My First

First times are always great, right? First roller coaster, first trip overseas, baby's first steps (or so I've heard, not that I can remember my own).

Yesterday was my first time baking cupcakes from scratch. I even made the frosting on my own. My absolute favorite- red velvet with brown sugar cream cheese frosting.

This might surprise most people, but I don't bake. It's so easy to buy desserts. I love food and I love to cook. But baking was always out of my reach.

So, what would then compel me to start a dessert catering business with my best friend Abeer? Well, she is an excellent baker. She makes delicious treats and is an talented decorator, after taking classes a few years back. She's practiced this skill many times over. I am the apprentice, she is the master.

So, she's the baker, and I'm the big mouth. Mashalah she's also got a great business mind, so this seems a very imbalanced partnership. But Inshalah, with time, she finds that I am as much a contribution to this partnership as she is.

So, with some duas, and some resistance from naysayers (my own mom), we've registered our new business: Haute Cakes. We' currently working on the website and business card, but you can check out the facebook site we've created for it. At the end of this month we have our first gig; it's not paying, but will be a great opportunity to get the word out. We are baking 300 cupcakes favors for the Wafa House fundraiser. It's a wonderful cause and I hope many people make it out. Click on the word fundraiser for details.

So that brings me back to my first time. It went a lot better than I anticipated, and it wasn't a disaster, thank you very much. I made the cupcakes for a dinner party, and my husband honestly thought they were great. But what other people thought I may never know, as my hosts and friends are probably too polite to be brutally honest.

Food Trip Recap

Asalamu Alaykum,

This weekend, after turning the big 3-0, I went on what was dubbed a food trip, for the amount of eating we planned on doing. My friends Rehab, Samina, Lobna and I drove 5 hours (thank you fog and rain) to Boston, MA for a weekend visit with my sister Saria.

I haven't been to Boston since graduate school at BU until my sister moved there. I find so many things astonishing..that my baby sister went to college..that she graduated college..that she's in grad school (I was in grad school!) and that she left home..and she's actually growing up..she's living on her own, learning to cook..and,unbelievably, surviving away from my mom. Really, if you knew Saria, you'd be as impressed as I am. I am so, so, so proud of her. I'm surprised that she ended up in Boston like I did, but Alhamdulillah she certainly seems to like it more than I did.

By the way, I blame that on reading Jhumpa Lahiri for writing extremely depressing novels based in the city.

So it was a great weekend. I love girls trips. Husbands are awesome, but it's just not the same. Both are wonderful in their own way.

You don't stay up talking until late into the night with your husband. Okay, maybe you do sometimes...but you always do it with girlfriends. Husbands don't like to take as many pictures as we girls do. And girls are just so outgoing. We ran into old friends, and made new ones. We cooked meals together, we shopped, we ate and ate and ate, and we talked. Not gossiped of course! We just talked about what bought us to where we are, what we hoped for the future, what not to wear :) etc. etc.

Of course, being that we're girls, and we were traveling, there was a bit of friction. And the indecisiveness was over the top. "I don't know, I'm fine with anything, whatever she wants to do, I don't care what we eat, whatever you want." A group of non-decision makers don't make an effective bunch. We spent much of the time deciding what to do next, but it was still fun because we were together.


Thank you ladies for a great weekend. Alhamulilah I feel so blessed to have amazing family and friends, and opportunities like these to enjoy it all. I can never hope to match my gratitude to everything Allah has given me, but I will certainly try.

Sameera

Blogging is the New Blogging...?

Lately, everyone around me has a great blog..I tried starting one of my own a while back, then grew tired of it. Now that everyone is blogging again, I think I will try to update mine once in a while. For myself, no one else reads it right? :)

So...what's my angle? Let's see I I don't have a hobby, or a job, and I don't write poetry. So perhaps I'll try out a few book reviews.

I am probably one of the few people out there that reads food books. I read cookbooks before I sleep (I know, weird), chef biographies, food essays, articles, the New York Times Food Section, etc. I love all things food related, and reading about it only makes me happier (not to mention hungrier).

The bad thing is the more I read about food, the sadder I get. I realize most of what we eat is crap, and improving one's dietary habits is difficult. It takes a lot to eat right and eat fresh. This capitalism driven country we live in does not want us to eat fresh...there's no money to be made off it. So they make it annoying and expensive for you. It's dirt cheap to buy mac and cheese in a box, you can buy it at the supermarket, the pharmacy, the corner 7-11, or even the convenience store at the gas station. But if you want healthy fresh fruits/vegetables you have to seek out a farmers market and put down a good chunk of change for it.

It's especially hard to eat well when you're out, which is quiet a bit for most people. That's a whole other post.

So one might be thinking how boring it must be reading about food. What can possibly be interesting about it? I can see how food is a fairly dull topic; most people just eat what's in front of them. They don't realize how much more is out there, how many frontiers they have yet to explore, how rich and plentiful the world of food is.

For me, food is a religious exercise. I'm not a very spiritual person, yet every time I taste something new and incredible I think Subhanallah, Allah has created such perfect and excellent foods. If you only knew how a strawberry off the field really tastes, or how delicious garlic can become by simply roasting it, or what fresh fish should taste and smell like, you would be shocked. Then perhaps you could appreciate it as much as I do. Or you can continue to sit back shaking your head, thinking "Man, Sameera is such a glutton". I know, I know, gluttony is a sin.

I've discovered so much through my reading about it, and I am constantly surprised. Do you know making homemade chicken stock is a piece of cake? And speaking of cake, making one from scratch is as easy as using a cake mix? And yogurt has 2 ingredients: milk and bacteria; so what is all that crap in the cup of supermarket yogurt?(I won't mention company names to avoid any potential trouble). And organic is not always better.

In my next post, I'll start with my latest read: Around the World in 80 Dinners by Bill and Cheryl Jamison. You can find it on Amazon.

Of course I didn't buy it. My library and I have a great relationship, Alhamdulilah. We're practically BFF (no offense Moustafa or Rehab). But that link is in case you want to see what it looks like, or read more reviews.

Until then, Bon Appetit :)