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…
Chocolate Brownie Cake
How do you treat your wedding anniversary? I treat it more like a day for introspection. When life starts for a couple, it is all rosy, irrespective of how rocky the start may be. We started our married life on some twists and turns but we lived through it, we enjoyed through it, we took life one day at a time. 3 years later, Rasha showed up into our life. I don’t know if I will call her the turn-around point, but how much ever I think otherwise, she is. HD started going into his own route of doing business and it is the same till date. Life has been a bit too fast, with very limited time that we get to spend with each other and more often, it is a fight for that little time we get. It is not easy if the hard work you…
Chocolate Crackles
I discovered this new group called Recipe Swap through Mayuriji. I had enjoyed the SRC so much that I was sure I would love this one too. So I landed up signing up for the group and participating in my first challenge! I feel it is always a pleasure to discover and interact with new blogs. My first blog assigned was Cook at Home by Sarah. As soon as her blog was assigned, I got to digging into it, scouring through pages after pages trying to decide what to cook from her blog. Meanwhile, I received an email from her to make things more interesting. A mini interview for me! The whole thing got me so excited… 😀 While I replied to her questions, I made sure I threw her a rapid fire round too… Do hop onto her post to see what she cooked from…
Vegan Chocolate Beetroot Muffins
Since I had the BM posts scheduled, I haven’t posted any happenings in my life in the past week. 🙂 I wouldn’t talk about the climate, as it makes me sad but let me talk about something else that made me really happy over this week. The last weekend, on Saturday, we all went for a trip to Global Village. A trip of bloggers was in pipeline from last year, but it took time to materialize and finally the last Saturday, we made it happen. Huma was our main guide and Priya, Zerin, Anamika, Jaleelakka, Fajee and our new UAE-ian Prema joined us for a little fun. We roamed for close to five hours, prop hunted, picked up interesting stuff, watched a few shows, chatted and ate through some of the delicacies. I have always gone to GV before but this time, the experience was quite different. Huma is…
Cold Mocha
This week marked the closure of this school term, or rather the school year. The girls have completed their final exams and are now relaxing. It’s almost a whole month of holiday, that umma wished I would send the girls to be with them. Unfortunately, airlines that fly towards our side of the world think that we are minting money and can afford to pay over-the-roof flight ticket charges. 😕 I think I better not get to that point, since it boils my nerves… hehe… Also, the temperatures are slowly soaring. We have hardly had any winter this time. Before we could even get a feel, it came and went. Right now, the mornings are cozy, the nights are breezy and comfortable but the sun is nice and hot. The temperatures may still show in its 20s but standing out for too long does get a tad uncomfortable in…
Easy Fudge Brownies
Most of the time, fudge brownies are associated with melted chocolate, but what if you have no time to really wait for it to melt and cool? I remember mentioning that during last Eid-ul-Fitr, we had an impromptu trip to Muscat to see my friend. Despite HD telling me that we may go, I wasn’t sure and then finally he broke the ice at 9 am that day morning, that we would leave by 3:.30 pm. You can imagine my panic – I hate going empty handed, that too to a best friend’s house and I had no time to go out and buy as such. In between preparing lunch, I searched through for an easy brownie recipe and ended up on this link on King Arthur’s website. Those who have tried recipes from their site will vouch how reliable they are, so I went ahead with it,…
Peanut Butter Banana Chocolate Chip Oat Cookies
Remember I had mentioned in this post how I used to land up with recipes while riding the metro? This cookie I am going to share with you is one of them. Thankfully, the article in the paper mentioned from which site it was and I hunted down the link for it too… This cookies is a mixture of sorts – all the ingredients used would anyway be there in the pantry, and is apt for finishing off anything remaining! Like a over-ripe banana nobody wants to eat and isn’t enough to bake a whole cake… or a peanut butter jar that is right there touching the bottom… These peanut butter oats cookies are full of goodness – sweetened with honey and the banana, flavored with peanut butter, having bites of rolled oats and then generous amount of chocolate chips! I have used half of chocolate peanut butter…
One Bowl Chocolate Cake | Easy Chocolate Cake
This weekend, the little one turned “not-so-little”. Azza is now officially 7, so what she got as her birthday gift is a lecture where she has to start helping thaatha with her chores and start praying as well. 😀 I don’t know whether she liked it or not, and her expression gave out nothing! Hehe… Everybody would tell me that girls tend to grow up faster, and I seem to have seen it with Rasha more than Azza. Azza still acts kiddish, compared to Rasha at that age. May it’s because she is the younger one. Whatever said and done, observing that her features are changing, considering that she has lost her milk teeth and they are being replaced by rabbit like huge teeth and it is overall changing her face, makes my heart twitch a bit. Don’t we search for the childish traits in our kids’ faces?…
Chocolate Chia Pudding
This year, I have decided to put less pressure on myself as far as blogging is concerned. Even though I still have loads in my drafts to complete, I am going to take it light. I have been wanting to do so since last year but it hasn’t happened. But this year, I am really going to concentrate on one post at a time and make it easy for me, so that I don’t loose the charm of blogging and can sustain my interest as much as I can. Let’s wait and watch out… 🙂 I am starting off with the Blogging Marathon #84 and the theme I chose was “New Year Challenges”. I am not a person who makes resolutions nor do I lecture anybody to do it too! If you are resolved at doing something, it is not necessary it needs to start with the new…
Eggless Chocolate Cake | Condensed Milk Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Icing
I was wondering if I should go on with the Bake-a-thon 2017 without a chocolate cake recipe and my mind said, NO! 😀 I had initially chosen to feature the Orange Almond Brownies while I was deciding which posts I should put in. Then my eyes fell on this one. One of the cakes that I made to gift my fellow bloggers while I went to see them and I totally enjoyed clicking them too. The time I clicked, I had left behind only one slice at home which disappeared from the counter top upon return! You can imagine the disappointment on the girls’ face once we returned back home. We finally traced the culprit, it was none other than B! 😀 So to cover up the disappointment, I had to make this cake one more time. So why was the cake delayed? I was…
Orange Almond Brownies
Sometimes, I really wonder about my girls. They are growing up at a pace that I have no control over. My younger one will turn 7 this January and I am still yearning for her to go back into her diapers! Those who read my blog regularly or follow me on other social media, know that I am working, with an 8 to 5 work schedule. Many also know that I now go for regular workouts during my working days, taking a break from it on Thursdays and Fridays. This means that by the time I am home after all the traffic, it is past 8 pm and at the bottom of my energy level. All I would want is to eat something, feed the kids and then push them off to sleep. Sometimes, I forget that they are children and I be at my worst behavior, screaming when…
Be My Guest – Dessert Taco with Twix Cream
I hope you are feeling glad to see the guest post series coming back to a normal schedule. 🙂 I am enjoying it a lot! I am glad that I restarted the series and getting the interest of lovely bloggers who will be gracing this space during the coming months, InShaAllah… so do stay tuned! 🙂 Meanwhile, this new kid on the block was due since July! I wanted her on board as a guest during Eid-ul-Fitr but Ramadan and her vacation spoiled our plans. Nonetheless, I left it to her to come back when she feels ready to do it. I believe guest posts have to be a relaxed affair. The host in the form of myself and the guest have to be comfortable with the arrangement. I also knew she would really not let me go with my request. While back home, we had spoken to each…
Vegan Chocolate Banana Bread
Can you believe October is ending? Then we will have just have two months left to complete this year. Each year seems to be passing on faster than the previous. Actually, it feels scary too. That we are getting older by the minute, we are moving faster towards the ultimate end… Everyday when I lie down, I wonder what I have done that day to make it special. Maybe it was just a mad rush of traffic, work, gym and home… with not even little time to read the Quran, to listen to it, talk to my kids properly, call my parents, even chat openly with HD… “Man is created hasty…” (Surah Al-Anbiya: start of verse 37) How many times have we forgotten that there is much more than the life in this world? 🙁 I am guilty of the same, day in and day out. Trying to balance…
Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
I am excited to be doing the review for a very cute and interesting upcoming cookbook! Miranda Couse, who blogs at “Cookie Dough and Oven Mitt” is releasing her cookbook called “The Easy Homemade Cookie Cookbook”, which is up for release on October 31 and up for pre-booking on Amazon. Since I am a pretty lazy cookie maker but a lover of cookbook reviews, I decided to jump at the opportunity and get it going. The book is published by Rockbridge Press and contains more than 150 recipes of classics, occasion special and other American favorites. The book starts off with a lovely introduction about how Miranda started the whole process of working on the cookbook and she dedicates it to the two cookie monsters in her family – her husband and little boy. The book then moves on to mentioning the essentials required for baking, and…
Chocolate Avocado Mousse
I sometimes wonder what makes good food bloggers stop blogging. There are many that I follow that have successful blogs and have been consistently blogging for many years, but there are some who have left it midway due to so many reasons. Sometimes I wish to ask and know why, but everybody has their personal reasons to keep aside their hobbies. I feel that for many, food blogging starts like a click. It just happens, just like it happened with me too. As you go ahead with blogging, you start realizing that getting people to read your blog and continuously keep coming to it is not easy. In fact, it is a lot of hard work plus a few flashes of good luck! I still haven’t got it, since I am not able to give time to promote my blog as much as I find time to do my…