The feeling of coming home is different, isn’t it? After a two month break, we are back to the Muslim Food Blogger Challenge. Due to dwindling participation and generally everyone being in a holiday mood – which translates into more house work and hyper kids, usually! – unanimously, we decided to give the challenge a well required break and come back to it with a fresh mind. Even though I missed hosting it, it gave me a breather that I didn’t have to make sure that I cook, participate and do all that comes with an event, especially when I would be on a holiday myself. I hope that this break has helped everybody in the group recuperate and come back to their blogging mojo. It isn’t easy to get back to blogging after a break even, unless and until the mind is rested well and you are…
Homemade Chamee Cheese | Emirati Cheese
You all know how passionate I am of wanting to share as much Emirati recipes I can on the blog. Though my access to these recipes are limited, I am trying my best to dig into sources and find them as much as I can. I do have a few in my drafts and may more in hand, waiting to be tried, InShaAllah. I hope I can slowly keep filling in the section and make this blog a one-stop for the beautiful Emirati cuisine. 🙂 Cheese is a very integral part of Emirati food. They serve cheese with almost everything. If I tell you that it’s the golden Kraft bottle that sells the best here, you need not be surprised. Cheese is used to dip in their breads and chebaab, and as spread into their sandwiches, especially the ever favorite Oman chips sandwich. But apart from the spreadable…
Yogurt Rice Pudding
I guess as I finish up the theme “Single Serving Dessert” for the Blogging Marathon #90, I get to a recipe that fits the theme perfectly. While the Sticky Date Pudding and the Strawberry Fool were made for more than one, but served individually, this Yogurt Rice Pudding is just for one serving! I had mentioned earlier that I am on quantitative nutrition, and I am allowed to eat certain foods in certain quantities. This approach has actually made me realize that I am intolerant of milk and I may not be using it frequently as I used to in the future for sure. I wanted to make a dessert all for myself that fit into my macros and that is how this pudding was born. I was actually in two minds, then I thought, “It’s just for me. Why am I even thinking?” I am so…
Kai Pathiri/ Orotti ~ Malabar Rice Pancakes
HD is a sucker for anything traditional. As far as food is concerned, he is less fussy – the only requirement he has is the food has to be fresh. But nothing is best for him than a homely meal of rice, curry and fish for lunch, and even better, some pathil with mutta curry (egg curry). In our side of Kerala, it is nice pathiri or the thin rice pancakes. Nope, I still don’t have a recipe on the blog. Such a shame, right? 🙁 I hardly make it, and each time I make it, I want to get done with it! I have received requests to make video of it too… I sincerely hope I can do it soon. My first experience with this thick pathiri was when I got married. My first impression was definitely not good. It was thick and any amount of curry…
Banana Cocoa Waffles
The feeling of emptiness is a real tough one. After having a chirping noisy house for the past one month, and a back breaking crazy sessions over the past 12 days, my house is empty. Yesterday afternoon, my kids left for their vacation along with my parents and then at night, my sister and her son bid farewell. It felt all too soon… The house looked so deserted, with everything just left as it is. Today, I have to slowly start putting things in place and make the house look like how it did before. I am looking at the whole thing positively. Last year, my kids and I were apart for more than 5 weeks, but this time, it is shorter. I will be travelling by month end, and it’s not that far away. Moreover, it’s a good time to get back to my routine. The past…
Omelette in Microwave | Mug Omelette
If you have a microwave in your home, then there is no excuse of missing breakfast, isn’t it? 🙂 When I selected eggs as my “Protein Rich Ingredient” theme in the Blogging Marathon #88 – the other posts being Double Cheese Omelette and Akuri, I really wanted to try the omelette in mug, which has been doing rounds for quite some time. With the microwave oven becoming a part of almost all households, despite what all negative image it may have, we all still use it for something or the other. It makes a lot of cooking quite easy especially when you have some time constraints. I wouldn’t say that this omelette tastes as good as the one you make slowly on a frying pan, but for breakfast on the go, this is such a good option. My only advice if you are trying this is to…
Akuri ~ Parsi Scrambled Eggs
I love umma’s scrambled eggs so much that I have never tried making any other way or even trying to eat it from out. 😀 So when this month’s theme came in for the Blogging Marathon #88 and I decided on choosing egg as my “Protein Rich Ingredient”, my attention went into trying a creamy scrambled eggs, associated with the Parsi community, called “Akuri”. The name of the dish is itself very cute, isn’t it? The difference between the Egg Burji and Akuri lies in it’s basic preparation method and ingredients. The Akuri is quite spicy, with the green chililes and red chilli powder used, so if you can’t take the spice, disregard the green chilli. I actually regretted adding the only one I used. I kept biting into it, and gulping down water to tame my tongue. 😀 The main thing for your Akuri to be…
Double Cheese Omelette with Sauteed Mushrooms
I seriously needed some push and motivation to continue my blogging. Even though you can see posts appearing on my blog, there is a lot of mental struggle behind it happening. When Valli’s post on the Blogging Marathon #88 was up, I decided to let my lack of motivation get a hit and signed up for two weeks. This week, the theme is “Protein Rich Ingredients” and I chose to focus on something that I am having on a daily basis now – eggs. Eggs is one ingredient that wasn’t without a bad name until some time. Eating eggs on a daily basis was taboo, especially considered to be a source of fat and weight gain. When I had my first attempt at losing weight, which happened when Rasha was 2, I was told to eat maximum three eggs a week. When I am repeating my attempt to…
Wholewheat Buttermilk Waffles
Remember the Secret Recipe Club? I was able to participate only in very limited challenges before the club called it a day. It was a pretty saddening time for almost all participants of this amazing club, since it was a really interesting challenge and everybody who participated in it enjoyed it to the maximum. When Sarah declared on the group FB page that she would be conducting a Reunion Reveal Day for this challenge, I had to jump in, even though I wasn’t sure how I would manage the challenge in between my hectic schedule. However, knowing me, I know I wouldn’t rest till I finish the challenge off. Hehe… So finally the email arrived, I was assigned Amy’s Cooking Adventures. She and I were in different groups during the SRC times so I never got her blog. As soon as the email came, I jumped onto her…
Mango Banana Overnight Smoothie
Tenth of the month and it is time for the Muslim Food Blogger’s Challenge! This month, I decided to keep the theme really simple hoping for more participation. 🙂 The theme was breakfast… Breakfast is definitely one of the most important meal of the day. It is fuel to the body that has released itself of all the previous day food given to it for processing. Living in a country like UAE where life starts really early mainly by getting stuck in traffic for hours, most of us seem to just skip breakfast rather than trying to have it. But now I guess with changing mentalities on general health and fitness, everybody seems to be taking breakfast a little seriously. I am somebody who always carries something or the other in my bag to have it in the office, or if I don’t get the time, I would…
Aloo Poha | Batata Poha ~ Beaten Rice Flakes with Potatoes
I am feeling sad. Winter seems to be going. We had a warm weekend and being in the kitchen wasn’t really comfortable. 🙁 We have had only one big rain this whole season and that is disheartening enough. Let’s hope there will be some rains before the summers officially start. Otherwise, the weekend was good. We dropped in to see HD’s local friend’s new born at the hospital. Their hospitality is amazing – they broke my diet royally by offering me too many sweets and also sending us off with a humongous box of chocolate that I have hidden in the fridge so that the girls don’t binge eat! Yesterday, we did a simple mall trot along with some grocery and then at night, I had to struggle to finish off my tasks for the day – always happens! My idea of eating poha – called aval in…
Kayi Curry ~ Malabar Sweet Plaintain Curry
In Malabar, we cook a lot with plantains, aka kaaya, kaayi, nenthrapazham… it is known by various names. There are so many ways we recycle our ripe plantains – it becomes nirachathu, a part of paal vazhakka, a combination with kooka or semiya, tossed up with eggs or with aval or just with coconut, as a part of puttu or becoming pradhaman, and how can we forget the favorite way of many Keralites – pazhampori and if it’s for the Malabar, then it’s unnakkaaya! I guess I have noted down all the ways that I have tried them into my cooking, even though there are many more ways, which InShaAllah, I will . Every Keralite will stock up their homes with ripe plantains, mainly because they are a very handy breakfast when you don’t want to cook anything and gets transformed into a snack, for unexpected guests! Such a versatile…
Vegan Soda Waffles
Yet another weekend comes to an end. Nothing much interesting happened, except for some new trials that turned out to be good, Alhamdulillah. It is getting colder by the day, which is a good sign that the winters are on, but the only issue is that at times it does get warm all of a sudden, leaving a very uncomfortable vibe in the air. We went visiting my schoolmate who had her second child a couple of weeks ago, so the girls were excited to see the little hands and feet. 🙂 Apart from that, it was a very normal weekend, though I wouldn’t say I was able to relax as much as I would have loved to! 😀 Finally the first waffle recipe is on the blog! Hehe… this isn’t the first waffle I cooked at home. Waffles are nothing but a fancy looking pancake, or at…
Cheesecake Granola Dessert Jar
I was really thinking of posting this on V-Day but I don’t celebrate it, then why should I wait till then! 😉 This was my attempt to salvage a failed attempt at making the wobbly cotton cheesecake. It wasn’t wobbly, nor fluffy, just an awfully sweet mirror of a cheesecake. Thankfully I had made a small portion, but still didn’t want to trash it. It was then this was born. I just had a small quantity of chocolate granola left which wasn’t sufficient to make up for breakfast. That is when I layered them into a glass bottle, stored it in the fridge for it to settle and had it as dessert. It was amazing. The cheesecake and granola paired so well, though I was a bit doubtful initially. Moreover, they looked really pretty as well. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of it… Hehe… If you…
Papaya Chia Overnight Smoothie
After the Chocolate Chia Pudding and the Laban Overnight Oats, here is the third overnight breakfast idea, for the Blogging Marathon #84 under the theme “New Year Challenges”. I have already shared an overnight smoothie recipe before. Like I mentioned in that post, an overnight smoothie is for people who want to eat oats but not in its bite format as is in most of the overnight oats. I had made this smoothie when I landed up with a papaya which was hardly sweet enough to keep in the mouth! I love papayas and each time I get a chance to eat it, I would have one whole without even sharing it! I have now one competition in the form of Rasha – I discovered her love for papaya this time when we were on vacation. She literally snatched the last piece of papaya right out of her…