Sister Fun

The past week has been so much fun and it went by way too fast. My sister arrived last Saturday afternoon. (Lucky for her, I got my own car a few days earlier). I allotted her 3 days of lounging and sleeping to get over her jet lag. Of course we had to have a game night one night:)

By Tuesday, we took the city by storm! First stop, Souk Madinat. We spent the day there shopping & perusing. My sister managed to find all of her souvenirs and gifts here on her first try. (I think I deserve a pat on the back). I also took her to one of our favorite spots to eat, Belgian Beer Cafe.

Chocolate made from Camel Milk! We tasted a spiced version which was NOT good. 

Tuesday night, we took her to our Golf Club to show her what Quiz Night is all about. Our friend Joe also joined us. Ram and I were SO excited to have more people on our team and we were sure that we would beat our past scores.  Unfortunately, four minds were not better than two. Joe is not allowed to join us for Quiz night again, lol.

Wednesday we hit up the world's biggest mall, Dubai Mall. We walked around and ate lunch at Ping Pong, a yummy dim sum place. Then we went to see the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa.  The building is 800+ meters tall, which is almost double the size all of the other world's "tallest" buildings. It took 5 years to complete and is lotus-shaped. The building is part residential, has corporate offices & the rest is commercial. I would have loved to see a flat in this building but I could never live there, too much traffic. I did take away an interesting fact: they recycle the condensation from the A/C in the building which is enough to water the landscaping for the entire property. Pretty cool! We waited about half hour to go up to the 124th floor, but we were rewarded with 360 degree views of the city.

Wednesday night we went to Al Khayal (Arabic) restaurant at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel. We've never been there before so we had no idea what to expect. Sure enough, we were in for a treat. They have a fixed menu that is priced per person and you get 6 appetizers, 4 mains, and 3 different assorted dessert plates. It was a feast that we were not prepared for! They also had a live band and belly dancer as the night's entertainment. We had plans to go to 360 bar afterwards which shows views of the city, but we were in a food coma and took our fat asses home after dinner.

This was just the beginning....

Random firework show during dinner

Thursday we decided to take it easy and pool hang during the day. At night, we met up with Joe and friends and ate dinner at Siddharta (Asian Fusion) and then went to Embassy bar afterwards.

Yummy drinks & great company

We couldn't let Shilpi leave Dubai without experiencing Friday Funday, so we took her to the Bubblicious Brunch at Safrron at the Atlantis Hotel & Resort. This hotel is insane. It's glamourous and reminds me of one of Steve Wynn's properties. The brunches here are on the level of Vegas buffets except they allow unlimited consumption of alcohol in a 4 hour time frame. The food options are also diverse: there's a sushi station, seafood section, chinese station, meat & cheese area, indian food & desserts galore. All that plus booze & a DJ = Friday Funday. After we stuffed & drank ourselves silly, we headed out to another popular after brunch spot, Barasti. There we soaked in the ocean views & smoked shisha till sundown.

Happy early birthday to me! 

Barasti

I still left a few things for Shilpi to see when she comes back until then, time to detox:) 

Taco Tuesday

Early in our marriage we established a tradition that we still follow 3 years later.  Every Tuesday was Taco Tuesday & Game night. We don't always have tacos, but it has to be mexican food. I recently saw a recipe for buffalo chicken enchiladas and I decided it would make its debut on Taco Tuesday.

The ingredients were simple enough, only I couldn't find red enchilada sauce here:( I did find red taco sauce, so I figured that would be a good enough substitution. So I made fresh flour tortillas, shredded the chicken, mixed the wing sauce & taco sauce, threw some cheese on there and BAM:

It looks good going into the oven doesn't it? Well that's where things went wrong. I guess it's my fault. I should have known the oven would do this to me. We have a gas oven, not the electric kind I'm used to. So when I've baked anything here, I watch the oven like a hawk because it cooks the food faster than the recipe calls for. I haven't burned anything to date, so I guess my number was up. I was so pumped about this dish, that I literally set it and forgot it.

After playing catch up with Ram in the living room for about 30 min, he asked me when dinner would be ready. I looked at the time and was like "oh crap." When I opened the oven door, the enchiladas stood before me baring third degree burns. (No picture was taken for obvious reasons).

So we attempted to eat what we could and then settled for cereal. After "dinner" we decided to skip quiz night at the golf club and stay home to play a game. We normally play Scrabble, but I thought why not play some UNO? I usually always beat Ram. And after the dinner fiasco, I wanted an ego boost. Well folks, let's just say it wasn't my night.

Anyway, that was a good wake up call because tomorrow Asif & Dima come over and I'll be making most of the meal from scratch, salad dressing and all:) Hopefully disaster doesn't strike again...

Taste of Dubai

Happy St. Patty's Day! Man I have a craving for green beer today (or any color beer as a matter of fact). Guess I'll have to settle for root beer! Ha. How times have changed. Last year on this very day we were at a bar in the Heights. Flash forward 1 year and 2 countries later....

The past few days there's been a festival in town. It's called Taste of Dubai and every year a bunch of restaurants and vendors show case their goodies for sale along with cover bands. They actually served alcohol there, which was very unexpected.  They also sold fresh coconut water which looked pretty good, too bad I don't like coconut...

They had nice outdoor seating everywhere, no sitting on the floor required! 

I was excited to go because they had several fancy smancy restaurants that had booths there, like Nobu and Siddharta, and a few others I've been wanting to try, so this was the perfect way to sample away. And sample we did:

Tacos from Nobu; Slider from The Burger Joint

Chaat and Dosa from Indego, the chef there is Michelin rated

Of course we timed our outing so we could catch The Counterfeit Beatles Band, one of the best Beatles

cover bands from the UK. The band was pretty good. I've heard many Beatles Cover bands since I met Ram, so it's hard to say which was the "best."

It was cool to see how they do festivals here in Dubai. Most of the festivals I've been to are over crowded with long lines and sloppy drunks, this was definitely not the case.  It was crowded but the lines went by fast and there were no drunkards in sight. Hope everyone is safe today whatever their St. Patty's Day plans are. Drink some beer for me!

Pin-Tested

I find that I have more time on my hands in Dubai vs Aberdeen. Hopefully that will change. Until then, what's a girl to do? Why test out some pinterest projects, of course!

One of my favorite foods is Thai but I've always been intimidated to cook Thai food. It just seems SO complicated. When I came across this pin for chicken basil stir fry, I decided to try it.  It's one of my fav Thai dishes and if I screwed it up, no biggie, I had the pizza delivery guy on speed dial.

The bonus was that I learned a new technique in the process called velveting. Velveting is a common technique used in Chinese and Thai food to keep the meat moist (and prevent overcooking) during stir-frying. There are several ways to do this, but my recipe only called for one ingredient: corn starch. So basically you just toss your chicken in some corn starch before cooking it and your family will swear you ordered take out:)

The only ingredient I couldn't find here was Rice Vinegar. But I was determined to make the dish without it. Afterall, how much can 2 tsp of the stuff affect the entire dish? (I don't think it had a huge impact on taste). The only thing we wanted was for it to be spicier, so next time I'll be sure to grab some Thai red chillis. Oh and I'll pair it with another Thai favorite, green papaya salad. Mmm.

On my pinterest high, I also decided to make Almond Butter. I've seen countless pins lately on how to make homemade peanut butter and almond butter.  When I recalled reading the pin, it only had 1 step (or so I thought). So I bought a bag of plain shelled almonds and threw them in my food processor. After a few minutes, it turned into almond meal:

After another 10 minutes, nothing was happening. It was not turning into buttah. I was disappointed. I decided to give it a few more minutes on pulse to see if it would magically change. Finally I opened up pinterest, and it turns out I left a crucial step out: roast the almonds. Ah well. Next time, I'm hoping for this: