Vegetable gardening

Ever since my last post which was long long ago, I have done quite a bit of gardening from planting vegetables from seeds to fruit trees.

Here is a glimpse of some of the vegetables I grew from seeds.

Cauliflower

Shelling Peas

Bell Pepper

Eggplant

Beans

Basil

Tomatoes

Cucumber

Zucchini

My green thumb is back, yay!

It all started when a co-worker gifted me a lucky bamboo plant along with plant food and instructions for taking care of it (Thank you so much!). Once the lucky bamboo made good progress on my desk at work, I gathered courage to buy some indoor house plants. When they managed to survive, I bought a few more of them and moved on to outdoor plants. I am happy with my collection at the moment and am now experimenting with seeds. Below are pictures of some of my treasures.

Lucky bamboo

Dieffenbachia and Croton

Cherie Hibiscus

Geranium

Miniature Rose

Popcorn

Making popcorn at home is very easy, easier than you might think. It is also much healthier than the bagged popcorn which has a lot of butter added to it.

So, ready? Take a large pan and throw 1 or 2 hand full of popcorn kernels. Add some olive oil just enough to coat the kernels and the bottom of the pan, a single tbsp should be enough. Cover the pan with a lid and let it sit on medium heat. Once you hear the kernels popping, turn the heat up to high.

When the popping stops (after about 2 mins or so), turn off the heat and transfer the popcorn to a serving bowl. You can sprinkle the popcorn with the seasoning of your choice; I like cheesy jalapeño.

Sweet buns

I had active dry yeast lying in my kitchen cupboard for years. I don't usually bake bread or cake so it was left unused. Even though it was expired, I decided to see if it still proofed. I quickly warmed up some milk, added some sugar and yeast to it. After a couple of minutes, the solution did not rise but since I had already taken out all purpose flour and added salt and oil to it out of optimism, I decided to go ahead.

I formed a wet dough and left it to rise in the oven with its light on. After an hour, the dough rose but only a little. At this point, I realized this was going to be a failed experiment but went ahead anyway. I kneaded the dough a little; it was very sticky to work with so I followed the "stretch and fold" technique. I made small balls out of the dough, greased a baking tray and laid the balls on it at some distance from each other. I left them to rise again but this time with the oven on at 150 ºF with a hope that it would rise well this time. And voila! this time it rose in just half an hour.

I greased the tops with some olive oil and left them in the oven to bake at 450 ºF. They baked for about 15 mins.

I left them to cool down for an hour. They were very soft after cooling down and tasted yum. They could have been a little more fluffier had I used a full strength yeast.

 This was my experiment on the Saturday night and now I have these for Sunday breakfast.

Handvo

I have eaten this before but I did not know what it was called. Thanks to Google search which showed me its name (and the recipe) after randomly searching for some of the ingredients I had vague recollection of.

This is a baked savory cake made from semolina, curd and vegetables (carrot, peas, french beans). It is healthy, easy to make and tastes amazing.

Jigsaw puzzle

It took a long time to put this together so I will probably keep it assembled for a few days.

Skylab

Today when UARS (Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite) was to fall over North America/California, I was reminded of Skylab which re-entered the Earth in 1979. No, I wasn't born yet but I had heard stories about it as a kid. I don't remember how much of those I comprehended. I used to think of it as an astronomical phenomena and had an image of "giant ball of fire falling from the sky" in my head. Little did I know, it was a man made space station which re-entered after completing its lifetime. I even have faint memories of asking my school friends if they had heard of it to find out more but I guess we were just too young to understand about the profound universe and numerous efforts we make to explore our own world and beyond! 

Image of Skylab fragment in U.S. Space & Rocker Center in Alabama.