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I can see why you'd miss the juices. The range is pretty extensive in most restaurants/cafes and they're just delicious! As far as I can tell, water quality is always the same, ie it doesn't vary. That's not to say it's good! I don't drink it from the tap because it still tastes salty and a bit odd after desalinisation. It's not horrible but I don't particularly care for the tap water here. It's the only place I've actually only drunk bottled water.

So glad you enjoy the pictures! I definitely like taking and sharing them. With the wattleseed, I'm sure it'd be a great idea to infuse the cream but, you know, I just toss in a tablespoon or less into a batch of icecream. I also find that wattleseed goes well in muffins that have sultanas/raisins, dates, bananas, chocolate or any other baked good with those flavours. When you used the wattleseed in pav, did you mix it into the cream or the meringue?

And this is what my orange chicken dish looked like using the recipe above.

Pictures! See what I mean about the colour of this place? It's even more garish than the photo shows. You can also see the balcony dining area. The courtyard is a great setting too: Our drinks. Actually I just noticed that my drink is nearly the colour of the outside of this cafe! Perhaps I shouldn't have made fun... And our sandwiches (haloumi on the left, meat/Mediterranean on the right) which were quickly devoured. The beautiful Jumeirah mosque with a sand storm of a day!

Thanks for the link. She says that ricotta isnt a high yeild cheese. Do you know how much Id get from the 2 quarts of milk? ← Hmmm, when I used 7 litres of milk I got nearly a kilo of cheese. So if I calculate correctly you'll get 250-300g or just over half a pound. Anyone want to "proof" my calculations?

For breakfast today I had some fruit. Two of those finger bananas (I seem to be hooked!), a pretty pear and a lovely looking nectarine. Unfortunately the nectarine should be arrested for false advertising. It tasted yuck. Threw it out after a couple bites. Had a meeting at noon. I arrived early and had a fresh watermelon juice which was served in a very nice glass. This cafe is just outside the building I'll be working in. The cafe's is outdoors under a big tent and filled with big sofas and chairs covered in chintz (is that how you spell it?) fabric. Very comfy. I wonder how many meetings I can arrange to have down there! [edited to add pictures]

The chicken recipe came from Middle Eastern Home Cooking by Tess Mallos. (Here it is in Amazon.) The picture on the cover is of this dish, called zarda palau! It looks far better than mine, of course. For the 2 of us I used the following: 1 orange 1 cup water 1/2 cup sugar 2 tablespoons oil (or ghee) 1/4 cup slivered almonds 2 chicken breasts (supposed to cut into quarters but I didn't) 1/2 an onion, sliced 1 cup long grain rice 1/4 cup pistachios toasted and chopped 1/4 teaspoon saffron steeped in 1 tablespoon hot water for 10 minutes. Shred zest into thin strips and boil in water for 5 minutes. Drain and rinse. Place 1 cup water, the sugar, and zest to a boil, then reduce heat to continue simmering for approx 10 minutes; until syrup is thick. Fry almonds in half a tablespoon of oil until they are golden. Set aside. Heat remaining oil in pan and brown the chicken. Remove the chicken and season it. Reduce the heat in the pan and add the onions to the fat. Cook gently until soft and slightly brown, approx 10 minutes. Add 1/2 cup of water to deglaze the pan. Add chicken, cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Boil the rice in salted water for 8 minutes. Drain, put into a bowl and add the orange syrup but not the zest. Spread half the rice in a baking dish and add half the cooking liquid from the chicken. Arrange onions and chicken atop the rice then sprinkle with half the zest and half the almonds. Top with the rest of the rice and chicken cooking liquid. Cover and bake in a 300F/150C oven for 40 minutes. Remove chicken and onions to a dish, arrange rice around them. Sprinkle the saffron liquid on the rice and sprinkle with the rest of the almonds and the pistachios.

And this is what my smoothie looked like: I think I shoulda made it thicker so that the wattleseed didn't mostly end up in the bottom.

Dunno whether it's Ok to keep that dough for longer than it says. It'll likely be fine, I suspect. I sorta know what curling is because my first roommate at college was from the top of Montana and therefore got a fair bit of Canadian influence. Keep me posted on your foccacia! I think I'll have to tune into the Piere Herme thread that I think I saw. Don't have the book but would love to drool over the pictures!

And here's the picture: I love the little bowl with the dragon flies. And isn't that rose petal covered nougat pretty?

Excellent! Thanks for the link to the cheesemaking info.

Tonight for dinner I thought I'd try a recipe from another of my ME cookbooks. It's one I wouldn't normally make but I figured, why not? It's orange chicken and, according to the book, is Afghani. Now orange chicken doesn't sound that different, why would I not normally make that? Well, it's because the orange in the recipe is actually orange peel that you candy! You add the syrup to the dish before baking it and put some peel on the top. I'm not a huge fan of sweet and savoury together, thus the hesitation with the recipe. The dish technique is to candy the peel, parboil some rice, pour the syrup from the peel over the rice, brown the chicken, remove it and slow cook some onions. Put half the rice in a pan, top with some toasted almonds, some of the peel, put in chicken and onions and top with rest of rice. Bake it and when ready to serve put some saffron steeped water over the top with more toasted almonds, the rest of the peel and some pistachios. I'll post a picture when I can. Very interesting! Anyone do this sort of thing before?

Oh, thanks for reading my blog! I've got to pull BWJ back out and take a look before I can suggest anything. What sort of party is it? I think I'm gonna make the potato loaves again. I just love those.

Lunch! Hubby thought he felt good enough to go out for lunch so we headed to a cafe everyone raves about called The Lime Tree Cafe. Just wait til you see the colour of this place. If there are limes that colour I'd hate to eat 'em! It's easy to spot their little vans driving around town. It was a nice day and the cafe has both an outdoor balcony and a courtyard. The balcony was full so we sat in their lovely courtyard. This cafe serves frittatas, paninis, salads, all day breakfasts, and some amazing cakes. I had a panini with eggplant, tomato and haloumi, since we've been talking about it here. Husband had a meat and Mediterranean vegetable foccacia roll. Both were toasted and they were pretty good. However I thought my panini should have had more haloumi especially since the taste was so wonderful. Can't wait to use the haloumi I have at home! I've been in the mood to order fresh fruit juices lately because most places do them so deliciously. This place had a new one on me: lime and mint soda. I've had mint lemonade so why not mint limeade? It came with a little jug of sugar water. I love that since I like my drinks on the more tart side. My dining partner had a latte. This cafe is down near one of the prettiest mosques around. In fact it's the "open mosque" because non muslims can go in twice a week. This program is an effort to help people understand Islam. We haven't gotten there yet but it's something we are really looking forward to doing.

yes it is. Your brain musta googled for you!

This morning I had a smoothie to use up my last banana/plantain. I used cows milk and date milk in it as well as some wattleseed. Have you see wattleseed before? Australian bush tucker, it is. It’s got a mocha flavour to it. I use it in baked goods or ice cream but it can be used in savoury dishes too. Here's the recipe page from that company I linked to up topic. And I also had some of that cinnamon covered date paste. Definitely my favourite! [edited to fix typo]

Well, I'm still having problems posting pictures without help so I'll just post the pictures later. Last night our dessert was Ben and Jerry’s which I’ve not seen since leaving the US. (Don’t ask how much it cost here! Some times you just have to treat yourself.) Flavours: Batter (oooh, my goodness it’s soooo chocolaty!) and Coffee. We also had three little bites of nougats that I got at Goodies on Saturday. Firstly, there was plain pistachio. It was very light and fluffy, not sticky and not really really sweet. It also had some other rather floral flavour to it; I don’t think it was orange blossom or rose water. The second one had apricot paste on the top and bottom and the nougat in the middle was pistachio. The last one was so pretty...it had dried rose petals covering the top! I decided that I liked to look at them a lot more than I liked to eat them. I also had to have a couple more items that I got from the date shop.

Thanks for your thoughts on vanilla, touaregsand and bleudauvergne. My other option is to bring some back with me when I travel, which I may do. I'll check out the vanilla powder a bit more thoroughly. Another reason I thought they might not sell vanilla extract in the grocery is that it has alcohol in it but I think there were other extracts there so that's probably not the reason. I'm surprised I can't even find it in the shops that service mostly expats. Hmmm...such a mystery! bleudauvergne, I hadn't thought about asking my house keeper if she'd be happy to stir stock for me! Actually, I've been thinking more about making stock which would give me the opportunity to buy big boxes of veg at the open air market one of these days. Otherwise it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for me to shop there as I don't normally use mass quantities of the same type of fruit or veg. Would be fun to give it a go; bargaining to come up with an exceptable price. I found it interesting that there are "helpers" that "greet" you as you get out of your car and ask if they can follow you around the market to carry your stuff, for a price, of course (they have carts and boxes).

Why thanks! I don't speak Arabic or read it yet. My husband loves languages and we're gonna try to learn a bit of it together. Most of the food seems to be labelled in English as well as Arabic so I haven't had try and read a new alphabet yet. However, as you'd imagine, some things are called a different word than I'm used to so there's still plenty of interpretation!

Here's a link to some information about Australian bush tucker foods. I've used a few bush tucker items at home, quite a few purchased from this company. I went to this shop when I lived in Melbourne and they were really nice people. Of course I then proceeded to buy some great stuff to try!

The 2 things that I'm disappointed I can't find are vanilla extract and stock. There is no vanilla extract, except maybe the imitation stuff which I don't like at all. There is vanilla powder but I've never really used it. Any of you think its a good substitute for vanilla extract? I've been thinking of making my own by steeping vanilla beans in alcohol. I have some vanilla paste at the moment that I'm using in the mean time. As for stock, I used to buy UHT packaged liquid stock in Australia that I thought was pretty good since I couldn't be bothered to make my own most of the time. However here you can only buy stock cubes or powdered bullion. I may find the time to make some stock of my own now.

Thanks all for the haloumi ideas and andiesenji that chicken barberry dish looks divine. jamiemaw thanks for the recommendation re your Canadian chef. I’ll definitely be checking that out, though not sure about this week. Hubby says he's feeling better so I'm hoping we'll soon be taking you someplace other than my house! Oooh, goodie , I can post my flat bread recipe. Here ya go. It's from The Australian Women's Weekly Middle Eastern cooking class cookbook. They call it pita but it's not what I'd call pita. 1 tablespoon dried yeast 1 tablespoon honey 3 cups (450g) plain all purpose flour 1.5 cups (240g) wholemeal plain flour 2 teaspoons salt 2.5 cups (625ml) water 2 tablespoons olive oil Most of the time I don't soak the yeast in water before adding it to the dry ingredients, but feel free to do so, of course. I put all the ingredients in my Kitchenaide where I knead it for 10 minutes to make it elastic. Then put it aside in an oiled bowl and covered to let it rise for an hour (until about doubled).. Divide into 12 balls, place on a floured surface to rise again for 30 minutes (until about doubled). Pat each ball into 16cm width, or so. Cook in a medium hot skillet on the stove, putting a little oil in the pan before putting each round into it. The recipe says to do this in a super hot skillet but my bread just burns. So I cook it a bit slower on a lower temp. I turn it several times to get even browning. Of course the recipe says you'll only need to turn it once. Let me know if you give this a try and whether you can see any improvements I could make.

Lone Star, have you been reading my mind and peeking into my fridge? I've been wanting to try haloumi for quite some time so I bought some a week ago. I figured I might be able to have it for a meal some time this week, but if not, it has the shelf life perfect for (refrigerated) bomb shelters! You'll see pictures if I get to it this week!

I used the recipe from the Bread Bible. Perhaps I mismeasured. I'll take another look to see if the recipe has those sorts of proportions. [edited to fix title of tome]

Ah, well, then mine wasn't even close, then! [mental note for next time, wet wet dough!]