Bombay Wellingtons and Kadhi

Night number one, Wednesday, did not go so well.  I decided to make (with my nanny) "Bombay Wellingtons" which was a recipe that a friend had posted on Facebook from her blog.  I didn't have the exact ingredients so we used a yellow pepper instead of green, and puff pastry sheets which means you have to cook for 30-40 minutes instead (which made dinner late!) .

Aria doesn't like anything that is not bread and cheese so her not taking more than a rabbit size bite was not a surprise.  Avani did not think that the idea of a pastry with meat went well together and instantly shouted "Chicken with a Pastry!!  Those don't go together".  Now I forced her to take a bite and her preconceived notion that it would be disgusting still remained and she continued to complain while she ate it.  After we added some ketchup to it and she had eaten a satisfactory amount, I asked if she was done and she said no, ate the whole thing but "it was disgusting".  Anjay, who was the target audience, had just returned from a sausage plant where he saw a live hog be converted to the links that we buy in the grocery store and had temporarily became a vegetarian.  He didn't even take a bite.  I on the other hand thought they were fabulous!  Arjun had some leftovers last night and was also impressed so the recipe is great, thanks Amrith!

Night two, obviously we had to go vegetarian so I called up Mom and Dad (Atlanta ones) and told her I have all this Besan in the house and what can we make with it.  Mom threw out Kadhi and Pakora so we thought we would give it a try.  Here is the recipe we followed:

Pakora Ingredients:
1 Chopped Onion - dime size pieces
1/2 Chopped Cauliflower - dime size pieces
1 Chopped Potato - dime size pieces
1 Green Chili Grinded (or paste) with seeds removed
1 tspn Haldi (Turmeric)
1 and 1/2 tspn salt
1 cup Besan Flour
2 tspn Oil

Kadhi Ingredients:
1/2 Container Yogurt (store bought plain)
2 tbsn Besan Flour
1 tspn Haldi (Turmeric)
1 tspn Sugar
1/2 Lemon
1 tspn tea masala
1/2 tspn ginger paste
1 tspn cumin seeds
2 tbspn oil

Instructions:
1.  Prepare oil in either a fryer or a large pot with enough oil to dip the Pakoras. 
2.  Mix all the Pakora ingredients into a bowl.
3.  You will know the oil is ready when you put it in and starts to sizzle. 
4.  Take a spoon size of the mixture and fry in the oil until brown.
5.  Set the pakoras to the side.  If you make extra they are perfect to serve as appetizers with ketchup.
6.  To start the Kadhi, blend the yogurt with 1/2 the container of water and the Besan.  Make sure there are no lumps.
7.  Add the remaining ingredients and blend again.
8.  Heat up the oil in a pot or wok with the cumin seeds.  When it is hot enough it will brown and pop.
9.  Add the yogurt mixture at the high heat and stir.
10.  After a few minutes, reduce the heat to low heat and occasionally stir for 20 minutes.
11.  Add a few of the pakora pieces to the kadhi until it is soaked and serve hot!

Avani loved the Pakoras.  Aria, well was Aria.  Most importantly, Anjay loved it.  Success.

The Way to A Man's Heart is Through His Stomach

My first attempt at blogging clearly didn't work.  Here I am 2 years later, almost to the date, and I am inspired to blog again!  I honestly think it would be therapeutic for me so I am going to give it another shot.

One major change is the newest member of our family, Akash Jayden Bharadwa, aka the love of my life.  He was born in March last year and I could not physically love him more!

Other than that, I am the same person.  An honest to a fault mom who always looks miserable, loves to renovate and is a complete open book.

Recently, I was persuaded by some of my wonderful sister-in-laws when out on a girls night out in Atlanta when I shared one of my stories to make another major change.  I told them the joke that I tell my girls all the time.  In the beginning, mommy's heart belonged completely to Daddy, 100%.  Then when Avani was born, she instantly captured my whole heart.  When Aria came along they had to share it 50-50.  Finally the adorable rascal was born and they are now all down to 33.3333333333333 (and they like to argue about that .00000000000001)!  Ofcourse the question (being Anjay's sisters) was how come Anjay doesn't get any of my heart anymore?

Besides the fact that it is a joke I laugh about with my kids, it raised the topic of making sure your husband knows he is a priority for you.  So I wondered, how do you actually do that?  I don't think many of them had thought about the how part but once questioned, we came up with some:

• Asking him how his day was
• Making time for just the 2 of you, i.e. date nights and vacations
• Being interested in his hobbies

At the end of the day, the one thing that was a reoccurring theme from all 5 of them was preparing his favorite home cooked meal for him.  Now mind you, I did remind them all that we are now in 2015 and not living in India but at the end of the day, that didn't seem to matter.  The consensus was that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach so in order to show my man that he is a priority to me (so my kids can still get 33.333333 each) I have decided that I am going to learn how to cook!

Ofcourse for most people this is not a big deal.  You probably can throw a meal together and don't think about it twice.  For me this is not the case.  I grow up in a house with lots of help including a live in housekeeper/cook and therefore was never domesticated.  After we got married, Anjay actually enjoyed it, then when we had children we hired a nanny and have had them help in that department as well.  Before that conversation it had probably honestly been a few years since I had cooked a meal fancier than pasta from scratch (successfully without having to toss it and get take out). 

Back to why I was inspired to write, I thought people might find my journey to learn to cook interesting and maybe even learn a recipe or 2.  Who knows but certainly wish me luck because I'll need it!

Painting Solid Pine Doors White

The previous owners of our house decided to paint all the molding in the house white when they listed it for sale but for some reason never decided to do the same for the doors.  Various contractors and my husband have tried to convince me that this is a new trend and I should love it but I just don't.  I like the look of clean white doors.  Anjay did not like the thought of changing them at all because they are solid wood doors and newer houses didn't have that.  He was completely against painting them (like he was the orange fireplace and we all love how that turned out).  I got a quote anyways because 5 panel doors are my favorite but it would have been over $3000!!!  In the end we had them all sanded down and painted.  The process has taken WEEKS to do which is much longer than I think anyone anticipated and the contractors still have 3 left.  But at the end of the day, it looks phenomenal.  We changed out the hardware to complete the look.  What do you think?

Modern Spiral Stairs

Here is the complete process for the back set of spiral stairs from start to finish. This is the first project of many to be completed on this phase of the renovation.

Before the project started there was nothing functionally wrong with the stairs.  They just looked off from the rest of the renovations we had done to our great room (family room, kitchen, and loft/kids playroom)

 

They had to take off the spindles because they said that there wouldn't be a good way to stain the whole thing otherwise.  When they first stained it, it looked really dark so they had to sand it down and do it again.

 

They custom made over 150 white spindles but unfortunately when they started going up there were a couple of problems.  I was concerned it was going to look like a wall due to the fact that the size of the spindles were increasing x2 because of the spacing of the wholes on the steps.  They said that they had to use the same holes otherwise the banister would have to be replaced.  It turned out to be what I feared and on top of it, since the custom spindles were made by hand, they did not all look the same and had some quality issues.

 

They took them down and we brainstormed for solutions to fix the problems.  I decided to use a thin piece of wood over the holes so we could space them out however we wanted to.  I also determined that the custom spindles were making it too busy so we used a pattern of 2 plain square spindles and 1 custom one. 

 

In the end, it looks perfect! I am so excited to walk into my family room and see how much more modern the stairs now look.  Thrilled!

Thats Just My Face

I was watching this week's episode of The Bachelor and one of the girls, Amanda, looked like she was about to knock someone out.  All the girls were saying what a bitch she was even though she was saying nothing.  The second that the bachelor walked in, her face lit up and she became a completely different person.  Now maybe she really is a two timing bitch, I have no idea we are only 2 episodes in, but maybe the girls are just reading her all wrong like everyone does with me.

A few months ago, I was at my friends 30th birthday party having a decent time, nothing too amazing, nothing too boring, just a good time.  When the night was slowing down for me, I headed towards the exit and had to wait for the elevator.  A stranger walks by me, looks at me for a split second, and asks me why I am so mad?  Considering I was not at all mad, I had no idea how to even answer.  Now this is not the first time I have been told that I need to smile more or been asked why I am so grumpy but never when I was actually having a good time.  Fast forward to New Years weekend and I am hanging out with Anjay's cousin, and sister-in-law, etc having a really good time catching up.  While in between conversations, the waiter comes up to me and tells me "You look like you're not having a good time anymore."  Again while being perfectly content, people think I am miserable.  Appearantly I need to get a face lift because even my own brother has told me that he doesn't enjoy hanging out with me because I look miserable.  My new response for people and that bold waiter who tell me how they think I am feeling, "thats just my face".  

So next time you are hanging out with me, please just remember that even if I look really pissed off, I am smiling on the inside :)

Am I Really that Hard to Please?

I feel horrible about making my contractors redo work.  The first time is when they started to restain the railing and steps.  I happen to peak in after they had a small portion of it done, they asked me what I thought and my initial reaction was that it was too dark.  They told me that this is the color I had asked for "espresso" and that it is the same paint that was used in the sample even though the sample looked quite a bit lighter.  I told them that it must be through the application because even the two samples both used the same color but one was quite darker because it was 2 coats.  They assured me that it was only one coat so it is as light as it can be.  I let them convince me for the moment but felt unsettled about it and had to keep coming back in to see if I would like it anymore.  At the end, I told them I was dissappointed with how it turned out.  They finally listened and started coming up with options.  They ended up having to sand it all down again and this time diluted the stain a bit to make it lighter.  All in all 4 guys, 4 hours = 16 man hours

Next came the spindles, in the original contract they put in 1 3/4 in square spindles.  Then I asked if we could so something a bit more interesting.  They decided to do try something custom.  The custom one sample came out nice so I said go for it.  They spent 1 day custting the spindles to size, 1 day routing it, 1 day installing and it just did not look right.  It looked way to busy and way too close together.  They said they had to put them back in the same spot as the old ones, but since the size was much bigger, the open flowing space ceased to exist.  Not to mention a lot of the custom spindles were badly damaged.  I decided to go to Home Depot and see what was available and got some thinner plain ones.  They pulled down all the ones they put up and in the end we are going with a cobination of home depot and custom ones.  At the end of the day, they are only charging me $350 more and have been super nice about it but I still feel horrible.  I don't mean to cause extra work for people, or even make the project be so delayed but I am putting a lot of money into it so I want it to be perfect.    I feel happy about my choice but am still feeling unsettled.  Crossing my fingers it all turns out well....

Stepping Up - Before Pictures

We are underway into the 3rd phase of the reno to our home.  1st phase was kitchen, laundry room, powder room, and foyer.  2nd was roof.  3rd is both set of stairs, office book case, wood floors and doors.  There is a 4th and 5th planned too but we won't go into it now.  First up, the back spiral staircase.  We do get a number of compliments on the cool factor that the stairs offer but also some scared moms of little ones falling through as we did when we first moved in.    My big grief is I really hate all the red oak wood!

They have already removed the spindles and refinished the banister and steps.  I will post after pictures as soon as they are done.  We are going with espresso rails steps and posts and white custom spindles.  In the front of the house, they are completely redoing the newel posts, spindles and railing.