Sunday, April 10, 2011

RADISH FLOWER BASKET (Table Decoration)


Things required:
Watermelon
Radish (long)
Carrot
Spring onion leaves
Satay sticks

Method:
1. Cut the watermelon into half and carve zig-zag design on the edge.
2. Cut out thin strips from the radish all around as shown in the picture.
3. Cut out the core of the carrot into a thin cylindrical shape.
4. Slice the carved radish and the carrot.
5. Take satay sticks, insert them into the spring onion leaves and fix the radish and carrot slice on the tip to make the flowers.
6. Fix the flowers, some radish leaves and spring onion leaves in between to decorate.


Sending this to the event - Create N Carve
Hosted by - Simply.Food

Things That Make Me Smile

Artifacts of light in my photos that give me unexpected bits of beauty.

Bitter hearts


It's been a busy weekend, but the good thing is that I have lots of pictures to show you!


Last thursday I spent the evening with Micky walking around Barcelona. I discovered some cute shops with lovely little things... the good weather is here and now we can stay longer on the streets taking pictures!

 
 Matrioshki earrings! The most cute 've ever seen!
 Soda is a lovely shop at Carrer Avigno.
 
 
 

I was wearing my blue Topshop dress; it's like the coral/orange one, yes... but it was so cheap and I really love it! I also weared my new Melissa shoes... I'm in totally love!

 
Dress - Topshop
Shoes - Melissa by Alexandre Herchcovitch
Tights - H&M
Socks - Primark
Hat - H&M
Bag - Blanco
Sunglasses - Vintage

After that lovely evening, I met Cristina and ent to My Buffer Guest party. My Buffer Guest is an online magazine managed by Julio Cesar Aguilera, who was my teacher at my coolhunting course last year; an he invited me. It was so funny, and I met some gorgeous people here... Louise, who's a model and is sudying medicine; Paula and Monique.
 Cris <3
 
 
 Louise
 
 
 
Louise, Paula, Monique and Cris!

We had a lovely thursday... and it ws oly the beginning of a gorgeous weekend!!

Sunday Reflection

This song and video is so powerful! I thought I would share it with all of you today!








Baseball

Thursday evening we discovered that the Brevard Manatees were playing and that it was the opening night of the minor league season. It had been almost a year since we've been to our last game and the weather was just too perfect of an opportunity to go.

We were surprised to find out that when we got to the ticket booth that this game was actually free! Also with $2 beers! It was a lot of fun and I hope we have the opportunity to go again before it gets too hot to go.





What If The Recovery Isn't The Most Important Thing?

Minyanville has an awesome post on this from whence these charts come.

The Fed is monetizing our debt - printing money and handing it to the Federal Government. The chart below shows all the Treasuries bought by someone other than the Fed. The boxed section on the right shows the world after QE2 ends.


As they print money, commodity prices are shooting up.


Commodity inflation doesn't translate perfectly into consumer inflation because of this:

Price you pay in the store = Commodity costs + Labor costs + Profits.

The lower your labor costs, the higher the inflation will be from the insane commodity inflation that's going on now. That's why gasoline and food are going up like mad while computer prices are not. Commodities are a much smaller percentage of the overall price of a computer.

This is also why places like Libya and Egypt are rioting. The things they buy on a daily basis are dominated by products made with cheap labor so commodities are a significantly higher portion of the final price. The normal Egyptian or Libyan is seeing inflation to the point where they can't afford what they need.

If you boil down the rhetoric from the Obama Administration and the Fed, we're printing money to maintain the recovery and make unemployment lower. What we're doing as a consequence of this is destabilizing the world and setting ourselves up for a monstrous inflationary hangover in the near future.

High inflation will force the Fed to raise interest rates as Europe and China have already begun to do. That's going to be bad for anyone who has to borrow money. Guess who has to borrow the most money of all? What's our fiscal situation going to look like when we have to pay, say, an extra 3% on our debt? That's going to amount to $520B a year in added interest payments.

A stumbling recovery is bad, but there are things that are much, much worse.

Beet Borscht

One of my favorite memories from childhood was going to to Lindy's with my dad. The restaurant was large and noisy, the walls were covered with photos of movie stars. Waiters were rushing about and there was a feeling of being at an enormous party. I remember sitting up particularly straight so I could see everything that was going on.
The foods were familiar, Jewish and delicious.
They had an enormous menu. I remember ordering beet borscht and a wonderful apple pancake.

My grandmother had always made the classic Russian cabbage and meat borscht. But prior to this I had only had beet borscht from a jar we bought at the grocery store.  Beet borscht at Lindy's  came not only the standard sour cream but also, with a hot boiled potato! I had never seen it this way and when I put a bit of the hot potato into the soup it was nothing short of miraculous!


I am including  a link  here to a description of the venerable Lindy's that  I visited so long ago with my dad.

http://nyapril1946.blogspot.com/2010/09/lindys-already-legendary-in-1946.html

Beet Borscht

3 large boiling beets
cover with water
Sour Salt, (dried citric acid, available at gourmet stores) or lemon juice
Salt
Potato
Sour Cream
Dill


Wash and scrub beets. Cover beets with water. Add salt and boil. Remove the beets and slip the skins off in cold water. Grate the beets, either a food processor or a medium sized hole of a box grater will do..Rubber gloves will be handy here.
Put the grated beet back into the cooking water. Starting with 1 teaspoon of sour salt or a tablespoon or two of lemon juice and then add some granulated sugar  stirring and adding a little at a time alternating sour salt and sugar if necessary, until you have a tart but not too tart sweet sour taste. Add a little salt if necessary. Chill well and serve with a large dollop of sour cream and a hot boiled potato with a bit of chopped dill
Note: sugar can be replaced with agave syrup or stevia and there is  very good fat free sour cream which I use.


Beet Borscht

One of my favorite memories from childhood was going to to Lindy's with my dad. The restaurant was large and noisy, the walls were covered with photos of movie stars. Waiters were rushing about and there was a feeling of being at an enormous party. I remember sitting up particularly straight so I could see everything that was going on.
The foods were familiar, Jewish and delicious.
They had an enormous menu. I remember ordering beet borscht and a wonderful apple pancake.

My grandmother had always made the classic Russian cabbage and meat borscht. But prior to this I had only had beet borscht from a jar we bought at the grocery store.  Beet borscht at Lindy's  came not only the standard sour cream but also, with a hot boiled potato! I had never seen it this way and when I put a bit of the hot potato into the soup it was nothing short of miraculous!


I am including  a link  here to a description of the venerable Lindy's that  I visited so long ago with my dad.

http://nyapril1946.blogspot.com/2010/09/lindys-already-legendary-in-1946.html

Beet Borscht

3 large boiling beets
cover with water
Sour Salt, (dried citric acid, available at gourmet stores) or lemon juice
Salt
Potato
Sour Cream
Dill


Wash and scrub beets. Cover beets with water. Add salt and boil. Remove the beets and slip the skins off in cold water. Grate the beets, either a food processor or a medium sized hole of a box grater will do..Rubber gloves will be handy here.
Put the grated beet back into the cooking water. Starting with 1 teaspoon of sour salt or a tablespoon or two of lemon juice and then add some granulated sugar  stirring and adding a little at a time alternating sour salt and sugar if necessary, until you have a tart but not too tart sweet sour taste. Add a little salt if necessary. Chill well and serve with a large dollop of sour cream and a hot boiled potato with a bit of chopped dill
Note: sugar can be replaced with agave syrup or stevia and there is  very good fat free sour cream which I use.


Have The Sunday Talk Shows Always Been This Awful?

I'm sitting here in the Catican reading and blogging while one of our sons is watching the Sunday news shows. The amount of ignorance on display from everyone, participants and hosts alike, is appalling. Man, I hope their ratings are low. If you had them speak in Portugese it would answer my question posed a few days ago: How could the people of Portugal be stupid enough to think that they could endlessly spend more than they earned?

Bonus bit: Senator Schumer was holding forth on how we could maintain Medicare and Medicaid by improving efficiency. The hosts sat there and nodded their heads. Mine exploded.

LADY'S FINGERS IN SAO MASALO (Sindhi Green Curry Paste)

Ingredients:
Coriander Leaves.....1 cup
Mint leaves .............. 1/2 cup
Green Chillies............2-3
Onions........................1 chopped
Tomatoes...................1 chopped
Garlic..........................7 to 8 cloves
Ginger .......................1 inch piece
Salt..............................to taste
Red Chilli Powder.....1/2 tsp
Turmeric Powder.....3/4 tsp
Coriander Powder....1 to 2 tsp
Lady's Fingers..........1/2 kg
Potatoes.....................2 sliced
oil

Method:

1. Grind coriander leaves, mint leaves,ginger, garlic, tomato, onion and green chillies adding a little water while grinding.
2. Wash the lady's fingers, cut into long pieces. Give a slit, sprinkle a little salt and fry them.
3. Cut the potatoes into round pieces, sprinkle salt and fry them.
4.. In a shallow sauce pan take a little oil, add the ground paste and sauté till the oil separates from the paste.
5. Then add the lady's fingers and potatoes, sprinkle a little water and simmer for 4-5 minutes.If you want to have gravy, then add more water.

berrygrading!

Hi I just back from holiday and its 6th sem already! =)


By the way, I got new BlackBerry from mom, (as always, she is so kind, and random, actually.. LOL)
How can u imagine when 2 hours before I left hometown and she offer me to change my Blackberry Curve to Torch? LOL. She is always so random. =)
thanks mommy! =)

those cute things







hear these words like many times..