Lily’s Blog, Dragon Absconded!
Baking Until I Drop

Eid is almost upon is. Eid prayers will most likely be Saturday morning (I say most likely since the muslim calendar is determined by the sighting of the new moon).

Our menu went through many revamps.
Mom kept wanting to make this, I didn’t see why we needed to make that and dad told me to do anything in my power to keep the work to a minimum/the menu not too extravagant because there is a member of the family who tends to overwork …
Did I ever tell you about the time in a staff meeting when I was discussing Eid and Divali preparations with a colleague (she was Hindu thus Divali and they were very close to each other that year) and I happened to mention the progress mom and I made; that we’d already planned the menu. She looked up at me stunned and asked, “it doesn’t have to be curry?”

I don’t know if I laughed at her.

But come on, there are muslims from all over and they don’t all come from a curry background!

Anywayz, to us, curry is ordinary food and though we like it and might sometimes want it for Eid, this is rarely the case. My stomach wants food that won’t make it sick and that I can eat for a long time.

My aunt also called yesterday and asked mom if we were cooking curry.
hahaha.
Her husband came with her one year (last?) and was looking forward to our sweets and snacks. So I took out a serving plate and nicely arrayed it all for him.

But noooo….turns out he was looking for the Indian delicacies.
*sigh*
I packed it up in a box and sat down, dog-tired (that was the year Chennette had typhoid and mom and I were … well not so good) and just took pictures of it…different angles, different lightings…it was relaxing in the backporch. Hmm, you mightn’t believe me as I never uploaded these pictures but…(A few pictures I uploaded).

So, the menu…

Food:

• Oven Barbeque chicken
• Lamb Biryani
• Channa Biryani (small dish for vegetarians)
• Lamb Kibbeh
• Fatoush
• Scalloped Potatoes with mushrooms (we keep changing our minds on this…we want it but don’t want to do too much!)

Savoury snacks:

• Felafel
• Beef and Chicken samosas (we not making this ourselves! we ordered it and we will bake them ourselves!)
• Baigani

Sweets:

• Basboosa or Harissa (MADE ALREADY!!!)
• Baklava
• Poppy seed cookies (I want to make cookies so if I up to it I will make them today or tomorrow) or nankatai
• Sawaine
• Rasgullah

Can you believe, I looked through my ‘Id pictures from last year. I took so many but never uploaded them because I wasn’t flickr pro then…!

Well, ‘Id is a celebration for us. We used to invite tonnes of people once upon a time. And mom used to cook curry in addition to the dishes we wanted. We would complain and ask why…because it was soo much work…too much work for us to enjoy our ‘Id properly and we wouldn’t eat it out. Mom would always respond that people would expect curry…we would counter that people would expect whatever we make. As long as we cater for food restrictions of the invitees we’re all good.

*sigh*

Life is tough sometimes. If you keep cooking the curry then of course people will keep expecting it and of course other people will have this misconception that muslims have to cook curry for ‘Id.