Shocks and Shoes

Outfit Post – Colder Climes!

10:37:00 am

In many places across the globe, people are posting pictures of themselves in stylishly cut coats or large fluffy jackets, cursing either the extreme cold or the snow. Boy, if only I had that complaint!! Bring in the most snow-hating person to live in hot n humid Kerala for a while and she’ll fall head over heels in love with the snow!!!

Anyway, the climate in Kerala isn’t too bad nowadays, though you’d still look like a freak if you wore a coat or jacket. A light cardigan is more than enough for the slight early morning or late evening chill. Today, for a change, it is slightly colder and windier than usual. A welcome change!!

I’ve had this black cape for a really long time, but hadn’t worn it much due to said hot and humid weather. So I brought it out when I was visiting my parents last weekend and I enjoyed wearing it. I didn’t realize how versatile it could be :-).

I wore it with a printed kurta and blue bootcut jeans. This kurta is one of my favorites because of its cheerful print (and the fact that it has lots of pink and purple in it :-)). It’s got puffed sleeves too, which you can’t see in these pics. Maybe I’ll do another outfit post with it just to show you the sleeves!!

Here’s a closer look at the happy print:

This cape is more like an asymmetrical cardigan, but thinner. It has two long pieces of fabric in the front to tie it up, and it would help in creating a completely different look. For now, I left them loose.

Due to the all-over bright print, I kept accessories to a minimum.

Please excuse the messy hair - I was having a bad hair day (like most days :-()

Outfit Details:

Black cape: Pantaloons

Printed Kurta: Max

Blue Jeans: Wrangler

Red Sandals: Lifestyle

Earrings: Don’t remember

Black Clutch: Mom’s

Pink Bangle: Fabindia

I’ve just recently cleaned out my wardrobe, considering that sale season is near :-). I’m disappointed to find so many pieces that I’ve used very rarely, like this black cape. I’m lost when it comes to styling many of them and feel like I’ve fallen in a fashion rut of the kurta-chudidar combo. I’ve already pinned a lot of inspirations, but trying to get those styles to work with what I have is confusing, to say the least. It only makes me feel like I need to buy loads of new things, which is definitely not what I want to end up doing.

Have you guys faced the same problem of trying to using your existing clothes to get the style of your fashion icons/Pinterest inspirations? How do you deal with the ‘I don’t have anything to wear’ scenario?

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Food, Malabar

Recipe for the Week - Paragon Style Chicken Curry

11:17:00 am

Haven’t there been times when you’ve had a lip smacking meal at a restaurant, only to find that you can’t think about anything else for the next few days? Much like falling in love, isn’t it? :-)) I’ve had those moments many times, but the time it hit me the most was when I had the Alleppey Chicken Curry from Paragon Restaurant at Kozhikode. This restaurant is quite famous for its authentic Malayali flavors and good quality food. We never fail to eat there whenever we’re in Kozhikode and I’d recommend it to anyone visiting the place – I promise you’ll not be disappointed!!

So, back to the chicken curry. I just couldn’t recover from the awesomeness of the dish and was dying to eat it again and again. So I tried to replicate it at home, and after a few attempts, I got close to it; although I should mention that this is still not as good as what you’ll get there!! It is a really good substitute though, which is why I decided to call it the Paragon Style Chicken Curry!

Note: All the ingredients are readily available, but be sure about the frying time of each ingredient, it affects the overall quality of the end product.

What you’ll need: (3-4)

500 g chicken, skinless, curry cut, on the bone

3 red chillies broken into halves

2 medium onions, sliced finely

1.5 Tbsp finely chopped ginger

1.5 Tbsp finely chopped garlic

1 sprig curry leaves

2 Tbsp coriander powder

½ tsp turmeric powder

1 Tbsp peppercorns and 1” pc cinnamon – crushed

10 cashews, soaked and ground to a fine paste

½ cup thin coconut milk

½ cup thick coconut milk (increase it if you want more gravy)

1.5 Tbsp coconut oil

salt to taste

What you’re going to do:

1. Heat the oil in a pan and fry the red chillies for a few seconds. Add the sliced onions and fry till brown and crisp, but not burnt.

2. Add the curry leaves, chopped ginger and garlic and fry till the raw smell disappears.

3. Add the spice powders and crushed spices and fry for a couple of minutes.

4. Add the chicken pieces stir well to coat with the spices and cover for a couple of minutes.

5. Add the thin coconut milk and cook till the chicken is done.

6. Add the cashew paste, and simmer for 5 minutes. Then add the thick coconut milk and take off the heat.

Serve with appams, ghee rice or Kerala parathas. Make loads of these, cause you’re not going to rest till you’ve gobbled up all of the curry :-).

You can increase the amount of thick coconut milk if you want more gravy to soak up those spongy appams :-).

Do try this out and let me know how it turns out. Is there any restaurant dish that you’ve been dying to replicate at home?

Personal

Time for some Chit Chat!

11:03:00 am

Well, well, well, hello there!! It has been ages since we just sat and chatted, right? My previous blog posts have been all about contests, challenges, sponsored posts and the like. I feel a certain disconnect with my blog and I don’t like it at all :-(.

Frankly, I’m a little tired of blog contests. I haven’t even participated in that many, but it’s all over FB and Twitter and it’s making me a bit sick. I’m not even that into smartphones, so I think I’ll take a break for a while :-).

So what else has been happening at my end? As you know, the hullabaloo over my brother’s wedding settled a while back, and the newly weds are back to their respective jobs. I’m still trying to lose the weight I gained during the wedding and its aftermath, and it looks like I’m going to lose the battle and keep the weight.

My body is beginning to tell me that I’m not that young anymore and my metabolism isn’t what it once was. During my college days, I used to hog on all kinds of oily, heavy stuff and hardly ever got sick or gained an ounce. But this year has reminded me that I can’t take my body for granted anymore – achy knees, a sore back, sluggish thyroid, hair fall – they’re all telling me I need to take more care of myself!

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In other news, I recently attended a job interview, after a career break of 5 years. It was a great opportunity, with a chance to head a new team, but the workplace was quite far from my house, and the route is riddled with traffic problems. The hubs already has a 12-13 hour workday, and if I took the job, it’d be the same for me. I didn’t think it was fair to leave Cub in daycare for that long, so I turned it down. I kept thinking and thinking and thinking and finally decided I didn’t want it. There are probably some of you wondering if I wasted a great opportunity, but I don’t think it would have worked for me and my family. So that was that.

On the plus side, I’ve started contributing regularly to The Mom Views, Swapna’s super-awesome blog on parenting. If you’re following me on FB, this is probably something you already know :-). Oh, and speaking of FB, I’ve recently joined Twitter too – I kept away from it since I didn’t want to be a victim of Social Media Overwhelm, but it’s kind of nice :-). And while we’re at it, do check out my Pinterest boards, that’s probably where I am a little too active :-D. I mean, honestly, there’s so many of them out there – Google Plus, Instagram....well, there’re just too many to keep track of!

To all my readers who’re still here, please don’t give up on my blog. I’m planning to dive into posting like the old days, and I’ve got some recipes, an outfit post and book reviews (not sponsored) coming up. I can feel my mojo coming back, so stay tuned to Shocks and Shoes!!

Baking Partners, Food

Recipe for the Week - Pataqueta, a Traditional Spanish Bread (Baking Partners Challenge #16)

6:54:00 pm

This is the third bread recipe I’m trying out from Baking Partners. The other two are Tzangzong Bread and Pumpkin Yeast Bread. They were both completely different from the usual breads I bake and so is this one.

Pataqueta is a traditional, crescent shaped bread from Valencia, whose inhabitants used to eat it when they went to work, as long back as the seventeenth century. Though it isn’t baked much nowadays, special requests are made during festivals. This recipe was suggested by Marisa of Thermofan. It’s in Spanish, but you can always translate and drool over her beautiful photographs :-).

This is a recipe that uses very few ingredients, but employs the steam baking technique. It is essentially a process where you place a tray of hot water on a rack below the rack containing your bread. I use a microwave oven in convection mode for baking, so all I have is a turntable, no racks. Hence I’m not sure if what I did here qualifies as ‘steam-baking’ :-).

What you’ll need:

For the Ferment:

100 ml warm water

1½ tsp instant yeast

1/3 cup flour

½ tsp sugar

For the Dough:

3 cups flour

200 ml lukewarm water

1¾ tsp salt

All of the ferment

Extra flour for dusting

What you’re going to do:

1. In a mixing bowl, stir the yeast into the water. Add the flour and the sugar and mix till smooth. Cover with cling film and refrigerate at least overnight or up to 48 hours.

2. Take the ferment out of the fridge and leave it on your kitchen counter for an hour or two. My ferment looked the same when I took it out, but after resting outside the fridge, it foamed up.

3. Into the bowl containing the ferment, add the flour and water and mix together using a scraper, till it comes together as dough.

4. Take it out on a work surface. Add the salt and knead some more. The original recipe mentions not flouring the work surface, but my dough was extremely sticky and there was no way I could knead it without dusting it with extra flour. Knead for some more time, till the dough is smooth and elastic. I needed quite a bit of flour to go from this:

to this:

5. Separate the dough into balls. The original recipe calls for balls weighing 150 g each. I divided my dough into 5 balls, but I’d suggest dividing into 6 for a more manageable size.

6. Cover with a clean cloth and let it rest for 20 minutes, after which it’ll have risen.

7. Flatten the balls a little from the top and sides, ensuring a perfectly circular shape.

8. Using a baking scraper, cut the ball from the middle towards one end. Separate the two ends to form a crescent and flatten it a bit from the top.

9. Mark two lines with the scraper on the bread. Place the Pataqueta on a floured baking sheet, cover with the cloth and leave to rise for another hour.

10. Preheat the oven to 200°C. With a knife, make two cuts along the lines marked earlier and sprinkle a little flour on the top using a sieve.

11. Now, here’s what I did next. I took a little steel bowl, filled it with hot water, placed it on the baking sheet next to the proofed bread and placed the whole contraption into the preheated oven. That was the best way I could manage to get some steam :-).

12. Bake at 200°C for 30 minutes. Take out of the oven and place on a wire rack to cool. Brush with butter right away, or the crust gets too hard.

At this point, there’s a nice rustic look to the bread :-). The crescent shape makes it look cuter somehow :-)

You can also see the lines we made earlier. I don’t know why, but I really liked how those lines turned out once baked!

Once cool, slice it any way you’d like and enjoy it with butter. Or anything else :-).

Check out the beautiful crumb:

These breads were really yummy and soft, with a harder crust. I’d say they are best served with some hot soup. Not your store bought types at all, these remind you of quaint farms, where the farmer’s wife makes cheese herself and serves it to weary travelers with her home made crusty bread. I know I read it somewhere, but I can’t remember where!!

Do try this out at home; you can see that you don’t need too many ingredients. If you’re not sure of the steam baking technique, do check out how the other Baking Partners have baked their Pataquetas. The lucky ones with multiple racks in their ovens have done it beautifully, although I wouldn’t call my Pataquetas bad at all!!

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Food, Reviews

Review: Smart Eats Snack Box - No More Unhealthy Snacking!

1:31:00 pm

We all have that particular time of the day when we feel a certain ‘slump’. For most of us it’s either in the afternoon, or early evening, or around mid morning. Things look like they’re moving in slow motion, and you just want to laze away.

What’s the most common way we battle the slump? Yup, with something to eat. There is no denying the kind of comfort we get by chewing something, enjoying the flavors and then the feeling of contentment once it’s settled down in our tummy :-). But when it’s week after week of samosas, chocolates, cappuccinos and chips, this very enjoyment turns into terror as said tummy begins to expand!!

It’s to counter this kind of unhealthy snacking that the smart folks at Smart Eats have developed the Smart Snack Box. With a variety of 4-5 snacks in a box, you are all set for a month of healthy albeit yummy snacking!!

If you’re like me, you probably go crazy in the supermarket, trying to decode ingredient labels. In such a situation, a subscription system that sends healthy snacks to your doorstep is heaven sent!!

The snacks are 100 % natural and devoid of artificial color, flavor, sweeteners or preservatives. They are made entirely from whole grain, contain 0% trans fat, 0% maida, are high in micro nutrients, high in Fiber and have balanced calories.

If you’re concerned about taste, then you’ll be pleased to know that well known nutritionist, Sangeeta Khanna, is their ‘Recipe Scientist’. Interested? Keep reading!!

The snacks arrived in a nice sturdy brown cardboard box that was securely wrapped in plastic.

I could barely contain myself when it came to opening the box :-). Inside, it was filled with four plastic packets of snacks. Oooh!

The healthy foursome included the following: Fruity Granola Bar, Fruity Caribbean Cashew Cookies, Tangy Sweet Roasted Mixture and Honey Roasted Cinnamon Almonds.

The Fruity Granola Bar is my favorite snack in the whole box. Each bar comes individually wrapped and contains oats, almonds, coconut and fruit. The bar is chewy, which is perfect, since it allows you to enjoy the flavors well, and doesn’t give you that disappointed feeling when something you put in your mouth just disappears in an instant. With a lovely nutty taste, it is wholesome and I didn’t even feel hungry by dinner time!!

Calories: 84 per bar (approx), Shelf Life: 1 month

The Tangy Sweet Roasted Mixture is the savory pick of the box. This is probably meant for Namkeen lovers :-). It has chana, peas, peanuts and puffed rice with a variety of spices. The sweet and sour taste is reminiscent of certain chaats. The best part - it’s roasted, not fried. Some chips and namkeens contain lots of oil even though they claim to be roasted. The test prescribed is to put some of it on a tissue paper and then check later for any oil residue. Well, this one passed the tissue paper test – not a trace of oiliness!! The mixture comes in a resealable bag that is perfect to keep its freshness intact!

Calories: 126 per 25g (approx), Shelf Life: 3 months

The Honey Roasted Cinnamon Almonds are something unique. I’ve had honey almonds before, but with cinnamon? This is the first time :-). There is a burst of spice when you put these in your mouth and the almonds are nice and crunchy too. These also come in a resealable plastic bag.

Calories: 143 per 25g (approx), Shelf Life: 6 months

The Fruity Cashew Caribbean Cookies are not your regular supermarket cashew cookies. For starters, they are only half as sweet and you get solid bits of cashew, not tiny molecular pieces. Secondly, they’re made of whole wheat flour, grapes and melon seeds along with cashews. You get bits of fruit, though I felt the cashew flavor was dominant. Each cookie is individually wrapped in plastic and again placed in a resealable bag. Unfortunately a couple of my cookies arrived broken, but that’s the difference between maida-made firm cookies and the more powdery whole wheat versions.

Calories:118 per cookie(approx), Shelf Life: 1 month

This box is what I assume the ‘Sampler Box’ looks like, at 399.00 per month. At this price, this is really a very, very good deal. The ‘My Box’ contains 6-8 snacks at 649.00 per month, and the ‘Family Box’ contains a massive 12-16 snacks at 1,199.00 per month. Customization of the box, though not currently available online, is possible through email and phone.

What I loved about the Smart Eats Snack Box:

1. The resealable packs are very useful – no more hunting for Tupperware and the snacks stay fresh.

2. Individual wrapping of cookies and bars ensures they stay in shape and are hygienic.

3. None of the snacks are too sweet or too spicy. Perfectly balanced.

4. 100% Natural, no artificial color, flavor, sweeteners or preservatives. Also, only whole grain with no trans fat or maida.

5. Each snack tastes different and a box provides good variety to cater to all palates.

6. Detailed nutritional info as well as ingredient list is provided on the back of the pack.

What could be better about the Smart Eats Snack Box:

1. I wish the almonds and mixture were also individually wrapped, serving wise. It’s easy to go overboard with these :-).

2. Listing the calories per bar or cookie instead of per 100g would be more helpful.

3. People with a prominent sweet tooth might find the snacks a bit under-sweet. (Not a problem with me, I don’t like very sweet stuff ;-))

As a parent, I’m wary of the snacking choices available to kids nowadays. All you see on TV are ads for junk, trans-fat filled foods. My 5 year old son loved the chewy granola bar and asked for more!! So you see, kids are not averse to healthy stuff!

Do check out more about the Smart Eats Snack Boxes here and join them on Facebook here. Happy Snacking!!

Disclaimer: I was sent a snack box for review purposes, but all the opinions here are my own.

Newer Posts

Older Posts

Outfit Post – Colder Climes!

Recipe for the Week - Paragon Style Chicken Curry

Time for some Chit Chat!

Recipe for the Week - Pataqueta, a Traditional Spanish Bread (Baking Partners Challenge #16)

Review: Smart Eats Snack Box - No More Unhealthy Snacking!

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