Monday, January 23, 2006

Shimmies all around...

1. Rania - Wings of Isis 2. Rania's fabulous opening dance 3. Alhambra dance students 4. Rania - sword dance

My first ever belly-dancing hafla (Middle Eastern dance party)!!

Organised by the Alhambra Dance school at Arab St. and held at the Raffles Town Club (swanky!), this was more of a D&D event. The Middle Eastern buffet spread was delicious and I especially loved the hummus and pita bread items :) Seated right next to the spread, I had first dibs to the food as well as a good look at the others who turned up in their own interpretation of the "Arabian costume" dress theme!

Our attention for the rest of the evening was reserved only for Rania, the reigning "Bellydancer of the World" champion and two other male Arabian dancers who performed a series of high spirited dances one sees while cruising down the River Nile...

I wonder if I'll ever dance like Rania one day? One just has to look at her abs to guess!

stormiii at 2:09 am

0cups of tea

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Comfort food :)



A local favourite, the yummy rice cake dish "Ju kueh" is topped with salted vegetable, meat sauce and the magic combination of coriander/onions.

January is indeed the month for long, rainy days! And this winter looks to be bad news in other parts of the world as they battle with unexpected cold and heavy snow :(

How was your New Year? I must say I welcomed it with a great sense of achievement as I finally attempted the cake recipe. Contrary to what most of you may think, I'm still an amateur when it comes to baking so it was quite an experience as somehow, Mom changed the recipe from a matcha & azuki bean mousse cake to a simple cheesecake with agar topping and assorted biscuit base ;)

While the Japanese have special New Year dishes called "osechi", we enjoyed the dish above - yet another one of my Mom's specialities which I file under my comfort food list.

stormiii at 10:28 pm

2cups of tea