I don’t know if you have been noticing but of late, I have been quiet silent with documenting my life or feelings. There was a time when I would write a lot on blog. Somehow, that has gone on the negative side these days. It isn’t that I don’t write my posts, I still do type a lot. Sometimes they are long, sometimes they are crisp and short. But whatever said and done, there is no philosophy, there are no thoughts being reflected, nothing much being shared. If you feel that I am being a bit mentally away from the blog, then I may have to say a ‘yes’. I am not sure how I would term the feeling but as much as I love the blog, I am trying to keep a little distance to keep myself from not getting over it. Having seen so many of…
White Chocolate Goji Berry Blondies
At times, ideas play constantly in your head for a long period of time, but it doesn’t necessarily get materialized immediately. It always happens to me. Before I used to put into immediate action any craving or any idea I would have. But now, due to time constraints and other priorities, I often put my ideas onto the back seat. Sometimes I note it down, sometimes I simply forget. This white chocolate blondies were one that have been playing in my head since very long. I had picked up a couple of packs of cooking white chocolate that was up for a good deal. I had this pack of goji berries that Zerin had given me some time. The girls wouldn’t eat it since it had a sour after taste. I would nibble on them when I would remember that it was sitting in the fridge. When the…
Peanut Butter Brownies
This Sunday night, my girls went home. I was under so much stress over this past week due to this. I had few sleepless nights and thanks to that, I landed up with a massive headache. I must blame myself for not doing complete research before I took the tickets. My elder one is 12 and is automatically now an adult as per ticketing terms. Based on this, I booked both of them together, only to realize that for the eight year old to travel, she needs to be accompanied by an adult who is 16 years and above. I did try through all my channels to see if there were any family travelling on the same flight, but I received no good news. Once we went inside the airport, we realized that everyone was scattered and that made it even more challenging. HD was trying to keep…
Simple Egg Muffins | Breakfast Egg Muffins
Making these egg muffins have been on my agenda since God-knows-when. Somehow, it just wouldn’t happen. So when I chose the theme “Savory Bakes” for the Blogging Marathon #101, I had told myself that I have to bake this somehow for this series. Even though this is the second post of the series, I had baked it only last week. Eggs are a good source of protein and fat, and we all know it. It has recently shed all its bad name and come into the group of super-foods. A couple of eggs in the morning or as evening snack can keep you satiated for quite a long time. I love eggs and eat at least two every day, especially after I have started my weight loss journey. If there is something that is present 24×7 in my pantry, then it is eggs. Most of the time I…
Cuca De Banana | Brazilian Banana Coffee Crumb Cake
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…