When we moved back to Bangalore last February I was looking forward to the cool climate, being able to walk around without sweating buckets and soaking linen pants on my way to buy milk, imagined a typical cold Bangalore winter morning with me sipping my tea on the balcony looking at the dissipating fog, little did I know that fate had different plans…
DH is still not getting his salaries paid in full (with the first 3 salaries of the year still not paid at all) and after applying just about everywhere he could think of in business consulting, got one good offer, with a nice salary hike…in…MUMBAI!
Now we aren’t really in a position to just be picky, it doesn’t take much brain to figure out that between an interesting job in Bangalore with serious salary paying issue and an other somewhat interesting job with a salary hike in a bigger more reliable company in Mumbai, the second is the best option.
So what if it is Mumbai? I mean at this point we just tapped in all our savings, we really can’t get any further without getting more debts than we can manage. I wont pretend that Dh and I are exited about the whole move though, but one thing DH told me was that this time he won’t let the monsoon and impatience get in the way of him finding us a nice place to live, it might take a little more time, and we might have a few months where we won’t be together often but he is going to avoid the Navi Mumbai ordeal, we tried it, we hated it and if we are going to be stuck in Mumbai for a couple of years, we want to be in a place were we can somewhat enjoy it. Which means mostly being in an area that won’t push him into commuting 4 hours a day, has a few nice shops and entertainment, and most importantly has a small park with a kiddie playground even if that is only inside the apartment complex. The only drawback with that plan is that finding such a place will be a bit tricky, because Mumbai has some really crazy real estate prices. With a big dog and a toddler we need a 2BHK that is at least 1000 sq ft but preferably 1200, we don’t care about balconies or terraces, we just don’t want to feel crammed, and we don’t want to have to pay half the monthly income for that. Fortunately some preliminary checks on real estate websites show some hope that we wont be asking for the moon.
Then once we have our new home picked, the waltz of boxes, can start all over again, I can fish out my old war plan, season it “a la sauce du jour” and try to break our record at settling down, though I seriously doubt we will be able to unpack the stuff faster than the 24 hours it took this time. But my mind is already racing with clutter shrinking plans, if we are going to have to live in a smaller apartment, we need to once and for all kiss goodbye to DH’s college course books, he hasn’t opened them in over 7 years, time to let go, and while we are at it we started debating the necessity of keeping or massive computer table, our desktop has been out of commission since last November and while the reason it’s not up and running is because we can’t afford to replace the mother board and processor, we haven’t exactly been missing it, DH was away all the time with his company’s laptop, and I am perfectly happy with my netbook, in fact truth be told my netbook has cured me of my made Facebook gaming addiction, why would I want to tempt the devil again? If we decide to get the desktop running again later, we can still find a less massive and far more attractive desk that will fit our new place rather than try to make our new space accommodate a table we bought to fit our old Bangalore flat but looked like a sore point in both our Navi Mumbai flat and the one we are currently living in. We still have a custom made writing desk to use for the laptops, and a dinning table we can easily turn into a workspace. Beside I’m against having the computer in our bedroom and hated having it in Ishita’s bedroom as well, and will hate it even more as she grows up and learn how to use it, that was the reason why we chose to move into a 3BHK last February, so that we can set a room as a Study/Office and not have work invade our personal space, but DH won’t be working from home in his new company, so the immediate necessity of having a Study is now more of an indulgence, which probably won’t fit our budget anyway.
The silver lining is that I am at least enjoying some of the cold monsoon weather Bangalore has to offer, and that we will probably move to Mumbai by October and then I won’t have to bear with too much heat until the cold period of December, and we will have plenty of time to get ourselves an AC unit to bear with Summer.
Now let’s see if Mumbai will be more enjoyable on our third attempt to live there?
Today DH is out of town so in order to kill some weekend time I decided to go shopping with Ishita as my grand ma sent us both me and my daughter our birthday gift in form of a cash transfer to our bank account. Ishita has a real sudden obsession with Dora the explorer and the “choo choo” episode that you find on the Treasure Island DVD, which she managed to scratch so badly it no longer plays, so this week I tried to find it in Landmark but it was no longer there, so today I headed to another bookstore and managed to find it, along with a “2” birthday cake candle which I will need for the kiddie party I’m planning for her, then we headed to Shopper’s Stop to see what kiddie clothes they have. I normally wait for the sales, but for the past few weeks I’ve been quite irritated at never finding anything that still fit and still look decent in Ishi’s wardrobe and this morning I finally got around to store all the too small and still good looking outfits in a box, and made another pile of too small and really worn out clothes, turns out she hasn’t much left after I did that, so shopping it was.
There is something about shopping that seem to make Ishita exited, especially clothes shopping, she can’t stop running around, pulling things off the rack in a very professional shopper’s way…your typical shopping crazy teenager in the making ladies and gent. And it’s not that she pulls stuff off the racks to make a mess, nope she grabs things she likes, and keep holding her loot as she roams around to narrow on the next target, like a bird of prey looking for their next meal, while I try to find something cute that will just come in her size already!
So in Shopper’s Stop she decided to grab 3 same blue corduroys pants, a white t-shirt with a teddy bear and a pink skirt while I was with the shop assistant trying to find her right size in a pile of denim skirts. Her little miss goes shopping behaviour actually actually attracted several shop assistant who couldn’t get how cute she was doing what she was doing (looting the kid’s department) and offered to keep an eye on her while I picked up some stuff, I never let her out of my sight though, and always reminded her to behave…ok mostly saying Ishita…NO to which the shop assistants kept saying “It’s ok let her do it, we will make sure nothing is too messed up” And all the while I could not help but think that should we have been in Switzerland I would have had cold stares from the staff for not having my daughter harnessed in a stroller or behaving nicely (meaning not touching the racks), trust me when I say that I’m glad people in India don’t mind kids acting like kids in public spaces. Swiss kids are expected to be at their best behaviour all the time, and kids are strongly frowned upon in upscale place or at dinner time in a restaurant, here you can have your child being out at 9pm in a nice restaurant and still have the waiter smile and offer them treats to keep them entertained, or a shop assistant willing to play “pretend shopping” with them if that’s what they want.
Oh and you also don’t have to deal with other parents shooting you daggers if your child runs around the store with a Dora The Explorer clutched to her chest while saying “choo choo” while you abandon checking dress sizes as she starts making a mad rush for the tea mug display in the home section of Westside as it we experienced later today. Nope instead you have parents saying “Sho Shweet” and asking you her name and how old she is and end up with a “Awww she is so cute”. The Swiss parent might just question your parenting skill at this point and nag you by pushing a stroller with a well behaved kid in it like saying “See mine is strapped in and don’t make a scene”.
So I managed to stop Ishita before she could do any damage in the home section, we bought the Dora The Explorer cushion because that’s her first independent choice and I was anyway thinking about having some bedding and cute cushion put in her room in order to slowly motivate her to actually sleep in her own bed later on, and while she couldn't stop roaming around having me on high alert the whole time we got things done, and celebrated the big shopping day with a slice of black forest cake and an Iced Tea for mommy at a coffee shop. Where quite obviously Ishi scored another few “So cute” for dumping dirty napkins on the table of the couple seated at the next table and my just telling her to stop it already and sit and eat more cake.
There is something about shopping that seem to make Ishita exited, especially clothes shopping, she can’t stop running around, pulling things off the rack in a very professional shopper’s way…your typical shopping crazy teenager in the making ladies and gent. And it’s not that she pulls stuff off the racks to make a mess, nope she grabs things she likes, and keep holding her loot as she roams around to narrow on the next target, like a bird of prey looking for their next meal, while I try to find something cute that will just come in her size already!
So in Shopper’s Stop she decided to grab 3 same blue corduroys pants, a white t-shirt with a teddy bear and a pink skirt while I was with the shop assistant trying to find her right size in a pile of denim skirts. Her little miss goes shopping behaviour actually actually attracted several shop assistant who couldn’t get how cute she was doing what she was doing (looting the kid’s department) and offered to keep an eye on her while I picked up some stuff, I never let her out of my sight though, and always reminded her to behave…ok mostly saying Ishita…NO to which the shop assistants kept saying “It’s ok let her do it, we will make sure nothing is too messed up” And all the while I could not help but think that should we have been in Switzerland I would have had cold stares from the staff for not having my daughter harnessed in a stroller or behaving nicely (meaning not touching the racks), trust me when I say that I’m glad people in India don’t mind kids acting like kids in public spaces. Swiss kids are expected to be at their best behaviour all the time, and kids are strongly frowned upon in upscale place or at dinner time in a restaurant, here you can have your child being out at 9pm in a nice restaurant and still have the waiter smile and offer them treats to keep them entertained, or a shop assistant willing to play “pretend shopping” with them if that’s what they want.
Oh and you also don’t have to deal with other parents shooting you daggers if your child runs around the store with a Dora The Explorer clutched to her chest while saying “choo choo” while you abandon checking dress sizes as she starts making a mad rush for the tea mug display in the home section of Westside as it we experienced later today. Nope instead you have parents saying “Sho Shweet” and asking you her name and how old she is and end up with a “Awww she is so cute”. The Swiss parent might just question your parenting skill at this point and nag you by pushing a stroller with a well behaved kid in it like saying “See mine is strapped in and don’t make a scene”.
So I managed to stop Ishita before she could do any damage in the home section, we bought the Dora The Explorer cushion because that’s her first independent choice and I was anyway thinking about having some bedding and cute cushion put in her room in order to slowly motivate her to actually sleep in her own bed later on, and while she couldn't stop roaming around having me on high alert the whole time we got things done, and celebrated the big shopping day with a slice of black forest cake and an Iced Tea for mommy at a coffee shop. Where quite obviously Ishi scored another few “So cute” for dumping dirty napkins on the table of the couple seated at the next table and my just telling her to stop it already and sit and eat more cake.
I decided to take a few of the very few recipe on my very old blog and post them there, today a good old Swiss classic : the carrot cake. As I mentioned in the recipe, this is a pretty basic, in fact most cakes and cupcakes as I know them are made on the “4 quarter principle” with equal weight of eggs, flour, butter and sugar. I found a few recipe in magazines around here but each time I tried these they miserably failed because the ratio were messed up somehow. Trust me guys apply this golden rule of basic baking I give you and you will never fail. Then you add your flavours to the basic mix, be it a hand full of nuts and fruits, carrots, or pure cocoa powder.
Also the recipe I give you below was the nut free one, my grand ma’s recipe calls for ground hazelnuts, which are though to find in India and when you find it, expensive, but later found that ground almonds make a good substitute, so if you want to follow that route, just substitute about 60g of flour for 60g of ground almonds.
For 1 standard cake tin you'll need :
3-4 eggs
Weight of the eggs in shell of all purpose flour, sugar, butter
150-200 grams grated carrots
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
2-3 teaspoon baking powder
The zest of a small lime
1/2 teaspoon orange essence (optional)
1 pinch of salt
How to 1) in a plastic microwave safe mixing bowl place the butter and microwave for 10 second at a time until it can be mashed by a fork and is soft enough to beat to a paste
2) Add the sugar and the pinch of salt to the butter, stir until well blended
3) Add the eggs one at a time will stirring and blending to the sugar/butter mix
4) Add the carrot to the mix and stir, add the cinnamon, and lime zest as well as the orange essence if used.
5) Sift the flour and baking powder together and add to the buttery batter, mix until all the ingredients are well blended. The batter should be thick put of pouring consistency, if it appear to be a bit too thick, you can add a little milk to it.
6)Preheat oven at 180 C , Grease a cake tin with butter and dust with flour, pour the batter in it smoothening it so it fills it evenly up to 2/3 the height of the tin
7) bake for about 30-40 minutes or until the cake is done to the middle, check by pricking the cake with a clean knife blade to its center, if the blade comes out clean the cake is done. If after 20 minutes you notice the cake is too brown but the middle is not cook, reduce the temperature of the oven to 150 and continue cooking until done.
8) Remove from oven and let it cool in the tin for 7-10 minutes, then de-mould and transfer the cake to a wire rack for complete cooling.
Serve as a desert, or with tea, you can ice it with icing sugar as well and turn it into a birthday cake.
Also the recipe I give you below was the nut free one, my grand ma’s recipe calls for ground hazelnuts, which are though to find in India and when you find it, expensive, but later found that ground almonds make a good substitute, so if you want to follow that route, just substitute about 60g of flour for 60g of ground almonds.
Carrot Cake
A tea time classic sponge cake and a favourite in my home country Switzerland. Like most sponge cakes this one is made on what we call "4 quarter base" in my family, meaning that the ingredients are measured as per the weight of the eggs still in their shell. Therefore if you use 3 eggs that weight around 200 grams you will have to add the same amount of flour, sugar, and butter to the mix and then add the flavouring agent of your choice to it in the required quantity (this later varies).For 1 standard cake tin you'll need :
3-4 eggs
Weight of the eggs in shell of all purpose flour, sugar, butter
150-200 grams grated carrots
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
2-3 teaspoon baking powder
The zest of a small lime
1/2 teaspoon orange essence (optional)
1 pinch of salt
How to 1) in a plastic microwave safe mixing bowl place the butter and microwave for 10 second at a time until it can be mashed by a fork and is soft enough to beat to a paste
2) Add the sugar and the pinch of salt to the butter, stir until well blended
3) Add the eggs one at a time will stirring and blending to the sugar/butter mix
4) Add the carrot to the mix and stir, add the cinnamon, and lime zest as well as the orange essence if used.
5) Sift the flour and baking powder together and add to the buttery batter, mix until all the ingredients are well blended. The batter should be thick put of pouring consistency, if it appear to be a bit too thick, you can add a little milk to it.
6)Preheat oven at 180 C , Grease a cake tin with butter and dust with flour, pour the batter in it smoothening it so it fills it evenly up to 2/3 the height of the tin
7) bake for about 30-40 minutes or until the cake is done to the middle, check by pricking the cake with a clean knife blade to its center, if the blade comes out clean the cake is done. If after 20 minutes you notice the cake is too brown but the middle is not cook, reduce the temperature of the oven to 150 and continue cooking until done.
8) Remove from oven and let it cool in the tin for 7-10 minutes, then de-mould and transfer the cake to a wire rack for complete cooling.
Serve as a desert, or with tea, you can ice it with icing sugar as well and turn it into a birthday cake.
