Sukriya India

Home is where the heart is.
If someone asks me where my heart is, ohooo, it'll be hard to answer for now.

We have been counting down hours to leave India: 20, 19, 18, 17, ... By today when this blog is being written, it'll be very soon, less than 24 hours! Happy and sad feelings are mixed in my heart, in my mind. Very happy to meet my big family, back to our own lovely house, enjoy my own private kitchen, but also feel sad to leave my kitchen here. Lots of new recipes were tried in this kitchen, lots of new experiments were done in this black and white open kitchen. I'll miss the black marble table top, the electric oven, and the Indian brand 'Bajaj' kitchen appliances. Yup, I'll be back slaving my 'Phillips' & 'Moulinex' while keep dreaming of 'Kitchen Aid' :D.

After all, I feel so grateful that I have been given an opportunity to spend some parts of my life here in India; a place that is very rich of colours, cultures and traditions. The land of dreams and romance, the land of celebrations. Lots of things I have learnt, lots of things I have got, ... and lost ? Yeah, little bit, sometime I lost my passion, and need to do lots of adjustment to survive. And yeaahhh, I'm survived and happy. Very happy!!

Here, I was falling in love for the first time to 'street photography'. The beautiful exotic architecture, the hospitality of the people, the colourful sarees, the richness of local culinaries and lots of authentic objects making me very hard not to bring my camera everywhere I go out (hmm, the camera is physically quite heavy, but once I forgot to bring it, I'll felt sorry for myself). I've never been worried to carry around my camera while walking exploring the city by myself alone; going to the local markets, walking through the seaside, even visiting some heavy populated areas. Oooooh, I'll miss them all, but I'm so glad to have hundreds of pictures of India for my collection. Oh, not only the camera, I have never been worried to bring my children along to explore every corner of this city eventhought many times I found out they were grumbling behind my back.

No more word I can write to express how lucky I am, having an opportunity to live in Mumbai, and exploring some parts of India. Meeting lots of new friends, tasting original Indian Culinaries, enjoying their richness of their land, including being an eyewitness how Mumbaikars struggled againts terrorism. The luckiest one I feel is to bring home lots and lots and lots of 'properties' (metal, glass, wood, plastic and fabric products) for my food photography journey, plus lots of very-good-but-inexpensive books. Ohh, I should share this to all my blog readers and friends, that India is the heaven of book lover. You will surprise and get excited to find out that you can buy books and magazines with very reasonable price and big discount. You should come to prove it yourself !
"Thank you, India".

Yesterday was my children's last day of school. Their minds telling me they are really ready for school holiday. Our house stuffs were packed yesterday and they will arrive in Jakarta about 1 more month. Our apartment here is not homey anymore as it's empty, but we enjoy the echo every time we talk loud :D

We'll be back home, and for sure this blog will continue, don't worry. This month I will celebrate my 4th anniversary of this blog. I started it when we were in Labuan, Malaysia. Also this month, we will celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary. Blogging and being a wife & a mother look like having not relation. But for me, the objective of learning to cook is simply for my family. Preparing delicious and healthy food is my resposibility. No one can change it. Arranging the food, touching them up, putting some style and taking pictures from different angles are always big excitement for me. At the end, collecting and storing the recipes in my blog bring me lots of advantages. I can now very easily finding any favorite recipes. I have many new friends and I can learn alot from other food bloggers.

Yup, this blog will continue wherever I live and have mood to update :). I'll see you on my next posting.
Last, just to let you know that I have been selected as one of the judges for Click event for June. The hosts; Bee and Jai have a very interesting theme for this month; STACKS. For more information you can click here.