Moving to self-hosted blog

As evidenced by my infrequent posts, I'm clearly overwhelmed with the amount of online activity my life is demanding! So, to simplify my life, I'm moving my blog to a self-hosted space on my website that I manage anyway. If you follow this blog and would like to continue, leave me a comment or send an email for the new address.

Meera

Belated birthday post

Several moons ago (well, only 1), my birthday came around on its annual visit to planet Earth. It was a remarkably gastronomical day, and I have no idea why I forgot to post these. There should be an app for that :)

There are cards, and then there are cards. Not only were the words inside the card beautiful, somehow MrM managed to pick a card that made me very happy just looking at it. You can take the girl out of India, but you can't take the India out of the girl. Not entirely anyway.

Since my birthday fell on a Thursday, and these are generally meeting-free at work, I had a lunch date with MrM. Admittedly, there are a few things as satisfying as eating sushi. I will claim that my butter chicken is up there, though :)

Cherry Blosson roll at Izumi.

Unagi hand-roll. It was a cone of deliciousness.

While my birthday is usually a great source of excitement for me, it is often a source of stress for the man, who suddenly finds himself unable to decide what we need to do on birthday night. So it comes in handy that our good friends called us over for dinner. The pi`ece de re'sistance of this meal was actually a ahi-avocado plate, but after staring at the picture for a while, I decided that there would be enough vegetarians who wouldn't share the same Pavlovian reaction to it. So, I'll post a picture of the awesome cheese and balsamic strawberry appetizer instead. 

Knowing that I geek out on phone lenses, and that I've been having a bit of a struggle finding something for my new Galaxy, the man bought me a microscope attachment. I carry it around in my purse and stare through it every time I encounter a new surface. Let me present to you, my cutting board :)

It was a wonderful day, and I hold on to the last of my 30's with great enthusiasm :)

In 13 years

Ro came home with this t-shirt on last week. Class of 2026. I can't believe it! Looks like we will be dealing with college applications for our 20th wedding anniversary :)

We have a kindergartener!

This day was coming all along. The husband was looking forward to it, the kid was neutral, and I was a nervous mess. But none of that family emotional disturbance was going to hold kinder back. And we are so glad it didn't!

We went with Ro to "muffin morning" the Friday before school start, and that got him all amped up to go to Kinder. The teacher was sweet (I hear we won the lottery :) ), the room had fun new toys and books, and Ro was so ready for a change of pace!

Here he is, all excited outside our home before we leave for the first day!

Putting his backpack on for the first of many days.

Styling outside school.

 I wanted to get a picture of the back of the backpack (grandma got it as a birthday gift, with his name on it), but I like this picture better. He is checking if I am following :)

 In the cafeteria, waiting for first bell.

Lined up with other kindergarteners to head to the room.

He found his room! Yay!

 Inside the room.

 Finding his name tag

Hmm.. what now?

 Look! A faucet!

Busy playing at after-care. He didn't want to go home - that's something that tells me he had a blast!

All done with day one, happy as can be :)

Roller skating Ro

Ro got his first pair of skates this summer. We try and get him out to practice, though the heat is getting to him too!

Banana coconut ice cream

A few weeks ago, one of my friends gave me her ice-cream maker attachment for the Kitchenaid stand mixer. I first made a really simple orange sorbet with it. This was my second, rather ambitious, experiement. I followed this recipe from David Lebovitz, skipping only the rum (OMG!) because I didn't have any handy (double OMG!).

My pictures lack the beauty of his, since I clearly have stopped whipping my SLR out for something a phone can capture ;-)

First, the jaggery. It was a lighter variety than his, so the color difference is expected.

I added 1/4 of the coconut milk to the jaggery, letting it dissolve. Think of making simple syrup, but with jaggery and coconut milk instead of sugar and water.

Next, I added 1/4-1/2" thick slices of over-ripe bananas. I used 3, since I was halving the original recipe. (Triple OMG!)

Once the bananas were cooked through, they got transfered to the blender for smoothing.

And then I left this in the fridge, overnight. Voila! Something very delicious that looks like mud. But, egged on by Ro's excited tasting of the slurry, I continued.

It went in the ice-cream maker, and churned around for an hour.

Happy chef's assistant. His job is to flip the levers on the mixer, and refrain from double dipping curious fingers.

And there we were! The ice-cream (can you call it that if it has no cream?) was delicious. It had an Indian flavor profile, specially if you are south Indian, and consume appams and vella-payasam.

I'm trying to read more about managing consistency, getting correct sugar levels, and what makes ice-creams set hard or melt soon. Meanwhile, I'm happy with something yummy, with less than 5 ingredients, all of which I can buy without learning chemical names! :)

Changing loyalties to an Android platform

I had been increasingly discontent with my iPhone4, and annoyed with Apple for not pushing back useful features like Siri to the iPhone4 with new updates. I was also annoyed, I'll admit, with my android hubby always having the cooler phone. So, when my chance to update my phone came around, and the next iPhone was months away in the future, I made the plunge and bought the Samsung Galaxy S4. Despite being an Apple fangirl, this move has been really good for me. There has been exactly one low-light: 95% of my girlfriends use iPhones, and I had to up my message limit since I can't use iMessage any more. Now for the highlights:

1. Swype keyboard.  I will never 1-finger (or 2-thumb) type again.
2. S-voice. What iPhone denied me by not pushing Siri back, I can have on my Galaxy.
3. Buying books on the kindle app. Apple wouldn't allow (or levied insane cuts on) apps that sold products within them. So I always had to view the mobile version of the Amazon store on Safari app, and then buy the book and have it sent to my iPhone. Now I can just buy a book from my phone without jumping through hoops.
4. Awesome giant screen. My iPhone4 feels like a iPod-nano when I hold it now.
5. Defaulting to Google Maps. I don't have to explicitly open it, or be routed through 3 clicks to be able to map an address with Google Maps. It is THE mapping application on my phone. No silly Apple Map.
6. Beautiful camera with 13MP and 16:9 resolution at 4128x2322.
7. Multi-window mode. I can have two apps open and operating on the main screen. I can use them. Not just look at their pretty, dancing icons.
8. Kill all apps. iPhone gave me tons of grief by not having a built-in way to kill all apps. I finally have a task manager.
9. File system. Yes, I said it. I can view real folders on my phone. Hallelujah.

So, its been a hit so far. Love it.