While I chose the theme “Sweets without Refined Ingredients” for the Blogging Marathon #94, I had no doubts in my mind regarding this particular one I am making today. Dates bliss balls have been doing rounds for all obvious and good reasons! All ingredients that go into making it are very healthy – whether it’s the dates, the nuts, coconut oil or cocoa powder. It is one of the safest bet to get your sugar fix when you really crave for it. All you need is one ball – take it in your hand, choose a comfortable corner, and slowly chew to enjoy it. It makes you feel really good after eating and your sugar cravings get fixed without a hint of sugar! How cool is that! 🙂 Dates is something I always have at home, but making these balls took too much time. I made…
Barley Pomegranate Green Salad
When you are working, you automatically wait for the weekends. Not that it is going to be your rest time, but somehow you will feel at ease. This week is going to be a long one, Alhamdulillah. I am not very excited, since we don’t have much of plans and I actually don’t want any plans too. Maybe just a long drive, or a movie with the kids at home is what I hope for. The mood to move out and have some fun time has somehow diminished now – I don’t know if it’s the catching up of age or something else. 😀 Coming to the recipe for today… It’s an Emirati style salad that I have adapted from here. What I love about this salad is that it has a lovely combination of healthy carbs in the form of barley, and loads of greens in it….
Tang Milkshake
When I was on vacation this time, Abidha (Insightful Grace – unfortunately her blog is cancelled so is its FB and IG page. 🙁 ) was in Tirur for a staycation. Unfortunately, we couldn’t meet up. It is not easy to travel back home without anybody, especially people like us who are clueless of routes and places. The only day I got so close to where she stayed was the day before I traveled back, and they weren’t there at home. During our chat, she was lamenting over the Tang milkshake that she got in many of her husband’s relative houses. That is when I remembered that I had clicked this and kept it pending in my draft since really long. She literally hated drinking it, while I reminded her that we eagerly wait for somebody to serve this for us. 😀 I have no clue who invented…
Warm Chicken Salad
Rasha is at a very peculiar age. She is on her way to 12 and sometimes I get jitters thinking that she is growing up so fast. But still, sometimes I see my little girl in her, always excited about anything that comes her way. Last week, we were having a chat as I was driving with the girls to get some grocery. She was talking about her English class. They recently concluded their exams and the paper had an essay to be written about “Kerala Floods”. The teacher commented that many of them just wrote a couple of sentences and ended the “essay”. However, there were a couple of students who missed to see the “l” in the “floods” and wrote very narratively about Kerala Foods. I am not surprised that the teacher said she had a rumbling tummy while correcting the paper during the midnight. 😀 I…
Capsicum Olive Omelette
I love eggs for breakfast – period! When I started quantitative nutrition, the best thing I loved is that I could eat eggs everyday to cover my protein and fat requirements. Yaay! 😀 So when I do a post for the Blogging Marathon #93 under the theme “Easy Breakfast”, what is easier than having an egg meal? I have already posted a couple of my favorite omelette recipes here and here, but this one takes the cake! I love capsicum and try to include it into most of the meals I can. I keep a small bowl of chopped capsicum so that it becomes easy in the rush to just sprinkle them on while making the omelette. A bottle of sliced green olives is also a part of my pantry, since the whole family can finish a bottle in one sitting. Combining both these vegetables into this delicious…
Banana Orange Smoothie
Of late, I have been reducing my work on new posts and concentrating on updating some of my old post of the categories, tags, SEO, etc. just to make searching on the blog easier. It was like a walk in the memory lane for me. This blog has been a little diary for me and has many incidents noted down in it. I guess it is of late that I haven’t been sharing much on the blog, because sometimes I feel there is nothing much happening that is worth being a memory. At times, I wish my girls were still small. As they grow up, they tend to become different individuals altogether. Then I remind myself that even I never remained the same, why should I think restrictive of my kids? Keeping aside my mood, let’s come to this delicious smoothie. I am a smoothie person, you all…
Wholemeal Pancakes
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…
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…
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…
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…
Light Lemon Curd
I did mention in my last post in July that I would be travelling primarily for my B’s wedding. Alhamdulillah, we had a lovely time. Even though it did rain prior to the wedding, the wedding day was quite dry, with the rain starting at night. The week that followed was when the whole excess raining caused heavy flooding in so many areas of Kerala. It so happened that he and his wife went for their trip to Langkawi, and then had their return tickets cancelled, which in turn end up with them flying into Dubai as it was the best option available in every way. As I type, I have my sister-in-law at home with us, and they leave during this weekend to go home. She has stayed with my parents for only a single day and can’t wait to go back to explore them more. 😉 Her…
Oats Mushroom Soup
When I come back from vacation, I tend to feel emotionally low, at least for a few weeks, till life settles and runs into routine. I guess it’s the same with many of us. This time, due to the floods that some part of Kerala went through, I had a problem with my return. For us, the closest airport is Calicut and I always take my tickets for travel there, but this time, my wish to see Kochi airport overrode and I decided to travel there. For us, Kochi is almost three hours drive during off-peak and I better not hint on how long it can take during peak! But I must tell you, it is such a beautiful airport! I mean, I haven’t seen so much cleanliness back home anywhere, so it did give me a pleasant surprise to see how clean it is. Coming back to the…
Omelette Paneer Roll
Do you see some connection here? While doing the posts for the Blogging Marathon #90 for the theme “Wrap and Rolls”, I unconsciously went with all egg recipes! Whether the Kolkata Egg Rolls or the Egg Toasties and now this one, all are with eggs! 😀 So it feels like I did a theme within the theme! Hehe… I had mentioned earlier that at the moment, I am on a quantified diet, ie. I get to eat limited stuff within my macros. Alhamdulillah, I have been able to steadily lose weight and am very happy with my progress. I now have the last block of weight to lose and I am pretty much sure that my body would not want to let it go. 😉 I am targeting this year end to get to my goal, InShaAllah. Definitely it will need a close watch on my diet plus…
Umma’s Egg Toasties
Food that makes you miss childhood is the best food. Would you agree? While I was brainstorming myself of what to make next for the Blogging Marathon #90 theme of “Wrap and Rolls”, my mind kept loitering around the egg toasties that umma would make almost every second Thursday. Thursday is weekend here, and we would have no madrassa that day, so naturally, we would be hungry around tea time. Umma would make toasties every single Thursday, alternating the filling with eggs, chicken or frozen mixed vegetables. I feel today’s generation is pampered with too many ideas that we are lost as to what to make for our kids, but our mothers had simple ideas and simple dishes, that were cleaned up. I guess many of you would agree to this fact of life. I had some bread sitting in the fridge and I wanted to use it…