While I chose the theme “Sweets without Refined Ingredients” for the Blogging Marathon #94, I had no doubts in my mind regarding this particular one I am making today. Dates bliss balls have been doing rounds for all obvious and good reasons! All ingredients that go into making it are very healthy – whether it’s the dates, the nuts, coconut oil or cocoa powder. It is one of the safest bet to get your sugar fix when you really crave for it. All you need is one ball – take it in your hand, choose a comfortable corner, and slowly chew to enjoy it. It makes you feel really good after eating and your sugar cravings get fixed without a hint of sugar! How cool is that! 🙂 Dates is something I always have at home, but making these balls took too much time. I made…
Honey Yogurt Cheesecake
Time for the Blogging Marathon #94! As usual I am participating two weeks this month too. The first theme I chose was “Sweets without Refined Ingredients”. I guess the title is so apt with the way I am trying to adjust my relationship with sugar and sweets in general. The quantified eating done for a majority of this year has actually refined my tastebuds quite a bit. I can still take sugar in little, but I can’t take it if it goes overboard. I simply can’t touch it! Of late, I have been hating ice creams from out, since I feel it is overtly sweet. The latest I loved was Godiva, which was mildly sweet and creamy, but thanks to its price, I will keep it as a occasional treat! 😉 So coming back to the theme, we had to make sweets that didn’t have any refined ingredients,…
Barley Pomegranate Green Salad
When you are working, you automatically wait for the weekends. Not that it is going to be your rest time, but somehow you will feel at ease. This week is going to be a long one, Alhamdulillah. I am not very excited, since we don’t have much of plans and I actually don’t want any plans too. Maybe just a long drive, or a movie with the kids at home is what I hope for. The mood to move out and have some fun time has somehow diminished now – I don’t know if it’s the catching up of age or something else. 😀 Coming to the recipe for today… It’s an Emirati style salad that I have adapted from here. What I love about this salad is that it has a lovely combination of healthy carbs in the form of barley, and loads of greens in it….
Low Carb Cauliflower Pizza
This weekend, we had a freak accident. What was supposed to be a relaxed day went a bit berserk. In a very action filled evening, HD’s right eye got hit by the edge of the fly stick and he was immediately writhing in pain. We immediately rushed out but since it was a Friday, most of the clinics didn’t have their ophthalmologists on duty. We did a run to the hospital, and then in one hour, was relieved to know that there was nothing much except a couple of scratches, which will heal slowly. Considering the fact that the hit was quite hard, the diagnosis was very relieving. The comical situation was that since the hit happened from my side, HD commented to the nurse that I had tried to attack him and he is going to take an insurance against me. 😕 Sometimes I wonder why are husbands…
Basboosa | Middle Eastern Semolina Cake
This month marks two years of the Muslim Food Blogger’s Challenge. It is an amazing feeling. I have been coordinating this event since the beginning and Alhamdulillah, am satisfied with the way the sisters have taken this challenge in their stride, trying to participate in every challenge possible. This year, we did only 9 challenges, taking a break during the summer months. As was done last year, this year also as part of the anniversary challenge, members are free to choose one of the themes of the previous months and repeat them. Below are the themes we had done over the past year and my posts for each: December 2017 – Arabic sweets January 2018 – Cooking with ingredient: Olives February 2018 – Cooking from cuisine: Bangladesh March 2018 – Breakfast April 2018 – Trying from a blog: This Muslim Girl Bakes May 2018 – Ramadan food from the…
Tang Milkshake
When I was on vacation this time, Abidha (Insightful Grace – unfortunately her blog is cancelled so is its FB and IG page. 🙁 ) was in Tirur for a staycation. Unfortunately, we couldn’t meet up. It is not easy to travel back home without anybody, especially people like us who are clueless of routes and places. The only day I got so close to where she stayed was the day before I traveled back, and they weren’t there at home. During our chat, she was lamenting over the Tang milkshake that she got in many of her husband’s relative houses. That is when I remembered that I had clicked this and kept it pending in my draft since really long. She literally hated drinking it, while I reminded her that we eagerly wait for somebody to serve this for us. 😀 I have no clue who invented…
Malabar Avial/ Aviyal
It was a really happening weekend for me. The Sharjah Book Fair opened to the public over the weekend, and I went there on Friday and Saturday. The Friday agenda was to attend my dear blogger friend Faji’s book launch. Yes, she is finally an author of her own cookbook, Faji’s HotPot. I was anyway going, but in the afternoon, I was greeted by a message from her and her husband, insisting that I be the first purchase at the launch. I was totally overwhelmed but anyway, accepted it, thinking it would be fine. Least did I expect that I would be called to share stage and talk a few words! It did make me a nervous wreck altogether – I have a fear of public speaking, though I have been into it at school and college – feels like eons now! 😀 We had an amazing function, Fajee…
Indori Shahi Shikanji
It is the last day of the month and I am doing the Shh Cooking Secretly Challenge this month too! It’s been long since I have done it back to back, and slowly trying to get back to trying and cooking new recipes as much as I can. This month, our selected state was Madhya Pradesh and I was assigned Sujata as my partner. Sujata’s blog is a treasure of traditional Bengali recipes and she cooks to keep her beautiful family happy. It was really nice to be on board with her. We had a brief discussion on the ingredients for this challenge. She gave me two simple ingredients of cardamom and saffron. My mind was literally dancing, since I had done a little search of the cuisine of Madhya Pradesh and my mind only wanted to make the Shahi Shikanji. Shikanji is usually the name…
Warm Chicken Salad
Rasha is at a very peculiar age. She is on her way to 12 and sometimes I get jitters thinking that she is growing up so fast. But still, sometimes I see my little girl in her, always excited about anything that comes her way. Last week, we were having a chat as I was driving with the girls to get some grocery. She was talking about her English class. They recently concluded their exams and the paper had an essay to be written about “Kerala Floods”. The teacher commented that many of them just wrote a couple of sentences and ended the “essay”. However, there were a couple of students who missed to see the “l” in the “floods” and wrote very narratively about Kerala Foods. I am not surprised that the teacher said she had a rumbling tummy while correcting the paper during the midnight. 😀 I…
Wholemeal Banana Bread
I always feel it isn’t necessary to make something fresh for breakfast like the Muhalla or the Capsicum Olive Omelette, for the Blogging Marathon #93 theme I chose for this week, “Easy Breakfast”. I am somebody who loves to bake something and keep ready for breakfast at times, be it on weekdays or even better, for weekends. This Wholemeal Banana Bread perfectly fits the bill for a delicious and healthy breakfast without much effort in the morning! This recipe appeared on the King Arthur site as the recipe for 2018. I love their website and refer it to a lot of times for perfect recipes. So I was sure that this bread would be a winner too. I hardly made changes to the recipe – used wholemeal flour for baking it, reduced the sugar a tad bit and used a mix of oil and butter, since I feel…
Capsicum Olive Omelette
I love eggs for breakfast – period! When I started quantitative nutrition, the best thing I loved is that I could eat eggs everyday to cover my protein and fat requirements. Yaay! 😀 So when I do a post for the Blogging Marathon #93 under the theme “Easy Breakfast”, what is easier than having an egg meal? I have already posted a couple of my favorite omelette recipes here and here, but this one takes the cake! I love capsicum and try to include it into most of the meals I can. I keep a small bowl of chopped capsicum so that it becomes easy in the rush to just sprinkle them on while making the omelette. A bottle of sliced green olives is also a part of my pantry, since the whole family can finish a bottle in one sitting. Combining both these vegetables into this delicious…
Muhalla | Mhala ~ Emirati Date Crepes
You may have noticed that when it comes to selecting themes for the Blogging Marathon, I always go for something easy so that I can accommodate it in. 😀 This week, I have chosen a theme for version #93 that I am generally bad at – “Easy Breakfast”. Even though everybody tells you that breakfast is the most important meal, there are so many opinions coming up on how much important that meal can be. No doubt, if you need to feel at your best, you need to ensure that your tummy is in tact. This case goes really true with kids. Schools start so early these days, that eating is a task. My girls have just a cup of milk or sometimes breakfast cereal and go. Sometimes they eat oats or upma but nothing more than that. If I make, they keep grumpy faces. So I literally…
Easy Moussakka | Eggplant Meat Casserole
Even though I have always mentioned that my kids are picky, I am grateful for the men that I have in my life. Whether it’s HD or B, they love to eat experimented dishes. I don’t need to worry about them not eating if I am upto making something different. I know many women don’t have that liberty. If the man of the house won’t eat, naturally you won’t be inclined to make dishes as such. Whether it’s the Baked Rice Casserole or the Fish Pie, which don’t even have any remote Indian tastes, it was accepted wholeheartedly and finished in my house, Alhamdulillah. But yes, the girls crimp their foreheads and eat a little – they love naadan food, but I really don’t care. They need to get used to have a maverick ummi who likes to experiment at times. 😀 Moussakka was something that I had…
Chicken Curry Pasta
Time for one of my favorite challenges, the Fantastical Food Fight! This month happens to be National Pasta Month and Sarah couldn’t have chosen anything apt that making anything with pasta! Since the theme was quite easy, I had to jump at it. I would have made pasta every week if my folks would eat. 🙁 HD and B likes it, but the girls are always so-so. Pasta is one of the easiest and laziest meals you can make and I wouldn’t be surprised if anybody told me that they made it multiple times a week. This Chicken Curry style pasta has a lot of memories to it. In the UAE, a lot of men live together in bachelor accommodation and they would usually cook their own meals then, unlike now, where they would simply flock the nearby restaurant. Every year, D and B would have an Iftar…
Banana Orange Smoothie
Of late, I have been reducing my work on new posts and concentrating on updating some of my old post of the categories, tags, SEO, etc. just to make searching on the blog easier. It was like a walk in the memory lane for me. This blog has been a little diary for me and has many incidents noted down in it. I guess it is of late that I haven’t been sharing much on the blog, because sometimes I feel there is nothing much happening that is worth being a memory. At times, I wish my girls were still small. As they grow up, they tend to become different individuals altogether. Then I remind myself that even I never remained the same, why should I think restrictive of my kids? Keeping aside my mood, let’s come to this delicious smoothie. I am a smoothie person, you all…