A Life Journey Together

Dinner at Hilo Bay Cafe

2011-12-07T11:44:00.000-06:00

Ever find yourself in Hilo, don't skip out on having a delicious dinner at Hilo Bay Cafe! And don't get put off by their location. Though they are located between office max and wal mart, once you enter, you will be pleasantly surprised by their upscale ambience. We had to convince a couple of our friends to go there for dinner, but the food makes up for all the trouble. The art on their wall

Punalu'u Black Sands Beach in Hawaii

2011-12-06T21:26:00.000-06:00

In contrast to the Green Sands Beach, the Black sands beach is very accessible and have facilities around! This is the perfect place to watch the Green Sea Turtles. We saw so many of them feeding by the tidal pools among the rocks. And you can also see them swimming. I was surprised to see them tossed around by the waves. Something I hadn't quite thought of before. That before the force of

Green Sands Beach @ Hawaii

2011-12-05T23:53:00.000-06:00

The follow-up to my post on the South Point. We have been reading about the Green Sands beach and were intrigued. Only draw back -- not allowed to drive there with a rental car. Even if it was a 4-wheel drive. So from the South Point, we drive to the parking lot for the Green Sands and were debating if we could just hike to where we can at least see the beach, as the guide book we were looking

Panel: 4 -- Henna Style on Wood

2011-12-04T21:51:00.000-06:00

Here is one of the latest in the series. I love the copper + teal blue color with white henna texture. The panel measures 11x15 inches. Acrylic and finished with varnish. Needs to be hung at a slight angle to avoid reflection on the metallic color. Saw this color theme by one of our local artists during the art show in October and wanted to try it out. Mirror in the center. Will be listed for

South Point in the US

2011-11-26T09:29:00.000-06:00

On the last day, on our way back to the airport, we stopped at a few beaches. One of them, which turned out to be more of a cliff than a beach was the Southern most point in the US, simply called South Point or Ka Lae. Huge Cliffs with a lot of people fishing and the vast blue ocean in front. We were surprised by how crowded it was there with mostly local folks. The drive to this point was

Carrots & Peanut Soup

2011-11-25T11:23:00.000-06:00

It's not quite soup season in my home yet, so here is a recipe from the archives. I need this motivation to start thinking about using the butternut squash from our garden this year into a batch of delicious soup! I am a big fan of texture in food and even my pureed soups have to be textural :) Ingredients: Carrots - 4 diced, Potatoes - 2 - diced, onions - 1 yellow - sliced; Peanuts -

Art Inspirations from Hawaii

2011-11-21T17:30:00.000-06:00

One of the best things out of spending two weeks on the Big Island, Hawaii, is finding quite a few artists similar to my painting style. Big inspiration. I hope I am able to find the time to channel some of this inspiration and have some creative fulfillment. Expect to see some of their influence in my future works, especially similar to the last but one (Its acrylic on wood). I couldn't quite

Glow of a Volcano

2011-11-19T01:48:00.000-06:00

The last two days we have in Hawaii, we are spending at the Volcano National Park. The Halemaʻumaʻu Crater in the Kilauea Caldera has an active vent that is spewing out gas and steam. Here are a sequence of pictures taken from the outlook at Jaggar Museum. As the evening turns to night, the vista becomes very surreal and there are no words to describe the feeling of being near (almost standing

Hawaiian Forest Birds

2011-11-07T12:55:00.000-06:00

I am in Hawaii this week for The Wildlife Society's Annual Conference! The first thing I did after getting here is to go on a field trip to the Hakalau Wildlife Refuge. The trip was led by the Hawaii Forest & Trail. It was an wonderful trip and we got to see almost all of the native forest birds. The one bird we did not get to see is the Palila. We saw the Pueo, a short-eared owl endemic

One Pot Meal: Vegetable Biryani

2011-11-01T08:18:00.000-05:00

Or how I like my food: loaded with goodness, colorful, textured & healthy!

Turkish Fried Carrots

2011-10-31T11:34:00.000-05:00

Posting a recipe from the archives today! I think this picture below is my first ever food picture of something I cooked :) The recipe for this is adapted from The Reader's Digest Vegetables & Desserts cookbook. I have made these carrots a few times and this picture is from when I made dinner at my friend Sujju's home a few years back, when I was still a grad student. Ingredients: Carrots-

Tomato Basil Soup

2011-10-30T19:27:00.001-05:00

The most success we had this year with our garden is with the tomatoes. We just harvested the rest of them and pulled out the 5 plants. A few weeks back with almost nothing left in the fridge, I made a tomato soup with all the excess produce from the garden. The soup was a little tart. I was out of cream to balance the tartness, but we kind of liked it that way, with toast and yogurt as

Leftover Medley

2011-10-27T19:04:00.000-05:00

The new thing we are doing these days is shop together at the farmer's market with another couple and share the produce instead of buying too much of the same thing for just us. And last week one of the slow food kid's also shared some of his market basket with me. Here is a side-dish of vegetables that came together with a little bit of broccoli, mustard greens and mushrooms. Ingredients

Acrylic Henna Flower on a Wooden Panel

2011-10-25T19:23:00.000-05:00

The third in my series :) My techniques are definitely getting better. In this piece I went between thick and thinner lines. Measures 6x15 inches. Textured acrylic similar to the first one. I might also accent this one with a few smaller glass pieces. And I know which way I want this one to hang on the wall. Will be available for sale soon...once I give it a coat of varnish and add the picture

Recent Jewelry

2011-10-16T23:29:00.002-05:00

Here are some of the jewelry I have made over the last couple of weeks. They will soon be available on Bee's Beads & Colors. That site needs a little updating since I sold a bunch of pieces at the Slow Food fundraiser, and am not sure which ones I still have. Send me an email if you are interested in any of the pieces below!

Second Panel

2011-10-16T00:13:00.001-05:00

This has been a really great weekend, with one of my friends from Stevens Point coming down to Madison to hang out with us AND give me oil painting lessons! How amazing is that! So, for the first time in a very very long time, I got to explore oil paints, but without the hassle of oils and turpentine :) And she has left me with enough paint and medium to play around more before the next lesson. I

New Art Series

2011-09-05T17:37:00.001-05:00

Here is the first piece I painted yesterday for my new art series. The panel is a wooden panel from Ikea measuring 6x15 inches. The medium is acrylic, with textured henna patterns and a small mirror in the center. I made one tiny little change to this after the picture was taken. I haven't decided which way it looks better to screw the hanger on. I love how the wood grains actually show through.

Acrylic Henna Diptych Painting

2011-09-04T12:03:00.001-05:00

After spending hours in Ikea last week, I found box frames that I really liked for these Diptych. The paintings are acrylic henna pattern with texture, sealed with a varnish finish on 6x6 gesso boards. Bright colors, suitable for any wall color, can be hung in any direction. Finished frame size is 10x10. I also found a multitude of different sized door/window/drawer panels for pretty

Slow Food Dinner @ UW Madison

2011-08-29T22:35:00.000-05:00

On Valentine's Day this year - I fell in love - with Slow Food! That was the first day I volunteered to help in the kitchen with Slow Food UW Madison for their Monday Family Dinner Nights. A month after that I was their guest chef and on March 26, I lead together a wonderful team of friends in making a delicious dinner. I really haven't sat down to write about my last few months of the Spring

New Spoils

2011-08-12T17:52:00.000-05:00

I finally splurged on a few books that I have been borrowing from the library quite a few times! Now they are my precious :) I love all three of these books for the simple reason that they are pictorial -- I seem to learn and pick up the stitches a lot more easily by looking at the visual representation than the written instructions. Can't wait to get started on a few projects, and use some of

Spicy Green Beans

2011-08-08T21:18:00.003-05:00

Inspired by Kalyn's recipe, I made this Spicy Sichuan style Green Beans for dinner last night. I added more ingredients including bok choy and mushrooms and the dish turned out great. It was very flavorful and my parents who usually don't eat mushrooms enjoyed this dish. I was happy to use up some of the produce from the farmer's market that needed using up soon. I like having other people in the

Composting

2011-08-05T20:42:00.000-05:00

Three months in the new house and we finally have a compost bin. A joint project between my dad, Shankar and I! Hopefully Kalki will not try to get in there and the bottom wooden box should keep the smaller critters away. Its 3x3x4 feet and cost under $15. Took us about 30-45 minutes to put it together. Happy Composting!

Guest Babies

2011-08-01T07:58:00.002-05:00

We had two beautiful American Robins fledge from their nest last week. The nest was by the rose plant on the arbor in the backyard. Yay!

Farmer's Market - This Week

2011-07-31T19:00:00.000-05:00

Here is the weekly update on what we got at the Farmer's Market this Saturday. New this week were Bell Peppers, Patty Pan Squash, Baby Bok Choy, Big Jim Peppers, Wax Beans, Kohlrabi and Golden Beets. We got more Door County Cherries and fingerling potatoes. Also more Corn. My mom already made a wonderful Cauliflower Pakora this morning, along with a Vegetable Biryani loaded with some of the

We are Good

2011-07-28T21:46:00.001-05:00