Books that I read in July - WTFOW #DAY7

Wow! So, this is the last day in write tribe festival of words marathon. I can't believe that I could finish this one week marathon.

I joined the marathon in a dilemma if i should attempt this. While I am busy with my 2 kids I didn't get time to even schedule my posts. So, I wrote randomly at any time of the day whenever I got time and mostly in the nights after everyoneeveryone slept. A big thanks to the write tribe group which kept us motivating to write everyday. Also, all the best for bloggers who are continuing the marathon in blog chatter.

Now, coming to my reading list for this week.

The Devil’s prayer by Luke Gracias
This historical fiction is a wonderful read. It kept me glued to the book till the end. Like a Dan Brown's novel, this has a lot of facts and mysteries about ancient texts and religion. Read my review here.

Black water tales by Jean Nicole
I am reading a horror after a long time. It's wonderful and gave me creeps. Though I didn't like climax, it's entertaining throughout. Read my review here.

Jamba the joint family by Sriram Balasubramanian
This is a quick and light read about the joint family culture in Chennai, India. The narration is interesting with a pinch of humour. I could reminisce my hostel days in Chennai while reading this. Here is my review.

Until next time,

A healthy twist to the normal diet - WTFOW #day 6

Everyone is going health conscious these days. People changed a lot, don't you think?
Many started drinking green tea, avoiding rice in the nights, moving to organic and more traditional varieties etc., It's contradictory, but I am observing a tendency towards Junk food like burgers, pizza and coke and also a tendency towards organic and low carb diet. Even though we are very health conscious, we cannot get away with the craving for tasty high-calorie food. I was thinking, how good it would be to add a healthy twist to our normal diet.

Here are some options that I found:

1. Oats dosa

Dosa (a pancake made from fermented batter) is a very common breakfast in South India. Usually, we use 1 cup of urad dal and 2 cups of rice for the batter. But, to give a healthy twist, we can add 1 cup of urad dal, 1 cup of rice and 1 cup of oats. I tried it and couldn't see any difference in consistency or taste, so works for me :-)















2. Vegetable salads

There are two types of salads that i try - cooked and uncooked.

Cooked: I use potatoes, tomatoes, french beans, carrots and capsicums to boil in a pressure cooker with one or two whistles. Then, I fry chopped garlic cloves, green chilies in olive oil, mix them with the boiled vegetables and squeeze lemon juice. This made my salad taste better. Have you ever tried this?

Un-cooked: We don't have many options to make the uncooked salad. We can try changing the types of vegetables and using a low fat dip/ dressing. I use spinach, cucumbers, carrots, broccoli, capsicum, cherry tomatoes. I haven't tried yet but we can prepare a dip with greek yogurt, minced garlic, minced parsley and grounded black pepper.

3. Chicken Soup

I have learned recently to prepare chicken broth which can be used as a base for chicken soup. I pressure cook chicken, ginger, garlic, Indian spices (very less), broccoli, celery sticks, capsicum, coriander leaves, coriander powder, salt, and pepper. Filter this and store it in freezer as broth. Whenever I want to make soup, I boil this broth with chicken pieces, vegetables of my choice with a handful of oats(to get thickness) , salt, coriander powder, and pepper. Isn't it simple for dinner?

Do you also add any easy healthy options to your diet? Do let me know in comments. Would be happy to implement :-)

Until next time,

Linking this to Write Tribe Festival of Words - Day 6.

Ps:All images from google labeled for non-commercial reuse.

My Top 5 Favorite Authors - WTFOW Day #5

My habit of reading started in my school age by reading stories. I used to take story books from our school library and read them at home. Slowly, I grew from reading story books, magazines(Tinkle Digest was my favorite), Sherlock holmes, Sidney Sheldon, Irving Wallace, Sudha Murthy to other different authors. Throughout this journey, there are some authors who made a permanent impression in my heart. I read and re-read  their books until I understood each and every sentence.

A few of them listed below but not in the order of preference. Actually, I cannot even compare them, as everyone is unique.

1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Actually, the author's name never registered in my mind for a long time. I was soo deeply in love with Sherlock Holmes that I didn't think about the author name. Only after reading Sherlock Holmes' short stories and novels, I realized that I want to read more from this author. There is one historical fiction from this author that I couldn't get a copy to read. This was my first book review of Sherlock Holmes (Not a review technically, just my thoughts :-)).

2. Sidney Sheldon
This craze started in my teenage and continued after college too. I was mesmerized with his characterization, detailing, the way he sets the context, the plot, twists, and turns in the story. I have  read almost all of his works and would like to read them again. This was my last book of Sidney Sheldon.

3. Dan Brown
I love the chases and puzzles in his books. The mystery element, fast pace, plot and his detailed research draws me to his books. I missed his recent book, but this was my earlier review on one of his books. Definitely, I love to read his books again and again.

4. Irving Wallace
I love his books a lot for drama, characterization, the plot and his research on the subject. He wrote on various topics and his knowledge on the subject is fantastic. His novels are like Sidney Sheldon's in terms of mystery element,but the plots are very unique. I love this book a lot about the Hitler's last days.

5. Erich Segal
Erich Segal's characters are very realistic and after reading the novel we cannot easily forget them. This novel gives so much information on doctor's day to day lives, their challenges with a fantastic story in the backdrop. I loved each and every character in this book. This is one of the high volume books that I read (600+ pages) and completed it in very short time. Other novels from the author like 'The Love story' and 'Man Woman and Child' are also fantastic reads.

I would like to thank all the wonderful authors who made book reading enjoyable. I love the other author's works also like Sudha Murthy, Amish Tripathy, Devdutt Patnaik, Indu Sundaresan etc., 

Happy Reading!

Linking this to the blog hop hosted by book r3vi3w tours and Write Tribe festival of words - Day #5.

Until next time,

Transition to stay at home mom - WTFOW day #4

This is one of those rants that might bore you.
I have been busy since 2 months and Iam blogging on the go from mobile mostly.

So, what's keeping me busy?

Transition from working mother to stay at home mom

Many doesn't believe me when i say , working and managing 2 kids is easier with some support(maid, cook and day cares) than managing kids all alone at home without any support.

I think, I am still not used to the routine of cooking, cleaning and managing kids. The major difference is that I am missing my 'me' time. I miss those light hearted talks with colleagues at lunch and coffee breaks. I miss the enjoyment of work, meetings, deadlines, pressure etc.,

An emptiness surrounding me
I am not feeling complete by the end of the day. Something is missing. I wanted to do something more than cooking and taking  care of kids. So I do a lot of research on utilizing my time and thus making myself busy and restless. Besides, there is a guilty feeling that I am not engaging kids properly if they watch videos and play games for more time.

I think, I should compromise on not being perfect and think practically on what possibly can be done for my inner peace.
I appreciate if you have come till this line and read my silly blabber.

Did you ever leave work and stayed at home? How did you cope up with this kind of transition?
I will be happy to hear the opinions of other mommy bloggers ☺

Until next time,

Linking this to Write tribe festival of words #5 - day 4.

My Love for Instagram - WT Festival #day3

I had come across 'Instagram' in 2012 and I instantly loved it. Not because it is the best platform to share your favorite photos with your friends, but for the filters that made my pictures look great.

I am not a great photographer, but I love capturing lovely moments of my life and watch them later when I need inspiration and motivation. Since I have only basic skills in photography, I am not sure how to adjust the lens, focus an object and blur the background, set the lighting etc., When I first got introduced to the number of filters in Instagram, it was a fantastic experience. I never shared much of my personal photos but I clicked day to day pics and nature a lot.

I have stumbled upon #photoadayJune instagram challenge last month in marathon bloggers facebook group. The challenge was to post one photo a day throughout the month of June and I  jumped with excitement to join the fun. A few prompts were dead easy, a few were fine and a few were very tough. Somehow, I managed to complete the challenge in June and here is a snippet of the challenge.

A collage of some photos from Challenge

Prompt -Gold

Prompt -Water 

For the prompt 'Vibrant'

Although I love instagram, I had bad time with it. I don't know how,  but my account was hacked once and it showed me following atleast 2000 unknown people. 😩
Somehow I retrieved my account back but couldnt remove every one from my 'following ' list. Still finding a way or an app to do mass unfollow.
So, this is my Instagtam story, do you have any strange story with social media?

Until next time,

The Japanese Tea Garden, San Antonio - WT Festival #Day2

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There are many tourist places in San Antonio with free admission. One of those is The Japanese tea garden in Breckenridge park. 

This place is also known as Sunken garden / Chinese tea garden. It was opened in the early 20th century which was an abandoned limestone rock quarry as per the Wikipedia. It is listed in US National register for historic places. During the world war II,  It was renamed to Chinese Tea gardens to avoid destruction.

Japanese Tea Garden, San Antonio

We have decided to visit the place with kids after reading the reviews about the waterfall and a pond with fishes there. What's fun than going to a water body to cool off the scorching heat in summer? Monsoons started in India and we miss rains after coming here.

The garden is open between 9am to 5pm. But, the Sun won't set till 7 pm here. So, visiting a place before 5 pm is like walking in the afternoon heat. We applied enough sunscreen and insect repellent to start the walk.

The place has a nice garden, a cafe, a pond with many fishes, lot of trees and shade, a waterfall and a wooden bridge. The waterfall is not that great but kids enjoyed watching fish in the pond. The place is great to take photos and have a walk under trees. We expected it to be a big garden but it didn't take more than an hour to walk around.

It would have been great if they change closing time to 8pm in summer. This place is wonderful to sit and relax with cool breeze hitting on the face in the evenings. Since this place is near Breckenridge park and San Antonio zoo, we can cover those too. Don't miss the train ride in Breckenridge park if you have kids!

There are many fantastic places around which I will be visiting soon, so please stay tuned for more info in my blog ☺

Until next time,

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Changing ourselves for a good change

Be the change you want to see in the world. - Mahatma Gandhi

Very inspirational quote, isn't it? But, how difficult it is? Can we change ourselves to see a good change in our society ?

I feel, it's very difficult than said. Let's say - we want our children to spend time at home in a meaningful way than watching television for more time or playing on mobile phone. But, can we switch off television and stop watching it for the sake of children and give them a company for a good change? Can we stop playing games on mobile so that we can be a role model? I know, there are many parents who do sacrifices for children.This will be really a great way to spend meaningful time with kids and make them realize importance of time.

 So, this quote by Mahatma Gandhi makes more sense  now. Let the journey of change begin from ourselves first. Written for 100wordsonSaturday hosted on WriteTribe.

Also, writing this for 3 day quote challenge. Rules mentioned in Day 1 post here.
Thanks Deeshani for nominating me :-) 

My day 2 nominations are :

Gaurabh - Precessing Creativity
Sandhya Kadam - Aarogyam Dhanasampada
Murthy - News Varsha


Until next time,