Bits And Pieces

Im turning food critic for this post :) Must indulge my madness!

I have been obsessing over cheesecake for many many months now, I think its been more than a year since I first tried this incredible cheesecake at the Well Studio Cafe in Auroville. so all was well as long as that incredible cheesecake was close at hand. But once we moved to Chennai - I had to start hunting for cheesecake again - and realised it really is a hunt! Ive had the most awful chewy(!) buttery (!) strange cheesecakes at insane prices. lets tear down a few places. 

Chennai - sandys laboratory. great food, nice place, nice everything - but their super expensive cheesecake is inedible - AND its highly recommended by the people there, so dont fall for that.

amethyst cafe - horrible. the french loaf - i think they use cheddar instead of cream cheese ! sigh.

and then we moved to bangalore ! so the hunt is going nationwide suddenly.. hard rock cafe - terrible!

The one at the food hall at 1mg looked deceptively enticing - but it was pretty gross. gloria jeans coffee - eek! Ice and Spice (ordered with great enthusiasm) - blech! We tried the cheesecake at Toscano - it was passable but still not very good. Bliss chocolate lounge at UB city - again a big no. It makes me wonder - is it so hard to make good cheesecake outside of auroville?

A small respite in the middle, when we went to auroville again and had a tiny cheesecake in a steel bowl (completely homemade) and that was pure heaven, light and lovely!

And then finally, at under the mango tree in bangalore - cheesecake that was half decent! 

So thats where Im at. I cant stop ordering cheesecakes. If you know of a delicious one - tell me about it!! must - eat - good - cheesecake.

While driving from Bangalore to Chennai, the sun rose making the whole world glow. It was beautiful. 

Im terribly excited. Were flying to the andamans tomorrow! one week of lying on blissful beach no.7 (repeatedly proclaimed to be nothing short of paradise) by everyone who has been there. Sketchbook in one hand and camera in the other, Im off! maybe Ill find my dream cheesecake in the andamans, you never know :)

Birthday Hunt for Treasure!

 
This was a little something I created for Siddharth's birthday. I decided to do something fun and slightly different from the usual cake cutting session at midnight, and so the treasure hunt was born :)
The whole thing was fairly simple and uncomplicated, I didnt want him to be searching till the wee hours so kept it as direct as I could.


So I illustrated a map of our home, and drew in the little bits of furniture that were relevant. I hid 10 things in the house, the biggest present of all being on the terrace :) which explains the staircase leading to the clouds that you see in the illustration! and then I penned in the numbers - 1 to 10 next to the area they were hidden in and he had to hunt for them in the sequence that I wanted him to find each present! The very first one was the birthday cap he has on :) Oh and the edges of the map I burned to give it that old feel !


We had soo much fun doing this, it was worth all the time spent planning it.
And the search went on for a whole hour :) I hope you had a great weekend! much love.

The next little treasure was a cake hidden under our dining table :)

                                                                    puzzling over the map

                                              Silly things that you do for love make me smile :)