Hi! I am Anvita, the founder of The Belly Rules The Mind, mom to a tween, wife of a scientist, and the person who started this blog because she could not stop calling her mom for recipes.
I was born and raised in India. Then life took me to Australia for a few years, then Germany, and finally the US. Every time we moved to a new country, the first thing I unpacked was my masala dabba. The first thing I cooked was dal. It did not matter that the kitchen was different, the stove was different, even the water tasted different. Once the tadka hit the oil and the house smelled like home, I felt okay. That is the power of food.
I started this blog as a way to document recipes I was recreating from memory and from long phone calls with my mom. "Maa, how long do you soak the chana?" "Maa, do you add tomatoes before or after the onions brown?" She would laugh and say "you just feel it" and I would say "I need measurements, please." So I wrote everything down, tested it, adjusted it for US ingredients and tools, and put it here. If my mom recipes can survive being moved across four countries, they can survive your weeknight dinner rush too.
When I am not in the kitchen, you will find me planning our next family trip (we love to travel and eat our way through new places), helping my son with homework, or trying to convince my husband that we do in fact need another kitchen gadget.
What I Cook
I gravitate towards recipes from all over India because living in so many places made me curious about every regional cuisine. You will see me making South Indian dosas and idlis, North Indian parathas and curries, Maharashtrian street food, and Bengali sweets. I also love experimenting with global recipes that use Indian pantry staples. Because once you have a well stocked masala dabba, you can cook almost anything.
My recipes are 100% vegetarian. Soniya is the one who cooks non-veg in our kitchen.
My Favorite Recipes
Anvita's family loves:
