*sigh*
Remember when last month the Daring Bakers made Lavash and I complained. I could’ve joined them. I actually made lavash from the same recipe that month.
Well guess what they baked this month!
See here!
Pizza.
From Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.
Yeah.
We all know what I have sitting in my freezer, right?
right?
In case you don’t know, let me refresh your memory:
And I still am not a Daring Baker.
*sob*
I promised ages ago to post a last post on Eid.
And of course I didn’t.
For almost a whole month I stood silent.
Well, a couple weeks ago I went to a Ladies Eid dinner (small group) where they also invited mom and her family to wish us a good hajj. They sang a couple qaseedas and I took the opportunity to leaf through the qaseeda book to find…tada! the song I tried to share with you earlier.
This is the song my grandfather used to sing every eid at every house.
It’s in urdu and if you want the translation, it’s here.
The food from this event can be found here and here.
Now maybe some of you are wondering if we did all the things we planned.
Well mostly.
I got to make my roasted red pepper couscous salad. You can read all about it at Chennette’s blog.
She took most of the pictures.
You can also see the lovely pictures of baklava she took that we timed with the arrival of our cousin and her new groom from the airport, thus delaying their sleep even longer.
It must be stated, our new cousin-in-law seems quite nice and Insha Allah they will be very happy.
And did we make the barfi for them? Yes!
We ordered chinese food for them when they were due back from Tobago and it was waiting and they enjoyed it immensely. It’s great to be back in Trinidad and find halaal food to eat…not just vegetarian and not just run by muslims but completely halaal chinese food.
And then later, we made barfi for my cousin so she could get it nice and warm. It was delicious. She stuffed some in her husband as he lay half-asleep.
I took pictures of the complete process and it’s deserving of its own post eventually but you can see the set here.
And I finally uploaded the pictures of my making the Cordon Rose Cream cheese cake.
Most Eid mornings, mom wakes up very early and starts the sawaine, frying stuff and maybe even cooking.
When I say early I mean the un-Godly hour of say 4am or before.
During Ramadan, when we’re fasting, 4am is *very* Godly however…not fasting…take a break please.
Thankfully, we didn’t wake up until Fajr time! (5:15am)
So, she didn’t wake up looooooooooong before me and I was able to come downstairs and help or be sous-chef.
Here follows the extremely dry, minute-by-minute account of my day. Enjoy :-p
Mom instead made accra with 1lb of flour (as opposed to the planned 2lbs). A proper recipe will follow later.
Are you fed up of being asked what’s your politics and you have no clue?
Are you non-US and trying to figure out how you would fit in with all the political crazies in the USA?
Well, I don’t know if this will help but it was a quiz and I got to select radio buttons and so why not?
My political compass
Economic Left/Right: -7.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.64
Advisory: I don’t completely understand economics…
Earl Grey Tea,
originally uploaded by Lilandra.
I’m sure I’ve said this many times but I’ll repeat it.
Since , this meant Ramadan ended at sunset on Tuesday.
So, we break the last fast of Ramadan in Shawwal, that is, on ‘Id-ul-Fitr.
For these reasons, we try, as we did last year, we made Chicken Biryani for the night. After all, why not celebrate at the start of ‘Id.
Chicken Biryani,
originally uploaded by Lilandra.
Oh my! You should’ve been there. To wake up to break fast to that smell. It was…heaven.
So, summarizing for the last day of Ramadan:
Tuesday 30 September 2008, Ramadan 29
Suhur: Hops Bread and butter and cheese
Iftar: Earl Grey Tea
Dinner: Chicken Biryani
Edit: When dad came from work, not only did he ignore mom’s directives and pass and pick up lamb, but he also bought a flower arrangement for her ;-)
Traditionally, ‘Id-ul-Fitr is a many-day celebration as we, muslims (strict), have only two celebrations1 and in muslim countries, this is honoured. Thus this will be the second of many posts commemorating ‘Id especially since Chennette won’t be arriving until Friday when we shall do some extra special cooking and thus have our ‘Id lunch on Saturday, as close to our whole family as we’ve been able to get any time the last four years, as my other sister, usually in Guyana with her offspring and spouse is now in the UK and my brother and his new family is in Saudi Arabia2.
When I was a child, we used to go house to house (muslim), following the Imam and at every house there would be a table set with sweets and savouries and other things. And we’d eat. Can you imagine? Every house? Or every “muslim” house? But it was fun. When we arrived at a house, we would gather around and he would lead us in the qaseeda:
Ma hay ramzan chaldiya
Eida kadin nagaya
Eida ho subako mubarak
Eida kadin nagaya
The above is from memory. I don’t know how accurate it is or even any more than those four lines. But it was and still is my favourite (only?) qaseeda. I wish someone could tell me how it goes…and sing it like he did.
After awhile, this was discontinued. I mean we’d spend all day going and stuffing and somebody would have to be at the house waiting for the rounds and thus missing out on the rounds and some people we would probably never even see at the masjid. It wasn’t very fair all around.
Then, at some point, we started having people bring something to the masjid. You know, you fry some aloo pie, make some barfi, bring some. If everybody would bring a little of what they made, then we could all lime and celebrate a bit at the masjid before going back home.
I like this idea…except some times it seems people only bring sweet stuff, and then to compensate, the next year/next ‘Id they only bring savoury :-)
Continue reading ‘Id Mubarak: Snacking at the Masjid
