spotlight – SIP, SAVOUR, & SEE

We needed a break – a break from it all. From work, from the sand, from the desert, from our lives, from everything. Months earlier we decided that we were going get away – for a while. We have had no shortage of traveling over the past year: Oman, Sri Lanka, England, USA, France, India, and Nepal have all made it into our passports and memories. However we wanted something that might not have been heavily influenced .by the West just yet. So during dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant in Dubai Dr. H suggested we look into a holiday to…

Travel

Morning Showers

December 5, 2012

There are those days when it all seems to start coming together. It is remarkable really when it happens. Maybe it takes place over weeks, months, or even years. But then suddenly on a single day – even a moment of that day – it seems to make sense. For me it was a rainy Friday morning in Abu Dhabi. Yes, you read correctly. RAINY in Abu Dhabi. In the 18 months that we have lived here, I have never put those two words together. Rain is something that I have missed desperately. The sound of it, the fresh smell…

Travel

Stepping in

November 9, 2012

We were told about Pashnupatinath well before we boarded our plane for Kathmandu. A good friend sent us a long list of everything that we needed to see in Kathmandu. We only had two days to explore, but he told us not to worry. We would be able to see quite a bit. The list included names of temples I could not pronounces, stories of living goddess in young girls, funeral rituals, and monkeys. Had I not been reading something from someone I actually knew, I might have mistaken the email for some kind of Grimm fairytale. It all sounded…

Featured / Travel

Colors of Kathmandu

November 4, 2012

Traveling. It is one of the things that is so wonderful about living in the UAE. We suddenly find ourselves in the middle of a whole new world. Places that seemed like remote possibilities or not even possible are suddenly within reach. Asia and Africa are places we can almost reach are arms out to and touch. Borders and are something to look forward to, and not debate in a political forum. We recently made a last-minute decision to travel to Kathmandu, Nepal. Upon arrival we discovered that Nepal is so much more than that famous mountain range. We left…

Life

Shutting it all down

October 6, 2012

I thought about it, really I did. I thought about shutting down this blog and my other one. After a summer from hell, I had almost no desire to write anymore. I cared little about anything. But slowly things started changing, and getting back to my kind of normal. That means cooking, writing, laughing, and being human again. So I have decided to brush of the desert sand that blows across the Empty Quarter and count my blessings – because as bad as things can get, gradually they tend to get even better with time.

Travel

Colors of the desert

May 28, 2012

We recently visited the animal markets in Al Ain with some friends. During our brief walk around the camel area, we made some new friends from Afghanistan The stark white dishdashas stood out among the desert orange haze Even the camels seem to blend into the background While the sights and sounds were amazing, they were also much of the same – desert orange through a haze of sand. This is the UAE, so one should expect these colors and sites. Nonetheless, we still miss green…

Recipes

Done in by Dates

January 21, 2012

I have put up a recipe of this kind before – I promise you. But I keep going back to it, because the ingredients are entirely too easy to get in this part of the world – that would be the Middle East. In the summer people are often seen underneath date trees with large tarps – someone climbs up the tree and throws down the sun-soaked sweet dates. As a child I never liked dates. They were hard and too sugary, and I picked them out of granola and cereal on a regular basis. Then I started liking them,…

Recipes

Browned Butter Brownies – with a catch

October 17, 2011

Cooking in the UAE is a bit of a challenge for me. Read thru this blog, and it is not hard to find out why. Recipes like Bourbon Caramel Cheesecake, Chocolate Cake with Rum Buttercream, or Boozed Up Banana Bread, well they are fine, and really really good, but they are not necessarily the kind of thing I could make here and bring to someone’s home, unless of course I knew for sure that I would not offend. You might ask why? Why would it matter? Alcohol. That is why it matters. It is against Islam to consume alcohol, and that means that…

Travel

Road to Nowhere

July 2, 2011

We weren’t quite sure what to expect when we started driving. Rumors were that driving around here was a bit crazy – however we were coming from Boston, and anyone who has driven there knows exactly what I am talking about. We chose to take the road on Friday morning – the quietest time to drive. No one is out – the people who sweep the sand off of the roads are around, but that is about it. On this particular morning however, the sky was filled with dust – a layer that had come up from the desert and…