Zucchini soup

One large zucchiniOne large onionSalt to tasteOne fourth cup sour creamHalf cup milkFreshly ground pepperTwo tbsp. olive oilOne bay leafPinch of nutmeg

Stuffed omelette

Three eggs (or half carton of egg white)Two tbsp. all purpose flowerOne fourth cup milk Salt to tasteOil spray
For filling
5-6 mushrooms
One medium sized onion
One small tomato
2-3 cloves of garlic
Half cup cheese (I used shredded Mexican blend)
Salt to taste
Two tbsp. oil (I used olive oil)

A day trip to Sausalito

Though I live near to the place, but I’ve never been in Sausalito before. I heard very much about the place. My of my friends who already visited the place, told me how exciting the place! So, for a long time I was thinking of visiting the place. So, I asked my husband to take one weekend there. After much dallying at last we could go there on one Sunday. After reaching there, I really understood, how much I missed till the day. When we reached there, we people were roaming around in bikes. I thought that, people of this small town love biking. But that was not. May be the people of the town love biking, but,that I don’t know, but the people usually come from other parts, rent the bike here and roam around there. 

On way to Sausalito

Sausalito is a unique and picturesque community, perched on a hillside between the San Francisco Bay and the Marin Headlands.
I spent the whole day with my family, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Before going there I didn’t check about the area to find out the attractions, so we just roam around the city, and everything came in front  of our eyes with its own beauty, I felt that, the place was just reluctant about the rat race of modern times. The Bay area, where every one is crazy about technology. No, the city is different, still it has the old charm. Every house is very beautiful. I feel that, everywhere is peace. Roads are narrow and hilly. The houses were peeking from the green. As the town is amid the mountain, one lane can be much higher than another one. Somewhere the roads are connected with steep staircases. Somewhere, the shops are much lower than the road. Lanes are really narrow. As the place is a tourist attraction, and not much places was there to park cars, we faced difficulty to park our car. After roaming through the lanes we finally found the good place to park our car on the side of the road. Not many vehicles were on the streets, may be we went on Sunday. But, I think the city is not crazy like the Silicon Valley, where everybody is running. 

A beautiful house on the hill top

As soon as we parked our car, my son started feeling very “hungry”. He didn’t give us much time to find out a suitable restaurant to eat. Actually, before going there my husband selected some of the restaurants, after reading the review on the internet, but our son didn’t give that much time to find out those restaurants. As I am allergic to sea-food, we had to exclude those. But, as the town is situated by the side of the creek, sea fish, crab, lobster are available easily. So, almost all the restaurants serve scrumptious seafood dishes. My husband, who is extremely fond of seafood, could not indulge himself with that, partly of my allergy, and partly for our son’s tantrums. We hurriedly chose one Italian restaurant to stuff our stomach with the flavors of Italy. We devour with panini, chicken carbonara, chicken enchilada. As usual my “hungry” son, didn’t eat at all. After that we decided walk along the side of the creek. That was great place for boating. People, who have yacht, usually park their yachts along the designated areas of the shoreline. As soon as my son saw those “boats”, he desperately wanted to ride one of them. We tried to explain that, those yachts are belonged to other people, and those are private. We couldn’t use them. 

Ferry building

However, he was tenacious to understand that. We just wanted to walk along the shoreline, but he annoyed so much, I decide to go back. Anyway, eventually we reached the Sausalito ferry stop. To keep our promise, we took ride on ferry from Sausalito to Ferry building , San Francisco. We had nothing to do there. So, after reaching there, we just turned around and took the same ferry, and came back Sausalito. My son, was satisfied, as at last he could ride the boat. After getting down from the ferry, we just started walking along the street. Suddenly, my husband showed me staircase. Just out of curiosity, we started climbing up the staircases, and we landed up on another street, just parallel to the first one. It was really amazing. As we walked along the street, we could see the backyards of the houses down the road. Residents had their own private staircases from the road to their backyard. The stairs are usually locked with small gate. Some where, residents have their parking garage on the top. From the garage they have their stairs to go to their house. Then we took a sharp turn on very steep road to reach the point where we started. 

Stuffed mushroom soup

Ingredients:

6-7 Big mushrooms
One median sized carrot
One medium sized onion
One egg
One tbsp.  (more or less) tomato ketchup
Half cup or less shredded cheddar cheese
One tsp. soy sauce
One tsp.dark soy sauce(Actually I used oyster sauce, but who are vegetarian, they will use dark soy sauce. There is no such taste difference between using oyster sauce and dark soy sauce)
One tsp. chili sauce
One tsp. tomato ketch up
One tsp. sugar
Salt to taste
One tbsp. oil (I used olive oil)

3 herb chicken

Dill is known for its very strong smell. I’ve never cooked any dish with dill.
Once I watched one recipe in youtube where the chef used dill on the dish, and he told about the strong smell of dill. The other day I went grocery shopping, and I picked u dill along with kit and coriander leaves. And I cooked biryani, where I used all the three herbs. The taste was really, really good. So, I decided to cook chicken using these three herbs. 

Holiday crafts

This year my Holiday decor is going on rather in a slow pace. I had some decors, which I made two years ago. I put them up in the house, but that turned out nothing. I realized, I needed to make more and more crafts to decorate my whole house. I thought that, I was doing all the crafts very fast, but after so many days I couldn’t fill up my rooms with decors. 

Anyway, currently I stop doing more, because , I find I’m not creating anymore good stuff. I’m thinking something else, but crafts are turning out something else. So, I realize I should stop doing more crafts now, only which are yet to be finished. Still many of the walls are empty. May be after few days if I think, I’ll do rest of the item in my list. Here I’m giving some of the pictures of my Holiday crafts. 

The wreath on the front door

The centerpiece on the dining table

Christmas cone

Wall hanging

More Christmas cones

Santa Claus

More wall hangings

Cross stitch wall hanging

Las Vegas trip

This was  my second trip to Las Vegas. First time I went there in the year 2008. Though the city is not for children, but I always take my son everywhere I go, so this time it was also not an exception. 

Mojave desert forest

It was a much awaited trip to us. Past two years we had been planning to visit the city. At last this June we able to make it. Traveling from Northern California to Nevada is a minimum 12 hrs driving. We decided to drive, rather going by flight, though driving is extremely tiring task to do. We booked room in the hotel, Stratosphere. We started from home at 4 in the morning, as we wanted to reach in the afternoon. We actually wanted to spend sometimes on the strip of Vegas after reaching there. The Sin City has its own charm at night, and we didn’t want to miss that. At 8 in the morning we reached Kettleman City, where we had our breakfast. The road was so flat, that sometimes I felt that extremely boring. I wanted to see some hill, some green forest and many more. However, in the desert of California and Nevada, it is an utter foolishness to expect lush greenery. Anyway, the nice pistachio fields gave me some rest to my eyes. Soon we entered the Mojave desert forest. And our almost entire journey was through that desert forest.

 The entire Mojave was very unexciting to me. The barren desert was full of small rock and few cacti. As long as I could see was the straight two lane road went through the heart of the forest. The journey was awfully tiring. So, after 12 hours when we could see the strip from distant we became excited like a child. However, it was really a good distance, because it took another hour to reach our hotel. When we reached the hotel we were dead tired. After waiting long in the lounge at last we got our room. Though we were too tired to walk. But nothing could daunt us. We got ready fast and went to join the others on the strip of Las Vegas.
Yes, Las Vegas, the Sin City, the city where everything is ‘Legal’. The main feature of Las Vegas is the Casinos. All the hotels have casinos. The tourists usually play whole day and night either on slot machines or pokers, or may something else, whose name I don’t know. The city never sleeps. My son didn’t know what exactly a slot machine, and he is too small to know that. He desperately wanted to play on a slot machine. With great effort I could convince him that, that was not a video game, but a game of the grown-ups. Anyway, though he was interested to play on the machines, but when he came to know that, those are not video game he just lost interest to play on that. Rather he started doing his usual mischief. 

Actually we went there on a long weekend. We avoided to go there on Saturday, to get rid of the madding crowd , but all our effort went in vain. When we came down from our hotel room, the strip was full of people. Everybody was going here and there. As the night was progressing, the flood of people were increasing on the street. Everybody was mad. Whether, I would watch the hotels or fashion, I was really confused. I decided to see both of them.

 

I don’t know much about fashion, but though I’m a fashion naive, still I can tell that, I was really amazed by the fashion of the women. Women in Vegas were ready to endure  any level of uncomfortableness to do fashion. Even, I saw ladies were walking on more six inches stiletto shoes. I saw a lady who was in extreme pain in her leg, (I could understand how much pain she was enduring, because the veins in her both legs swelled up so much, that they could be visibly seen.), still walking on stilettos.

Gondola at Hotel Venecia

Anyway, first we went to hotel Bellagio to ride Gondola. But…….. After seeing the price, we thought it would be wise  to take photos of Gondola. :-)After spending some time there, we went to Caesar’s Palace hotel, to watch the volcano show. We waited there , but we couldn’t see it.Actually we didn’t know the exact time of the show. We were already getting late for the fountain show, we rushed there to get good spot, from where we could watch the dancing fountain. After watching the magnificent show, we just couldn’t move anymore. On the top of that, my son was dead tired and he became very cranky. It was time to go back hotel. But without food ?? no. no. no. We decided to have dinner at Chipotle. But my son was too tired to walk, so my husband went to take dinner from there. After some time he called me, and to my horror, he told that, it would take to get food minimum 1 hours. It took him to get food more that one hour. But the story didn’t end there. He was waiting in the traffic to reach to us for another hour, where the restaurant was just across the street. It was really a tragic drama. We had no idea when he could enter the parking garage of Caesars’ Palace to take us. At last he dropped that impossible idea, and just stopped for 2 minutes at the side of road, and we literally jumped into the car and drove away from the sight. In this hodgepodge , my husband missed his dinner. After reaching hotel room, he flatly denied have the cold burrito , and went to bed in empty stomach.

Next day was Monday, and everything, was very calm and quite. It was really hard to imagine people had been rushing here and there at the previous night. Usually Las Vegas stays in sleepy mode in the morning. The city gradually wakes up as the sun goes from set to west. The nights become alive with flashing lights and dazzling dresses. People start pouring down to the casinos. Anyway, next morning we went to the top of the Stratosphere Hotel. There were many activities to do at the top, like Bungee jumping, and other activities.

 However, we are not so courageous, to do all the activities. We went there just to watch others who were participating in all those activities. I always try to find the answer, why people love to be scared by spending so much money? Our next destination was hotel Circus Circus to watch one circus show. The show was extremely short but spectacular.   How much can you expect from a free show!! :-) But it took a lot of times. 

At Flamingo Hotel 

Luckily my husband order pizza before coming to the show. When we came out of the show we were hungry like wolf. We just rushed and grab our pizza ,and gulped it down. We didn’t want to do any more thing, as we were going to David Copperfiled magic show that night. So, we needed some rest. In the evening we dressed up to match the mode of Vegas night and went to the magic show. I was completely spellbound. Still I cannot understand how a person could appear with a bike on the stage out of nowhere. I think it is a must-watch show in Vegas. When the show was finished it was dead of the night, and we just dragged our selves to the hotel. Next day it was again the same 12 hours  journey back home. 

Hotel Cesar's  Palace