Day 5: Back to baking

My Day 4 post for the Marathon on my Citizen Matters blog here:
http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/blogs/gardener-s-diary/blog_posts/understanding-the-origin-of-your-food

And on to Day 5 :). I didn't have much to write about, and then realized I had a couple of photos that I hadn't yet uploaded or shared so those it will have to be.

Baking is a favourite activity of mine, but I go through these major ups and downs of having days of crazy baking, or a complete lull. To break the monotony and also get tips from an expert, I decided to go for a baking workshop with Nandita Iyer of Saffron Trail at her lovely home in Whitefield. Getting a peek at her amazing terrace garden was an added bonus ;)

As expected it was great fun, and to keep the momentum going I got back and tried the cinnamon rolls right on the next day :).

Day of love? or Baking maybe ;) ?

So it was another Valentine's Day that went by quietly, the brightest aspect being that I decided to be in a baking frenzy :). Well food is a way of showing love isn't it ;)?

(1) Making that perfect whole wheat bread has always been such a dream, and I came a whole lot closer with this recipe from Chinmayie on Love Food Eat.

Changes:
- Did not have flaxseed powder so left it out
- Added some wheat gluten
- Found I was at the end of my atta, so mixed a wee bit of maida at the end, probably 1/3 cup or so.
- 2 hours for 1st rise, 1 hour for 2nd and it really was easy and brilliant!
- And I musn't forget to mention my amazing KitchenAid that saves me all the kneading!

I need to get/swap/buy one of those smaller pans so that my loaves get to normal size, my present one is the aluminium long one, and seems like everything only rises up to a 2/3rds size due to the length of the pan. But doesn't that texture look amazing? It was! The only thing I'd change would be to increase the salt a bit (feeling less guilty using organic rock salt ;)).

(2) By afternoon I had this wish to try a chocolate lava cake, have always had a fascination for them. And Valentine's and Chocolate just seem to go together :). As is usual with me, I did not have the ramekins needed by the recipe so tried it in muffin pans instead. It looked too undone at 8 minutes so kept it for a wee bit longer and it turned to a sort of brownie cake. Even worse, I realized the recipe used self-raising flour and I used plain maida :(. End result, yummy and edible, but definitely no lava cake!

(3) Had to carry on the mood and finished off with a whole wheat pizza - 100% whole wheat and yes, I am very very thrilled. No photos as I hate taking food photos in the night and this one was definitely not going to stay until morning. My recipe started off from this link. But as many of the review comments have mentioned, I also tried making it completely whole wheat and it came out pretty well. Only change next time might be I might throw in some gluten and (once again) increase the salt a bit.

Resolution Time?

The start of a new year.. that always signals resolutions of some sort to me. This year,  I tried avoiding the topic for 3 days but it keeps going around in my head so I thought I might as well write it down. Talking of resolutions,  I loved this post by Jane, wish that would work for me ;). The ones below may be repetitive with my bucket list here and there.. seem to be setting myself a lot of work in 2013!!

1. I will sow something new every month, give away seedlings if I don't have space for them :). This is necessary for me to figure out how many of those zillions of stored up seeds are viable at least!

2. I will bake one batch of something every week, this is due to about to be spending a lot of money on an appliance that I need to justify, you'll understand as you read further down ;).

3. I will wake up half an hour earlier every morning, in the hope of getting stuff ready for D to take to school without needing to go into a panic once or twice a week as I've got up too late for preparing what I wanted to!

4. I will plan at least one complete self-pampering activity every week - may be going for a Hair Spa or even just soaking my feet. Yes, I need to PLAN it or it never happens!!

5. I have recently started "No Laptop" time on request from my kids. This is usually the half hour or so after dinner during which time S and D read to me (how clever of me is that :)?). Definitely have to continue!!

6. Mindful buying - lots and lots of thinking before buying anything new. My cupboards and home are overflowing and I will only buy things that I NEED. Of course this might include a KitchenAid, some of you know how long I've been thinking over that one.

7. I will spend 15 minutes every day cleaning - just cleaning up, just 15 minutes. Flylady says this should slowly bring my home to order, it's time I stopped just reading those mails from the site and actually implemented something :).

We are now done with the marathon blogging in December, and have embarked on Project52 - at least one post a week in 2013, so this is my entry for Week 1.

Happy New Year Everyone!