As May comes to a close, it’s time for highs and lows (haha that rhymed)! May was good from a work point of view but somehow, I felt like I was re-living in May of 2020. Work was all over, workouts were scarce, and the chance to meet friends and family was not really in sight. Delhi is doing a lot better with the crisis though. It has the highest vaccination rates among cities and the distance between the people getting the virus and me is getting farther away.

Highs

• I got published in the media three times this month! Platform Magazine did a lovely coverage on my journey as a food blogger with a feature of the two ingredients chocolate mousse. I contributed (read: wrote the whole thing) to an article in Cosmopolitan India all about content creation strategies in 2021. The third one was more from an influencer strategy point of view for e4m where I share my thoughts on the future of baby influencers (TLDR: scary, non-consensual, but with a lot of growth from a business POV)

• India saw a scare of potential platforms Facebook and Twitter getting banned, which resulted in a huge bandwagon jump to Clubhouse. This was kind of exciting because I feel like a natural on audio. I hosted a more focused room on pulling audiences from my Instagram to CH, which was 90 minutes of way too much fun (and talking). The second was a room about how IG has changed the way we consume food with some very popular people in the Indian food industry which was kind of nerve-wracking, mostly because until last year most of these people were thought leaders in my head and now were (virtually) sitting on the same dais as I which was really interesting. I didn’t contribute to it a lot, but I would like to think that it was of value when I did. Click here to follow me

• The studio where I shoot, got a deep clean! I removed so much gunk that had been collecting for the last year. Natasha and I also bought a rack to stack up all the utensils that were overflowing the kitchen. Every tiny investment makes me feel even more committed to content creation. So happy!

Low

• As mentioned above, workouts took a hit. I began waking up by 6:30 and working out between 7:30 and 8— if at all. Dad too seems a lot less motivated than he has been in the past. I think we are all just hoping for gyms to be open sooner than later. I did find a workaround to the workout conundrum and starting scheduling a 20-minute cycle session in the evening. I did that for 4 days last week and I’m hoping to make it more regular this month!

• The inevitability of social media seems to be scaring me a little as well. The value of the content creator today comes from numbers on platforms as compared to the quality of the content which makes things like the government banning a social media platform, all the scarier. I am glad that there is a community of people that come to see the blog every month with about 15,000 average page views to the site. So glad for all of you because at the end of the day, this platform is one that I own and that is something no one can ever take away.

Oatmeal cookies are always steeped in nostalgia. For most of us, oatmeal raisin isn’t the first cookie of choice. It’s usually the second-best option. Don’t worry, it’s my plan B cookie too. But unlike a chocolate chip cookie, we all remember our first ORC (I made it an acronym nbd). Mine was the giant cookie from Subway. The idea that a super soft cookie where the texture doesn’t come from the fix-ins such as nuts or chocolate chips but the base ingredient of the cookie— the oatmeal is very much unique to the ORC over any other cookie out there. Two tips if you do make this: don’t skimp on the spices since they are the prime flavourings in the cookie and secondly, rolled oats with full husks are far better than instant oats so do invest in some nice oatmeal. Happy baking!

Glimpses of the week

Ingredients

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened, more for pans

1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed

⅓ cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground ginger

1.5 cups rolled oats

3/4 cup raisins

Method

1. Like most cookies, you need to mix the wet and dry ingredients in separate bowls. Use a hand mixer and whip up the butter along with your sugars. This allows for the sugar to mix well and reduces that annoying sugar crunch you commonly get.

2. Add eggs one by one so that you don’t spill much and continue to whip. Whipping is essential to incorporate air into the batter, which will lighten the batter and make for crispy tops and a less dense centre for the cookie!

3. For the dry ingredients, add flour, add spices, salt, and baking soda in a bowl. The spices along with the vanilla that I forgot to talk about in the wet ingredients are the only flavourings to the cookie. So, while they are optional, they will be the cookie's major flavour, so pick and choose what you like.

4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix well. Not too long since you dont want to overwork the flour and create gluten formation.

5. Add the oatmeal and the raisins and mix lightly. Dont worry if the batter is too firm. Once mixed stick into the freezer for 30 minutes to let the flavours settle. Preheat the oven to 180 Celcius at this time

6. Line a baking sheet with some baking paper or grease with butter. Take the bowl out and using an ice cream scoop, scoop out the batter. This is about 2 tablespoons of the batter about 6 cookies on a sheet. Stick it in the oven for about 9-13 minutes until the tops start browning. The batter will look a little undone but it will cook off once it cools completely!