Jazzed up Lamp

I upgraded my bedside table lamps a few months back, with the result that one of the old lamps moved into the living room to brighten a corner that was particularly dark at night, the other found a new home in my daughter’s room, but still looked very grown up, so I decided to prettify it a little.
The original looks like this :

This is the one currently sitting in the living room, a half circle of cane and wire, its twin is now looking like this:

Painted in silver acrylic paint, adorned with a flower in blue paint and 3D outliner and a lot of paper butterflies. The feathery purple thing was part of a gift set wrap I kept, the butterflies are scrapbooking cut outs I bought in a stationary shop a while back.
I mounted the lamp to the wall so my daughter wouldn’t be tempted to carry it around the house and damage it. One simple way to give an old lamp a makeover.

Piperade

Piperade is a recipe of Basque origin using red, green and yellow bell peppers (capsicums) as a main ingredient. It’s a popular side dish at a barbeque party as it goes real well with grilled meat, but can be enjoyed with rice for a vegetarian meal. There are many variant of that dish, here is the one made in my family

Ingredients:

- one of each red, yellow and green bell peppers (called capsicums in India) Cut into long strips
- 2 medium tomatoes, diced
- 1 red onion, thinly sliced (not chopped)
- 2-3 teaspoon sugar
- salt, freshly ground pepper corns to taste
- Sliced pitted black olives, a handful (optional)

1) Heat 2-3 table spoon olive oil in a heavy bottom frying pan (skillet), toss the onion in and stir fry until they are starting to brown, and add 2-3 teaspoon sugar, stir for 1-2 minutes and add the bell peppers reduce the heat and cover the pan. Stir occasionally until the peppers are soft

2) Once the peppers are soft add the diced tomatoes, and mix, let it cook until the tomatoes are turning to a chunky gravy. Add the salt and ground pepper and the handful of olives, cook for about one minute more.

3) Serve hot with rice, or grilled meat.

Bedroom Painting

I took my own sweet time to think these through, my bedroom is the most important room in the house, it has to be uncluttered and peaceful, so finding the right thing to hang above our bed was though, in the end I chose to pain these:

The inspiration was tribal tattoos, the Fish and the Turtle are both almost exact copies of designs I found online, the Sun is a freestyle design of my making, I needed something that would look good beside the dream catcher my mom got me from Canada, and since the whole bedroom is in blue and white I didn’t want the paintings to clash either.
I must say the end result looks quite good and just about completes the bedroom.

Home Management binder

first thing first I didn’t come up with the idea myself, I’ve stumbled upon a blog that is all things home and household related and the lady writing it had the marvellous idea of sharing her tip to keep her household organized, you can find her inspiring post here

We all have important papers that end up scattered all around the house, or buy food stuff in duplicate because we didn’t check all in the back of the pantry cabinets, or suddenly wondered at the last minute what to cook for lunch and because of the lack of time, idea and motivation threw some generic tomato sauce pasta together…don’t lie we’ve all been there.
In my home this meant having some bills in one drawer, some in another, vouchers all over the place, and the fridge covered in take various piece of papers and leaflet that would fly when we turned the fan on. So yes the Home Management Binder sounds like a good idea. Here is how mine looks inside:

I chose a binder that had a plastic cover so that it can be easily wiped clean, the inside has a small pocket in which I slid all the coupons, vouchers and membership cards, above I glued two packs of post it notes on a piece of cardboard taped to the binder.
I didn’t find blank paper divider, and the lady at “Imperfect Homemaking” did make a point saying the binder needs to bee pretty to be useful, so I bought plastic sleeves, hand made paper and little stick on tabs to make my dividers. The first one is the to do list:

As you can see this is the same thing that she has in her binder, the system is so simple, no need to complicate things.

She also offers free printable organizing sheets, I didn’t need the other, so I just printed the weekly menu planner and grocery shopping list.
I love it already, DH eats Indian food the maid cooks for his tiffin, my daughter and I eat something different for lunch because I love to cook different things. the problem is on hectic days I just find myself blanking in front of my fridge at lunch time, and end up just doing grilled chicken and veggies, or pasta…you get the drill. By the weekend I suddenly notice all the veggies I had bought to use and half of them lost their freshness. With the meal planner I sit down on Sunday, think about it so that I have at least 3 meals planned in advance, and write it down. The grocery shopping list side of the sheet is for me to write down all the things I need to buy during the weekend as we do a weekly shopping trip, then with my fridge stocked up again I can write down the menu for the next week and so on…see simple!

That one I came up with myself, I have made a special pantry inventory folder, in which I put a printed list of all the things I have in the storage cabinet, when I open a pack to transfer to the ready to use cupboard and boxes, I just add notes to it, when it is too scribbled over it’s time to print a new sheet.

And there are still these days you don’t feel like cooking, or have unexpected casual guests coming for a drink, or you just want outside food without going out. I had a few take out menus on my fridge, I put them all in a folder, with the customer codes and coupons so that they stop flying away or get dirty in my kitchen.

I have two more folders: School where I keep my daughter’s monthly school schedule and “Everything Else” where I keep…you guessed it, Everything Else

And gone is my mess of important daily paper…I wish I came up with that or found the idea ages ago, would have spared my nerves a great deal.

Chicken pasta salad

Swiss are salad people, and the peak salad season is Summer, where we happily trade our regular lettuce side salad for salad meals. Summers are short in my homeland, so people get as much outdoor as they can, and salads are the perfect thing to take for a picnic or to jazz up a barbecue dinner in the garden.
With the heat being back in Mumbai, eating salads just about make sense as it is refreshing, fast to prepare and will prevent one from sweating in the kitchen. Pasta salads are the best because you can boil the pasta a day in advance and let it cool in the fridge and then top it with whatever catch your fancy. This version is a non veg one, but it can be made to suit a vegetarian diet without any difficulties.

Ingredients:

half pack of penne pasta (250g)
2 boneless chicken breast
1 yellow and 1 red capsicum (bell peppers in US)
half a cup black sliced olives
1 small bunch of fresh Italian basil (sweet basil)
2-3 tables spoon mayonnaise or tartar sauce

1) boil the pasta in water with salt and a little olive oil to prevent them from sticking together, drain and set aside to cool down completely. this step can even be done the day before and past stored in the fridge in an airtight container.

2) In the grill plate of your sandwich maker (the one with grooves, not the one with triangle shape) or in a lightly greased skillet on the stove, grill your chicken breast until done to the middle. Then cut into bite size chunks and set aside to cool.

3) Dice the capsicums and snip the basil leaves with a scissor, or roughly cut them.

4) Add the olives, capsicums and chicken to the pasta, add the mayo and stir to mix well, toss the basil and mix again, your pasta salad is ready. 

 

- You can replace penne by another type of pasta, just be mindfull that this works better with big shapes such as farfalle, fusilli, and penne because they catch the seasoning in a way no small pasta will. Steer clear of macaroni and spaghetti for that one. - You can use any choice of salad appropriate vegetables: tomatoes, cucumber, sweet corn kernel, green olives, moong bean sprouts, even season with mint and coriander leaves instead of basil. - Instead of mayo or tartar sauce you can use olive oil or make a vinaigrette it tastes wonderful too - this pasta salad is extremely tiffin friendly (lunch box) as well, simply boil your pasta and grill your chicken the night before, and toss in the fresh veggies in the morning. What’s more that is one full and balanced meal in one container. - The salad tastes good at room temperature, but keeping the past in the fridge before tossing will make it more refreshing on a hot day.

Musk Melon and ginger juice

That one I picked up in the airport in Bangalore where they have a self serve fresh food fridge section, they have several fresh juice already in a cup on offer and I chose this one, it was so good and is so simple to make that it has become a great way to beat the heat. It’s fast to make, you don’t need to even add water or sugar, or strain the pulp. Musk Melon is called cantaloupe in the US by the way, and you need about half a melon to make a glass.

Ingredients:

Half a musk melon per glass
a thumbnail sized piece of ginger

1) Peel and cut the melon into chunks and put it into a blender (mixie) and blitz to a pulp
2) Pour into glasses and enjoy chilled.

As I said…SIMPLE

Vanilla French Toast

French toasts re actually called “Pain perdus” in French, which translates as lost bread in English, and is probably a more accurate term to give the dish as it was originally a way to salvage bread that was getting stale and hard and would otherwise go into the dustbin, the bread was soaked in a mix of egg and milk and then cooked on a greased skillet. There are many variant on that base recipe to give certain flavour to your bread, the one I grew up with were always sweet, as people in Switzerland much prefer a sweet breakfast to a savoury one. This one is a very easy one that takes minimal preparation, all you need to keep in your pantry is some vanilla essence, you probably have the eggs and milk in your fridge already.

Ingredients:

(enough to soak 6 slices of bread)

2 eggs
3 teaspoon sugar
100ml milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
6 slices of bread (I prefer whole grain bread)
icing sugar to dust the toasts (optional)

1) in a mixing bowl, break the two eggs, add the vanilla, sugar, and milk and stir to make a batter

2) Heat a frying pan with a little oil and dip one slice of bread in the egg mix until fully soaked and put it in the hot pan. Flip it from time to time until both sides are golden brown. And transfer to a plate, repeat with all the slices.

3) If using icing sugar, take a tea filter and put a teaspoon of icing sugar in it and sift it over the French toasts. Enjoy

- Presentation tip, cut the slices diagonally as above in the picture and arrange the triangle on a plate before dusting.