To judge a foot by its wear!

My foot, rather.

Nah dont get me wrong! I’m not swearing!

I am referring to my foot, literally. I, in fact, have been wondering about the role of footwear in my life.

What triggered this thought, you wonder?

Well, I was in the kitchen, one day, trying to make some sense out of whatever it is that I was cooking and all of a sudden I realized that I was late for school run. I didnt bother to change as I was wearing an outwear already. I was barefoot, so I just pulled out of my rack the first pair of shoes I saw to slip on and scurried out.

Barely a few meters drive, I was at a signal waiting for red to turn green. Now, because of a perennial leg-ache that has been bothering me for sometime, I have this habit of taking my feet off my shoes, when in static mode in the car, to relieve the pain, even if briefly, from the tight grip of the shoes . So while doing that, I casually glanced down to my feet only to realize that I was wearing an old, dreary looking pair of shoes. I couldn’t care less. I didn’t think it was hardly an issue to freak out on, so ignored the shoes and shifted my focus to other interesting things on road!

But this li’l observation did set me thinking about people, some of my friends even, who would never go wrong in choosing the right footwear for the right occasion. So much so that if faced with a similar situation, they probably would have hyper-ventilated on the casual over-sight of picking an unimpressive pair of shoes to wear! 🙂

About two days back, again, I was on my way to drop Namnam for karate class after which I had plans to while away my waiting time by aimlessly wandering around a chic mall. I had remembered to be ‘dressed’ for the loitering-occasion with a new pair of jeans and top before stepping out of the house. But till the time I had stepped out of my car to go to the mall, I hadnt realized what shoes I had on.

I was wearing chappals!

I found myself wondering whether it would be appropriate to step inside the mall now. And I had a near face-palm moment when I saw all those smartly dressed people, wearing their shiny shoes, stilettos and platforms walking in and out. Yet again, I brushed aside the matter as a non-issue and walked in head on all confident hoping noone would give a glance to my feet!

As I was saying, I have observed that a lot of people give importance to footwear just as much as they would to their clothes, bags, hair, skin and such. I remember admiring this lady during a ride in Delhi Metro, a couple of months ago, for the sheer way she had ensured to dress up in a matching shade of green from head to toe! From gaudy green suit to green rubber band to green bangles to green nail-color to green clutch-purse to…yes, you guessed it right..green sandals! I couldn’t help wondering about the time and pain she would have taken to get everything so colour coded!

Would such orderliness in people also mean that they would be as disciplined about every aspect of their life in general? I wonder.

I have friends who have an impressive collection of footwear with a pair for every occasion. And I admire them for that quality, I really do.

Having said that I have never been so perfect, where footwear department is concerned :). While I do love to shop for shoes, more often than not I end up picking them, keeping in mind the multiple occasions I can use them in..so that I don’t confuse myself in deciding what to slip into! I make do with the same pair for most of the occassions, for (a) I’m lazy to decide which pair would go best with which of my dress, and (b) I’m just not so particular. The only thing I’m particular about is getting a regular pedicure and keeping my feet clean and crack-free as much as I can. But shoes, nay, not so much.

I’d rather spend that extra time on shopping for dresses, which is where my priorities on optimum splurging lie 😉

Even while packing for vacations, I stuff a maximum of two pairs of footwear and if need be I wouldn’t even mind pulling a pair out if it would mean I can make space for an extra pair of dress! I guess its more of a matter of where you choose to invest your interests and energy in, right?

So how’s it with you all? What role does footwear play in your lives? 🙂

P.S. Speaking of footwear, I’m seriously tempted to fling some of my choicest footwear real hard at some sick snooping politicos and disgusting journos for the way they have been shaming the nation with their acts ! Do you think I’ll get ‘atonement’ for doing that? 😉

It took a Choux Pastry to make me want to come back here..

And brush my blog up before it inched towards a near-dormant state!

I baked this today after Smitha tempted a bunch of us yesterday by announcing that she was making Choux pastry.

It was the first time I had heard the term, but when she said that these puffs were used to make profiteroles and eclairs, I found myself drooling even more.

Now, I am a very lazy person, especially when it comes to cooking or baking. So I normally steer clear from complicated cooking unless of course it is absolutely necessary. But the easy way with which Smitha had gone about baking, filling the puffs with creme all so fast while chatting with us, had me thinking that it was something that I could attempt too.
So I got the recipe from her last night. One glance through it and I remember thinking, “Oh wow! This is quite easy!”

I had most of the things needed for the pastries except for whipped cream and nozzle for the filling. Since I was fully charged up to try out the recipe today itself I rushed to the store and bought all that I needed.

The baking process began and everything from the measurements of the flour to butter-water consistency to thickness of the dough was turning out just right! Now the recipe had a simple instruction of using a spoon to put small balls of dough onto the baking paper. But clearly spoon was too amateur for a baker like me who had had it so easy up till now, so I went in for a piping bag to squeeze the dough out to make small balls! And what was the result? Well, the result was blotches of dough splashed across my kitchen-top and baking tray, not to mention the spots on my t shirt, as a result of an enthusiastic squeeze with all my might because of which the nozzle burst off! :eyeroll:

So…simple spoon was back in the game.

These are the Choux pastries in the making.

I had at first planned to keep the puffs simple with just the whipped cream filling and few sprinkles of icing sugar on top. But my eternal craving for chocolates had me looking out for means to make some choco-flavoured topping. I didn’t have to go too far, as I found a jar of chocolate cream, right at home, that we had picked up on a visit to the Lindt Factory in Zurich this year! Slurp!

As it turned out, the profiteroles royally dipped in chocolate were much relished by all the three chocoholics in Deeps’ abode 🙂

Smits, thanks loads for the recipe! 🙂

Edited to Add..

The link to the recipe .

For some strange reason the recipe doesn’t mention the baking part. So let me add that bit the way Smitha explained to me.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees centigrade.

Spoon 5-6 teaspoonfuls of the dough on to a lined baking tray and bake for 30 minutes or until they are puffed and golden.

Remove the tray from and poke a hole in the bottom of the balls to release the steam and put them back in the oven for about 5 minutes to dry the insides.

Once the buns are done, transfer them to a wire rack and let them cool.

To put the whipped cream filling, cut a bun in half and squeeze the cream onto the lower half, using a piping bag.

Cover by placing the top half of the bun over it.

Sprinkle some icing sugar on top and serve.

Alternately, for chocoholics, the top side of the bun could be dipped in chocolate cream or ganache, which is what I did, before placing it as a cover 🙂

I found this video on Youtube quite helpful too..

Happy Diwali to everyone..

in advance 🙂

We celebrated the festival last night.

And run-up to this day was preceded by days of rigorous pre-Diwali cleaning. Yes, I was bitten by the safai virus too! How could I escape it when so many of you were putting up posts and tweets on how you all were so engaged in getting your homes clean and set for the festival of lights. Watching and reading you all drove me to turn my heavily cluttered house to a neater and decluttered home just in time :).

The kitchen cabinets were reorganized. Floors were bleach cleaned. Even those far ends that hadn’t had any contact with cleanliness for weeks were reunited with the vaccum cleaner. Thanks to which, the sharpener that was last seen some 7 months back was found lying in a chunk of dust under the child’s bunk bed! Piles and piles of unwanted papers and stationaries cluttering inside the study table were shown the door. Wardrobes and bookshelves were reset. Windows were brushed off the dust. The front and back yards were broomed and washed. Of course I had some able help from my domestic help, who diligently took my suggestions and instructions to clean every nook and corner of the house . God bless him!

I can’t begin to tell how satisfying and calming it felt to see all those shelves and cabinets and drawers that looked as though hurricane-hit, transformed into neatly stacked counters. Even though, as Rachna rightly pointed out, others may hardly notice the hard work put in.

Having said that, isn’t it a bit of an irony that Diwali, which brings in so much of cleansing and decluttering to our homes and lives would eventually entail a sense of mess and unkemptness the very next day with all the crackers and poppers and snappers strewn all over the street?

Thats not to say that I don’t appreciate the positivity, brightness and cheer that the festival brings with it. It is after all, my favourite festival!

Here’s wishing you all a wonderful Diwali this year! May the festival of lights brighten up your lives with happiness joy and fervour to last forever 🙂