Am in love with the shape of me...

Lately, i have been realizing that my motivation and self confidence levels have gone way down the meter. I feel like I have reached rock bottom.As Rachel had quote "there is like rock bottom then 50 feet of crap and then me!!"
With a baby inside of me , I must stay in my happy place with positive thoughts flowing over me. But pregnancy is a stage in your life where you have no control over your physique as well as emotions. There are times when, I sit and cry without knowing the reason for it!!!. Even a cloudy weather makes me gloomy!! Am I going insane!?.
With some internet research , I found out that what ever is happening to me is perfectly normal during pregnancy.Now that's a relief!!!. ;-) . I can blame all my emotional ups and downs to  the one only culprit that's "my hormones" and also these wary hormones would calm down post delivery. With that, I can say to all of those advicing me to stay happy with positive thoughts that "Stop advicing me people... Speak to my hormones please .." :-D.So the emotional part is dealt with a satisfactory theory to explain.
But what about this bag of bones I am carrying around.How could I possibly control my ever fattening body.And to a person like me who always bothered about my physical appearence and always did whatever required to maintain a healthy weight, this abrupt change is a wildest nightmare. What if I could never ever go back to my pre-pregnancy body!? Though I have seen with a full time nanny , hollywood and bollywood divas getting back their shapes easily within a 6 -8 months span of time.Well that's them, not me... Not everyone can afford a helping hand these days.Can we??.. While I was on the verge of loosing my self esteem, just to twist the knife , there comes few comments from my so called "well wishers"... "you look different!!??" .."ohh your face has swollen" .. "see i knew you were pregie..no wonder your pics looked so wierd.."
:'(:'(

When these aching and sceptic thoughts of mine resulted in sleepless nights , I decided to console myself with positive thoughts about my unborn baby. I slowly realized that there is a purpose for all the events in our lives. Pregnancy being the current event of my life, I must not be saddened by the course of this event.Instead I must cherrish its outcome that I would be giving birth to a beautiful life.Millions of women out there are struggling to be able to give birth to a baby. God has bestowed me with this happiness that I would be cherishing my entire life.I should consider myself to be lucky and not fret about being fat or bulky.
After all, I would be bringing a new life to this world and it is not an easy job!!!
And I should totally be in love with my shape 'cause this is the shape of love...the shape of a new life inside of me....

PS: Please do not comment on a pregnant women's physique.It hurts....You don't know what she is going through...

Carrot cake with buttercream frosting

After my buttercream frosting disaster , it took a while for me to take up all the courage i had for another try.. Well i did and to my surprise it came out really finger-licking good.
On a bright sunny day, when my cousins were expected any moment to visit my place, I decided to make this sweet delight of carrot cake with buttercream frosting for them..
Carrot cake was not new to me but the frosting was.. Whenever I make cake I never bothered about the measurements of the ingriedients. I make it as per my wild guess and gut feeling. To my surprise it has never failed me.. This time too, I decided to do the same exact wild guessing while measuring the flour, carrots, butter , eggs and all other ingridients.  But my mother never approves this sought of baking.She says baking is all about measurements. According to her, I had a huge luck (i would call it as my "baking luck") if it came out good everytime I baked. I am going to take this piece of baking lesson seriously but not this time.. ;) coz i was short of time and also i had to make the frosting (about which i had no hope on my so called "baking luck")
Within 25 minutes my carrot cake was ready. All i had to use was flour , grated carrot , baking powder , salt , powdered sugar , eggs , vanila essence , butter and oil. I wisked them all together. Then poured it on the baking tray and baked it for about 25 minutes. 
Next was the frosting ,for which I had to wait until my carrot cake had completely cooled down.Meanwhile,  I searched for the frosting recipe again, when it struck me that a friend of mine had given a tried and tested recipe of the frosting she had made for her red velvet cake.All thanks to her that i did not had to wander for the recipe all over again. Almost after 2 hours of waiting my cake was ready to get frosted. And voilaaa!! ..the frosting was ready too..All i did was to whisk the butter , powdered sugar , vanila essence and cream until it started to look like a froth. And i took everything in the same measurement as given in the recipe. See...thats why they say " you have got to listen to your mom.. "
Now what.. I cut the cakes into two halves horizontaly (duh!!..of course).Then applied the frosting on one of the halves and placed the other half on top of it...
By that time ,the door bell rang and we all went to recieve my aunt and cousins.I hurriedly kept the cake in fridge to set and joined my cousins for some chit chat after a long time ..Also in the back of my mind thinking about my cake which looked delicious but would it taste th same or not??.
Soon after the awesome lunch that my mother made , I served my cake ,hiding all the neversouness I had with a smiling face. I should also add that i never taste my cake first. My official cake taster is my husband , who was not present there (i miss him so badly now). My parents whom I would have asked to taste but they got busy with the guest so it was pointless to even ask. So the amount of nervousness I had was insurmountable until my aunt said " nice ,from where you bought them". For which my mother replied "ilaa ..she made it today".. Then the praises came from my cousins in sarcastic manner which put me on a relief that "yes my cake was good for the first try""
Finally it was time for me to take a bite of my not-so-perfect creation of the day.. And I loved every bite of it..
Next time I will make sure to stick to the measurements coz you can't always trust your "baking luck" can you!?..

At my home, peace and serenity is at its best

A hot cup of tea... breezy frontyard... riverside view... lush green surroundings... What more can I ask for peacefull vacation.Well, exactly not a vacation, its where I belong..my birth place..my home sweet home..
I would refer my home as a place to refresh my soul... behave like a kid no matter how old I get and a shelter in my escapism..And when I say escapism ,I did not mean avoidance.
That ain't me..
I remember back then, when we came here for every school vacation for almost a month ,we used to divide the days to spent some quality time at both of my parents place.Those were one of the best times of my childhood.Eventhough, I was in love with this place, my father's retirement bought me into a dilemma as to how would I adjust to the old school ways of living. My busy and speed paced city life made it difficult at first to adjust with the simple and less complicated style of living..Years later I do realise that how wrong were my thoughts.I did not knew that "Simplicity is the core of a happy life."
I believe being close to mother nature and being able to enjoy her blessings at its best is one of the greatest gift one can get. Never would I want any modernisation to effect my home town so as to destroy its natural beauty in any way.

Upside down orange cake

My pregnancy cravings are taking a great toll on me.  Also my beloved’s decision of grounding me from eat outs makes it more difficult to satisfy these crazy cravings. After my bday, I had a serious craving for cream cakes…frozen cream cakes…!!!.I decided to make a carrot butter cream cake at home. Within few minutes I found the best recipe online and gathered all the ingredients. In an hour the carrot cake was ready. I was left with the frosting part. All the instructional videos showed the quickest and easiest recipe for the frosting, but I lacked the one main device for making it- the HAND MIXER!!! L. Still I had a gut feeling that the frosting would come out perfectly fine if I used the electric mixer. But to my dismay things turned out the other way round, and my carrot cake was left barren without the beauty of a frosting. Though it was a flop show, I thoroughly enjoyed my spongy carrot cake and ordered a hand mixer online for the unsatisfied longings of mine. While the hand mixer was on its way, I planned to make a juicy upside-down orange cake. This was just one of my experiments with baking. I saw this recipe on Living foods by chef Rakhi and decided to try it as soon as I get those imported oranges (nay, not the green ones), she used in the recipe.

The recipe is truly a simple one. A simple spongy cake with a glossy- syrupy-layer of sugar glazed orange slices. It took me around 45 minutes to sugar glaze the orange slices and 10 minutes to make the batter. Since the recipe requires you to cut the orange slices with the peel, I made it sure to cook the slices properly in the sugar syrup until soft. Then I made the batter with flour, castor sugar, baking powder, egg, and oil and poured it over the sugar glazed oranges and the remaining syrup in a greased baking dish. After pre-heating the oven, I kept the batter to bake for about 25 minutes at 160 Degree Celsius.

Result:  I had poured a lot of sugar syrup which made it difficult for the cake to come out of the dish. So next time I will make sure not to over pour the syrup. Just a filmy layer of syrup would be enough to give a glossy texture to the cake. Also I had sliced the oranges as such with the peel as the recipe demanded, which took a while to cook in the syrup. But after the cake was done some of the slices were easily chew-able, whereas some were not. So next time I would peel of the skin and then slice the oranges.

Rest came out well.For the whole recipe check out living foods official website.

Upside down Orange cake

How we decided our first ride?

Everyone dreams of a perfect car, so did we..... Both of us have never been a "car enthusiasts" ,still our idea of a perfect car that suits our needs were vividly clear. Here's how we did it:

Amongst hundreds of car companies and their variants, we chose our first parameter called "Budget" to filter out the most affordable cars in India. We found out that the cheapest car available is Tata Nano and price starts from 2.30 Lakh. Since its launch in 2008, people have gone gaga over it(not anymore I guess).Initially, watching this unique but compactly designed hatchback car gave everyone the wow-factor. Considering its low sales and safety features, we were obvious about the fact that this is not our car for sure.So we did not bother to inquire for it at TATA motors. But there was another hatchback of theirs ,TATA Tiago, which was launched in India last year.We decided to have a look at it.The TATA showroom nearby my place was under renovation,so we were taken to their temporary showroom few miles away from the old one.Due to lack of space, only limited cars were shown in the display.But the salesman gave a detailed explanation of all their variants in Tiago. Though we were happy with the features it had,still we thought of it to be a little over-pricey. Also after coming back from the showroom,we did a detailed research on it. As per some websites and their user reviews,we found that the cons of this model tend to weigh more than its pros.Also, we saw very less of Tiago's so far on the roads.What would be the reason??.We decided not go deep into that and started searching for our next option.
Next, we headed ourselves to Maruti Suzuki's showroom. Maruti has been one of the India's most trustworthy car companies.There was a time, when people proudly owned the Maruti 800,one of their oldest city car.Wiki says they launched this car in India in 1983.Since then it had become the most beloved car of India until a decade ago when more affordable car came in market.Eventually they had to stop this iconic car's production in 2014 as their most of the buyers migrated to their own other models like Alto. WagnoR etc.But we were clear about the fact that, we would not want Alto or WagonR to be our first ride as there is nothing new about it.We never owned one of them ,still our eyes had enough of them.Every next person we knew...Neighborhood we lived.... roads we traveled had it..Yes, this is the only reason we did never ever wanted an Alto or WagnoR to be our first car. Now, we had an other option which matched our budget limit and that baby was "Celerio".A perfect hatchback with all the basic safety features, which we never took seriously.This is something I recently learned by our car hunting so far.A car with basic safety amenities are rarely to be seen in India..especially for a car below 5 Lakh. Is it because the stylish appearance or the luxury features are more important than a Anti- Braking System or a Air Bag?? I guess may be it is...We made an enquiry about the Celerio Model at our nearest Maruti Suzuki Showroom.We got all the information but neither did they had the current 2017 model nor do they know when will it reach them.The rest of the response or the follow up that we got from them was totally cold and plain.We decided to put it on hold for a while.
Meanwhile, Hyundai Cars caught my attention as they had this jaw-dropping offer on all of their models.So, we moved on to Hyundai, wherein, we had two option based on our parameter called budget:- Eon and Grand i10. Eon ,though a great car with affordable price, caught our attention initially.We only had second thoughts due to its 0.8 litre engine, which was over-shadowed by its special Magna 1.0 litre edition.We had sought of made up our minds on Eon,when we saw this elegant baby:- The Grand i10. Although it was a bit over-pricey for us, we couldn't let our eyes of this super stylish hatchback.Again, we were confused between its two variants:- Era and Magna.Era had all the basic features that we needed except for a music system and central locking system, of which only the later one was available in Magna.So we did not find any point in buying the Magna variant as it had a huge price difference. We decided to go with Era and put in all the accessories required from the third party.
So here's how we decided our first ride.. Though we have no idea how the heck are we going to ride it through the city..especially this city where people hate to follow traffic rules...

Anyways I would be updating the post about our first driving experience..