Shocks and Shoes

Weekly Goals Update – 10 June 2012

8:22:00 pm

Recipe for the Week - Bread

8:05:00 am

This has been a dream of mine for a while – to bake my own bread. I’ve read about so many bloggers successfully making their own bread, and that too not just bread; you have multigrain bread, banana bread, walnut loaf and all sorts of complicated stuff!! So, I decided to give it a go, and went about enthusiastically baking my very first loaf. And…it failed. It was this hateful, solid, extremely hard mass. I’m pretty sure I could have hurt someone with it, though I didn’t try ;-).

Don’t worry, this recipe isn’t that, it is my second attempt, and it is something like a combination of bread recipes from two superb food blogs - Aarthi’s Yummy Tummy, and Niya’s Niya’s World. So here we go!!

What you’ll need:

1. 2 cups multigrain flour

2. 1 cup plain flour

3. 1 tsp salt

4. 1 tbsp sugar

5. 1 tbsp dry active yeast (take a fresh packet)

6. 200 + 50 ml warm water

7. 1 tbsp olive oil

8. A little butter and milk for brushing

What you’re going to do:

1. In 50 ml warm water, dissolve 1 tbsp sugar. Add the yeast and leave to rise for 15 min.

2. In a large bowl, put in 200 ml warm water, and dissolve the salt in it. Add the fermented yeast mixture and mix well.

3. Add in the flour a little by little, mixing into the liquid with a metal spoon. You'll end up with a sticky dough.

4. When it can no longer be stirred with a spoon, put in 1 tbsp olive oil and start kneading with your hands. It'll still be sticky, so you won't be able to knead very well. If it seems tough, add some more warm water.

5. Once you get a soft, slightly sticky but pliable dough, transfer it into a large, oiled bowl. The oiling of the bowl is to prevent the dough from sticking to it.

6. Cover the bowl with a wet kitchen towel and allow to rise for 1 hour.

7. After an hour, the dough should have risen to double its volume.

8. Turn out the dough onto a well floured surface, punch it down and knead well, for about 10 minutes. Your arms will ache a bit, but it is all worth a wonderful, light loaf!

9. Put it back into the bowl and let it rest for 30 minutes, covered with the kitchen towel.

10. Take out the dough again, and punch it and knead it once more. Shape it into a loaf and place it into your greased loaf tin. Cover and let it rest for 1 hour.

11. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius. After the third rising, this is how the loaf should look like:

12. Brush the top of the loaf with some milk and place the loaf in the oven and bake at 190 degrees Celsius for about 20 minutes. The purpose of the milk is to give the loaf a beautiful golden color.

13. Once out of the oven, brush the top of the loaf with a little butter to keep the crust from turning too hard.

Cut into slices and enjoy!!

With Nutella - my favorite topping for practically everything :-)

Believe me, the feeling of baking your own bread is indescribable, even better than baking a cake!! The aroma wafting out of the oven, the feeling of fresh bread in your mouth, the crunchiness of the crust and the softness of the bread, heaven!!

You can also sprinkle sesame or other seeds on top of the loaf prior to baking. I tried flaxseed once:

Notes:

1. Use a fresh packet of yeast, makes a big difference.

2. The water for the yeast mixture shouldn’t be too hot, just warm.

3. If your yeast didn’t ferment, there’s pretty much no use going ahead. Start again.

4. If the dough seems too tough at the beginning, add warm water – else it won’t rise as well.

5. Wait a bit once the loaf is out of the oven to cut it.

6. Use standard measuring spoons and cups.

I did try this recipe with only multigrain flour, but it didn’t rise well. I’m not sure why that was. I’m still a novice at this, so looks like some experimenting is called for!!

Personal

Monthly Goals Review - May

9:33:00 pm

Links

Link List – May

1:00:00 pm

May is finally over. An eventful month for me, as I’ve mentioned here. Now on with some great links to check out!!

1 You’ve heard it a lot, but ever wondered what the word ‘chic’ actually signifies? Sal at Already Pretty explains.

2. Want to eat healthy, but simply can’t stay away from junk food? FitStudio tells you how to get that fix, and yet stay within limits.

3 It isn’t easy to explain success in a generic sense, but J’s Everyday Fashion makes a pretty good attempt.

4 Stephanie provides you a detailed step by step tutorial on how to groom your eyebrows, at ClothedMuch.

5 If you’re a loss when it comes to accessories, Imogen at Inside Out Style shares some tips on how to use them to highlight your best features.

6. Setting up a home office? You’ll be overflowing with ideas after checking out StyleFrost’s post on the same.

7. Adrienne at The Rich Life (on a budget) explains the joys and tribulations of being a stepmother. A wonderful, heartfelt read.

8. From the DIY basket: Aayushi at Styldrv has a great tutorial on making some plain shoes super glam without much effort.

9. You’ve probably heard all these before, but Laura has some really sensible tips to help you clean out your clothes clutter in a pdf form at I’m an Organizing Junkie. Print out and pin up on your wardrobe door. (Save it to your smartphone too, for good measure)

10. I love everything about Karishma’s outfit at Purple Peeptoes – when was the last time you saw a simple black top-blue jeans pairing look so stylish?

11. All of us make new resolutions at the start of the year and then let go blaming one thing or the other. Jerome at Daily Spark tells you how to take responsibility for your actions.

12. Do you wonder what happens to all those hours in your day? How did all that time just pass by? Stop wondering with this nifty time management tool at Real Simple.

13. Another one from Imogen at Inside Out Style – Pretty much everything you need to know about a pair of jeans.

Hope you guys enjoyed the links, see you all in June!!

Self Love

Toxic!!

1:43:00 pm

Please don’t be shocked by the title of this post – it isn’t a warning for any impending disaster, unless you count toxic people a ‘disaster’. And they might as well be.

I just wanted to talk about a certain ‘species’ of people, for whom I can’t think of a better name than ‘toxic’. Have you ever had anyone at any point in your life, who could bring you down with just one snide remark? A person, being around whom always felt like an effort? Well, chances are that most of us have faced one or more of such people at various stages in our lives.

A toxic person doesn’t just harm him/herself. He harms people he meets on a daily basis as well as those he meets one-off. She could be someone you met for a few hours on a train journey, or she could be your grandmother. The first scenario is easy enough to avoid, but the latter, not so much.

Such a person doesn’t really understand or care about the impact of his words. He could be discouraging, negative and terribly biased. It is near pointless arguing with him, because his opinions are written in stone. He carries such an aura of negativity around him that Tweety bird would turn into Ebenezer Scrooge.

This person can hurt your self esteem, trivialize your feelings and make your dreams appear unreachable or insignificant. Just having a (mostly one sided) conversation with this person can make you feel heavy and loaded.

Of course, avoidance is the best way out. But then, this is easier said than done when he/she is family or someone you really can’t avoid. However, you can find a few workarounds:

1. Try and minimize conversation with such people. Limit your responses to ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or (even better) ‘hmmmm’.

2. Don’t disclose your personal goals or ambitions, they are bound to be mocked or discouraged.

3. Don’t give out strong opinions on any subject, especially those that might be deemed controversial by Ms. Toxic. If they offer theirs, just tune out momentarily and think about a vacation in the

Bahamas

. Or Bradley Cooper. Or both.

4. Remember, such people usually have deep insecurity issues. So don’t flaunt your achievements in their face as well, it could make them even more bitter, which means more negativity in their stock to spare.

Don’t forget, you don’t have to put up with their sh*t. You have every right to live a full, peaceful, ambitious and well balanced life. Don’t let ANYONE take that away from you.

And who am I to give all this advice, you ask? Good question. Only I don’t have a good answer, except that I have been in contact with a few toxic-ians till recently and these have been my coping strategies. They’ve worked for me, so hopefully some other suffering soul out there will find them helpful.