My Experiments with Life

Finally I bought a combination oven (microwave + convection + grill), a Samsung CE117AE-S model, to start my long awaited baking experiments. The inauguration was done by our friends Aarthi, her mom-in-law and Prathiba with a yummy Chocolate cake over the last weekend. Today was my first solo experiment, trying to bake bread. The recipe I used was from a personal finance blog :) Trent@TheSimpleDollar has this popular post Homemade Bread: Cheap, Delicious, Healthy, and Easier Than You Think . Followed the steps quite religiously and here is the outcome: Looks good to me, and the house smells so delicious right now. I hope it tastes good too :-p My take from this first time bread making: The effort required is not huge at all. Totally I spent about half an hour in activating the yeast, preparing the dough, kneading it, punching it down, preparing the oven, etc. But the process takes long time, about 3 hours, though your attention is required only for about half an hour. You...

So, how is my vegan wagon of almost a month? This is a sequel to my last post . I have an enthusiastic partner to try the vegan way, and that is my husband. Any initiative or undertaking is definitely much more sustainable when you have a partner who is equally enthusiastic and like-minded. Guess that's behind the "gym buddy" concept, huh? That apart, our Vegan lifestyle changes: We have decided to be domestic vegans. That is, no dairy consumption at home but we might relax this when socializing, if need be. Because, we don't want to create a fuss when we dine out with friends if there is no vegan food available. Being vegetarians already, when we dine out with friends, the places that don't have vegetarian choices are automatically out of question. If we place tighter constraints, it would be unfair to the people we go out with, and eventually going out might not be fun anymore with us. Man is a social animal, ain't he? We don't buy dairy milk anymore. It...

Last week I came across an article on milk, called the milk letter , written by a doctor, Robert M. Kradjian. This well written article tries to claim why cow's milk is not at all necessary for humans, and also about the ill effects of consuming dairy milk. The article is long, but worth a read. Apart from the health reasons and justifications, I was more struck by the ethical part of it. A cow's milk is for its calf, as much a human mother's milk is for her baby. How about depriving a baby of his/her mother's milk and using that milk to feed kittens and puppies? Milk has been an important part of the diet all over the world for a long time. I heard some African tribes do not consume milk. In India, or rather in India-of-the-olden-days, cattle were treated as a part of the family. While bulls worked in the agricultural fields, cows gave milk, after the calves had their share. Cows were revered as "Gomatha" or the 'mother cow'. The idea was that, after ...

One of the many things I fell in love with in Singapore is its library system. I used to be a book-worm during school days. It was quite difficult for me to balance between various activities when I d a book at hand, I had to finish it! So, during times when I needed to devote my time to more important things, I would take care not to start reading new books. When I was 7-15, I used to read mostly, magazines and newspapers, from 16-~20, it was predominantly fiction. And then, I guess there was a short break to my voracious reading habit. Thanks to the public libraries here in Singapore, I've again started back on reading, but now its moderated and my readings are diversified, I don't read only fiction these days. Almost all neighborhoods in Singapore have a library, either public libraries, or bigger regional libraries. The national library at Bugis is the biggest one. The value the library adds to the life of the residents is quite remarkable. For citizens and Permanent reside...

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