Delhi. I can’t help being a foodie – I think most Delhiites are!

Eating out is really difficult, and not just because it’s expensive. It’s really hard to get good vegetarian food here. I don’t particularly like tofu and other soy forms, and a vegetarian meal often ends up being salads or barely-cooked vegetables. (Let me explain – for an Indian vegetarian, no meat (red or white), no fish, no fowl, nor fat from any of these. We do eat dairy products, and some of us eat eggs. But no chicken).

I’m married to a truly wonderful American man, and I’ve been trying to introduce him – gently – to the glories of desi (Indian) vegetarian food. I try not to eat too much junk food, and for all these reasons I like to cook.

Why I blog:

This blog is the story of my experiments with food. Some of the recipes are actual experiments (and I detail even the failures). Some of them are tried-and-true traditional recipes. Others are based off recipes given to me by my mother, sisters, aunts…and even the Other Half, who has taken to vegetarian cuisine like a duck to water!

You can browse the blog a number of different ways. You can use the search function and wander through – just scroll down for the search option. You can also click on the “recipes by ingredient” dropdown menu (bottom left), and pick whatever you like, depending on what’s in your pantry.

Why “Tiffin box”:

A tiffin box is a compartmentalized box for carrying food in. The traditional tiffin box is steel, round, and has three (or more) tiers, for easy separability of food. They pile up on top of each other and then the handles come over the top and lock everything into place. People carry food in them to work. Dabbawalas use them to take food to their customers. It also refers to the little box kids carry to school with their mid-morning meal inside.

Bon appetit!