spinach granola bars???

I've been meaning to blog about this subject for ohhh... at least a month or maybe more, time is not one of my strong suits these days.  Yes you read the title correctly spinach granola bars!  A few months back i purchased the Deceptively Delicious Cookbook, desperate to get some kind of nourishment in what little food i could coax my 3.5 year old daughter to eat.

Now i know and i have been told several times by trained professionals that a child will not starve themselves to death and for the most part i keep that in mind at dinner time, but after hearing countless people say "she's so tiny" and "did she eat, i have snacks" or my favorite "that’s such a tiny bite you should give her more", i start to lose my head.  Doubt starts to creep in and i get panicked, oh my gosh am i starving my kid?? i forget that she takes small bites or else she gags and stops eating for the day, or that she is a normal weight and a bit tall for her age, or that she did eat a pretty good lunch, i forget that i am her mom and i know her.  

Back to point, the granola bars.  Obviously i cant type up the recipe and post it b/c i would have to get permission and blah blah blah, but i can tell you my experience and the end result!  It's a pretty basic granola recipe for the most part oats, flour, cinnamon, sugar but then comes the super sneaky part, SPINACH!  You steam up spinach and then puree it!  After smelling the smell of steamed spinach upon opening the microwave door i was gonna call it quits right then and there.  Me and the maid where both gagging, it's a really awful smell!  No way w/ a smell like that it wasn't gonna be tasted by safiya the super picky eater.  I can’t stress how terrible it smells.  I persisted to the next step of pureeing, at this point i had stinky super green dirty baby diaper looking goo, and my maid laughed at me and left the kitchen.  Once all the steaming and pureeing is done along w/ the gagging and nagging feeling that you’re wasting your time, you’re supposed to mix the gross goo w/ blueberry preserves.  I didn't have blue berry so i used a red jam i had on hand and added some blue gel food coloring.  If the puréed spinach wasn't gross enough on its own imagine chunks of red jam floating around in it.  Then you dump it on the granola base and cover it up w/ some more granola and bake.  The book tells you to wait till it's completely cool before eating it and so we did... despite being one of the grossest things i have ever made the finished product was deceptively delicious!  No one any the wiser except me and the maid ;) they did ask why it was a very electric aquamarine color though, tip don't add food coloring.

Perhaps the funniest thing is safiya the super picky eater still won't touch the granola bars or the choco chip cookies w/ chick peas, but i have sneaked some carrots into her spaghetti and cauliflower into her eggs!

Mabrook Egyptians :)

I wasn't going to do it but i have to... CONGRATS EGYPTIANS!!!!!!
I'm so crazily happy for the Egyptians and so thankful for their courage!!  I always believed in my heart and harped on the point that the voice of a united people cannot be put down, but i never imagined i would get to witness it like this!!  Maybe just maybe my kids will have an entirely different experience of living in the Middle East, they will know they mean something and they can speak and live their lives openly!!  7amdallah and thank you Tunisia and Egypt!!!

my 1st arabic slam dunk


Yes i'm still alive, if not a little lazy.  I was cooking today, that’s right i've been venturing back into the kitchen, and a brilliant idea hit me!  Why don't i blogg some Arabic recipes?!?  I am by no means an expert in the art of Arabic cooking.  For some strange reason every time i've attempted Arabic food the kitchen ends up looking like Beirut after a war, but why not share some recipes that i'm really good at? 

If you didn't know my hubby is Arabic, Palestinian to be specific, so of course if i ever want to have a chance in hell keeping him at our house during dinner i needed to learn how to do a few Arabic dishes.  You would think in an Arabic country and w/ my mother-in-law living just down the road that would be pretty easy, not so. 


red lentil/aka masoor dal

 In the beginning it was me and the internet... try finding Arabic recipes when you don’t know the language HA!  On the occasion that i would find one, finding the ingredients was like a finding lost treasure.  That was almost ten years ago, i was ridiculously shy and too stubborn to ask for help.  Fast forward to my second go here Arabs are posting recipes and have pretty great food blogs, my husband’s cousins have married some awesome wives i have a small understanding of the language and i'm not so shy anymore.  Oh I also have a terrific maid who worked for a Lebanese family before and knows just about every dish!!!  I'm still learning, thanks to my teachers if your reading, but i have a few fail proof Arabic recipes under my belt now.  
My ultimate Arabic recipe is for red lentil soup, or shorbat addus in Arabic.  This is a staple in any Arabic house and it's so easy, probably why i'm really good at it!  I won't pretend that this recipe is all mine, these dishes have been around for ages and all the basic ingredients are the same but every house has its own way of doing it and this is how we do it in my house! 

almost done

 NOTES:  This soup is traditionally prepared w/o stock, now days most people use chicken stock, i am vegetarian so i use veggie stock all ways are equally yummy.  If your into rotting tissue in your food beef or lamb are the traditional choices, although this recipe is such a staple b/c even in lean times it is very filling w/o meat.  On that note some people add cooked rice to the soup or toasted pita at the end of cooking to make it even more satisfying.  Add your salt near the end of cooking to avoid making your lentils tough.  Lastly most people do not let the onions go brown but i love the flavor it gives.  Oh and you can hide carrots in this soup really easy just add them w/ the onions and garlic.  They get blended in the end so no one will know, as if this soup wasn't already super healthy!

Shorbat Addus

a splash of olive oil
2 c red lentils (masoor dal) well rinsed
1 med onion chopped
2 cloves garlic chopped
5-6 c of stock
salt
1tsp cumin

-measure and rinse the lentils until water is pretty much clear.  Let drain.
-chop your onion and garlic.
-heat olive oil, add onions cook until soft and getting a bit brown.
-add garlic and let it go soft, 3 mins maybe.
-add drained lentils to pan and stir, allow the water from rinsing to cook off (the lentils will change to slightly pale orange)
-add the stock (i usually add a few cups at a time to make sure of the consistency)
-cook for 20 t0 25 minutes stirring once and again.  The lentils will start to look like they are falling apart, it's done!
-process w/ a hand blender to your liking, or don't totally up to you.

death of an olive pitter

I was just sitting up in bed the other night thinking i should really blog about something to do w/ food, after all that was supposed to be the point of the blog.  To be honest though cooking and baking is one thing writing about it is entirely different and frankly a bit boring at least in my case b/c i don't have fab stories about how the food came about.  My "fab" stories would be about how i searched all over town and couldn't find an ingredient or even better yet how i searched all over town for something that was right in front of my face but i didn't know what it was called in arabic.  Don’t laugh it's happened does anyone remember shamam??  That’s cantaloupe for all my american friends.  Thank god my mother- in- law googled it!!  Then i was calling it shamsham which has nothing to do w/ anything, i was 7 mths preggars and my brain was fried!  Back to the point though i was sitting up thinking about a food related thing, as if the universe heard my thoughts today i was provided w/ a bit of a food fiasco...  green olive gnocchi.

I actually didn't have a plan to make dinner, i'm still not in the mood, but the husband came home asking "what’s for my belly tonight?"  Initially i was going to make spaghetti but not enough spaghetti, bummer.  So then i decided to do tortellini w/ some ricotta and spaghetti sauce, ricotta expired crackers!! At this point i was a bit annoyed, then i looked at my food board and there it was green olive gnocchi, score!!  I had planned on trying my hand at home made gnocchi but in this situation i just used frozen.  I had everything else on hand and it's a pretty simple meal to pull together, right!?

About a year ago i wouldn't have even looked at recipe w/ green olives ewww.  I've pretty much always hated them.  Recently though i had a choice green olive at a pretty posh restaurant and ever since then i've been on a kick!  It seems you just have to choose the right ones so far super bright green kind of big ones seem to be the way to go at least for me, not bitter at all.  Green olives are like martini's you have to use the best vodka or else they suck ass, you gotta use good olives or else ewww.  I saw this recipe and thought w/ some good olives that would be pretty good!  And so the fun began!!!

Everything started ok saf and i chopped garlic and onions, safiya explained to baby that garlic is not good raw and onions make your eye's hurt.  Then it was time to do the olives.  About 6mths ago i found a great little gadget, the olive pitter!  It's #2 in my kitchen arsenal right after the micro plane.  I began "pinching" the olives as saf like to say and the trouble began.  The olives where impossibly hard, and then it happened, the olive pitter met its untimely demise.  The part that stamps the beloved + and pushes out the pit snapped and flew the bottom hole leaving the pit and olive unscathed!





Have you ever cut olives off their pits?  Oh my gosh it's tedious, worse than the busy work teachers used to give us cause they had a hangover and couldn't be bothered.  I usually like chopping and measuring and all that i find it relaxing, but really this was awful and i still had like 15 olives to go!!  So i was using the super cheap chef’s knife i got from the grocery which works better than anything else i've ever bought, but a chef's knife is kind of big for olives.  I tried the small Rachel Ray paring knife, completely dull!  Just a note i used to love Rachel Ray until i got some of her products and they are such crap i fell out of love immediately, even our shared love of orange couldn't save the relationship!  I tried another paring knife also a bust, and ended up back on the huge knife.  The center piece of this recipe was really pissing me off!

long story short after using the hand blender and sauce splashing all over me and the kitchen dinner did make its way to the table, and it was friggin delicious even zaid liked it!!  If your gonna try this one which you so should it’s a calorie blower since it's cream based, any suggestions on not using cream would be welcome, and i used pine nuts instead of almonds and bumped up the garlic and capers.  Also frozen gnocchi fries up nice, and the martini tip comes from Ashley s! Tootle loo loveys!! 

http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/green-olive-gnocchi-recipe.html

baahumbug, or however it's spelled

Just a quick note on christmas, it sucked!  I spent christmas eve and most of the christmas day in hospital, no fun at all!  So the cookies went un-frosted the food went un-made and poor santa didn't get milk and cookies.  You won't be seeing any fun christmas posts or deep thoughts, not that i'm capable of them anyhow.   Oh well there's always next year!  hope everyone else had a fab xmas!

spiced cauliflower... mmm really!!

I haven't posted much about food so far mostley b/c i really suck at food photography, but also b/c i haven't been in the mood of cooking or more to the point making grocery lists.  I've never enjoyed making the grocery list, who really does, but the excitement of cooking new things usually gets me through the task.  Lately though it seems like such a chore so i haven't really been doing it.  On the occasion that there has been a proper meal on the table the last couple of weeks rather than sandwiches or cheerio's it's a magical mystery to me how it got there.  By the way to all my friends who just decide what to make that day and go to the grocery and get the stuff how do you do it?  it's super hectic!

Anyway back to the subject at hand, cauliflower!  In genral i like cauliflower but it's kind of a bland veggie.  The only way i found that i really love it is fried up like in magloobi (ma2loobi) it's an arabic dish, but frying a veggie sorta defeats it's purpose.  There is also a really great soup you can make from it but it's more of a spring time soup.  Luckily i found a super fantastic super easy recipe for spicey cauliflower on my favorite food blog.  Now i didn't have all the ingredients on hand so i substituted and left some stuff out, and over did the ginger but it still tasted excellent.  Oh and did i mention it so easy like capital E easy!!  I'm just gonna put the link b/c i don't want to make a mistake re-typing it, and also b/c once you check out the blog your gonna want to cook everything on it!

http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/spicy-cauliflower-with-sesame-recipe.html

my version not as pretty but tasty!