Ramadan Mubarak!

Asalaamu alaykum wa rahmatallahi wa barakato~

Happy Ramadan everyone :)  InshAllah you all have a beautiful month filled with blessings and forgiveness, ameen!

Fancies

 

Where Am I?

Asalaamu alaykum wa rahmatallahi wa barakato~

I haven't updated in quite a while, so here's the drop-in to say where I am and why.

I ended up having to move quite abruptly, and this was obviously stressful, but alhamdullilah I have moved now and everything worked out fine.

I just graduated from uni in May, and was searching for jobs.  I found one, Alhamdulillah, teaching at an Islamic school in my area.  However, now that I have a job, I am trying to pull together all of the resources that I need.  As a first year teacher there is a lot to plan and do before school begins.

Ramadan is quickly approaching, as you all probably know, and thus I have been trying to prepare myself mentally and spiritually.

I have a four month program to learn Arabic, so I've been working hard with that.  One of my goals this Ramadan is to complete the Quran in Arabic.  My reading skills have really been improving lately, Alhamdulillah, so inshAllah I will be successful (I usually just read in English...).

I am travelling to Chicago next week, the week before Ramadan.  My husband and I, being the airheads that we are, did not consider the timing of this trip and are now realizing how close we are actually cutting it.  We will be back on July 8th, and Ramadan begins inshAllah July 9th.  Yikes.  Very little turn over or resting time before then.

So, things have been happening quite rapidly and unexpectedly for awhile now.  If you read my previous post on my inability to deal with changes, you know that this has not been fun or easy for me.  Alhamdulillah for everything though, and things do seem to be falling swiftly into place.

I hope anyone reading this has a beautiful day, inshAllah, and a beautiful summer.

More to come soon about our trip to Chicago, and of course, Ramadan...

<3

Lebanese Cooking: Stovetop Kofta on Rice

Asalaamu alaykum wa rahmatallahi wa barakato ~
May the peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you ~

Today, I was making one of my favorite Lebanese foods, stovetop Kofta, and I thought I'd share the recipe. It's delicious and fairly easy to make, once you get the hang of it.  I make it exactly as my mother-in-law taught me, who is from the Zahle region of Lebanon (Northeast near the Syrian border).

Without further ado, here we go!

Ingredients:

1 lb. ground beef
1 bunch parsley, minced
1 onion, diced
3 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced width-wise
2 Tbsp. olive oil
3 tsp. red pepper
1 tsp. black pepper
3 tsp. salt (meat mixture)
1 can tomato paste
2 cups hot water
1 Tbsp. salt (water mixture)

Directions:

First, prep all of your ingredients.  Mince the parsley, dice the onion, and peel and slice the potatoes.

Potatoes should be about 1/2 an inch thick.

Next, combine parsley, onions, olive oil, spices, and meat in a mixing bowl.  While you mix, prepare to fry the potatoes.  Fill a frying pot with about an inch of oil and heat on high.  Wait about 5 - 10 minutes (depending on the strength of your oven) for the oil to warm.  When you put a potato in and the oil boils, it's hot enough.

You can adjust the spiciness and saltiness to your liking!

When the oil is hot enough, it's time to fry those potatoes!  Drop them in, enough to cover the bottom of the pan, and fry for about 10 minutes or until they are golden brown.

While the potatoes are frying, put the meat mixture into a 9 inch by 13 inch METAL baking pan.  (If it's glass, it will explode!)

Press the meat into the pan with a spatula.  As the potatoes become browned, drain them of oil and then place them on top of the meat mixture in the pan.

Once all of the potatoes are fried to (near) perfection, it's time to make the tomato sauce.  In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine about 3/4 of a 6 oz. can of tomato paste with 2 cups of very hot water and about a Tablespoon of salt. 

Mix the ingredients until fully combined.  I have found that adding small amounts of hot water to the tomato paste and mixing makes the tomato paste easier to dissolve. 

Now, pour the sauce mixture over the meat and potatoes.  It should cover the entire thing completely, but some potatoes or onions or parsley may float to the top.

Place the dish on two burners vertically, and cook on medium heat for about 15 - 20 minutes.

While the Kofta is cooking, prepare the rice.  To feed two people for about three meals, I make 1 1/2 cups of rice.  Here's my rice recipe:

1 1/2 cups of basmati rice

3 cups of water

Dash of salt

1 Tbsp. oil

Combine all ingredients and heat on high until boiling.  When boiling, cover and reduce heat to low.  Cook for 20 minutes without opening.  Then, the rice should be perfect!  

After your 20 minutes is up, the food should be ready to go!  Serve the Kofta on top of a bed of rice with plenty of tomato sauce.  

Sahtain!  :)

Ethnicity Tag

Asalaamu alaykum wa rahmatallahi wa barakato~
May the peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you~

I've seen several bloggers/Youtubers do this tag, so I thought I'd take a break from finals stress and join in :)

1. What is your ethnicity?
My family is American -- now, what does that mean?  Since America is a nation of immigrants, I could be of any ethnicity.  We have traced our lineage on my mother's side back to the 1700s, and we were already in the U.S.  This means that my family is likely of British origins on my mother's side, as these were the only immigrants/colonizers who were in the U.S. at that time.

My father's grandma is Swedish for sure.  Here's a list of the ethnicities I am "rumored" to be ;) :

French
Scottish
Norwegian
Welsh
Swedish (for sure)

I have been told, before I converted and began covering, that I looked French, Scottish, Russian, or German.  I guess I have one of those faces that just looks foreign no matter where I am...I never fit in.

I am also likely composed of some German, as that is the most common ethnicity in my area.  Someday I'll get a genetic analysis so I can know for sure :)  For now, I'll just call myself a European mutt :)

2.  When was the last time you visited your country?
I consider my country the U.S., and I live here, sooo, today!

3.  Name one ethnic food you enjoy the most.
My favorite favorite favorite food is chicken and dumplings.  My great grandma made THE BEST chicken and dumplings, I mean yummmmy stuff.  My second favorite is apple pie! *drool*

3.  Name one household item that best represents your culture.
A coffeemaker!  I'm not sure if people in other countries use these, but nearly every house you visit in the U.S. will have one.  Most Americans drink strong coffee every morning (NOT NESCAFE ;)), some add sugar and milk :)  I think this reflects American culture because we're all about the productivity...we're one of the only countries that only allows one week vacation per year, and only lets new mothers have two months off after giving birth.  So, yeah...

5.  What part of your country are you from?
I'm from the middle part, which is made up of mostly agricultural and rural communities :)  (Forget those ideas of skyscrapers you have in your head!)  Some call it the Heartland, some call it the Bread Basket of the U.S., because of how much food we produce here.  The soil is the best soil in the world for growing plants!  The middle of the U.S. has a very unique culture compared to the rest.  It is generally much more conservative and "less fancy" -- there are different ideals of success and wealth. For instance, owning a big truck is considered manly/rich, not owning a BMW or a Benz, haha.  If you drove a car like that, people might look at you funny...

6.  Can you speak the language of your ethnicity?

I can obviously speak English, and as my ethnicity is likely British, yes.  However, any of the other possible ethnicities in me, nope!  I speak Spanish, Arabic, and English, and I'm not likely Spanish or Arabic ;)

I hope ya'll enjoyed :)  I tag anyone who reads this to do this tag, and post it in the comments :)

Nostalgia

Asalaamu alaykum wa rahmatallahi wa barakato~
May the peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you~

Do you ever get waves of nostalgia washing over you, like being enveloped suddenly in the tide?

This happened to me today.

I so badly wanted to hear the noise of the locusts in the summer where I grew up, my heart hurt.

This noise reminds me of the heat and happy days and nights spent outside with my family and friends, catching fireflies and playing flashlight tag.  Reading in trees and looking at stars.

I used to lay on my back and gaze at the stars for hours, thinking how amazing creation is.

When was the last time you did that?

I miss being a child...

Work Work Work

Asalaamu alaykum wa rahmatallahi wa barakato~
May the peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you~

Oooff, I have been too busy lately.  I moved this weekend, have several 10-15 page papers due for university in the coming weeks, and I graduate in May, insh'Allah.  Which just means searching for jobs like a nut...

So perhaps I'll just update ya'll on my papers for now.  Some of the topics I'm writing about are interesting --  some not so much.  This semester I took three graduate level courses, ay yay yay.  They were challenging but rewarding.

One paper will be about ethnocentrism in digital media -- such as video games, movies, online, etc.  This sounds weird for an upper-level paper, but my class is digital rhetoric.  Yup, I spent a semester learning about video games and social networking, he he he.

I thought that it was important to write about this topic because of all of the war video games we learned about in my course.  I find the trend very disturbing, especially when there is no balanced option to show the moral implications/repercussions of war.  All war games nearly played in the U.S. are of U.S. soldiers attacking the Middle East, including mosques, etc.  This leads to racial profiling, misconceptions of Islam and Arabs/Muslims, and generally reinforces a spirit of "them vs. us" without the players of these video games possibly ever realizing what is being put into their minds.  Disturbing...

Another paper I'm working on will be about how social media is affecting power relations, specifically in education.  This is for my Governmentality/Foucault philosophy class.

And I'm also writing a paper for my Migration in Film and Literature about a novel by Bharati Mukherjee called "Jasmine."  It's due next week and I haven't even read the book... ;)  I guess it's about an Indian immigrant to the U.S.

For my Advanced Arabic course, I'm supposed to make a video final project of myself speaking Arabic about something.

We shall see how it all goes...

IRL OOTD: City Market

Asalaamu alaykum wa rahmatallahi wa barakato~

May the peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you~

Just thought I'd share an IRL OOTD with ya'll.  Sunday my husband and I ventured down to the city market -- it's my favorite thing to do.  We looked around at the flea market and then bought tons of fresh produce for incredibly cheap.  I bought eggplant for Mat'loobi, yummmmm, my favorite.

This is what I wore -- it was incredibly windy, so I was happy to have my jacket to tuck my scarf into.  Nothing's worse than your scarf magically floating around your head...

After we were done shopping I got some berry gelato at the Italian market.  It was delicious!

In sh Allah you all had a delightful weekend :)