We have become big fans of Sweet tomatoes which is a soup-salad buffet restaurant. We visited it for the first time many years ago and at that time we were not very impressed. We became regular customers here after Ishaan was about 1 year old. This soon became the only restaurant where Ishaan would sit and eat!. V loves the salads and muffins, I love everything they serve – from salads to soups to bread. They keep changing their soup menu often. There was a time when we visited this restaurant every week.
During one such visits, we tasted Asian Ginger broth – very tasty and soothing, having a great ginger taste. We became instant fans. Then we started watching their menus carefully to figure out when this soup was on the menu!. The next step was to make this at home. Just an easy google search landed me on this page with the recipe . If you know me, you also know that I like to make things from scratch. So instead of vegetarian base mentioned in the recipe, I wanted to make it with a vegetarian stock prepared from scratch – that way I could control the quality and taste of broth. I took help from this recipe to make the stock . This soup tastes so great and is very very soothing. Give it a try.
Ingredients for vegetable stock: 3 cups celery 3 cups carrot 2 cups onion 2 bay leaves 1 tea spn black peppers 1 tbl spn chopped fresh ginger 1 tbl spn chopped garlic 8 cups water Salt
Method: Mix all the ingredients in a big bowl and bring it to boil. When it starts boiling, turn down the heat to medium for about 45mins to 1 hr till the broth gets all the flavors. Make sure the vegetables don’t get mashed up. Sieve it to remove all the vegetables. Save the water.
For Broth: Vegetable stock 1 tbl spn corn starch 2 tea spn ginger pieces 1 tea spn garlic pieces Oil
Method: Heat oil and add ginger, garlic and fry for few minutes. Make sure they don’t get browned. Add vegetable stock and bring it to a boil. Mix the corn starch in 2 tbl spn water and add it to stock. Let it boil. Serve hot.
PS: You can serve chopped green onions, sliced mushrooms, grated carrots or wonton strips with the soup. While eating, add these to the soup and enjoy. We like the soup on it’s own, without any toppings.
Pictorial:
It has been couple of months since I became a “Stay at home mom”. I was both happy and sad about this decision. Happy because finally I could give all the time to Ishaan and also work on a thousand things that I was putting on back burner due to my busy schedule. Sad because it would mean a big unknown about my career. We took Ishaan out of daycare. We thought he would miss his friends, he would be bored at home, but he didn’t even ask for them!. In these few months, I have tried to enjoy every moment with him. I have been busier than ever trying to catch up with a very active toddler. Laptop time for me means TV time for him, so I have reduced my laptop time to minimum. I write a post once in a while when he is sleeping. I still spend time on FB thanks to my iPhone!. I can definitely say these were/are the best few months of my life in recent years. We have been going out almost every day - to library for story time, to toddler play time, children’s play areas, petting zoos, pumpkin patches, swimming and lot more. He is already 2.5 years old and before I know, he will be all grown up. So I have kept everything else on hold and trying to make most of my time with him. Next week we are travelling to India for a long vacation.
Now coming to today’s post – V’s colleague asked if I could prepare a cake for her with K-State football theme , she is going to watch the upcoming K-State game with friends and she wanted to carry the cake. The biggest unknown for me here was the fact that I don’t know anything about American football. After few Google searches, I knew what I was going to make. Although it took a while to bake and decorate it, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Ishaan was such a sweetheart, he kept himself busy with his colors and a book.
Lessons learnt : – Make a little more of fondant than needed, if you run out in between, you have to start over again which takes too much time. – Coloring fondant takes too much time and muscle powder. To help with this, microwave the fondant for few seconds and it becomes easily to work with (not sure if this method works with other kinds of fondant, but worked with marshmallow fondant). – To smooth out any irregularities on the cake, dip a spatula in hot water and massage on the fondant. I knew this works with buttercream but had not used the method with fondant before.
Pictorial: (I will have to fix the color balance on the camera, the bright violet colors on the cake are all showing blue here)
