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…
Sour Cream Cheesecake
Stress takes away the sweetness from everything. Don’t you agree to me? Of late, there has been too much stress in the air – whether it’s internal or external. When everything around you seems to project negativity, it slowly seeps into your positivity and thoughts, how much ever you try to push it away. It affects even more when the person involved is in your close circle. I am literally hoping, InShaAllah, that whatever is causing the stress will melt off. I have seen in the past that whatever we worry about, Allah opens up certain doors and then you are wondering, “Why did I even stress?” I have this habit of watching birds as I get stuck in traffic. The season is changing, so you get to see a lot of migratory birds. I always look at them with a lot of hope. Looking at them reminds…
Paneer Capsicum Rice
For the third post for the Blogging Marathon #93 theme for the week, “One Ingredient, 3 ways”, here is a rice that I have fallen in love with recently! Not only because of its taste, but because of its simplicity to cook it! Like I mentioned earlier, even since I have been on quantified eating, I have been prepping my meals a lot. One of it is the rice. Cooking little quantity of rice everyday can be daunting, so I cook the rice for the whole week, weight them individually for days and pack them in dabbas. By doing this, it used to make my life easy. Since I had to have paneer for my protein, and some form of vegetable, this combination of capsicums with paneer became my favorite. I guess majority of my nights, my meal was this. I never clicked it because I never thought…
Paneer Matar Masala | Matar Paneer
For this week’s Blogging Marathon #93, the theme I had chosen was “One Ingredient – 3 ways” and the ingredient I chose was “paneer”. After the first recipe of the Kadai Paneer, here is another paneer gravy. If you really go to see, there is one standard way of making paneer gravies. A ground paste of onion and tomato is used as a base and the seasonings are adjusted as per your needs. Since paneer in itself is rich, you can skip the use of cream in the gravy. But to make paneer taste and look more tempting, the use of cream or yogurt – to make it more guilt free – is always recommended. I would like to emphasis on the use of kasuri methi. A sprinkling of crushed kasuri methi just lifts up the whole spirit of a simple paneer dish. So whatever said and done,…
Kadai Paneer
I always look forward to doing the Blogging Marathon. Last month, the group had a mega marathon of 26 flatbreads and every one who participated did an amazing job with compiling them on their blogs. I, for one, would never be able to do it! Sometimes, with the way my interest in cooking is spiralling down despite cooking on and off, I sometimes wonder if I will be able to pull up even posts for the BM. Hehe… I guess we all go through such a phase in life where we just loose our interest. I am trying hard to hold on to it and hopefully it doesn’t slip through my fingers… 😉 Coming to the topic I chose for the next three days for this first week of Blogging Marathon #93, it is “One Ingredient – 3 ways” and the one ingredient I chose is paneer. There…
Vendakka Kichadi ~ Okra in Yogurt Sauce
After so many months, I took to participating in the Shh Cooking Challenge this month. I have been wanting to participate ever since they started the challenge of cooking from Indian states – only doing Goa, but somehow or the other, I was not able to give in my name. First of all, I was on the phase of watching my eating, and secondly, my family at times are dicey with their food, if not always. So I was worried – if I cook something different and they won’t eat it, then what is the point in it appearing on the blog? When the declaration came on the group that it would be Kerala on the spotlight following the aftermath of the disastrous floods, I jumped into it. After all, it’s my state, and there is so much for me to explore of its own food! I was paired…
Pear Cinnamon Cake
So after two plain Hot Milk Cake and Chocolate Buttermilk Cake, let me present you a full on, mouthful bake! I love baking with fruits and it is evident with the amount of cakes that have fruits included in it. My first and only pear bake was this one, which I totally loved, so when this recipe was posted by Ms. Zanam Fijas on a FB group, I had to save it up and try. It is definitely one of the rare recipes that I baked as soon as I landed up on the recipe! 😀 As far as I am concerned, it was that tempting! Cinnamon is a beautiful spice. But it can be a turn off too, if not used in the correct amount. Somehow, I hate the taste of cinnamon in bakes that we get to buy from outside. I feel they are just too…
Chocolate Buttermilk Cake
Sometimes, I feel the vacation hasn’t really helped me get rid of the tiredness. Or is it that I really need to tweak my timings? It feels like my chores just take away the joy of my time. For the time I wake up till the time I sleep, there is a constant rush of activities going on – whether it’s packing the kids’ lunch box to prepping my meals to getting stuck in traffic to work – which is Alhamdulillah a blessing, I must say! – to the traffic back, and then working out and then going home to more chores that never seem to end. At times, it drains up my energy, but then I tell myself that there are people who look for the kind of life that I have. Always, the other side is greener, isn’t it? 🙂 I am now trying to see…
Hot Milk Cake
It’s been long since I have done a three back-to-back series. Since I have been doing the Blogging Marathon on and off, I had decided to give the series some rest. Also, my drafts are dwindling so it may mean that I won’t get three drafts that go with a theme. 🙂 Thankfully, this time I do have some from my drafts, so let’s push it through! With the climate slowly getting better, the mood for coffee and cake pushes up in the evening. I love simple cakes, no icing and all. You may have a look at all the cakes that I have on the blog and notice one thing – not many have frosting on it. Even though frosting makes a cake look and taste better, somehow I like plain cakes. They are easy to make, quick to eat and frosting is always messy! Call me lazy……
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…
Vegetable Kurma | Cheat Version!
With life getting so hectic, cooking has taken a back seat. I do a lot of meal prepping for myself and for the family, I settle down with meals that are really easy to cook. I am trying to update some 30 minute meals on this blog and hopefully will try to update my old posts with the tag so that I can feature it on my sidebar for easy review, InShaAllah. There’s a lot of polishing to be done on my old posts, I will slowly work on that part and try to update all the categories and tags by the end of this year. I am hoping I will be able to look into those by slowing down on my blogging. Let’s see… 🙂 Meanwhile, bringing you one of the best easy fix curries I have made… There was this blog called Chef El Dente that…
Chocolate Banoffee Pie
It is exciting to come back to one of my favorite challenges – the Fantastical Food Fight hosted by Sarah. I always look forward to her emails with the theme and most of the time, feel sad if the theme is interesting and I am unable to participate! You can find all my posts related to this challenge here. While on vacation, I was casually checking my emails, I came across her email and checked it, thinking in my mind that I won’t be participating in it since I may not get into the frame of cooking for the blog. All of a sudden, my eyes fell on the theme and it literally popped out. “B-A-N-A-N-A”! Do I sound like a Minion? I think I was one previously. 😀 I am a literal monkey when it comes to bananas. I totally love it. Any variety of banana, I…