I’m not a vegan, and can never be for my love of dairy is too great to abandon. In the recent year or so the Vegan movement seem to be taking over the planet for a moment -vegetarians, where are you?- and whenever I browse the social media account of a vegan I happen to come across one version or another of something they call “Nicecream” or “Nice Cream” and they keep raving about it the way they were raving about Read more »
Fan of Mexican food? I absolutely am, in fact Mexican ranks second as my favourite cuisine of all times. Whenever I crave a fajita, a sizzling one with all the works, I usually head to one of the American franchises around Kuwait. However, since I’m trying to live a healthier life sans the excess salt, fat, and surprise spice that attacks my stomach mercileccily I began to make mine at home. This recipe must be the easiest, lightest, and quickest way to get a guiltless fajita fix. Read more »
Let me start by stating the fact that I do not like cauliflowers.
In fact, I loathe them.
The smell, the taste, the texture. I’m a vegetable loving vegetarian who actually does crave broccoli but never could stand to be within a metre of cauliflower in any shape or form including the very famous fried cauliflower and eggplant sandwich we call Meshakkal in Kuwait. Never was a fan. The same goes for sweet potatoes, I just could never understand their over-sweetened taste nor embrace it as a vegetable. Read more »
This is not a recipe per say, its just a salad I tossed together because I didn’t want the fruits in my fridge to go bad and added a few bits and pieces there. Salad, especially with berries, is more of a summer or spring dish than winter which you’d want to keep warm in with a chunky vegetables soup and crunchy pieces of bread. Perhaps some melted cheese and rubbed garlic on that bread. Mmm… in any case, I don’t mind salads in the winter at all and this berries and pear salad with warm cheese and warm caramelised nuts would add a bit of colour to those grey afternoons. Read more »
Ever since I began cooking quinoa I really wanted to use it with one particular dish, maraq bamiya (okra stew). You see, if quinoa passes the maraq bamiya test, it can reside their proudly on my pantry for the rest of time, banishing every last morsel of rice from the premises. The dieticians in Kuwait have been urging us to replace rice with quinoa and I already tried that twice with the quinoa mushroom risotto and the quinoa with dill & broad beans (bajela w shbent) and both time quinoa posed as the perfect protein-packed fiber-laden replacement to white rice therefore I Read more »
Lately I’ve been doing nothing but trying to concentrate on making my diet work and trying to stick to a healthy life style, therefore you will be seeing a few more diet food related posts every now and then on my blog. Earlier this week, I’ve seen Ansam cooking a dish on instagram using quinoa bread she got from J’s Bakery. Read more »
Growing up, rice with broad beans & dill or what we call in Kuwait “Bajela w Shbent” was a favourite lunch dish of mine. It is traditionally made with chunks of meat and daqqos tomato sauce at home but I’ve always opted to mix it with low fat yoghurt instead. I was craving it the other day but since I’m still on the path of losing the Ramadan weight and testing out quinoa in recipes I’ve decided to make the dish, subsituting rice with quinoa and see how it would turn out. To my surprise the recipe turned out to be a success and had I not made the dish myself I wouldn’t have realised I was actually eating quinoa! Read more »
I’m still experimenting with using quinoa and I realised that I prefer eating cold quinoa mixed in some sort of salad instead of hot quinoa as I’m still not used to the taste of hot quinoa. Yesterday I decided to try and make a quinoa salad so basically I just grabbed whatever was in my fridge and chopped it up to make a nice healthy low-fat quinoa salad with ruby-like pomegranates seeds peeking through. Read more »
A long time ago, when Google Reader was alive and kicking, I remember a fellow blogger posted a video of Gordon Ramsey preparing scrambled eggs. The only way I can actually crave and eat eggs is by eating them scrambled and not every restaurant can make them the way I consider them scrambled. You know yellow, creamy, with soft peaks and the entire thing in one piece. Ever since I saw the video I’ve wanted to make scrambled eggs at home but I never really got the chance to try and cook them until last weekend. Read more »
One of my birthday resolutions for this year was to become healthier, not for the sake of weight loss but for my overall well-being. I’m not twenty one anymore, not even 30, and this means my supply of youthful health is running out fast and the time has come to be smart about my choices. I remember an old man selling ice cream out of a cart in the street that we met last year. I wanted an ice cream -well it’s me after all- and my husband didn’t. The old man, with his beautiful toothless smile and deeply wrinkled face, told my husband to eat an ice cream while he still could. Read more »
My friend and estranged blogger eshda3wa dropped by my place on the second day of Ramadan in keeping up with her tradition of giving away Ramdan noqsa’s, a noqsa is the name we call the gifts in Kuwait by the way. This year, eshda3wa’s gift was also traditional with a wicker tray and five mini tin pots inside. Read more »
Many local cookbook authors time their new releases with the start of the holy month of Ramadan, given that for 30 nights people have to provide iftar, ghabga, and suhoor meals and they are always on the lookout for something new. This year I had my fair share of Ramadan cookbooks, four in total, each and everyone more delicious than the next with mouthwatering pictures and readily ingredients available in the nearest co-op. The first of which was the Ikea cookbook which you can get from Ikea if you purchase with the amount of 25 KD or more. Read more »
It’s time again to bring out the samboosa dough, for my Ramadan iftar table is never complete without a plate of hot bubbling baked samboosa (samoosa) in the very centre! With fourteen days to go until the start of the Holy Month of Ramadan where muslims fast all day long and break their fast at sunset. A favourite Ramadan preparation activity of mine is wrapping the Samboosa’s myself at home using my own filling mixes. Read more »
There is nothing I adore more than baking pizza at home. It reminds me of my childhood, when I used to sneak to the kitchen and grab handfuls of grated mozzarella cheese while the pizza was being prepared. I usually almost always have pizza ingredients Read more »
Life is about balance and whenever I feel a bit off balance like I did this past week, I know I need a pick me up lunch that won’t make me regret every bite after I was done enjoying it. Sometimes hiding in my kitchen and whipping up something as light and healthy as this grilled eggplant salad makes me feel calm. Read more »
I was invited to try the soon to be opened Véranda restaurant in Harvey Nichols yesterday. The invitation was set for 7 P.M. and on 7 P.M. on the dot I was standing outside of Harvey Nichols in the Grand Avenues. Véranda’s entrance is through an elevator/staircase at the rightmost section of Harvey from the outside. Read more »
Last weekend I was in my kitchen thinking about lunch when my eyes fell on a box of lasagna sheets. Of course, why not? So I made my favorite vegetarian lasagna an d snapped a few shots with my iPhone that I thought I’d share on my blog. So, what went inside my lasagna? Read more »
I had a dinner party yesterday and I’ve decided to make the salads myself. I was leafing through my cookbooks when I saw a recipe for a salad with popcorn as an ingredient. At first I was like, really? popcorn? Then I thought to myself why not? The salad recipe I found had plain popcorn and radishes with veggies and wasn’t that interesting so I decided to make my own version of a popcorn salad. After all, flavored popcorn have officially become a craze in Kuwait these days so how bad can it turn out really? Read more »
The easiest thing to do as a Ramadan dessert is stuffed Qatayef. Every other co-op has a station producing the pancake like round qatayef dough and all you have to do is pick them up, take them home, stuff them then cook them. Read more »
A long time ago my husband expressed a wish that we try and make our own waraq 3enab bel zait -stuffed vine leaves- at home. I don’t know why given Read more »
Yesterday morning I woke up with the strangest craving for home made mini pizzas! I don’t know where that came from but I remember my excitement in my childhood if we were baking pizzas at home, how I would try and snatch the freshly grated Read more »
Insha2 Allah this time next week, it will be Ramadan, and we would all be thirsty and many many of us will be dreaming of drinking an icy cold glass of Vimto. I am not a Vimto addict like my fellow Kuwaitis, I drink it bel sena 7sena, but my husband is a big Vimto fan and every year he brings home two bottles to drink during Ramadan and we make one pitcher and it wouldn’t taste good and we would let it gather dust on the kitchen counter.
Yes, I confess, I don’t know how to make a good glass -or pitcher- of Vimto. Are you a Vimto fan? Do you love Vimto in Ramadan only or all year round? and would you please teach me how to make Vimto? Much obliged!
I’m a person who cannot resist samboosa. Given that I can polish off a platter of samboosa without looking twice, I limit myself to having it during Futoor in Ramadan and having it only baked instead of fried. Therefore, I have this Read more »
Summer is here, and so is the Raqqi! I’ve never been a big fan of watermelons growing up but somehow I realized it had grown on my. This summer however I found myself actually looking forwards to eating it, a new thing for me.
I have many ideas for this summer’s watermelons: juices, salads, and desserts! I’ve already made a yummy juice the other day, I’m now trying to gather my bravery to have it as a savory salad. In any case, I’m happy raqqi is here this year.
Are you a raqqi fan?
Ya shamatat abla ‘9a’9a feyya! We, team Pink Girl and I, lost in the bloggers cooking competition with flying colors! I believe we came last b3d :p Read more »
