7 Jan
One thing to make sure is in your luggage and make sure you never board the plane from Heathrow without is the Harrods cocoa dusted almonds! They are so addictive! You would pop in one almond after the other and savor the chocolaty taste… the chocolate is good… the chocolate powder on top gives the almonds a lovely feel on your tongue and it is so very good ❤
Highly recommended on your next trip to London!
6 Jan
On the first morning of the year 2011 we decided it was a fine day to go out for breakfast. I woke up with a sore throat but i thought what the heck a good breakfast would surely battle away the flu symptoms… Continue reading
6 Jan
One thing i always wanted to try is Carluccio’s White Truffle Olive Oil… i actually always grabbed it and tried to sneak it in the cash register but my husband would catch me and lecture me on the fact that we cannot travel with a bottle of olive oil back to Q8.
The bottle is TINY though! Very small and no taller than the palm of my hand! So at last i managed to buy it behind his back, hide it, and smuggle it back to Q8 with me and guess what? Not one drop is spilled!
Now i am searching for a great recipe to match this great tasting white truffle oil… insha2 allah i will be posting about it soon… oh and Butootee will not be allowed to taste any 3eqaban lah 3la na7astah 😉
Do you have any suggestions?!
5 Jan
Yesterday Afternoon my mother had some fresh coals burning on the portable dowwa to make some chai fa7am… So a thought had struck me… why don’t i try to make Qer9 Moqla?! Continue reading
4 Jan
I’m sick and bored and sitting on my couch this morning… i flip to alwatan TV and there is a man i don’t know talking about some financial thing i don’t understand. I was just about to change the channel when i noticed his glasses…
They are SO COOL! I have never seen such glasses before… they would be perfect for people like me who break their glasses constantly… those are already split in half so they won’t break as much 😀
Have you seen those glasses before?! Would you wear them?!
3 Jan
After my Zerda post asking for zerda recipes my dear fellow blogger Bent El Deera contacted me to let me know she has a home made zerda for me!!!
For those of you who do not know Bent El Deera… she is an AMAZING cook masha2 Allah la elaha ella Allah tabaraka il ra7man…her blog “Aklati” is all about her cooking and i really trust her taste in food… So to have the pleasure of having a Zerda from her is something extraordinary indeed…
Thank you hon for the delicious zerda! We enjoyed it very much at home :*
2 Jan
We took a quick road trip to Khafji in KSA for the sole purpose of two reasons: 1- Find the book Hind wal 3askar i am searching for and 2- Visit Hungry Bunny for a nostalgic childhood Continue reading
31 Dec
Where was i yesterday? Busy & Not posting?!
A dinner gathering was held in honour of FourMe’s recovery from Cancer 😀 The dinner was hosted in her bestie Shoso‘s place and bloggerette Walladah brought over a Noon she had vowed to throw on FourMe when she goes into remission and she was true to her word 😀
A lovely & very yummy spread of food was available… much Continue reading
29 Dec
I was feeling a bit cranky yesterday at 9:30… and i was also craving some frozen yoghurt… for some reason New Q8 Bride’s post kept popping into my head so i went to my mother and sister and asked if they want any frozen yoghurt? You should have seen my mother’s beam when i said they deliver it to your door step!!! Continue reading
29 Dec
I am a sucker for everything retro! This year as i was browsing in the basement of Selfridges i noticed a new store called Pedlars that sells the most exquisite funky & retro items! My kinda store! I am so glad i found it… let me show you my favorite pieces… Continue reading
29 Dec
I was going through a box of old junk the other day when i found the above cartridges!I was immediately pulled back in time to my childhood… lazy summer mornings… us in Pajamas waking up to run downstairs and turn on the tiny TV and the MSX Sakhar computer… playing all day long while sipping KDD Mango and eating KDD ice cream!
Now all that’s left is those 😦 I remember the Castle and The castle two and the PENGUIN! ooh Rambo was amazing! I still play them on my PC using an emulator -and i am going to play the circus soon after this post :p – but still there something about puffing dust out of that cartridge and wrestling with it to fit into the MSX that is priceless… if only someone would invent a time machine 😦
28 Dec
Once upon a time in Q8… visiting someone who came back from abroad meant recieving a soo’3a (souvenir) was a guaranteed thing! People coming from the UK always brought flake and mini cadbury chocolates and sometimes M&S swiss chocolate coins. People coming from Mecca always brought some necklaces and something that looks like a little TV that you would press and images would change… no matter what happens and where they have been and why they have been there… poeple always got a soo’3a!
A soo’3a neededn’t be a big affair or anything… even a bar of chocolate would do! I remember when i first got married, we used to bring soo’3a for everyone… i loved shopping for little knicknacks to put together in a little bag or box and then coming home to opening my luggage and putting the sowaye’3 together and assigning them to people… then giving out the bags and watching people happily recieve their sowaye’3…
Little by little we realized that those sowaye’3 cost us a lot of money, a lot of time, and a lot of effort… and even though we did them because it made us happy to be givers and not to expect a soo’3a back… we realized that no one actually cares about the thought and effort we put into them and that people are recieving them warily… as if it’s a thing that must be repaid when they travel themselves… the soo’3a therefore has suddenly become a symbol of demanding a soo’3a repayment from ur next trip instead of a symbol of i remembered you in my travel!!!
Therefore we have limited our soo’3a to my parents and my parents only… whenever we travel we have to get them something back and my sisters already ask me for a lot of things -and i ask them for a lot of things- when either of us travel so the concept of a soo’3a is lost in the commosion.
What happened? I know there are still a lot of people who give out soway’3… maybe too many sowaye’3… but all in all the concept of a soo’3a has been mutated into something to dread rather than something to look forward to! What happened?! I wonder if there are people out there who still get people soo’3a!!!
Do you still get soway’3 when you travel?! If you stopped… why did you?!
P.S. i remember my friend AWS once got me a lovely orange box filled with little knicknacks from her trip to Japan… knowing how much i love Japanese stuff she filled the box with little Japanese artifacts… finding that box on my office desk when i arrived one morning, opening that box and going through the endless little items was the one of the most memorable souvenier experiences EVER! The joy of checking out the things was unmeausrable!!! Thank you AWS :*
28 Dec
Once upon a time very long ago, we gathered in the tent in front of the dowwa in the then freezing Q8y winter… one of my aunts would bring a little pan (moqla)… mix some eggs milk saffron cardamom & flour with sugar, then pour the mix into the pan and over the coal she would make us something that tastes like a cross between a pancake and a qers 3qaili…. and it was so SO good and warm and sweet and fulfilling… the ultimate quick winter quick comfort food!
I remember my mother calling it qers moqla… I remember my mother trying to recreate it later on and making a fairly good version but not quite the same… so i cannot rely on my mothers recipe. I tried to google the recipe online but guess what? Apparently no one knows much about qer9 moqla or makes it!!! Let alone have a picture of it…
Have you heard or had qer9 moqla before?! Now if you did can you please get me the recipe?! I just can’t stop thinking about it…
28 Dec
Whenever i see the dark green box of After 8 chocolate mints something comes over me and i grab my self a box for me to enjoy later. It is not the best tasting chocolate on earth but there is something different about it’s dark colors and posh feel and it’s tangy minty taste is quite special to my heart for it pulls me back in time to my 80’s childhood… my father would bring home a box and i would hover around waiting for his fingers to hand me the little elegant dark paper pouch containing a little sliver of chocolate with sugary mint center! I always hated how tiny and thin the chocolate portion was… i always wanted it to be bigger for i wasn’t allowed to eat the whole box in one go… but now i am allowed to so i don’t mind at all 😀
Do you like After 8 mints?! Do you have any childhood memories attached to it?
26 Dec
The Bodouir commented on my Zerda Post the other day that Crismon Garden makes something similar to the dessert i described. I had to see for my self of course so on Friday i went with my mom and my husband to Crimson Garden Spoons… the weather was amazing and we sat outside, people watching and eating their yummy food… at the end of the meal we ordered tea and their “m7lbiyat” which was described as having 7alwa at the bottom and m7lbiya on top with… it came and it looked so very good!
It was topped with caramalized almonds, pistachios, and rose petal flakes… the m7lbiya was really good but the bottom 7alwa was a bit harder than the zerda i have tried… all together it is a good dessert that is very similar to the Zerda i am looking for… if you pass by Crimson Garden i would highly recommend it 😀
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