wandering mind

I have been baking most of the bread we consume for the past year and a half. I like to know the feeling of knowing that my bread contains all the ingredients that I can pronounce - organic flour, organic oil, organic egg if needed, turbinado sugar or unfiltered honey, sea salt - I feel very good about. Last week I wanted a break from my usual whole wheat bread and decided to make this free form bread. I think almost every one has heard of the no knead bread. Its been in various newspapers and website. I have tried it twice before - it looks like one of those artisan bread. One time my sister was over and thought that I had bought it from Panera Bread :) This time I followed Jugalbandi's recipe .Of course mine doesn't look as good as theirs - but it tastes' pretty good. Click on the following picture to look at the detail - I love it so much that I want to make it the wallpaper on my desktop :) I invite others who haven't tried this to at least give it one try - result...

I was at the post office earlier today. There was a young girl in front of me with a yellow box with pink and magenta hearts on it - probably a valentines day gift. Girl: How long will this package take to get to Iraq? Postal employee: where? Girl: Iraq Postal employee: One to two weeks, depending upon where in Iraq. Girl: I know I should have done this last week. My heart grew very heavy. When will our people come home?

I have been working in this town for over 5 years now. For over 5 years, every weekday morning, I have been admiring this church. I think it is a private school and a church.I never took the time to go and visit it. I admired it from a distance. Now my company is moving to a different location next week and I shall greatly miss this town which I grew to love. Here is the view that greets me every morning to work. It tells me to center myself and not get too caught in the whirlwind of the day :) Click on the picture to get a better look. I took this picture yesterday from my car when I was waiting for the light to turn green. This place would be just 20 minutes away, and I can often come here for lunch. But just like so many promises of keeping in touch, I am not sure if this one would be realized.

My 11 year has been taking violin lessons for 3 years now. But for the past few weeks she has been wanting to quit. I asked her for a good reason, and she gave me many - Her friend quit (not good enough reason for me) Her teacher is too strict (I told her she needs to practice more and win her teacher with hard work) She gets pulled out of art (her favorite subject) to go to Violin class (It is weird how music works in our school system. Instruments are optional part of the curriculum and they don't have a time set aside for it. If you pick to learn an instrument, you get pulled out of some class - social studies, art - whatever) She doesn't enjoy playing violin anymore. She is also taking Piano lessons privately and also plays violin in a Rock Orchestra. So if she were to quit, she would still be playing violin with her Rock band. I didn't want her to quit because first of all, lessons are free at school and they cost a lot if you were to take them privately. But the main ...

I know it is not mother's day - but I wanted to write about how much I appreciate my mom. My mom does so much for me that it would take me several incarnations to pay her back (if that reincarnation thing actually works :) I leave for work before my kids even wake up. My mom lives 2 miles down the road. She comes in early in the morning, wakes them up, makes them breakfast and drops them off to school. Then she cooks something for dinner. She picks the kids up from school and gives them a snack and waits for me to come home. I usually come home to steaming hot dinner on the table. This is just to name a few - the things that she does for me are countless. All my friends are envious - they say I am a lazy spoiled brat - No - I am just very lucky. When we were buying a house my number one requirement was that it has to be near enough to mom and dad. Today I am feeling exceptionally thankful. Today - Monday - always a crazy day at work - too many meetings, nothing getting done as fast...

I have been tagged by Transient Lives to share a picture and talk about it. The tag is to find the 6th picture in your 6th folder and talk about it. On September 3rd 2006, we became proud parent of two Cockapoos - Buddy and Lucky. Here is how it happened. My kids had been wanting to get dogs for ages, but we weren't sure if we were ready for the commitment. My older daughter is possibly allergic to dogs and we didn't want to get a dog, get attached to it and then have to get rid of it. I researched and found out about dogs that don't shed. And we decided upon Cockapoo breed. I found a farmer not too far from where we live who breeds Cockapoos. We wanted to get one male dog because my kids always wanted a dog named Buddy. So we went to pickup Buddy. The farmer had four puppies - two cinnamon colored, and two off white. He told me that cinnamon ones were already sold and the owners were coming to pick them up later that day. So we picked the off white male pup. As we were l...