A Brownian Walk Through Life...

At our home we do Friday pizza nights. The pizza is usually "home-made" but with store-bought dough. I have always used Trader Joe's dough which is convenient and makes good pizzas. However as is right at this time, we are trying to not hit the stores for every small thing and trying to make alternatives at home as much as possible.  So I decided to try my hands at making pizza dough. Surprisingly it was extremely easy and so tasty, making me go "duh" why haven't we made it before. Home-made dough while being very easy to put together was so much more flavorful than store bought one. It elevated our pizza 10x notches! I don't think I'll be going back to the store bought one anytime soon, atleast not on days when I have time to let the dough rise. I loosely followed this  Food Network recipe but changed the proportions to suite the amount we need and also tweaked to the ratios that had worked for me with the flour I am …

I love eating veggie bowls for my work lunch. However I don't make them at home as often, so with this stay-at-home period I am hoping to add a bowl into the lunch rotation once a week! Bowls are super simple and super adaptable to what you have at hand - making them particularly attractive options these days. A good bowl essentially has a few components, each prepared separately and put together at the end customized to eater's taste: Cooked grain: this serves as the base. It can be plain cooked rice, wild rice, couscous or quinoa. Protein: baked tofu is my favorite but can also use roast chicken or boiled egg. Veggies: roasted broccoli, sliced onions, avocados, cucumbers, carrots, chopped cabbage, micro-greens all good :) Garnish: sliced nuts or sesame seeds A good bowl comes together quickly and is a healthy powerhouse. This version with wild rice is my particular favorite. The only other thing I would add to this is sliced avocado …

This social distancing is inspiring a new wave of home-bakers don't you think?! Along with the usual suspects such as hand sanitizers, wipes and toilet papers, it was interesting to see that even the humble bottle of yeast was out of stock almost everywhere! I guess during these uncertain times simple skills like bread baking can be deeply comforting. Or perhaps baking serves as a creative and therapeutic outlet to battle the anxious news surrounding us... whatever may be the reason, I am happy to say that I have joined the bread baking bandwagon as well :) So on a Sunday morning we set off making our first loaf of bread. I wasn't ready to attempt a sourdough starter, and besides we eat simple sandwich bread loaf a lot often than a crusty round loaf. I followed this recipe  to the T and to excellent results! The bread came out just as we expected and the whole process start to finish was very easy. A perfect recipe for beginners who don't have …