Le gioie del food blogging

About two months ago, I received a gift from a food blogger friend. I was so amazed and happy! Bee from Jugalbandi sent me a little packet containing a wonderfully cute key holder, a chocolate bar from Scharffenberger, peanut chikki (a delicious Indian version of peanut brittle) and.. a secret ingredient!
You can see it in this picture, together with the key holder:
This packet was part of a sort of 'food blogger chain', where people receive a secret ingredient from a food blogger, and in turn send another ingredient to three more food bloggers. What Bee sent me is a spice mix called 'Kootu Podi'. She explains how to use podi in this post, together with a recipe for the spice mix itself.
I loved the smell of the powder, when I opened the packet. But I didn't get to cook with it until very recently, when I finally got my own new apartment. Since then, I already made it twice, in two variations. The beauty of Kootu Podi (the dish) is that you can make it with any sort of vegetable, and apparently, even different types of dal, and various seeds or nuts. So, in my understanding, almost anything could go with Kootu Podi :)
Here you can see my two versions:
In this case, I used green lentils instead of toor dal, bok choi and mushrooms as vegetables and sunflower seeds instead of peanuts.
Whereas in this case, I used split yellow peas (probably not exactly split pigeon peas, but I didn't have enough time to actually go to an Indian store and buy the toor dal), red cabbage, broccoli and zucchini as vegetables, and again sunflower seeds.
I tried the first version with Melynda (my housemate) and the second with Simona. We liked both of them! Simona was so happy about it that I gave her part of my mix, so she will try to cook with it too :)

And I was so happy with this exchange, that I followed the chain by sending my secret ingredients to Meeta, Simona, and actually.. my mom. :) I then proceeded to buy a fourth batch for myself, as these ingredients can be found only in Italy, and I still have to try to make the secret recipe with them.. so, Meeta and Simona, be patient and hopefully soon enough you'll find on this blog the recipe to use the ingredients with!