Now that my husband and I are in our apartment since having the baby, we are trying to get into a routine. Last week I made daal (lentil soup) but I accidentally made way too much and it lasted the entire week and by the third day we were pretty sick of it and I knew I should have frozen some of it. And I did it again when I made spaghetti! After finishing dinner and peering into the pot I realized we still had so much leftover so I froze some of the leftovers so I could use it on a rainy day. Continue reading
Frittatatatata!
Here is a recipe for a delicious frittata you have to try! I am all for a good breakfast and eggs are my go-to for something healthy and delicious.
- 1 medium onion, sliced
- 1 small tomato, chopped
- half of a green bell pepper, chopped
- half of a red bell pepper (roasted)
- ginger-garlic paste, optional
- 6 whole eggs
- salt, to taste
- black pepper, to taste,
- red chili powder, to taste
- Roast red bell pepper over the stove or in the oven. Place in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap to steam. Set aside.
- Heat oil in a skillet/pan. Saute onions on high until they start to become translucent. Add green bell pepper, then tomato. Add ginger-garlic paste if using.
- Beat the eggs in a medium bowl. Whisk in salt, black pepper, and red chili powder.
- Peel the burnt skin off the roasted red bell pepper. Add the roasted red bell pepper (cut up) along with the other sauteed veggies to the egg mixture.
- Pour into a 9 inch baking dish and bake for about 30-35 minutes at 350 F.
Life Update!
Hey guys! So as usual, I haven’t blogged in what seems like forever, but I’m determined no matter how long I go in between posts, I still try and blog. Even if no one on the internet reads this lol, I need to do this for me.
So if you read my last post you know I was expecting 🙂 alhamdulillah, I now have a baby boy! It has been a crazy whirlwind of a ride since he’s got here. But I think I can safely say it’s starting to settle down now? Or at least I hope so! I’ve been staying with my parents and they’ve been a huge help to me! My mom has been cooking and making sure I’m well fed so I can nurse my baby, and when my husband is not here (he visits every two weeks) she sleeps with me and helps out when the baby wakes at night and needs to nurse. My dad and siblings love to hold him and play with him and that’s been so helpful whenever I need to take a shower, get some shut-eye, or even escape for 10 minutes or an hour to run an errand, do shopping or just some me-time in the form of getting coffee or boba tea!
Ramadan 2017 & Life Updates
Salaam & hello friends! And Ramadan Mubarak to all those who are observing the holy month! As always it’s been a while since I’ve updated my blog and I honestly am not even going to give you an excuse. But yes, life has been pretty busy! 😀 As I mentioned in my previous post, I got married last year right after Thanksgiving and last semester I was student teaching at a middle school teaching 7th-grade math. It was honestly a really rewarding but challenging experience, and I’ll probably look back at this time and chuckle at all the craziness but smile because I left with lots of good memories as well! I also graduated from my university! I got my degree in Psychology and I’m also officially certified to teach!
Here are some pictures of the food that we had at my graduation brunch!
Some yummy beignets to start off my grad brunch!
My lobster omelette- so good!
This was my friend’s delicious cinnamon roll french toast
Right now, I’m laying low at my parents’ house spending my Ramadan here before I move to the city where my husband lives. I’m so excited but also nervous cause I haven’t even started packing yet, oops!
But perhaps the craziest, most wonderful, whirlwind, plot-twist thing to have happened to me since I last wrote my post is that…
I’m pregnant!!!! Alhamdulillah (All Praise is to God)!
I must have found out perhaps days or maybe a week after I wrote my last post…little did I know why I was feeling so queasy in the mornings, lol! Speaking of which, my first trimester was not fun at all, especially with student teaching! I had constant nausea and ended up losing a lot of weight because of my morning sickness (a misnomer btw, because you’re not just getting sick in the mornings…for me it was primarily in the evenings). There were days where I honestly did not think I would be able to finish my student teaching cause I was missing a couple of days of school, but somehow I managed to finish! My supervisor especially was really supportive during that time, as well as of course my parents and husband.
Soooo, I probably won’t be teaching or doing any full-time work in the near future lol as I’ll be busy inshaAllah (God willing) with my baby bear!! I do want to keep myself occupied so I wanted to get back into blogging. I have so many life changes coming ahead…being done with school and finally being able to move in and live with my husband, making our new apartment feel like a home and settling in, and of course preparing for the new baby! Hopefully, I’ll be more consistent with blogging but I can’t promise…who knows the next post might be in 5 years when my baby bear finally goes off to school, LOL! Just kidding! (hopefully!)
Until next time,
the aspiring foodie
Tiramisu, nontraditional
I’m baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! It’s been almost a year since I last updated my blog and I know I’m quite terrible at being consistent, but I thought better late than never to update now…right? Anyways, quite a lot has happened since that last stressful spring semester…namely, another stressful semester (and I haven’t even properly dived into my current semester right now, so the verdict is still out on the level of stress). Well, I guess the most notable thing that has happened since we last chatted is that I got MARRIED! 😀 So yeah that was this whole thing, I’ll tell ya. But I think I’ll save a post all about that for later 😉
Right now I’m working on my last semester for undergrad before I can graduate after these lovely 4 years (no sarcasm, I really did enjoy my college years), and I’m doing my student teaching (exciting, yes, and also extremely nerve-wracking!!) I may have had a little bit of an anxiety attack when I got home after my first day. I think I just let my fears and insecurities consume me. But thankfully, after talking to my dad and husband who comforted me I began to feel a lot better about the whole student teaching thing by the third day. And now it’s the second week and I don’t feel queasy in the mornings anymore, so yay! Although, I’m still not able to stomach a full breakfast so early in the morning 😦 which sucks since I’m a huge breakfast person, and I really believe in having a nice, big breakfast to start the day..but I don’t know waking up before my body wants to, totally kills my appetite…that is until second period and my stomach starts growling in class, oops. Until, I get used to waking up at 6:30 every day and not being able to go back to sleep, strawberry yogurt filled with lots of added sugar, it is.
Anyways! On to the FOOD part of this food post. I went to a going-away party for a friend over the weekend (which was so lovely by the way…filled with such inspiring and lovely people, thought-provoking conversation, Buddha bowls, a gorgeous lemon-blueberry cake, and manicures!) A few of the girls were asking about my blog actually and my friend had also just asked me to send her the recipe for the tiramisu I had brought to share with her and her family, because apparently her mom loved it and her mom is part Italian, so that must mean I did something right, right??
French Toast Roll-ups: A Fun, Fancy Breakfast
Breakfast is easily my favorite meal of the day. In a perfect world, I would wake up bright and early, eat a healthy and wholesome breakfast, and be productive all day. Sadly, we don’t live in a perfect world and our lives are not nearly perfect. We usually do not get up bright and early and if we do, it’s against our will, we completely neglect the most important meal of the day, and as for productivity I can only speak for myself, but some days are better than others, hah.
But I still love the idea of a delicious and filling breakfast. And the weekends are usually when I can indulge this fantasy. Now these french toast roll-ups aren’t exactly “healthy” or even “wholesome”, but they taste amazing!
I admit I stole this idea from Pinterest, but it was a genius idea and I had to share my new finding with you guys. So what is a french toast roll-up you ask? Good question. Basically you roll up a piece of bread filled with some sort of filling, dip it in an egg-milk concoction, and make it like you would any regular french toast, and then roll it in a cinnamon-sugar mixture.
It.is.so.good.
I can’t even stress enough how good it is. Not to mention suuuper easy and simple! Anyone can do this! They also look pretty fancy, so they would be perfect for a brunch or a special breakfast treat for an anniversary/birthday/holiday or just because. (Because you’re always allowed to treat yourself just because.)
So let’s get to it! Here’s what you will need:
- 8 slices sandwich bread
- 2 eggs
- 3 Tb milk
- 1/3 cup + 2 Tb sugar, separated
- 1 heaping tsp cinnamon
- Filling options: Nutella, softened cream cheese, jam, fresh diced strawberries/other types of berries or peaches, caramel sauce, etc. (I used Nutella on some and cream cheese + strawberry jam on the others for a cheesecake flavor! Both were delish!)
- Optional: syrup
1) Cinnamon-sugar: Mix together 1/3 cup sugar and cinnamon. Put in a shallow bowl or plate. Set aside.
2) Egg-Milk Concoction: whisk together eggs, milk, and 2 Tb sugar. Set aside.
3) Roll-ups: Flatten the bread with a rolling pin. (The original recipe calls for cutting the crust off the bread, but I absolutely hate doing that because it’s such a waste…unless you eat the crust afterwards or make use of it somehow before it becomes stale…I guess you could use it to make breadcrumbs but it’s just easier to keep the crust on, because let’s face it- after making these babies you’re not going to be in the mood for eating stale crusts or making breadcrumbs because you will be too satiated and in a daze from how delicious your breakfast was)
4) Sorry that #3 was unnecessarily long
5) On one side of the bread put a little bit of the filling of your choice along the edge in a narrow strip. (A little goes a long way- you don’t want your roll-up to burst with the filling when you’re rolling it up or cooking it…I know it’s tempting to slather that Nutella on thick, but trust me…curb the urge)
6) Carefully, but tightly roll the bread into a “roll-up”. I used a little bit of the egg-milk concoction to “glue” the seams together to help prevent the roll-ups from unraveling
7) Carefully dip the roll-ups one by one in the egg-milk concoction.
8) Grease your pan with a little butter and heat it on medium heat
9) Toss those beauties in the pan (er, maybe place them gently because they have a tendency to unroll) seam side down.
10) Cook them for about a minute on each side and make sure you cook it all the way around.
11) Take them out and immediately place them in your cinnamon-sugar mixture and make sure they’re nicely rolled around in it
12) Totally optional to drizzle a teensy bit of syrup on top
Bon appetite!
End of Another Semester
It’s been one hell of a semester. Seriously. It’s been hell. Ok, maybe not that bad…Alhamdulillah the worst is over! Right now I’m supposed to be putting together my final portfolio for my diagnostic reading practicum for my conference with my professor tomorrow, but of course I decided instead it was the perfect time to reflect on this crazy semester. After 4:30 tomorrow I will officially be done with this semester and my third year! It is so so so crazy to think I only have ONE YEAR LEFT before I graduate!!!!!!!! And have to face the “real world” (didn’t you always hate it when adults said that??? I hardly think any of us are living in a fantasy world…most of the time anyways).
But I guess it is kind of like a fantasy world, because next Spring not only will I be graduating, inshaAllah, but I will be student teaching (nowadays they’re calling it clinical teaching, which sounds kind of cooler I guess). But at the beginning of this semester, I was really struggling. Exhausted, emotional, frustrated…unhappy. Everything was so hard. I skipped classes, something I have rarely, rarely done. I would also completely zone out of this once class, because I would be so mind-numbingly exhausted from my other classes, again something I regret. I really wish I had paid more attention in that class. On top of of the rigorous classes, my schedule did not make things any easier! Oh, and I was working part-time as a peer tutor as well, which meant an additional 7 hours on campus. I felt like I was on campus all day from my morning classes to my tutoring sessions, and then my evening classes. It was tough at the beginning because I was really not used juggling a hectic class schedule with work. I hated my night classes with a passion. But life is funny, you see. You get used to things. It takes some time, but you adjust.
And as awful and hard as I will remember this semester to be….I have to remind myself a lot of good stuff happened too 🙂
Samoa Bars
Are you one of those peoples who wished Girl Scout cookies were sold all year long? I hear your plight. My favorite are the samoa cookies! How can you possibly go wrong with chocolate, coconut, and caramel?
Honey Wheat Pancakes
If you’re like me you’re constantly trying to eat healthier…and constantly failing to do so. About every month or so I get this earth-shattering realization that junk food is bad for me and I need to start eating healthier and working out more…and this lasts for about a week or so before I slowly fall into bad habits again. But the good thing is that no matter how many times I fail at my healthy-eating regimen I always tell myself that I can do it again. You may fall hard but picking yourself up is what counts. Anyways, end of semi-inspirational/motivational talk. Let’s talk food.
Chocolate Cupcakes!
Since yours truly loves cake, I thought it would only be appropriate that I start off with a cake recipe! Well, actually, it’s a cupcake recipe. But to-may-to, to-mah-to right?
sweetspo 