Christmas Shopping List 2016

Hope you all are having a great week so far! If you’re like me, you’ve been too busy for holiday shopping! I’ve been looking around for presents for all the amazing women in my life. I figured you all might appreciate the stuff I’ve found for shopping inspiration:

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Lately, I’ve been really obsessed with wrap sweaters (5), and I basically got a wrap sweater for every lovely lady in my life this year. This one looks really nice and comfy for winter weather chilling, plus it is flexible material for mothers-to-be!

Everyone always needs good skin cream for the rough winter months, but I’ve also been trying out a bunch of hand and face creams. The Josie Maran hand cream (2) is really helping me with my dry hands, which get really pesky as soon as the weather gets cool. For protecting my face, I really enjoy this Clark’sBotanicals face cream (1). I don’t think my skin has even been softer, and I also really like that it has a very mellow scent which I prefer for something so close to my nose. J

But, for when I do like a good perfume, there are these two roll-on perfumes that are my absolute favorite. I’ve started to prefer roll-on perfume to spray-on perfume because I feel like it’s more subtle and easier to control where the perfume goes. I just received this Midnight Fleur perfume (4) as a gift a few weeks ago and I absolutely love it! Unfortunately, it’s not guaranteed to arrive by Christmas, so I added Burberry Brit (3), which is on Amazon Prime and has been a classic favorite of mine for a while.

I think everyone could always use a little relaxation, especially with the busy holiday season, and a bubble bath is a great outlet for chilling. I recently tried out the Philosophy Amazing Grace shower shampoo, bath, and gel (6) and I really enjoyed using it for a bubble bath.

So, good luck with holiday shopping and let me know how it goes!

Winter Wardrobe

Hope you guys are enjoying the Christmas season! I’ve been having a great time with dressing up to go out, so I figured I’d share some ideas from outfits I’ve been posting on Instagram.

S and I at my cousin's wedding!

 S and I went to my cousin’s wedding a few weeks ago. It was unseasonably warm, so we were able to enjoy hanging outside during the reception. I wore this long sleeve black dress and received nonstop compliments on it. Little black dresses are always a classy staple, and the long-sleeve version is a perfect dress for winter. My friend gave it to me as a present, so I wasn’t able to find a link to the actual dress, but I found some similar ones that you might enjoy checking out:

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This weekend, we had a night with several holiday parties to visit. I was struggling to find a shirt that was both comfy and casual but also nice enough for going out in the evening. My sis-in-law remembered that she had borrowed this shirt from me and suggested I wear it.

And I remembered how much I love it! Plus I think that pastels, even though they’re known for spring, look especially nice in winter as a gentle pop of color against all the black and brown that people wear, especially in the New England winter. I think I got this shirt at a thrift store, so I don’t have a direct link. But I found some well-reviewed pastel pink blouses that don’t break the bank:

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So, even though this season is all about giving, maybe you can splurge on yourself a bit and find something nice to wear for all of those holiday parties! Good luck with shopping!

Insha Allah

Hope you all are having a lovely weekend! S is visited me this weekend, and he’s been the best study buddy. Before I head to school, I just wanted to share a song that S played this weekend called Insha Allah by Sting, and I figured that I would give a bit of background on what insha allah means too!

Sting recently released Insh allah as a way to honor Syrian refugees and remember those lost at sea during the treacherous voyage across the Mediterranean. There were decidedly mixed reactions to him singing this song at the Bataclan last month, where he reopened the concert hall almost a year after it was one of the targets of the Paris attacks. I personally appreciate his motivation to elicit a more comprehensive sense of morality by discerning between terrorists and refugees. Plus, his performance connected the victims of the Paris attacks to the Syrian victims who also suffered from ISIS’ influence. In a city that’s still undoubtedly traumatized by those attacks, it’s difficult to distinguish between criticism is sympathetic to that trauma and criticism that is islamophobic.

Anyway, thanks to this beautiful song, Sting is raising awareness to the plight of Syrian refugees and keeping people conscious of the regime-sponsored horrors that continue. Feel free to follow my twitter account if you’d also like to stay updated on current events in Syria.

The phrase insha allah is a great one because it is very versatile with several meanings. Insha allah literally means “God’s will,” and is used as a response to a lot of conversation and questions. I’ve heard it used in response to questions like “Will you do this?” or “Will you come to that?” In my experience, when some people use insha allah, it may have a connotation of wanting to do that thing or to go there, but not being 100% committed yet. It could also mean that the person wants to do that thing or go to that place, and very well intends to, but life is never certain so you never know what might or might not happen.

Insha allah could also be used when someone is talking about a future goal or something that they really want. In that case, when someone talks about their hopes, a friend might respond by saying insha allah to mean that hopefully it’s the will of God and that it’s meant to happen.

So what does Sting mean by saying insha allah in his song? I think he means to do several things. He wants to evoke the Syrian people’s amazing resilience by nodding to their ability to have so much faith and hope. He also may want to evoke the first meaning of insha allah I mentioned, which always considers how life can be precarious and fragile.

Listen to the song and see what you think!

A Foodie's Thanksgiving!

Happy Thursday!

It’s been a really ideal week for the foodie in me, thanks to Thanksgiving and family shenanigans, so I figured I’d share a bit of my meals with you all, plus a recipe from the Syrian family.

My dining room table!

I had a great time making the American-style Thanksgiving meal this year. This is my fourth time making it without my mother, and this is the first time that I feel like the prep work for the meal went smoothly. I think that partly has to do with my familiarity with the timing of everything. Now, I just know when the turkey and all the sides should go in and out of the oven without having to look it up.

My pretty hilal turkey (and the cranberry sauce to the left)!

I had a few people comment that this was an exceptionally tasty turkey, and asking me what I did to make it so juicy. For me, I think the trick is to brine the turkey for at least two days prior to Thanksgiving. Then, first thing in the morning, I pop the turkey (covered!) into the oven at 300° F and just forget about it. I’ve even put the turkey in at 250° F the night before, and the meat was really falling off the bones by dinnertime, it was that juicy! Americans tend to freak out about whether the turkey will be cooked enough. My logic is that anything in the oven for eight or more hours will most definitely be cooked enough. And, to my knowledge, no one has gotten food poisoning from my turkeys! We got a 12-pound hilal turkey that, surprisingly, was more than enough for eight people! 

Mr. Hilal Turkey taking a brine bath.

I also made sweetpotato casserole, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, and two types of mashed potatoes (the traditional American kind and then the Middle Eastern olive-oil-and-garlic kind for the lactose intolerant at the table). 

For dessert, I made my mummy-in-law her favorite treat: apple pie bites. They're so easy and fun to make, plus they look like pretty, dainty pastries at the end! 

This week's dessert: Apple pie bites!

By the time I got back to school, I was already missing Syrian food, so I made fetty. You can translate fetty from Arabic to “torn up;” the dish gets its name from the pieces of bread you tear up to create the dish’s base. Specifically, I made fettet djaj which is the “torn up” part of the dish topped with chicken.

Fettet Djaj

To make fetty, you first boil the cut-up chicken (I prefer sizes of one inch or less) in either a pressure cooker for thirty minutes or in a regular pot for 2-3 hours. S has our pressure cooker, so at school I use a regular pot and study while the chicken simmers. Anyway, in the boiling water, add salt, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, and an onion. Then add the chicken. Towards the end of the boil, fry up pieces of thin, white flat bread for about five minutes and then put them into a pie dish. Fry enough bread to cover the bottom of the dish.

Then you make the rice. I usually fry up vermicelli (“shariyya”) with olive oil at the bottom of the rice pot under the vermicelli is a light golden color, then add soaked short-grain white rice with two parts water to every part rice. I also add a teaspoon of salt for every cup of rice. Stir the rice and then wait for the rice to boil, then bring it down to a simmer, cover the pot, and only open the pot to check on the water level. If there is no visually apparent water, I usually tip the pot sideways to see if any excess water is around. If you taste the rice and it is undercooked, just add no more than a fourth of a cup to the pot and let it simmer covered for a few more minutes. Then put your rice on top of the fried pieces of flat bread in the dish.

Then create a yoghurt sauce. For a pie dish-size meal, go with about a cup and a half of plain yoghurt (“kasi wa nus leben”), one or less than one piece of garlick (“toomi o nus toomi”), and a little bit of water (“shwayyat mai”). I know the measurements sound strange, but this is literally the family recipe passed on orally since forever, and measurements of the recipe is all based on the experience of simply making it! Anyway, pour the yoghurt sauce over the rice and make sure it sinks into the rice and reaches the bottom of the dish. Next, garnish with chopped parsley and top with your drained chicken, and then enjoy a super tasty meal!

A quick note on portion size: I find a pie dish size plate is more than enough for three to four people, depending on how many of those people will want seconds just because they love how tasty it is! To double the size, you could easily use a casserole dish to feed 6-8 and just double the amount of everything in the recipe. Like most of my mummy-in-laws food, this is a non-measuring kind of recipe, so the proportions are very flexible and in the end, the amount of parsley, chicken, or yogurt all depends on your preference! But definitely don't go overboard on the garlic, otherwise no one will want to actually eat the fetty (or kiss you!). 

Anyone who tries this recipe, please let me know how it turns out! Cheers!