Home for the Holidays

I went home for holidays, wow what an experience. Now I am back, but can you really leave the memories behind. I think I have carried my experiences back with me, the memories of laughter and fun shared together. It is true that home is not where you live but where they understand you. No wonder that the trip to India even if it costed more than double than any other trip was worth every penny. Visiting your family is any day more precious than taking a trip to an exotic place as the love, affection and joy you receive from your family is unparalleled and is there a joy more than true sharing and caring? You feel at peace with your family, like this is where you really belong and you are cherished for what you are.

The long sit-downs with the cousins, sharing funny stories, moments of triumph and despair and many many mugs of chocolate mocha’s and cocktails in endless parties. The beautiful trip to the pink city of Jaipur, known for its ghumar dance and wonderful cuisine. The graceful camel and elephant rides in Chauki Dani complete with sumptuous meal of bajara roti and saag and mouth watering halwas. There was no dearth of tappy ghumar dances and one could step into the shoes of Rajputs to relax on the manjis (the beds used in villages of Jaipur) and live the life of a Rajput by wearing the dresses they wore, dancing like them and eating and relaxing like them. The warm hospitality by the entire family close as well as distant relatives was sweet to the heart and mind. They basically looked after us entirely with a affectionate balm that still is exuding its fragrance to our souls. It indeed felt like home where we could shed all our fatigue and relax and enjoy life without any inhibitions.

So this holiday season I went home, the place I really love and though my feet has left home but not my heart as it is still savoring the wonderful taste of having visited home. It is a wonder now that I took this place for granted and longed to step out of its loving boundaries to explore the unseen as the grass looked greener on the other side till you are there and find the same challenges and limitations follow you there.
Now I keep longing to go back. Yes this was the place that taught me to face the hurdles and life’s challenges with the weapons of values and morality. But is the learning enough or do I continue to need more hand holding and refresher course, I realise that there is a lot more to learn. So every time I visit home it is a novel experience as it continues to teach me new life’s lessons and bring a new fervor onto my life.

So already I am feeling home sick but have learned beautiful lessons that you can build your home anywhere when the foundations consist of love and friendship lit and warmed with an affectionate heart. This is a home that no other home even with a better wallpaper or dishwasher can hold a candle to. Can I give a price to a feeling that I have just been to a place where one can communicate freely with full confiding hearts without the fear of ridicule or dread of misunderstanding.

Just follow your nose – WINE tasting demystified

Few things in this world get better with age – wine is one of them. An older woman is often complimented for her looks when someone says she is like wine … gets better with age.

Let us take a deeper look at wine and study its various characteristics. One of our favorite outings is going for wine tasting and in such wine tasting sessioons I have observed people swirling their wine and sniffing it, looking very professional. There’s a reason behind this curious ritual. It involves all your senses – smell, taste, sight….

LOOK – Fill your glass about a third full with wine and hold it up to the light or against a white background. Check the color – is it bright red or deep purple? A wine’s color indicates its body and intensity, which changes from variety to variety. The deeper the color, the fuller the wine. Try it with the white wine too.

NOSE – The only way to fully appreciate a wine’s bouquet is to place your nose gently inside the rim of the glass, then close your eyes and inhale. Now, what are the first aromas you can identify? Do you smell fruit or flowers? Spice or smoke? How about chocolate? Don’t worry if all you can smell is wine – this step does take practice.

SWIRL AND NOSE AGAIN – Don’t overfill your glass – you must be able to swirl it without spilling it (this would not impress your host!).  Experts also hold teh glass by teh stem so their hand doesn’t affect the wine’s temperature. Gently swirl the wine around the glass tehn nose it again. Notice anything different? Swirling allows air to mingle with the wine, the motion releases more vibrant aromas.

SIP – At last, it’s time to taste teh wine. Tale a sip and swish it around in your mouth for a few seconds, taking in a bit of air at the same time. As teh wine lingers on your tongue, it will begin to taste as delicios as it smelled.

MATCHING FOOD + WINE
It is commonly known rule to pair red wine with red meat and white wine with white meat
BALANCING ACT
Finding a perfect match of food and wine enhances the flavour of both. Start with the strongest flavour in the dish you’re serving then choose a wine taht either contrasts or compliments teh food/ For example, contrast a spicy dish with a sweet wine, or complement a hearty dish with a full-bodied wine.
TAME HEAT WITH SWEET
For hot spicy dishes, select sweeter white wine such as an off-dry Riesling to contrast teh spice and cleanse the palate.
FLAVOUR WITH FLAVOUR – Pair strong, full-flavoured foods such as barbequed ribs with a ripe, fruit driven wine such as Shiraz.

BODY & WEIGHT – Match teh density of teh food with the weight of the wine. For example, serve a hearty beef stew with a big full-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon.

INSPIRED BY COUNTRY – when in doubt, select a wine taht comes from teh same country as teh food you are serving, for example Italian red with a rich, meaty lasagna.

TRUST YOUR TASTEBUDS – At teh end of the day, trust your taste buds. While wine can enhance certain foods, there is no wrong way of matching food and wine. Always choose a wine you like.

RAISE A GLASS – THE PERFECT PAIR – There are two basic kinds of styles to get started: one for reds and one for whites.

THE RED WINE GLASS – BIGGER IS BETTER – Choose a clear 14 oz thin-walled glass with  a round bowl. a large bowl lets you swirl the wine without spilling – mixing air with wine, to bring out its rich, complex flavor.

THE WHITE WINE GLASS – COOL AND COLLECTED – White wine glasses should be more elongated in shape to concentrate the wine’s delicate aroma.

Organizing Family printed photos

Memories….. memories…. memories. Photo collections are a good example for preserving memories. However, organizing can get out of hand quickly, and the guilt those piles of smiling faces induce! All the more reason to get your collection in order, for there’s no organizing project that will give you a greater sense of satisfaction or a more wonderful heirloom for family and friends.

Get started

• Schedule time every week or month until you’re caught up.
• Gather all your photos at one spot. Look for strays in the basement, spare bedroom, dresser drawers – anywhere you might find them.
• Decide how to store photos. You’ll need both long-term and more accessible storage. Options include albums, frames, photo storage boxes, computer or CD files, or a combination of these.
• Use same-size boxes and albums so that they’ll look neat when stacked.

Sort and edit

• These different tasks should be done at the same time.
• If you have a huge backlog, start sorting photos by year (or by decade and then by year, for a very big collection). An economical short-term solution for large collections is to sort photos into bankers boxes (available at office-supply stores) that are marked by year. Move pictures to more expensive archival-quality photo boxes at the organizing stage.
• Edit your collection down to images that mean the most to you. Sounds easy, right? Not for most of us. Photos are probably the hardest items to throw away because of their sentimental value. Julie Morgenstern, author of Organizing from the Inside Out (Henry Holt/Owl Books, 1998), advises tossing shots “that are blurry, boring, make the person in them look awful, or are duplicates.” Good suggestions, but think twice about trashing shots that aren’t technically perfect but are irreplaceable because they’re either evocative of or the only record of a particular event, time or person in your life. Unlike purging a clothes closet, editing a photo collection is the one time when your emotions and instincts should be your guide.
• Give duplicates away immediately.

Organize and store

• How you organize your photos is as individual as your collection, but here’s some general advice.
• To avoid feeling overwhelmed, organize your most recently processed photos first, then work backward.
• Decide how to arrange your photos for long-term storage and maintenance. Chronological order is easiest. You can also structure by events/occasions, trips, or person (the latter is great if you plan to hand down a collection eventually).
• Here’s a method that I know works (for me, anyway). Leave photos in their original envelopes and store them chronologically in photo storage boxes. In the top right-hand corner of each envelope, label the contents with a sticker and a few key words, like “France ‘97.” If an envelope contains more than one topic/event, separate the items on the label using a slash.
• You can also label each photo using a pH-neutral pen (available at some photo-, art- and scrapbooking-supply stores).
• Store negatives in three-hole binders with polypropylene sleeves specially designed for negatives. Label the sleeves with the same heading as the matching prints.
• Albums are great for capturing special moments, events, themes or important people in your life, but most of us can’t store all of our photos in them. I recommend organizing your collection in archival-quality, pH-balanced or acid-free photo-safe boxes (visit online sources, photo- or scrapbooking-supply stores) and then deciding what to highlight in albums. That will make it easy to pull favourite images out of your collection when you’re ready to create an album.

Preserve

• Choose the appropriate level of preservation for your needs and the value of your collection.
• All photos deteriorate eventually. For most of us, using acid-free materials to mount and store pictures will be sufficient to ensure that photos last a lifetime and can then be bequeathed.
• Transfer photos to a hardy medium like CDs to preserve them indefinitely. You can also post images in online albums on your own Web site. Digital cameras make this process even easier.

Display

• Frame photos using acid-free materials so that no part of the photo touches the glass (a good framer will be knowledgeable about this). And remember, pictures exposed to sunlight will fade faster.

Organizing Family printed photos:

Tips for organizing the laundry rooms

Here are some tips for the organizing tips laundry room.