Cinnabar dinners

Hmm..that struck me as possible fodder for blogs! At Cinnabar we mull over every meal. We make lists, we draw up plans..short of murdering one another we get our 2-bits heard. Meals are the all-holy moments in our lives. Anticipation precedes every meal. Eating our dinners quietly..oh forget it! Savoring, critiquing, suggesting, comparing, even photographing the meal once its been served! Ah these are the meal time rituals followed scrupulously in Cinnabar. Ah! I did leave out a critical aspect of meal times. We invariably PLAN the FOLLOWING meal then and there! Every fam has a host of meal time faves. Some of ours have been photographed and I think I will post some of these hits here. And build as I go along.

This was a particularly smackalicious sort of dinner. Fries, awesome avocados that only Kody can offer, a fork-lickin' good tomato herb sauce, and with it fish steaks marinaded 5 hours ahead of pan-searing in olive oil! Voila! How simple and how nutritious!

Menu 1 Potato latkes

Marinated and pan-seared boneless chicken

A big mug of emerald green spinach soup

Menu 2 French fries ( par boiled and then shallow fried ) I am a scrooge when it comes to deep frying!

Herbed tomato salsa

Fish steaks in a dill sauce ( marinade with salt pepper lemon juice dill & garlic) Pan sear 10 minutes before meal

Fresh avocado ..

The simpler the dinner the funner!

Book cover illustrator..wheeee

Now, that's a lofty title -"Book Cover Illustrator"! Rini asked me to design the cover of her book. A book that covers Intellectual Property issues .Weighty, eh? Don't get carried away that a swish of the brush, stroke of color ( some luck, too) and some dab of paint is all it takes. To design a cover you need to know what goes under it, right? That was a task I had to surmount. Rini is wont for using large words, actually unknown to my 46 year old ears. I had to contend with concepts such as 'hermeneutic' theories and "tropes of nature and mind" which were casually thrown at me by this childhood friend of mine. I did the obvious thing. Scurry to the nearest dictionary. Meaning, I opened another window on my laptop..all fine..but I also had to engage the muscle between these 46 year old ears to understand what dictionary.com said. It amazes me how some folks which include Michelle, Madhu and Rini are all at it- on and on - in the pursuit of excellence in academia ( might I add, at this age!). Quitting work has brought on a comfortable sense of laziness in me. I am content to get up at eight!! I recall times when I would be up at the cracko'dawn. No more for me, those busy times. Get me that foot stool. Switch on the sunshine. Let me listen to the same old songs again and again and again. Let the world jump on to newer, faster treadmills. I am willing to smile and wave to the rats.
ok..where were we?? Ah ..yes.. designing the cover happened in 2 hours flat but not till I figured out what was in Rini's mind. This friend wanted me (moi) to work a certain Dali painting into the theme. She was enamored with "The Three Sphinxes". This involved reading reviews of this Dalian piece of ..er... art.
That done, I proudly arranged my wonderful collection of watercolors. Admired them. Got to work. Voila! Must confess.I produced something at the end of this labored, cerebral effort. Phew! Now lets see what the ( picky) publisher says!

OUP used my artwork and did a nifty layout!

Artinspiration

Gosh it would be easy if I could open a catalog and choose today's inspiration. How handy! But now..for those who are self-proclaimed artists this is probably the hardest thing.. and to keep ideas and concepts "original" is really the search for the Holy Grail. Take me for instance. I want to churn out ( wrong word unless I am an assembly line artist ?? paradox?) year-end gifts. Should they be cards? Aw..I do that every year. Should they be calendars? That way those who receive them will be grateful to me for the WHOLE year- see the ego? Now, do I personalize each calendar to suit the recepients? Put in birthdays of those in the family? You do know how big Indian families get? Should I look for professional spiral binding services.. should I get it all printed professionally? Aaarrggghh. So, what do I do? I sit and look through sites on the Internet and spend only 3 hours looking at other people's ideas..there goes creativity and orginality- straight out of the window! My head's buzzing with options. PRIORITIZE! Okay..first things first..lets go see what material we have and what we need. More agonizing and more confusion along the way..but, for now, go I must.