Back from a trip to nostalgia

Gauva tree near Grandma's place, close to this tree, and a butterfly fluttering by.

When you have made lots of friends and you plan on making a disappearing act, you should leave a word lest they worry about you. And while i have done the disappearing act a few times now since starting the blog less than a year ago, i seem to have still not learnt the 'leaving a word' part. I had gone off to my parents place again last week and spent nearly a whole week eating, shopping, and visiting relatives; and despite my best intentions, i simply had no time to come back here and say hello.And i have other excuses too, like my camera battery charger going kaput and such other lame ones. So anyway when i saw a mail from a blogger friend today enquiring if all was OK, i was guilty and ready to post something even if it was nothing interesting and no recipe.

And while my only intention was to do a quick post, as soon as i logged into blogger, i started opening links of recent blog posts that i missed and that seemed too good to ignore. I was sufficiently distracted and started to feel guilty again that this post has nothing to offer, that i am talking without having anything to say. So i won't mind if you too have nothing to say about it. Hope you have been well.

This is the tree that bore these fruits

Easy Home-made Frech Fries

I have been cooking so much lately, i have had no time to talk about it. And these french fries have been featuring prominently as evening snacks most days of the week, ever since i discovered them about two months ago. I saw them featured on The Pioneer Woman and they looked delicious. Not its easy to say no to fried potato whether they are really in front of you or just virtually in pics. But then i am also one for shortcuts. I usually don't have the patience for pre-planning. So while the source recipe tells you to soak the potato cut into fries for at least an hour and then fry them twice once in hot oil and next in very hot oil, that sounded too long winded and cumbersome to me. And it asked for a thermometer to measure the temperature of oil. There i gave up. But i didn't give up entirely.

Purple Grape Jam with White Bread Loaf

I had been eyeing this jam for a couple of months now and i had been sceptical of baking bread for even longer. Then i saw my friend bake bagels from scratch and knew it was time for me to draw some inspiration. I had been telling her that i would bake a bread from her blog because she was doing it all too easily and all too frequently.  I may have been postponing it because nobody was asking me to do these. If i did make both bread and jam from scratch, it would be solely for me. The husband won't touch bread especially when it has jam in it (will eat Subway breads only!). And is not much of a breakfast person either. I decided i should do it for my own satisfaction. Boy was i happy. I finished making jam at 5 in the evening, then made these for the husband to snack on and finally pushed my bread into the oven. Fresh bread came out at 8 pm. And i didn't have the patience to wait till breakfast to try these out. So my dinner came in the form of purple jam lathered over freshly baked and sliced bread. I have no complaints. Making something from scratch going slightly out of your comfort zone gives tremendous satisfaction. And for me, i have not done anything so elaborate just myself after getting married. Usually when the husband is out and i have to cook only for myself, i have only ever made Maggi noodles or eaten left over rice from the morning or convinced him to bring me takeaway. So to go out to such lengths to prepare something only for myself wasn't bad at all. I should try it again sometime.