New recipes and An Upcoming Meetup

The cooking fairy is here (that's my equivalent of stitching bug) and I have been trying a lot of new recipes in the past few days.

DH & Me are again in that mode where we refuse to eat the common daily food and everyday we want to have "something new" for dinner.

I'm going to add a new feature to my blogging about cooking. I'm now going to  rate the recipes I try for ease of cooking, time required for cooking,ease of availability of ingredients and DH's rating for taste.
I'm not a big chef or food connoisseur that my ratings or review will matter much . However , there are reasons why a person would decide to try a new recipe. Ingredients and time required to cook are the main factors which let me decide whether I will cook that recipe or not. With my work schedule. I'm prefer less time consuming recipes.

1. Oven roasted Zucchini

Zucchini in one of the new ingredients I have added to my food plate now. Zucchini is not native to India and is only available in special stores there. Since I have moved to Kuwait, I wanted to use it in my cooking so I bought a big box of Zucchini last week.

DH loves roasted food and this what I cooked ...
Recipe source:http://www.cookingclassy.com/2014/05/garlic-lemon-parmesan-oven-roasted-zucchini/
Ease of cooking : 9/10 if you have a oven at home(Higher rating -easier to cook)
Time required : 30 mins , Rating 8/10 (Higher rating -less time to cook)
Availability of ingredients :8/10
DH's rating : 8.2
Changes made to recipe: I used a table spoon of cheese spread instead of parmesan cheese .

2. Zucchini With Corn and Cilantro

Of course one more zucchini recipe.. remember I bought a box. Sorry no picture

Recipe source:http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20509747_8,00.html
Ease of cooking : 10/10
Time required : 15 mins , Rating 9/10
Availability of ingredients :8/10
DH's rating : 6.6
Changes made to recipe: I used coriander instead of cilantro .

3. Spinach with Eggs (Yumurtalı Ispanak)

Recipe source:http://almostturkish.blogspot.com/2009/04/spinach-with-eggs-yumurtal-ispanak.html

Ease of cooking : 9/10
Time required : 30 mins , Rating 8/10
Availability of ingredients :10/10
DH's rating : 6.2

Spinach is not one of my favourite greens and DH absolutely loves it. Turkish cuisine has many spinach recipes and I chose Yumurtalı Ispanak this time.
Please do not hesitate to try this recipe as the DH rating is based on the bitter taste of spinach. Turns out that he had bought a local green leaves(don't know the name) thinking that it was spinach.
I'm sure if cooked with spinach the rating will go up to 8 :)

4. 3 B Stir fry

Recipe source:http://www.tarladalal.com/3-B-Stir-fry-(-Healthy-Diabetic-Recipe-)-33690r

Ease of cooking : 9/10
Time required : 30 mins , Rating 8/10
Availability of ingredients :7/10, May have to buy bean sprouts from a super market
DH's rating : 8.75
Changes made to recipe(not intentional): I read baby corn as sweet corn ;)

The recipe turned out to be delicious...I wasn't expecting that.
Next time I'm thinking of serving it with plain rice.

That's all on cooking front, let me know if you try any of these recipes.

Remember how I told you that I'm desperate to meet crafters locally. I think my prayers may have been answered...I read about World Wide Knit in Public day somewhere on the internet, and thought why not. I'm a part of knitters group and I know the basics.
So I'm now hosting World Wide Knit in Public day in Kuwait (I'm teeny meeny proud of this).
More prayers answered--I found Tammy through one of fellow bloggers post.
Tammy is an active blogger, crocheter, crafter and a lady with most infectious positive attitude. I haven't met her yet ,all this is what I gather from her blog and few email interactions. So I contacted Tammy and told her about my idea WWKIP in Kuwait. She encouraged me and have been actively spreading the word about the event. Thank you Tammy.

Well when I say I'm hosting the event, there is not much I need to do apart from some internet posts and registering the event.
I know I shouldn't expect a big turn around for the event but I'm sure I will meet new knitters/stitchers/crocheters there.

Inspired by Tammy's blog I will now try to include one picture of my life in Kuwait.
This is a picture of the first flower which bloomed at my house in Kuwait.
We just loved it and couldn't help clicking a picture ...

On stitching front ,I have finished stitching the Sunflower bouqet with only the dreaded back stitching left to do. There are 5 shades of back stitching and the chart is in black and white . So I will use my imagination ....

See you soon for the GG post.


 

FOTM SAL May update and some cooking

Here is my entry for Flower of the Month SAL hosted by Alyssa .

I have not been able to stitch much of this as my current target is to finish Sunflower bouquet for my colleague who is going to retire soon. As advised by my stitchy friends, I am now using two strands for stitching for the flower series. But I didn't have the courage to frog what I had already stitched using 3...do you think the difference is too obvious or looks ugly?

In other news, I'm happy to tell that I have attended two meet ups of a group of knitters in past 2 weeks.
Don't be surprised...I don't knit but this is result of my desperate attempts to a have a group of cross stitchers. I have been trying really hard since last 1 year to gather or meet people interested in any type of needle work here in Kuwait. Sadly, nothing worked ..so I  signed up on Raverly and joined the local ravelry group.
The ladies in the group have been kind enough to absorb me and we had fun in the last two meetings. While the ladies chit chat and knit, I stitch (at the pace of a tortoise) counting everything thrice. I must say that cross stitch is not a easy craft to take along...I am finding it difficult to stitch sitting in a chair with chart in hand and I'm already thinking of learning crochet specially for the meet ups ;). At home, I stitch sitting on a sofa with my legs stretched and the chart pinned to one of the cushions.

The weather here is at its worst now with the temperature nearing 50 degree Celsius. This Friday, DH & I ,dared to step out of the house in the noon and we repented it so much. The sun was blazing and our feet started burning...Well its just the start of summer.

On the cooking front, I have lost my cooking bug...however guilt took me over and I tried my hands at making my mom's recipe of a lentil cake last Tuesday. The result wasn't upto my expectations so I'm not going to blog about it until I get it right.

Today I made Menemen (Turkish-Style Scrambled Eggs With Tomatoes)  for dinner.

This dish is very similar to Indian version of Scrambled eggs-Anda bhurji.
I like tomatoes in my Anda Bhurji but DH doesn't like tomatoes much...
So when he asked me to make something eggy today, I proposed making Menemen instead of Anda Bhurji .
I'm a conservative and usually don't make changes in recipes. The only reason I divert from the original recipe is unavailability of ingredients.

I followed the recipe by Burcu and used capsicum instead of green peppers.

The other reason I like Menemen is because I like eggs to be slightly undercooked and this a perfect recipe for that.


Its end of another month and good time to think how productive the month was craft wise...