This month, starting from today, you will see a lot of challenge related posts. I really wanted to give a push to the blog, so sometimes I just need to go overboard with my sign-ups. 🙂 I am a part of the Recipe Swap group, which is managed by Mir and guess what? For this month, I got assigned her blog! Now Mir’s blog, “The Schizo Chef“, is like an ocean. She is a truly cooking affectionado, who doesn’t shy away from trying any cuisine, even if it means out of her comfort zone. From her native Caribbean cuisine, to South American, to African, European and Asian, she is covering almost the whole world in her blog, one step at a time. If you really love international cuisine, then do hop in to her blog and be surprised! 🙂 I had a little tough time trying to figure…
Easy n Soft Cinnamon Rolls
I just have to pinch myself to believe that we are almost at the mid of this month. Days are literally flying in the real sense! The girls are travelling home by this month end, and I have so many things to finish before they can fly out. I really don’t know when I am going to find the time for all of it. 🙁 But InShaAllah, as always has been the case, somehow matters just work out in time, so hoping for the same too… Usually the month of June gets hot, and as expected, it is getting horribly humid. Cooking and baking is the last thing you want to do. The heat is energy sapping now itself, so wondering how the coming months are going to be. I can’t wait to go home in August, literally running away from here… 🙂 I never…
Pistachio Milk Cake
The last ten days of Ramadan always feels sweet and sad. Sweet – because the Almighty has promised the highest of rewards whoever does his good deeds and gets through the Night of Qadr. “We have sent it [the Quran] down in the Night of Qadr. And what may let you know what the Night of Qadr is? The Night of Qadr is much better than one thousand months. The angels and the Spirit descend in it, with the leave of your Lord, along with every command. Peace it is till the debut of dawn” (Q. 97). Sad – because the month is quickly coming to an end before you could even enjoy it completely. This Ramadan has been really hectic. I have been working on a few things this month and it has literally drained me. I have been having late nights almost everyday. But I have no…
Strawberry Summer Cake
It feels good to have a break at times. I was trying to arrange a stay-cation earlier this month, but due to conflicting schedules, I got it done over this weekend. I was praying that the weather wouldn’t be harsh, as usually April ends start getting quite hot and humid. Thankfully, everything went in our favor. Not that the weekend started off well. HD tried to help extra and in the process, my house was hit with a mini sandstorm and our vacuum cleaner conked off. Who wants to go on a stay-cation after cleaning the whole house? He sensed my panic attack and immediately moped the whole place, though that did very little to salvage my stress. But still, we somehow put it behind and pushed ourselves out. Once out the house, the mood was different. The drive was good. We relaxed a bit. Then the dad…
Mango Mousse Cake
I do sometimes thank God for making me keep posts pending to get to an opportunity. If you see, I rarely celebrate any personal occasion of mine except the girls’ birthdays or our anniversary. And today happens to be our anniversary number 15, Alhamdulillah. I almost forgot about it, actually speaking. Every April 14, I have done a post and actually, every year, the posts reflected how exactly I felt about him. The past six years I have been blogging, our marriage has been topsy turvy of sorts. I guess that happens to every family at some stage. At times, you wonder, how stupid you were to be or stay married to the man or the woman you are now with. But then after a few hours, the thoughts just tide over and gets replaced with something else. I guess that’s how life is, we need to wait for…
Cookie Butter/ Biscoff Chocolate Chunk Cookies
I haven’t been sharing much on the blog because it’s been the usual hussle-bussle. I won’t say nothing is happening in life… There is a lot happening but somehow I don’t want to sink myself into it. It is always better to try and stay afloat, rather than push yourself down and feel awful about it. From the start of the year, things haven’t been really positive, and that has stalled even my weight loss. I am not able to put in as much discipline into my eating as I had done last year, and this is frustrating me to the core. But I am trying to stay focused on myself and keeping myself on line, making sure that I don’t lose all the hard work that I have done last year. Maintenance is as important and sustainable at the stage I am in, I guess… 🙂 Talking…
Easy Pizza Rolls
For this week’s theme of “Kid’s Delight – Snacks and Bites” for the Blogging Marathon #98, I am jumping in with these Pizza Rolls that I baked for Rasha’s class party along with the Brookies. You must be wondering what did I make for Azza then. She came home saying that her teacher asked her to make some “healthy sandwich” and that too only 12 of them. I was a bit concerned. Only 12? And that too sandwich? I asked her again and again, and she kept saying “yes”. I ended up making chicken salad sandwich for her class, which didn’t take much time as Rasha’s goodies took. Anyway… 😀 Rasha actually wanted pizza. But then making mini pizza is a small pain, especially for a class party. So I convinced her that I would make rolls, so that they are easier to carry and eat. After thinking…
Brownie Cookie Bars | Brookies
Some recipes are meant to jump forward and make others wait. This is one. I will start this post with a story. 🙂 On February 14, the girls had their school class party. I can’t believe that this academic year is already ending for them. I have seen both of them go from “at least a little serious” to “not at all serious” phase. I don’t know if it is a thing of worry. Rasha has always been super cool about her studies, nothing bogs her down, not even low marks. But Azza was always concerned about her marks and her impression in front of the her teachers. But now she is losing it as well, and it is worrying me. She still gets upset at low marks but it doesn’t bother her as much as it used to. And they are moving into higher grades… 😕 OK,…
Eggless Carrot Cake
There is something called “warmth”. It is not necessarily only in our own relationships, but it reflects from even pure strangers. Have you felt that? I started experiencing it when I got into blogging and got to meeting a lot of blogger friends. I experience the same while posting stories on my Instagram handle. I never expected total strangers to actually echo with whatever I share. I try to keep it as raw as possible, because life can be very undermining now especially when everybody else’s looks very rosy. I don’t share much of myself but sometimes I do, and it feels good to be instantly recognized in between the crowd. I sincerely appreciate those who come and ask about me, and give me a heads up. It happened at a masjid over the weekend and umma was caught off guard. I couldn’t explain to her how she…
Wholemeal Bread
I am just glad that the first recipe for a full-on bread is going live on the blog today. 😀 I have made a lot of yeast-based bakes, but those are usually buns or recipes that weren’t something like a breakfast bread. I have tried so many bread recipes but each of them were a fail for so many reasons. The highest reason is my impatience. You need to knead your bread sufficiently and not add too much of flour. The time when the dough becomes non-sticky and elastic, is the time to stop. That is the time when gluten is formed and the bread will rise and look fluffy. There is a lot of science behind bread baking but I am no scientist and I don’t wish to take away the joy of cooking by mixing in science. 😀 But somehow, bread baking can be very stressful…
No-Bake Strawberry Cheesecake with Shortbread Crust
The expectation on a food blogger is immense. Each time I have guests at home, somehow they come to know that I run a food blog, and then they expect me to give them some awesome food. 😀 I don’t blame them. Nobody seems to understand that what I post on the blog is not even something that I cooked recently. My family will vouch that they haven’t eaten anything that is appearing now on the blog. I hardly make anything special these days. Life has become such a roller coaster ride. Weekends are as busy and time pressed as weekdays are. At the moment, I am focusing on a few more projects, which hopefully will materialize well, InShaAllah. My baking and cooking has literally taken a backseat. I haven’t lifted up my camera ever since my parents have landed. I actually feel sad when my props and…
Creme Caramel | Flan
I have always written very long posts for almost all my milestone posts on this blog. I have celebrated the blog birthdays, and then each time I achieved a number of posts on the blog, etc. Of late, I stopped celebrating. It started to make no sense to me. Should I say that they started to mean nothing to me? As this post goes live, the blog has completed 6 years old. I should have posted day before yesterday, but I wasn’t in a mood to clog up the posts on the blog. I wanted to give the posts some time, and myself some time too… Last year was a fight of sorts. I fought to keep my spirit of blogging. I fought to keep going. There were so many reasons to it. I started the blog as a diary of recipes for myself, and then it slowly…