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!

my nemesis, sleep

At 31 years of age you would think i would have the art of sleep down, wrong!  It's exactly 4.50 am and instead of sleeping like most people i'm blogging.  At about 7 i was exhausted totally desperately begging for my pillow tired, but i knew if i slept i would wake up so i took a shower.  No help still tired.., aggh.  I decided w/ high hopes to let my son stay at his grandfathers and put myself and my sicky daughter to bed so that we might wake up refreshed and full of energy at a normal time in the morning, and i can go walking b/c i've been totally lazy this week.

Success we slept by 8.30 so why am i up?  my lovely husband came in around 11.30 and broke my sleep, actually shattered my sleep!  Not his fault i'm a light sleeper and we have a small flat.

Anyway as per norm my daughter will be waking up at the crack of dawn and i will be dragging my ass after her all day...  besides the fact that not being able to sleep makes me totally useless and depressed it also makes me eat like a maniac!  i mean who wakes up at 11.30 at night and "needs" chocolate?  If there are gods of sleep i sincerely need your help, and not in the middle of the day or early evening, like 10 thats reasonable right?

UAE's 39th birthday!

On a day to day basis if you spoke to me i would have a complaint about Abu Dhabi, the traffic sucks parking is an absolute mess and a majority of people here still don't understand how to wait in a line just to name a few.  Its pretty much the same as any other city i guess.  On Dec 2nd though my love/hate relationship w/ Abu Dhabi turns into pure ecstatic love love love! and it lasts me clear through to march.  Why you ask?  Let me tell you about national day...

Sh. Zayed

Every year on dec 2nd and few days after we celebrate United Arab Emirates national day, the equivalent of America's 4th of july.  This year was the country's 39th birthday!  Yes only 39 years!?! Although I'm not a national of the country I cant help but get caught up in celebrating it's founding.  It's really incredible what has been accomplished in 39 years in this tiny country.  Really this much in 39 years of course there are gonna be some kinks, what are we expats complaining about?  I wonder how the US or UK looked after 39 years?  i'm almost positive it wasn't even close.


The scale of the celebrations seem to get bigger and bigger every year.  Preparations start weeks in advance you'll see the lights going up and wonder what's in store when they get turned on.  This year there has been light sculptures of camels, ships, falcons and horses adorning all the round abouts.  The corniche is amazing as always w/ lights of all different colors in scroll work designs and slogans about the emirates in arabic, all the palms are dressed up.  My personal fave this year is the giant balls that keep changing colors in the median up and down the corniche.

As if the lights on the roads weren't enough, which of course in Abu Dhabi it's not, all the major buildings of the city are decorated up in sparkling lights and colors of the flag.  There are laser lights shooting across the city in green and white.  They even turn one of the building into a massive movie screen and show shots of the country over the years, so while your stuck in massive party traffic you can not only watch the show on the road, but and actual movie!

Add to all of this the nationals parade... thats what i call it.  All of the nationals or locals as we call them deck out their cars.  There are cars covered in stickers of red, green, white and black, cars are covered in crystals and boa's and spray painted,  cars are covered in murals of their owners favorite sheikhs anything you can think of it they've done it! Its like mardi gras w/o topless girls or alcohol.  A word to the wise don't exspect to actually get anywhere in a hurry during national day or your going to be seriously pissed off, get your stuff during the day and just relax and enjoy the show at night!

I'll complain alot about Abu Dhabi as most people do but on Dec 2nd I'm reminded just how young this country is and honestly I have to appreciate it good and bad b/c there is no place else like it! .  When we are driving around watching all the shanangins I'm always thinking why don't we celebrate the 4th of july like this?  why don't we dress up our cars and blast the nantional anthem from our cars and tow massive flags behind them up and down the road?  Why don't we light up our cities and take a few days off and really feel the awsomeness of America?  Ok i know we are in a recession, but really why?  I guess thats another blog...

Oh there is one more reason that i love the celebration... secretly it's like my own personal kick off to christmas.  I know the lights aren't for christmas but i can pretty much fool myself into thinking they are, and toffee nut latte's are back in starbucks and you hear x-mas music in the stores, it totally gets me into the spirit!  So happy 39th b-day UAE!!! and happy holiday season to the rest of us!!

an ode to autumn

our super expensive pumpkin

     So this will be my first post and all i can think about the past couple of weeks has been Autumn or more to the point the lack of Autumn.  In Abu Dhabi we have two major seasons hell or summer and hot which is the rest of the year.  Hell starts halfway into May and last from mid Oct to early Nov.  Anyone who isn't fortunate enough to leave during the season of hell will tell you that it quite literally is hell on earth!  I'm talking about temps of above 100 and humidity that is absolutely unbearable, it's like living in a steam room.  There is one good point about the season of hell though, at it's height Jun trough Aug it's a little easier to find parking in the city b/c all of the sane people have taken holiday. 

     The season of Hot starts somewhere between Oct and Nov and is actually quite lovely.  It's warm enough to enjoy the parks and corniche and the humidity lays off enough to see clear across city.  It even gets a bit chilly in Jan and Feb, like you need to wear a sweater, unless of course your from some northern arctic country then it's still  like summer.  

     Now that you have a basic idea of our Abu Dhabi seasons i can get back on topic, no Autumn!  I was lucky to grow up in a place that had full on Autumn... rainstorms, days that are so clear and brisk it's impossible to explain and explosions of the most brilliant fall colors you've ever seen!  we even had a harvest festival and grape stomping.  We had so many vineyards the smell of grapes was everywhere like an outdoor air freshener.  Autumn also brings haunted houses, crazy costumes, and a turkey dinner a few of my favorite things! 

north east in the fall

     So what to do?  I live vicariously through all my friends who are lucky enough to live in places where fall still comes to visit.  Yesterday i bought a pumpkin, a very expensive pumpkin, and the family carved it up.  I was contemplating getting some indian corn and gourds to decorate a bit but seeing as all of my neighbors are arab I'm sure they would be wondering why on earth i decorated my door w/ dried up vegetables!?!  I'm looking for some halloween festivities for the kids and maybe even myself i love dressing up as something, not just a slut whats up w/ that Halloween is not slut-o-ween get creative ladies gosh!!!  Maybe i will cook Thanksgiving dinner, or not, cleaning a turkey is so gross!!  Last but not least i will drink my seasonal toffee nut latte's and reminisce about lovely fall days.  Now I'm off to try my hand at butternut squash lasagna...