February 2, 2008

Snapshots of a Sydney Summer Garden ...

This summer I was a busy bee in the garden, quite literally. An initial active working period was toned down to make allowance for my lumbering, pregnant self. We made a sandstone bed, smack dab in the center of our frontyard and planted a gorgeous "Magnolia Soulangeana" there. I populated the bed with some "Kew Lavender" bought from Bunnings and 3 packets of pink and purple paper daisies. The paper daisies grew amazingly fast and were almost a meter tall within a couple of weeks with papery thin and wispy little blooms that I just have to touch every time I pass by. The Magnolia seems to have established itself and is taller than me [I am barely 5 feet tall]. I am anxiously waiting for autumn and then winter when it will shed its leaves and give birth to those glorious pink goblet blooms.

My newly planted frangipani has sprouted 4 new leaves very late into summer. I can't help but wonder what went wrong when all around me frangipanis are already flowering and thriving. The rosemary in my frontyard has grown a lot over the summer and I have started thinking about cutting and propagating it to try and tame it a bit. After a flush of crimson red blooms, the bougainvilleas are quite dried up now with tiny little greenish brown leaves. The Salvias in full red blooms and the Murrayas in flushes of fragrant white blooms have given new life to our backyard. There have been lots of chillies, lemons, oranges, ginger, curry leaves, thyme and coriander growing through the end of spring and all through summer. The agaves and rhoeos have started becoming bigger. Our date palms are proving to be a nuisance with thousands of unusable dates littering the lawn and pool area. Some bulbs planted by the previous owners have produced lovely flowers and I have no clue what they are. The French marigold seeds I scattered everywhere are so cute with tiny little tight blooms of yellow sprouting as far as the eye can see.

The rose cuttings that I planted in early spring have produced several flushes of gorgeous white, peach, yellow and crimson blooms. Once they finish flowering I go snip snip snip with my secateurs, removing dead heads and within a week or two have new buds thriving. I think roses are like little treats for the gardener and nothing compares to the emotion that swells in you when you see a full bloom and breathe in their heavenly scent.

We were very excited about the strawberry seeds we sowed, especially when the leaves filled up the wooden barrel and began sprouting tiny white flowers. A few days later out came teeny weeny little green strawberries and then they started turning red ... aaahh the wonders of nature! Then yesterday morning on our routine inspection of the plants, the strawberries were gone ... all but one. What was even more baffling was that it was an extremely neat job, no damage to the leaves or soil visible at all. We were debating on whether the culprit was a possum or a bird, but couldn't reach a verdict. Then this evening when we were out and about in the garden we heard our 4 year old say "Rivvy eating strawberries" and he came right upto us and opened his mouth. There crushed between milky teeth lay the answer to "Who ate our strawberries?". Needless to say we had a good laugh and rested easy with the thought that neither birds nor possums have gained the expertise that man possesses in picking fruit from tiny vines flawlessly.

On a personal note Rish was born on the 6th of Jan and will be a month old soon. I can't wait to get cooking and gardening again ....

Posted by Gel at 6:22 PM | Comments (0) |

May 21, 2007

Abstract Photos 2005 : Part 2

For those of you who don't know about my first job [this blog and site being my second], it is a site called Starswelove.com. It started out as a hobby site for Nicky and me, back when we were in college and had celebrity crushes. A simple celebrity photo site slowly blossomed into a full-fledged, dynamic celebrity portal and movie database over time and kept me busy. The site boasts of over 20,000 celebrity scans and wallpapers and is constantly changing and evolving. I have been busy working on that over the weekend, so no food blogging happening here.

Today I am posting part 2 of my Abstract 2005 Photo Series. These are some portrait shots of myraid things. Let me know what you think ...

Posted by Gel at 11:16 PM | Comments (0) |

May 18, 2007

Abstract Photos : 2005 Series Part 1

I have a 4 year old Canon Powershot G5. It has 3.6x optical zoom and 5.0 Megapixels resolution. I think my love of photography started budding when I got this amazing camera. Going on 5 years now [I bought it in late 2003], I still don't feel the need to upgrade. I wish, oh yes, I do ... to own a Canon 10.1MP Digital SLR. But I can wait, because my G5 still gives excellent results and is a constant learning process for me. It produces beautiful enlargements, crisp and realistic. I actually blew up a picture of my son and poster printed it, framed it and voila! It was like walking into an art gallery, the day I put it up. It was larger than life and people were actually amazed that a camera with 5.0MP did that.

Earlier today I was browsing through archives of my 20,000-odd photo collection ... yep, that's how many pictures this amazing camera has shot; and I decided to share some of my favourites here on the blog. Check these out, they are from way back in 2005. I was still experimenting and had not even tried food photography.

Posted by Gel at 10:52 PM | Comments (2) |

May 15, 2007

Herb Patch Update

Remember when I talked about my new herb patch. Well, it has been 5 weeks since I scattered seeds in the soil bed in our backyard and my herb patch is officially thriving. The fenugreek seeds really took off and were the first ones to sprout. The resulting "methi" is now a lush, green cluster of approximately 12 cm tall dainty stalks with 2 levels of flat, round leaves. I am thinking of harvesting it this weekend and making "methi muthiyas" [Steamed fenugreek dumplings - A traditional Gujarati specialty]. If the quantity turns out to be good, I might even take it a step further and indulge in some good old-fashioned "oondhiyu"; after all it is almost winter and what better season to have it then now.

The rocket is extremely slow growing, maybe it has got to do something with the weather. The parsley and basil never sprouted and neither did the mint. But the coriander is happy and thriving. The "ajwain" was planted only last week and that has sprouted as well. I do have some wild parsley growing in the general area behind the pool, the soil made fertile by the hundreds of dates that fall and create a composty patch. I have got some new pots and am preparing to plant some birds-eye chilli seeds. The chilli plant I got from a local market has stubby little green and orange chillies, but they don't pack a punch. The tiny green ones I get from the greengrocers are really fiery and I hope the fresh seeds from those take root in these pots.

Right now though I am trying to figure out a way to get rid of snails who leave a silvery trail and some mystery bug that keeps trying to eat my herb leaves, leaving tiny holes in them. Any ideas?

Posted by Gel at 6:04 PM | Comments (2) |

December 9, 2006

Stars And Gingerbread Children this year ...

So, I finally got around to clicking pictures for our Christmas card this year. I put up white sheets, plopped a funny red Santa hat on my son's head and snapped off a few photos before he got cranky. That happened soon enough though, so I sent him off to watch "Finding Nemo" while I experimented photographing some stars and cookie cutters. The Christmas Card Layout turned out quite nicely and I am very pleased with the result. The colours are whites and reds with a gently spattering of gray/dusky rose here and there. I made the entire layout in Photoshop CS as opposed to sticking a picture on cardstock and laboriously scrapping all around it, like I did last year. All I need to do now is stick the layouts on store-bought blank cards and send them their merry way!!

Here are some of the abstract pictures I was choosing from for the layout.

Posted by Gel at 7:00 PM | Comments (1) |

August 7, 2006

Yumminess in Pictures!!

I have been bitten by the shutterbug recently and have been trying to achieve interesting results with food photography. It is a learning process for me and here are some of my experiments [the food was yummy too and we enjoyed eating it as much as photographing it :)]

Kewra Badam Barfi

Coconut Walnut Slice

Tangy Lemon Slice

Singapore Style Prawn Nonya

Posted by Gel at 5:38 PM | Comments (0) |

March 13, 2006

Novelty Cake No 1 : A Pot Of Mud

In the past 2 weeks my whims and fancies have shifted to the wonderful world of cake decorating. As I have mentioned before, I have been dawdling over the idea of baking a 'fun' cake for my son's 2nd birthday which happens to be next month. To achieve that with a certain flair, I need to practice and perfect my methods. As luck would have it, it was our 5th Wedding Anniversary yesterday and the ocassion called for a special cake. So a week ago I started scouring hundreds of Novelty Cake recipes and design ideas. The idea of the 'Dirt Cake' in a plastic flower pot intrigued me. But I wanted a proper cake, not a dessert ladled into a store-bought pot, which is what the 'Dirt Cake' really is.
After a bit of thought I braved the 'Pot Of Mud' Cake and it turned out quite nice. The idea was pretty straightforward and required minimum fuss on my part. I baked a Chocolate Mudcake in a deep souffle pan, to achieve the 'flower pot' shape. Next, I dug up the top to resemble loose, wet soil. The cake crumbs which I dug up were scattered at the base of the cake and decorated with raspberries and green marzipan leaves to get a garden 'look and feel'. I decorated the upper rim of the 'flower pot' with white marzipan trim and handmade blue marzipan flowers. I stuck an actual steel and wood mini spade in the mud to complete the cake.

Posted by Gel at 9:05 AM | Comments (3) |

March 3, 2006

100 recipes : First Milestone

We officially have 100 recipes on the website. The first of many more milestones I hope. It seemed like it took me forever to get 100 recipes up and running, maybe now the pace will pick up. "Cherry Compote" had the honour of being Recipe No. 100.

I love hunting for unusual and interesting crockery and kitchen utensils. I love colours. Plain old steel or drab white crockery doesn't stir up my creative juices. Unless of course, if they are mixed and teamed up with whimsical and colourful utensils. This weekend I picked up a beautiful olive coloured, enamel colander from the Homewares store. It is bright and quite retro looking. I might start out with some grape photography using the colander.

We recently started a recipe request list at home. My hubby writes down his requests for me to conjure and I write down the names of the dishes I want him to make. I finally got around to making the first request yesterday - "Pan-Fried Momos with Sweet & Spicy Sauce". Originally a Tibetan delicacy, I first tried this version in a small restaurant in Calcutta, India. They pan fried the steamed momos and served it up with a delicious Chinese-style sauce. Although I don't remember the name of the restaurant, the recipe stuck with me. I made it 2-3 times before I was fully satisfied with the result. Now, it is one of my husband's favourites.

Posted by Gel at 11:02 AM | Comments (1) |