Road Trip!

SF -> Grand Canyon -> Flagstaff, AZ -> Sedona-> Phoenix -> Los Angeles -> SF

..10 days, and a fun, wonderful, loving, sweet boy for company. what more could I ask for? oh, and cookies :-)

will be back soon!!

Phone-a-friend

I have a bunch of friends on facebook who I have known since pre school. 'Since' might not be an apt word cause I lost touch with them after the 5th grade when I moved to another school and only recently got back in touch. We haven't hung out like ever, probably only in the playground or at the swings. But we all share similar childhood memories of sliding down the err.. slide, watching tadpoles in the puddles after rains, holi at school etc.Yeah, our school was cool. We celebrated Holi. Only that I was too scared and din't go out to the playground but I remember that day very clearly. There's this one guy who is in my list, who was the first friend I ever called - on the phone.

So one day in the third standard, everyone decided to exchange phone numbers. I ran around the entire time during 'workroom hour' asking everyone for theirs and noted them down on a sheet of paper. Our school was small, only about 50 kids or so, and I had about 25 numbers crammed into a page. After school, a very excited little me ran to my grandmother.
"Aaji, look! I got the phone numbers of all my friends!!!"
"Ok, let me see" She took the paper from me, glanced at it and started laughing.
"But where are the names for all the numbers????"

Cream puffs with Chocolate Cream and Strawberry Filling

I decided to make Cream Puffs yesterday. Why cream puffs? I don't really know. What I usually do when I get one of these 'I'm-going-to-make-something-I've-never-made-before' thoughts is to look up a bunch of recipes online, check out a couple of youtube videos to see what the procedure and the steps should look like and start. I usually do some minor modifications, take suggestions from a few recipes and use my judgement. I've learned to make sure I write down what I've done differently so when I want to make it again I know I have something to fall back on. More than once I've forgotten.

I started by making the batter. I could have spooned the mixture on the baking tray directly, but I wanted to pipe it out. I dint have a pastry bag so I just kind of dumped the dough into a ziplock bag, snipped the end and piped them on the tray. This was another first for me. Piping. My mehendi skills came into play here, I think. I was able to hold the bag quite steadily and work.





I stuck these in the oven and was getting antsy. I can be REALLY impatient at times and I have to occupy myself suitably if not I just drive myself crazy. I was walking back and forth from the computer to the oven checking to see what was going on.

Ooh, they look good don't they? At this point I was VERY excited. They've puffed up just the way I wanted them to.



So I don't really have a plan. I want to fill then up with chocolate cream. I have some strawberries lying around too. Decide to cut them up, and fill along with the chocolate cream that I just made. The best part was that they baked so well and the puffs were hollow inside so there was ample space for filling.



I don't have a picture of the cream though :-( and I should have made it nice and thick. I was impatient and made a shortcut cream filling. I filled them up...




And then I dusted them with powdered sugar and some chocolate syrup.





If you notice closely, each picture has one puff less than the previous one. This baker likes to sample :D With the husband hovering around, I have learned to share.

Credits to the husband for photography, editing and kitchen cleaning :-) <3



P.S - lurkers - I see you guys! Tell me who you are :P :-)

We have huge lovely windows in our kitchen and the mornings are gorgeous with the sunlight streaming in and everything is just so pretty! It would be criminal not to take advantage of that right? So we decided to paint the kitchen yellow. In preparation, we signed up for a class at home depot on painting interiors. One bright sunny saturday morning, we(I) dragged ourselves out of bed and went to the closest home depot store. It was a short 1 hour introduction to painting type class. We looked at painting accessories and rollers, paint textures and chips, and realized there's more than one type in each shade of paint. Deciding on a shade of yellow took a week. Should it be bright? Sure, but what if its 'too bright' we dint want silk saree bright. It had to be that right color of bold but not lame light grandma yellow. Armed with a can of a nice cheery shade, rollers, plastic sheets, blue tape, and a host of other materials we got home and set to work that afternoon. It was fun! The actual painting part took just about 20 minutes. It was the preparation that took an hour. Other than the wall, our hands, feet, hair, stool, and table were covered with paint. Ever our faces had specks of yellow. We cleaned up, left everything to dry and relaxed with some blue moon.

Result : The strong sunlight and the yellow walls were TOO yellow.

After some deliberation, the husband set out to get another can of lighter yellow. After he got home, we painted one wall light yellow. Which was too light. And then, the genius in me decides to mix the two and paint the insides of the windowsills a medium yellow. So now, we have one wall thats light, one thats bright and the insides that are somewhere in the middle. yeah, sure laugh all you want!

And guess what? The next morning, it all looked absolutely gorgeous! The light and bright shades complemented each other really well. We put up our curtains which are cream and light yellow organdy and set up our white dining table and chairs . The rest of the kitchen is painted white and we have some green vases lying around.

This is our table against the wall




Curtains




lotus candle holder. Isn't it pretty? =)



my Peanuts shower curtain that I just HAD TO HAVE the moment I saw it and our happy sun kissed(read:burned) honeymooning feet =)

I have a feeling I'm going to be having many more of these conversations in the years to come.

Chatting with the husband (I happened to be in an adventurous mood that day, wanting to try something new)

me: shall i make naan or egg paratha?

him : ok

me: hello? u just said ok without even reading??

him : yeah i read
ok make

me(thinking) !!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm back. I'm wondering if I have any readers left. Lurkers maybe? Those of you who don't leave comments but land on my blog by googling " words not to use in front of the Queen." How the heck did that happen? I don't think I ever posted anything about the queen let alone what not to talk in front of them. weird.

In the other news, I went and got married this summer amidst lots of drama. yeah, thats me. =) More on that later. That requires a whole host of posts I think! For now, we're back, and I never thought setting up house would be so much fun. Doubly so because EVERYTHING is new and we all know how much I love shopping and shiny new things right? I've also started noticing things that I would have never given a rat's ass about before. Like rugs. Floor rugs, bathroom mats, kitchen mats, rugs for the bedroom. I've been obsessing about it to the point that we haven't bought any because I haven't found anything(affordable) I love. You know what I mean right? You look at it, love it and HAVE to have it. I've found a couple of $1000 ones that are awesome, but I don't think the husband is leaning anywhere close to splurging on 1000 buck rugs. heh heh. We(when I saw we, its mostly I) want something that goes with our color scheme, that's not too busy, that's muted BUT grabs the attention of people like my former(uninterested) self "wow, where did you get that from? Its so contemporary"

I have a feeling we're going to be walking around in socks for a while.