Its a New Beginning

Well, it feels nice to begin writing about the weekly updates again in this promising new year.

I love this picture of hers. Suddenly,  I feel she is all grown up, undestands me well when I speak to her. Though she still talks to me in her baby lingo, it has a lot of emotions,  thrown in for good measure. Sometimes I worry (esp. after my India trip, where everybody made a huge deal out of it) that she isn’t speaking so much. She still manages to say ‘tata’, ‘hi there’, ‘amma’. But when she calls out amma or mamma, I literally feel my heart melt. It is the single biggest joy in the world, hands down.

After the disastrous India trip, it is time to pick up threads from where I left ;-

1) Build my wardrobe from the scratch. Since I do not have anything that Iowned previous to my pregnancy anymore( why? another story , another time), I knew, I had to act quickly. Over the weekend, I made amends with my impulsive shopper side by buying some clothes from MNG (MANGO). They have an incredible sale going on world wide. I have been a fan of this brand for long as they have simple, yet elegant pieces for a nice evening out and immaculately tailored trousers. But this sale was actually very disappointing. It felt as if they had dumped their waste in one single sale and were giving them at 70% off. I am yet to check Zara out as they are also selling at a huge discount

2) Exercising took a huge backseat during the vacations and all the binging has started showing its effect. It is time to hit the gym with a vengenance and with a new IPod Shuffle Gen 5 ( a gift from Amit) in hand, I am excited about running all the miles on the treadmill.

3) I missed doing my restaurant reviews but now am happy to start it off with lovely restaurant Dome.

4) Job hunting has been a huge stress but it has become a necessity now. Sometimes, I wonder how I would feel when I get my pay cheque for the first time after such a long break from work. Would I feel like a fresher, a fish out of water in office? Will I be able to sit on my seat the entire day? Will even one moment pass without thinking about Mimi and what she would be doing? Its really crazy inside my head right now. Trust me, the less I say, the better.

For now, I am just happy exploring my baking potential. A few days ago, I turned out two batches of Chocochip and Oats Cupcakes.

The recipe

• Oil – 1/2 cup (youu can use butter also if you want)
• Eggs – 3 large
• Flour – 1 cup
• Whole Wheat Flour – 1 cup
• Sugar – 2/3 cup
• Milk – 1 Cup
• Vanilla essence – 1 tsp
• Dark Choco Chips – 1 cup (milk will do too) – I used blocks of Cadbury’s dairy milk and chopped them to bits.
• Cinnamon Powder –  1/2 tsp
• Oats- 3/4 cup
• Baking Powder – 1tbsp

Preparation

• Whisk together eggs, milk, oil and vanilla essence. Whisk as you want, but it wouldn’t turn fluffy and creamy as a mixture with butter would. But I would suggest that you whisk it well for about 15 minutes or more.
• Mix together the dry ingredients i.e flours, oats, sugar and baking powder and chocolate chips
• With a spatula fold in the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Try not to over mix and thats the key to good cup cakes/muffins .
• Pour into a lined cupcake moulds. Bake in a preheated oven for at 180C for about 15-20 minutes till the skewer comes out clean

Chocochip and oats cup cakes

These days I have been drawn into this passionate, ever challenging world of bakers. I religiously follow the following:

http://www.passionateaboutbaking.com

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/

http://sinamontales.wordpress.com/

http://www.bakerita.com/

These guys are awe-inspiring and I am certain that if you browse through their food blogs, your jaws will drop. Every morning when I wake up I do a customary FB -check, Email- check (usually all the new posts of the blogs that I follow are delivered to my email) and then my favourite food blogs- check. I still go and browse through their older entries if not for anything, just for the enchanting photographs.

Apart from the gastronomic affairs, we did something that we hadn’t done before. We watched a movie in a multiplex. With Mimi. Now that is an accomplishment. The next step.  We watched Disney’s ‘Tangled’ – well known in fairy tales as Rapunzel. It is a very sweet rendition with a twist in the tale. Mimi sat through it for an hour and only in the last 30 minutes did she feel like running around. Still it was quite sane an experience contrary to our expectations.

My mom’s been complaining that my weekly updates have become more about me than Mimi. She reads this, only for her alone 🙂 Wonder why parents forget their own children once they have grandchildren! So there were a couple of things that Mimi’s been upto that I haven’t recorded

• She is a hoarder. Like the chipmunks, she hoards food for the winter. Only that, she uses the dvd player to hide food. I didn’t realize this for long. But I found out her well-kept secret when I caught her munching on a piece of rusk I had bought last month. We had exhausted it long back, so I was pretty surprised where she got hold of one. As soon as she saw me looking at her, she ran back to the dvd player and pushed it back in. I was in splits and she too started grinning along with me. But to her dismay, when she tried to pick out her food ( pieces of bread, biscuits, pear pieces, apple slices)from the dvd player, the next day, it was all gone. Obviously.
• She seems to have changed her behaviour drastically after her visit to Delhi. She refuses to go to people and clings to me. I hope this is temporary because earlier, she seemed so happy when she had lots of people around her.
• We managed to get her tresses/curls chopped off while in Delhi. But now they have quickly grown back. I picked up plenty of hair clips and other hair adornments from the local markets of Noida.

 

Mi Mi

 

In other news, I am reading the Sophie Kinsella series and my mind knows it is nothing but a whole lot of trash, but my heart wants to indulge in it. It is hilarious in parts and I identify with the heroine a lot, with respect to her shopping habits (only). Someday in life, I want to write such (trashy) literature. I love them!

Until the next weekly update, Au revoir!