Cauliflower lime soup

I went a bit overboard on day 2 of soup week and made a huge batch of cauliflower lime soup. So much that I ended up having it for dinner as well as lunch on the following day.

However, the taste turned out great - so no complaints really!

2 cups cauliflower florets

1 cup onions

2 garlic cloves

1 inch ginger

2-4 green chillies (adjust per need of slickness)

3 tablespoons coconut milk

1 cup veggie stock

1 cup water

1 small green lime (not lemon)

Salt to taste

A pinch of Turmeric 

Black pepper

Cilantro - few sprigs

Sauté the basic 3Gs (ginger-garlic-green chili) in little olive oil, then add onions. Add cauliflower after the onions are semi brown and mix in the spices. Cover and cook until soft. Cool, transfer to a power blender and blend on high with coconut milk, veggie stock and veggie broth until creamy and smooth. Mix in the cilantro and squeeze in lime juice and blend on high until color turns mild green.

Transfer to bowls, add salt and serve!

I mixed in some cooked beans to add texture to every spoon.

MCP Soup

MCP is my version of a mint coconut and pepper soup. It's healthy, flavorful and super easy to make. It was so good that we devoured it prior to taking a picture. 

I used my cuisinart 13 cup food processor to chop up the onions, peppers, ginger and garlic; bagged them for the week. For the soup, you need 

1 cup chopped yellow onions

1 cup chopped peppers (yellow, orange, red)

2 green chillies

2 garlic cloves

1 inch ginger chopped

1 sprig of mint leaves

1/4 cup coconut milk

2 cups veggie stock or water

Spices of your choice - I used cumin, coriander and pepper

Salt to taste 

Sauté the veggies (don't add mint) in a pan with the spices. Cool slightly, then transfer to blender (Vitamix) and blend with veggie stock and coconut milk on 10 for about 40 seconds and then on high for a minute or two. Turn off, and add mint leaves and blend quickly on variable and 10 for a few seconds. Transfer to bowl, add salt to taste and serve!

Jawbone UP3

S got me a Jawbone UP3 that I've been eyeing for a while, and since then I've been logging my sleep, activities and food on it. It's quite amazing to take stock of sleep hours and make a conscious effort to meet those goals. I was amazed to see calorie counts & nutritional charts for traditional indian meals come up within the app when o log my meals!

Anyhow, that combined with us feeling really fat got us on the health week wagon. The cuisinart chopper and vitamix blender have found their spots on the counter top and we are sticking to fruits, veggies, salads, soups snd smoothies this week. Recipes to follow!

Flea Market Flip - Mail Holder

S & I did an impromptu trip to Maine in Fall '14, and had an amazing time staying at an Airbnb farmhouse. On our way back - we stopped at a Flea Market. Digging through layers of throw-away items to find a treasure that speaks to you has got to be the most exhilarating feeling ever!

I found this mail holder for $1, and a pair of candle holders for $4. The mail holder was too plain and simple, and was sure to get a makeover one of the weekends. It took until Spring '15 for me to flip the flea find! Before and after pictures are below..

Some glue all, pebbles from Dollar Tree, stencils and paints were all that were required to turn the plain mail holder into something that fit with the rest of my home! The mail holder got a coat of brown paint, the sides were glued and lined with pebbles and the front panels got some designs using stencils. In less than 30 minutes - the flea market find was flipped !

Privacy for $10

It's been almost a year since we moved into our new home and the plain view side panels of our main door has been driving me crazy for just as long!

Investing in new panels or replacing plain with opaque wasn't an option. Hanging mini curtains on the inside wasn't my style. After some intense pinteresting, I found this cheap, but effective solution that allowed me to add a bit of my creative energy into our home.

What You Need

Clear Contact Sheet

Scissors

Tape Measure 

Paint Pen

Here's how 

Measure your side panels or any window you are looking to create privacy / obstruct plain view into your home

Cut contact sheet to this size. Cut as many as you need. 

Use a paint pen to draw any designe of your choice on the non adhesive side ! Not much of an artist? Simply stencil it!

As you can see, some of the best looking panels are the simple squiggly lines that even a toddler can do!

Mix and match as you please and decide where you want each of the panels to go.

Now comes the hard part!

Letting the contact sheet stick to the window without air bubbles requires a little more skill than laying a screen protector on an iPhone. Find something sturdy like a thick bound book that is more or less the same size as the panel. Unrolling the sheets along the longer edge worked best for us (best to use help while doing this) i.e left to right in these pictures rather than top to bottom.

We chose to stick these such that the design side faced inside the house rather than the outside. I think this will extend the life of your handy work by protecting it from nature's fury (sun, rain, snow)

You can still see the design from outside, it will just be inverted. So be mindful to not use any text in your design.

Hope this is useful!