Keep Calm and Curry On

Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.

RHUBARBIX - A dessert recipe from my kitchen made from home-grown rhubarb. Good for breakfast too. 😋

Chopped rhubarb and dried cranberries baked with cinnamon, cardomum and anise are topped with a crumb mixture of cereal biscuits, brown sugar and ghee. The sweet and crispy texture counteracts the tangy flavour rhubarb perfectly. Eaten hot or cold.

🧑🏽‍🍳 🧙🏼‍♀️💥🔥🔥💫💫

I like candles around my home. Lots of them. To save money and cut down on waste, you can recycle your used candle wax by melting it over the stove, or in the microwave. Add scent or spices of your choice and pour into moulds or glass containers. Personally, I prefer natural and earthy scents which don’t irritate the respiratory tract at all. When they’re home-made after burning white candles, you know exactly what’s in them. These ones I made today are cinnamon, star anise and clove scented. Just grind the spices and throw them into the melted wax. Wicks and moulds are very reasonably priced on line and they’re very quick to make up. It’s calming to work on something with your hands in between screen time at regular intervals and helps enhance FLOW.

🕯️ 🕯️ 🔥🔥 🎃 🍂 🍁

Wishing all my Hindu, Sikh and Jain friends Happy Choti Diwali. Diwali ki shubhkamnayein. 🙏🏽 🕉️ 🪯 ❤️💫💫

May the year ahead be filled with blessings and the light brighten your path ahead.

This Indian festival symbolises the spiritual victory of Dharama over Adharama, light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance.

Particularly poignant for right now in this lifetime for us all I feel. Even if you’re not celebrating or honouring its significance today.

⛓️‍💥 🌍 ⛓️‍💥 💥🔥🔥❤️❤️💪🏽💪🏽

UPSIDE DOWN APPLE & PISTACHIO CAKE

A moist and exotic aromatic twist on a traditional European apple upside down cake recipe.

Baked by combining wholemeal flour, demerara sugar, and eggs laced with the sweet essence of rose water, honey and freshly ground cinnamon sticks.

After shelling the pistachios, I crushed them roughly in my copper Arabic inscribed pestle and mortar and then tossed them into the mixture. Stir with the wooden spoon. 👩🏽‍🍳 🧙🏻‍♀️😉

After slicing the apples thinly 🍎 🔪 I layered them onto the bottom of the greasy loaf tin and poured the mixture on top.

Baked until well risen in a moderately heated oven. 💥🔥🔥

The perfect sweet treat for when you stop for tea on an autumnal afternoon. ☕️ 🧹 🍁 🍂 😉😎👍🏽

AUTUMN CHUTNEY

A light heat 🌶️ chutney made from the Autumn seasonal cooking apples gifts I received recently.

I combined the apples with red onion, and beetroot, carrot and ginger shreds thrown out by the juicer machine yesterday. Zero food waste by using everything you can from your fresh ingredients.

The apples and red onion are chopped into large chunks, and thrown into the large cooking pot with all the other ingredients….the vegetable juice shreds, butter, brown sugar, cinnamon bark, star anise, turmeric, black pepper and cayenne pepper.

Bring the mixture to the boil, and then turn down to a simmer until it reduces down to a soft but still lumpy texture. Around 60 minutes or so. Stir with a wooden spoon occasionally. Or as often as you like. 🧙 👩🏽‍🍳 💥🔥🔥 🥄 😉

Spoon into hot glass jars heated in the oven, and you should be able to store it for around 3 months in a cool, dark place.

A very simple to prepare and tasty relish which is good with cheese, and also as a condiment with meat dishes.

GEMAR CHATIMA TOVA. 🙏🏽 ✡️ ❤️💫💫

My simple feast tonight before my 24 hour fast for Yom Kippur tonight. Just a simple chicken bake with courgettes, (or zucchini as they say in most of the rest of the world apart from 🇬🇧 and 🇦🇺 I believe). Eggs for dinner. 😉 🧙🏻‍♀️ 👩🏽‍🍳 💥🔥🔥💫💫

I didn’t have a pomegranate today at home so just made do with what I had in the larder cupboard and fridge. I don’t think that will have too much of a detrimental effect on my fate being sealed in the Book of Life. It’s always the intention behind any ritual that counts I believe. Hopefully. Atonement for sins in a past life tonight. ⭕️ ♾️ ♾️ ⚖️ 🤞🏽

Just because I have Indian heritage, it doesn’t mean I eat daal and curry all the time. We used to look forward to our fish and chip suppers on Fridays when we were kids like you wouldn’t believe to have a change form eating rotis and rice everyday! 🤔😅

Seasoned with black pepper, Himalayan pink salt. 🇮🇳 🇳🇵 , turmeric, freshly cinnamon sticks, and a very generous pinch or two of chilli for a real kick to boot out anything nasty that may be lurking around. Also great for blowing away colds.
🌶️ 🦵🏽🦵🏽😉😎👍🏽

Served with a rocket salad dressed with 🇬🇷 olive oil and ground flax seeds. A simple dessert of just 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 cherries and an 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 apple from the pile I received last week. There’s always been enough oil in the bottles. Gratitude. 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

What’s really mind-boggling is how similar Judaism and Islam actually really are. This is like fasting for Ramadan but in REVERSE THE ORDER MODE. Much longer though.

Anyway…wishing anyone who’s honouring this ritual tonight a blessed and peaceful year ahead before the next one comes around. Hopefully, we won’t all be wanting to murder each other anywhere on the planet by then. Faith, hope and belief work miracles. Especially if we all imagine together. And nothing like fusion of food to help things along as well. 👩🏽‍🍳 🥰

⛓️‍💥 🌍 ⛓️‍💥 ❤️❤️💪🏽💪🏽

More apples delivered this evening. Always good to mix up different varieties. 🔪 🍎 🍏 👌🏽

Thank you Otto for these today. 🙏❤️💫💫

Will be very well used for sure, and it will be a very busy Sunday all day tomorrow toiling over the stove in the kitchen. All systems GO.

😉🧙🏻‍♀️👩🏽‍🍳 💥🔥🔥😎👍🏽

These kind of gifts of love from a neighbour are the best. 🙏🏽❤️🥰

English Bardsey variety cooking apples from the tree in her garden ready to be transformed into some crumble and pies this weekend for some warming and hearty desserts. Perfect winter fuel for the body now the weather is getting much cooler.

And of course , and naturally…I’ll be adding some spicy stuff to the recipes whilst stirring up the mixture over the flames on the stove. Particularly fun when you’re working on cutting the rot out.

😉 🍎 🍏 🧙🏻‍♀️ 👩🏽‍🍳 💥🔥🔥💫💫

Many of my friends are having problems sleeping well these days. I can recommend a natural ‘potion’ which works really well. Tried and tested formula. When we were younger, we always had hot cocoa or Ovaltine in hot milk before we went to bed. As I’ve got older, I’ve become lactose intolerant in my fifties. (Actually, statistics from some sources show that more people are lactose intolerant than during the seventies and eighties…both male and female and VARIABLE age ranges. Many women do however experience this during or after the menopause. I switched to nut and soya for a while, but over the past 2 months, I tried goats milk. In the East, most milk is goat or buffalo derived. They boil it at home after purchasing from a local milkman in rural areas before consumption. And actually, it’s helped my rheumatoid arthritis calm down as well by reintroducing more dairy in the form of goat milk. You are advised to avoid dairy if you have this condition, but I just love my cheese and dairy too much to cut it out. We are all built differently, so may not work for everyone, but it works very well for me right now. Our bodies are constantly changing as well, so we can SWITCH things up from time to time when the formula doesn’t work anymore.

Hot chocolate for one cup:

* 1 cup goats milk

* 1heaped tablespoon of white or black poppy
seeds ( white are more potent)

* 1 tablespoon of PURE cocoa powder (or
cacao if you prefer or don’t have it)

I have a sweet tooth, so I like mine with brown sugar or honey…a much healthier option than over-processed white sugar I feel.

Luckily, I sourced this pack of ceremonial cacao at a food bank a few months back. A very LUCKY find.

KEEP CALM AND CURRY ON! 😉😎

🧑🏽‍🍳 🧙🏼‍♀️ 💥 🔥 🔥💫💫