If there is one thing I still miss from Switzerland, it is bread, though over the year the choice has increased here and I’m no longer limited to white semi-sweet sliced toaster bread as I was when I first arrived in 2003. But Indians like their bread soft, while European like me prefer a harder crust.
My favourite of all back home is a bread we call “Sils” bread, or “Delice” in French, it is basically the same dough used for the giant German Pretzels, and is probably part of Switzerland’s German heritage. The best way to enjoy these is just with butter, but you can make sandwiches of all kind with them.
Now when I first got my microwave/convection oven I had bread baking woes due to poor quality yeast available in stores in Bangalore, but I solved that problem when I went back to Switzerland for two months in 2008, I stocked up on tons of individual dry yeast packs, they are light weight, and you can put a lot in your suitcase, I also asked friends to bring me back some when they came to visit me in India, with the result I have a substantial stock of dry yeast pouches stored in my kitchen so that I can bake my own bread whenever I crave something special.
Once the yeast problem has been solved, and I returned to India after 2 months of stuffing myself with Sils bread as if it was going out of fashion I decided that making my own might not be a bad idea, but had no clue on how they got the shiny glossy brown crust that is so typical for the bread, so I googled it and found a recipe that was easy enough to follow. The brown crust, as I found out is the result of a chemical reaction caused by the heat of the baking process on a bread that has been poached in a mix of salt and soda bi-carb (baking soda) before the actual baking phase. The recipe is a breeze to follow, the result is yummy and that bread freezes very well. above is the picture of the mini-rolls I made for my daughter’s birthday party, I made mini cheese sandwiches, and they were a real hit with the kids (each sandwich was gold ball sized).

Here is the recipe in question, you will of course need quality yeast, if you can’t find a good dry yeast, ask your baker where to get some, fresh or dry.

Ingredients:
500g maida (white flour)
30g softened butter
1tsp salt
7g of dry yeast (one pack)
300ml of a half/half mix of milk and water

Put all the ingredients in a bowl or in the food processor with the dough hook and knead. take it out of the bowl and stretch and knead vigorously for about 7-10 minutes so that the dough gets a lot of air trapped in.

Let the dough rest in a bowl covered with cling wrap or a thick towel for at least one hour to let it double in size. 
Knock the dough and take small portion of it to shape them like buns, or balls of the desired size and put on a baking tray lined with baking parchment (or greased), cover with a towel, and prepare the dip.

Ingredient for the dip:

1 litre water in a sauce pan
100g of baking soda (soda bi-carb)
1tbsp of salt

Preheat the oven to 200 C degree, and bring the dip water to a boil on the stove.

Once the dip start boiling start poaching the buns one by one, leave them in the water for about  30 seconds, and put them back on the baking tray. Once all the buns have been poached, make slits on the top of each buns to prevent unattractive cracks.

Bake for about 25 minutes, less if the buns are tiny, look for a rich brown crust. Just before taking the buns out of the oven, pour a little milk in a bowl and take a pastry brush out. As soon as you take the bun out of the oven without removing them from the tray yet, start brushing them all with milk, this will ensure that they will look glossy, if you don’t brush them they will have a mate dull crust, but this is in no way going to affect how they taste, the milk brush is a cosmetic procedure, then transfer to a wire rack and let them cool down a little, though there is nothing better than biting in still lukewarm bun, for me that does it, it brings back the feeling of buying a pretzel at any of the pretzel carts you find in every Swiss cities which beacon you with their fresh bread smell in the cold winter streets. Bliss! 

- Every single wall in your home is decorated with scribbles leaving you with the feeling of living in an Avant-garde contemporary art gallery.

- You bless the guy who came up with washable crayons so that you won’t have to explain the art gallery to your landlord.

- You curse whoever used cheap paint to do the walls as it goes off along with the washable crayon scribbles.

- Your kid’s room looks like a disaster zone most of the time, and your long hours of cleaning and straightening it come undone in 5 second flat!

- When you can tell what your child means when she says “whaaaaaaa” and how much it differes from when she needs “whaaahaaa”

- Words such as “yon”. “shoo shoo”, “ty” or “loo” are new French words you never knew could exist. And for the record they stand for “Avion”, “chaussure”, “tiens” and “lune” which respectively mean plane, shoes, here hold it and moon.

- Disney Animated movies have no secrets for you, with even a few you end up knowing by heart, such as monster Inc and Tangled in my case.

- Your sweet little girl has developed a Dora tracking sense or “Doradar”. She will notice every single items with Dora on it be it book, hair clip, play dough, DVD, tiffin box or t-shirt and point at it.

- You start thinking they should find a way to print Dora’s face on vegetables so your daughter would just start eating them!

- Setting a craft project demands 15 minutes of your time, protecting the surface, getting the glue, the paper and the paint ready and your tot will just loose interest in 5 minutes of doing it.

- There are a lot of things to be done with toilet paper you wish you never knew about.

- You have a to-do list as long as your arm in the morning and it is still there untouched by the end of the day because toddler emergencies replaced your scheduled chores.

- You turn the house upside down to find the nail cutter in vain, buy a new one to spare you the aggravation of going insane, and your little angel will come and hand you the one you were originally looking for 3 days later!

- You have a couple of half written blog draft, 2 half paintings, and a few unfinished craft projects all around your home.

- You give a very dirty oriental rug for cleaning, bring it back home, lay it back into place, admire the fact it looks as good as new, and 5 minutes later your kiddo find a way to spill juice or tomato sauce on it!

- Items in your home follow an odd migration pattern with building blocks finding their way in the pots and pans drawer, and spoons in your potted plants.

-You spend 3 weeks wondering where a certain sippy cup disappeared, leave it for lost, and end up finding it in an old purse you never use at the bottom of your wardrobe.

- Old newspaper, washing machine and laundry batch should never be used in the same sentence, especially when we are talking about a batch of dark clothes which have been washed in a washing machine stuffed with old paper…

- A cute smile and a giggle makes you forget that you were contemplating a stiff drink in the first place and a hug melts your heart. 

I vaguely remember writing about India’s obsession with fair complexion and a market flooded with fairness potions for both genders and all ages (even saw a baby fairness massage oil!). The topic is much talked about in the Gori blogging community, and has done the round. Recently a friend of mine had the topic going on her blog and one person commented and added something interesting: each culture has their cosmetic obsession and worldwide women are tacitly told to just suck it up and work that much harder to just conform to a certain ideal of beauty.
India has a fairness fetish, but I grew up in a part of the world where women are on a perpetual diet trying to fit into a fashion world designed around the body of a skinny pre-teen girl passing as a woman.
Yes while my desi counterparts are burning holes in their mirror looking for tan marks and dark spots, the ladies back home are twisting their rear around peering in the mirror to examine the shape and size of their bottom, narrowing on the orange peel effect like a tracking missile locked on a military target.
We are told that anything above a size 6 is overweight if not obese, that we should preferably be a size 4 at the default of not being a size zero. Magazines are here to remind us of the cruel reality with special detox diets adapted to all seasons: “Pre-holidays purge” “How to not pop out of your entire wardrobe during the festive season” “Low fat turkey recipes” “Post holiday blues, get back into shape now” “Start the new year right…detox plan to get the last of the foie gras overdose behind you” “Spring detox, only 2 month left until the bikini” “Summer diet, it’s not too late to look hot in your bikini” “Fall regimen, keep your toned tanned body in shape until Christmas” and all over again!
Now of course since living on just water and watermelon isn’t for everybody, you have the assortment of cream, massage techniques, aromatherapy, acupressure, hypno-treatment, five star gym full of perfectly normal women running on treadmill like hamsters on caffeine running toward that elusive goal of looking like the latest Vogue model. If all fail you have the infomercials and teleshopping, with their lot of electrocuting belt, sauna belt, vibrating belt, hot suit, cling film treatment, ice belt, sauna box, abs sculpting contraptions, butt massagers, weight loss pills, things to help you loose weight in your sleep or without exercise, the things that would tempt all women but that few will ever admit having purchased or even contemplated buying, as teleshopping is known not to be “serious”.

Yes my cultural peers have a fat and flab phobia, time to come out of the closet. Like all I had my phase of self loathing (at a point where I was fitting in a size 8…how I would kill to fit these pants again!), I did try a toning cream, promising to zap my fat in 10 days, the issue was that to make one believe it actually works they put a cooling agent in it, that gives you a sensation of cold so cold it feels like burning, and probably like most ladies who gave in to that fad, I stopped using it after 4 days, never saw any results and hopped to the next fad of just shocking my nerves in the shower finishing with an ice cold splash all over my body, but again gave up because it was not my idea of relaxing after hard day at work, and in winter, it borders insanity. Like many I read that squeezing my butt at my desk burned  x amount of calories and dispense you the need to do more hard-core exercises, the trick being for you to actually remember to squeeze your butt all day long which pretty much use half of your brain cells which could be put to a better and more intellectual use.
I also did the video tapes, looking like a flabby monkey in my living room, huffing and panting simply trying to go through the whole 30 minute session with grace while the ladies in the DVD don’t break a sweat, 5 days later still on the beginners level I could not move a single muscle in my body without agonizing in pain…to loose just 2 pounds, of probably what was just fluids.
In over 15 years of trying to conform or be fit, the result is that I gained 15kg, wear a size 10-12 and am not caring as much about how I look rather than how healthy I am.
Maybe that is what they call wisdom? Goodbye idiotic magazines full of beauty regimen impossible to follow unless you sell your soul to the “devil” which goes by several new fancier names these days, and basically get your sexy goddess superficial body at the price of a whole life filled with fun and chocolate puff pastries.

Yes dear, we are all told to walk the walk, and look the part, regardless of where we were born, natural is never enough, and never pretty.

One feel good therapy for all though: Google “Stars without make up” and see how fooled we’ve all been, makes your relationship with your mirror that much better.