Bottling Jam: day 42 of #100happydays

To say that I have always dreamt of making my own jam is an admission I would be scared to make. But it is true. As a child, nothing personified winter more than my mother making and bottling tomato jam, which we would then enjoy for the rest of the year. In my eyes, I knew I would attain Domestic  Divadom the day I could do similar.

But though I bottled fruit preserve and fruit chutney often, I never had the courage to try a jam. And then, I gathered all my courage. And did it. Nothing Ventured, Nothing Won.

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Easy once you know how- Day 23 of #100happydays

Growing up, paneer was something we only had in restaurants. Though a fantastic cook, I don’t remember my mother ever making any paneer dish at home, and I didn’t know you could. Then I married into a Punjabi household, and learnt that you could buy raw paneer from a store. I started doing that regularly, because paneer is one of the easiest things to cook and invariably tastes great.
And then, one day, when there was more milk in the fridge than I thought we could consume, I tried making paneer. Like everything else, It’s easy once you know how.
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Tomato Soup for the Soul- Day 15 of #100happy days

On a cold winter day, you don’t need very much to be happy. A warm shawl to wrap around yourself. A bowl of steaming hot tomato soup in front of you.

All these years, the tomato soup used to be from a packet. Pour the contents of the packet into a pan of boiling water, making sure there are no lumps, and keep stirring till done. Bliss, in fifteen minutes.

But this winter, tomato soup has been made from scratch. Using the plumpest tomatoes I can find, and by balancing the spices just the way we like them.

Pleasure guaranteed.

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Your favourite dish- Day 6 of #100happydays

It was a restaurant I often visited before I became a parent with practically no time to call my own. I hadn’t been intending to go there, but when I found myself outside the place, I couldn’t resist walking in and ordering what had then been my favourite dish. It arrived looking exactly as it did ten years back- even the plate was a clone of the earlier ones. I sat back, savoured the vision, then took a deep breath and dug in……

Happiness is ordering what had been your favourite dish, and realising you make it much better now. 

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Cooking Happiness- Day 1 of #100happydays

Cheesecake is one of the few things we agree on as a family. Specially strawberry cheesecake. We don’t tolerate it. We don’t merely like it. We, all four of us, love it. Even the younger one who is absolutely indifferent to anything that needs to be consumed, and the husband who’s perfected the art of gobbling stuff without having to taste it.

So when I found fresh strawberries in the market, I picked up the rest of the ingredients, and proceeded to make cheesecake. It took forever, but can there be anything more fun than Cooking Happiness for the Family?

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Baking bread

Some things you deem impossible. But even applying the term "impossible" tacitly implies you thought about doing it, before deciding you couldn’t. Baking my own bread was something that didn’t even merit the tag “impossible”, because bread was something you ‘bought’, not ‘made’.

But fate always has other plans for you. I picked up what I thought was a packet of baking powder, and realized it was yeast only after paying for it. I could have taken it back, but chose to use it instead.

Let’s just say I have a long way to go, but I will get there.

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This is the fifth year that I am going to be a part of NaBloWriM. The writing mojo seems to have deserted me, but by elaborating either on a quote that touches my heart, or by attempting to capture a fleeting emotion, let me see how long I last.

Some of the best things in life

As I ponder returning to a full time job, I think of the things I might no longer have time for. Simple things like running, cooking, photography, crochet. I know I will somehow “make” time for fitness, but will I enjoy it like I now do? The takeaways we order may taste better than some of my culinary experiments, but will they give me as much satisfaction? I can afford more expensive lenses, but what use are they without the leisure to shoot?

Some of the best things in life are cheap- if we can afford the time for them.

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Link to the article that started the thought off - Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed
 A Drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.