A Peek into my Life

Spring is usually the time when wind-chimes come out to hang. I could see them hanging in many a houses but instead of buying one, I decided to challenge myself into making one. In the spirit of recycling, I began to look around for things that could be used to make windchimes. I narrowed down on metal as the material of choice because it had to make a sound when it clanked together. I also did a google search and saw a few ideas. I decided, metal cans it will be. I spent most of spring collecting metal cans of various sizes. Finally I made two different kind of wind chimes. Cascading Can Chime When I looked at my collection of metal cans, I saw four of them fit inside each other just perfectly. That led me to this cascading wind chime design. I used tiny jingle bells to anchor the cans on the metal wire and also for the sound they make. Materials: metal cans of different sizes metal beading wire small bells acrylic colors Remove any labels from your metal...

When Nupur posted the fridge cleaning challenge on her blog , I knew I couldn't ignore my fridge anymore. I had been ignoring it for almost a year now and it was extremely dirty. Yes, I am lazy like that when it comes to cleaning. A couple of days after the challenge was posted, I decided today is the day. I could have done it in parts over a few days but that never works out for me. I clean a part of the fridge one day and then forget about the rest on other days. My fridge was pretty empty because these days I am trying to reduce the number of grocery shopping trips. This forces me to find ways to use the stuff lying around in the fridge and pantry. This way, we get to eat different from the usual roti-sabzi routine and of course, save money and reduce waste. This was one of the days when grocery shopping was inevitable. That is a good time to clean the fridge as there is less stuff to remove and replace in the fridge. I started with the dirtiest parts first : the bottom-m...

Chickpeas and apples do not seem to make sense together. But when you think of the apples as a tart and sweet flavor; that flavor does go great with chickpeas. Also, when you end up buying apples that are a tad tart to eat on their own (we just like our apples sweet), you have to come up with creative ways to use them. Chickpea-Apple curried chutney I am not sure whether to call this a curry or a chutney because while the consistency is curry-like, the flavor is chutney-like. That is where the famous word "curried" comes in and I decided to call it a curried chutney. The tart-sweet flavor accentuated by spices is always a hit with my taste buds and I loved the curry down to the last drop. I served this with spinach pesto parathas. Any kind of flavored parathas would go really well with this. The dish does not photograph too well and even I had not taken much effort to take a pretty picture. I was in a rush to finish the picture taking and dig in. Ingredients: ...

The last in the series of the strawberry saga : the unusual strawberry salsa. Fruit salsas, specially mango salsa is well known but strawberry salsa, not so much. This is a great alternative to the regular pico or tomato salsa. It even looks just the same as the regular salsa. Only after scooping it with a chip and biting into it, do you realise there is something different about this salsa. The strawberries I used were not very sweet. They were just perfect for the salsa providing the right combination of tartness and sweetness. Strawberry salsa We polished off the entire bowl of this addictive salsa in one sitting. We had brown rice and kale chips from Costco and they went so well with the salsa. Just grab your favourite scoopers and a big batch of this salsa for a memorable movie night at home. Speaking of memorable, just writing about this salsa, makes me wish I could have some of it right now. Ingredients: 15 strawberries 1 tomato 1/2 medium red onion ...

As I promised on my previous post, this time I write about strawberry jam. Making jams is such a rewarding experience, much like making achaar, the Indian pickle. Jams are generally thought of as a store bought commodity, so it makes home-made jams so much more special. As with anything homemade, you can control the quality of ingredients and know exactly what you are eating. I tried two types of jams with my stash of Costco strawberries. A balsamic strawberry jam and a strawberry chocolate jam. My daughter couldn't keep her hands off the strawberry chocolate jam While reading up on strawberry jams, I found some useful information. Strawberries are a fruit that is naturally low in pectin and pectin is the substance which helps the fruit juices to gel and combine into a jam. Apples are naturally high in pectin and commercially available pectin if often made from apples. So instead of buying pectin to make the jams, I added apples to the jam. Although, jams do not necessarily...

About a month ago, when strawberry season was still on; we went to a local farm for strawberry picking. We finally managed to make a trip to the farm before the end of the season after postponing a few times. I am so glad we went there because all of us had such a fun time. There was a sand box, riding toys, balls and other fun activities for kids. We had strawberry slushie there. It was so refreshing and sweet and had great strawberry flavor. A good indication that the strawberries would be great too. We also tasted funnel cake for the first time. It was light and airy and had just the right sweetness. The strawberries were so sweet and juicy unlike anything we had seen before. I am afraid we will not be able to enjoy supermarket berries now. That just makes you think how much the food has been through before it got on your table from the supermarket and the forgotten way of eating fruit fresh off the trees. After eating a lot of berries right away. I managed to keep some aside ...

Summer is a good time to write about weekend updates. There are only so many weekends before it gets all cold and dreary again. It is the time to go out and have fun. This year summer has been like the indian monsoon season. It just rains every other day. It is good in a way that the sun is not so harsh due to the clouds. So Saturday started off lazily with an Chickfila egg and cheese sandwich and oatmeal with homemade masala chai for breakfast. I cannot start the day without good masala chai and that means I have to get into the kitchen. The husband wanted me to take a break from the kitchen and so he got the breakfast while I made the tea. After webcam time with parents in India, we were off to the pool for a couple of hours. It was a good day to be at the pool; not raining and not too cloudy. I don't like to get wet but my daughter and husband love it. So while I was relaxing in the shade on the beach chair, both of them were splashing around in the water. We were back in...