Danderma's Blog, page 72

London Xmas Lights 2012

For the past decade or so, I’ve made sure that I am in London during Xmas time. I personally believe its the best time to visit London: Decorated shops and streets, lights everywhere, amazing new merchandise to buy, happy -often disgrunted- shoppers milling around, gift wrapping mania, and Xmas songs and charols playing all day long. People travelled in the summer, we stayed and travelled in December.

This year, however, My husband and I made the choice of staying in Kuwait and not travelling London during December. I have my reasons and I thought that was best for everyone. But yesterday before I went to sleep I heard it was snowing in the UK and I began to wail. Stupid, STUPID me! I do have a few pictures of this years decorations though so I will put them up in this post and remind myself: next year I must go Insha2 Allah!

 

To hold that cup of steaming hot chocolate from Godiva, to be snuggled up in the warmest items in my closet, to venture out among the throng of jolly shoppers and lose myself in their midst, to hear those jingles playing around in my head, to be in my happeist place again… 

Trying Authentic Brazilian Cuisine at Luna Restaurant

Even though I am a Vegetarian and quite a picky eater, I’ve always wanted to try new cuisines, exotic if that’s the correct term. We are still hung up on Indian, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese with a good mix of Thai thrown in for diversity. I think we once had a Brazilian restaurant in Movenpick but it shut down or something and I never got to try it. So when an invitation came asking if I’d be interested in a preview Brazilian dinner introducing the Brazilian Festival in Luna restaurant  I was very interested indeed.

Luna restaurant in located on the 18th floor of Hotel Missoni, Salmiya. When we arrived the very first thing we saw in the lobby of the hotel was this.

Seems like the hotel is cloaked in Brazilian spirit in accordance with the festival! As we reached the 18th floor the Brazilian spirit was indeed more tangible.

The dinner was buffet style and since when we arrived the guests had already been to the buffet and moving between the dishes it was very hard to take pictures of what was laid out but this is what I managed to photograph.

As you can see the buffet was laden with hunks of meat that my dining companions stated it was exceptionally good. My plate was laden with cheese slices, walnuts, lettuce, and sweetcorn salad. My dining companion’s plates however were a different story.

Meaty! I did try the Black Bean soup and it was very good with a hint of something smokey with every spoonful. The Brazilian chef responsible for this feast, chef Paulo Machado, told me later on that the soup can be eaten with rice the same way we eat our maraq and rice dishes in Kuwait.

I’m not sure of the name of this dish but its between rice and couscous and chef Paulo said this is consumed on daily basis in Brazil the same way rice is consumed on daily basis in Kuwait.

The highlight of my dining experience however was when chef Paulo Machado sat down to our table to chat with us and I asked him about how Brazilians drink their coffee and he told us he would make us some Carioca style coffee the way it was drank in Brazil. This is off the menu by the way.

The Carioca style coffee has a body that falls between dense espresso and a weaker Americano. It is slightly sweetened but the beans are roasted in a way the flavor of the roast lingers in the coffee and with each sip you feel like you are smelling coffee being roasted. The sweetness doesn’t overcome that flavor rather you cannot feel it at all but I’m guessing without it its might become very bitter. It was delicious! Thank you Chef Paulo!

While waiting for the great coffee we got ourselves some desserts. Romeo and Juliet, Pave De Bis, and a little carrot like cake that was recommended by Chef Paulo.

The carrot cake was very good and Chef Paulo said the video to make it is on youtube. I will search it after I publish this post. The Romeo & Juliet is one bite of something with a qamar deen texture. very interesting indeed.

And this is the Pave De Bis. Out of all the desserts in the Brazilian buffet Chef Paulo talked fondly about this desserts that they make at home for friends and they consider it comfort food.

How was it? Very good indeed. Reminds me of a local comfort food dessert we make at home with chocolate, cream, and mary biscuits only the Pave De Bis comes with something like shredded profiterole instead of biscuits inside.

As the night came to an end and we said our good buys we didn’t leave empty handed. Thank you Chef Paulo Machado it was a pleasure meeting you. Chef Paulo is also a fellow blogger and his blog is in Portuguese but he has a section of recipes in English that you can check out (blog link).

If you are interested in trying some authentic Brazilian food the Brazilian food festival is on at Luna Restaurant in Hotel Missoni until the 8th of December 2012. However, the Brazilian cuisine is only served at dinner time from 7 PM until 11:30 PM. To reserve a table you can call 25770000. Thank you Hotel Missoni and Dareen Awwad for extending the invitation.

BBQ Dinner at Home…

A while ago as the weather was getting finer I knew it was time to have a BBQ gathering. If you’ve been following my bloga while you’d know about my friend and fellow blogger FourMe who had recently beat cancer after a vicious battle. Her 2nd year Cancer-Free Remission anniversary was coming up so it was the perfect opportunity to gather the girls for BBQ dinner at my place.

It was a fine night for a BBQ, the weather was crisp and it was raining so we set up the area where we usually park our cars with chairs and a table. As for the BBQ I had the entire thing catered by Munch’s BBQ Station.

I was lucky to have booked Munch’s BBQ in advance. If you have been following my blog for quite a while -ehem- you might remember my post about their spectacular BBQ service (post). The demand on their BBQ service is so high you have to reserve a date a while in advance -two weeks in my case- but they are totally worth it.

With the BBQ Service I’ve ordered a big bowl of Salad from Munch and two bottles of juice. The salad was the Amira Salad wich came with a mix of lettuce, goats cheese, and sliced dried apricot in a vinegarette dressing. The juices were a Pomegranate Berries juice and a Lemon Lime and Mint juice.

As the BBQ chef was setting up, the entire bowl of salad and the juices were polished off. We did have some traditional munchies though: banak and termes. I have zero clue on what these are called in English and even though they were quite a dining faux pas we enjoyed them immensly :p

The infamous bucket of soft drinks and ice was there, if you recall -again!- the movie night (post) where the bucket had fallen into the floor smashing everything, I still am vacumming glass by the way. The only thing that’s off was the handle, it just won’t go back to its original place.

As soon as the first whiff off the now lit grill reached us we heard a loud MEW! Lulu our stray cat decided to crash our BBQ night! She sat underneath the cars tyres, mewing and making cute sad faces at me saying she’s hungry! By the way, she ate half the chicken we had ordered for the BBQ, grown up Lulu is quite instatiable :* You remember Lulu right (post)?

Just before the first course was served our guests had all but arrived bearing gifts for the girl who beat cancer! We used the flowers to decorate the one of the cars surrounding us to sheild us from the cars passing.

Next came the food…

I wasn’t planning on taking pictures but midway through the meal I couldn’t resist and took shots of what’s left. Waguy steak bites, corn on the cob, grilled sliders, vegetable skewers.

 

 And of course grilled pizzas!

We had margharita and mushroom pizzas and they were good!

We also had french fries which were fried right there with a frying machine. Hot and crunch and sinfully good.

When the BBQ part was done we all went inside because the weather was getting too cold and windy. Our dear friend Al-Noury who is famous for her excellent Arabian coffee and tea decided to celebrate FourMe‘s remission anniversary by sending over her dressed up coffee and tea flasks.

Pretty mo?

Al-Noury also provided the cake: Laduree’s famous Isphahan. Happy 2 years cancer free FourMe :*

And Bothroos was there too to celebrate with FourMe! Remember Bothroos (post)

Given that its a customary thing for guests in Kuwait to arrive at gatherings with food items I’ve asked them all to bring desserts. The evening turned out to be a desserts massacre with over ten different desserts from ten different businesses arriving! These are a few of the ones I’ve photographed.

Above are very delicious cookies from Monkey Cookies (@Monkey_Cookies). Below are killer Rocky Road bites with chocolate and marshmallows Rocky Box (@Rockybox_KW). They were so SO good. Highly recommended.

A tray of mini bite sized cakes that are both delicious and a joy to look at! They were quite a hit! Its by a business called Laura Cakes (@LauraCake_Q8). Highly recommended.

My head was spinning for there were too many desserts and sadly I didn’t manage to photograph them all. We also had jars of cheesecakes from Posh Cafe, Chocolate Chip cookies from Baking Tray, Cupcakes and Brownies from Crumbs Bakery, and another tray of coffee sweets from Al-Faisal bakery.

It was a memorable night indeed, filled with delicious food, good company, and loud laughter. Happy 2nd year of Remission my dear FourMe. I wish you a long, healthy, and prosperous life. To all our guests it was a pleasure to have you over, thank you all for coming :*

Tasting the New Pinkberry Salted Caramel Flavor

If you’ve been reading my blog since before the fro yo mania hit Kuwait you would know that I was crazily, madly, head over heels in love with Pinkberry and I still am. Therefore when an email from Pinkberry popped in my inbox asking me to come in and try their newest seasonal flavor before its official launch, I was truly ecstatic. Its like getting a free pass to lala land

 

The new seasonal flavor is to be launched today so yesterday we headed to Pinkberry Al-Bidaa to check the flavor out. Frankly I thought we were only to taste the new flavor. To our surprise we were handed “Trainee” badges. Interesting.

Then a tray of the “new” flavor frozen yogurt cups came out. We didn’t know what it was but to my delight it was the “Salted Caramel” and if you read my blog and know me well, you’d know that I absolutely adore Salted Caramel!

There were several different combinations of the Caramel frozen yogurt: this one with chocolate balls and banana slices. Banana and caramel? Winner combinations. I’d leave the chocolate balls out though, their texture was all wrong.

This one came with sliced almonds and chocolate curls. My husband tried it and was very happy.

This one was without toppings but the caramel flavor was swirled with chocolate. Quite interesting but personally I prefer each flavor on its own.

Why the Trainee badges then? Well, we got our chance to swirl our own cups of caramel Pinkberry! I myself didn’t do it for I wanted to take photographs but my husband washed his hands, put on a couple of latex gloves, and happily swirled god bless him

As for the taste of Caramel on its own? Quite good, not too sweet, and not tangy at all. It tastes llike caramel ice cream rather than a caramel frozen yogurt.

Pinkberry didn’t let us go empty handed, each blogger got himself a goody bag to take home. Thank you Pinkberry Kuwait for extending the invitation and for everything

By the way, Pinkberry Kuwait opted to call the new flavor as “Caramel” instead of “Salted Caramel” the way it actually is in the states since they have decided that ”caramel” alone would be more appealing to the Kuwaiti population’s taste. However, they did confirm it is indeed the same Salted Caramel and I checked with the US site (link) and all you need to transform that caramel Pinkberry into a salted caramel one is a sprinkle of sea salt which Pinkberry Kuwait promised they’d consider having.

Personally, I will be bringing my own coarse sea salt grains the next time I’m in Pinkberry to sprinkle it on top of my Caramel frozen yogurt with a side of banans and wafers. Way7a Qalbi as I usually say in Instagram. If you are a fan of salted caramel I urge you to do the same and if not, well then try the caramel. The new Pinkberry flavor will be launched today Thursday in all of Pinkberry’s outlets around Kuwait.

Pancakes and a Realization for Breakfast

When I was in London last month I woke up one morning a bit disoriented. Stumbling in my wake, I went to the fridge and pulled out the ingredients for a breakfast I was craving since the day before: ready made M&S pancakes with butterscotch syrup and a packet of fresh raspberries, and a banana.

I washed the rasberries, sliced the banana, reheated the pancakes in the toaster, poured the orange juice and made myself coffee. I took everything to the table and settled down, ready to start pouring the packaged butterscotch on top. When suddenly I got up and ran around the room searching for my camera.

You may be thinking where I’m going with this but I do have a point. As I tried to take pictures of my breakfast, still half asleep, rearranging everything around the table and snapping a mile a minute, a sudden realization jolted me wide awake.

As I took the hundredth picture I thought to myself “I miss this, I miss me!”. Whose me? Me, Danderma the person, the little unknown blogger who took pictures of her breakfast every Friday. Along the way and along the years, I’ve lost an essential fragment of myself, the person behind the blogger, the person who enjoyed and appreciated the simple things in life like waking up to a delicious breakfast on holidays.

I’ve been complaining lately that my pictures always turned out horrible. It hit me that its not the pictures that are horrible, its the essential thing that makes the pictures look good, the enjoyment of what I’m photographing. When I see a picture whatever emotion I’ve had when I took it does reflect back to me no matter how long it was when I took it. It might not be visible for the observor but it is loud and clear to me. Like a fingerprint I can’t wash away.

Am I making any sense? I think I do to myself. I miss writing too, and ranting. Reaching out automatically for that camera when my mind wasn’t focusing clearly brought out the little person in my that’s been on a strike lately. Where have I been? I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been too busy, too washed up in the melodrama that I call my daily life but now that I know what was missing, I can relax more, take a breather, repair my broken spirit, and focus on what works for me, what makes me happy.

Here is to many happy days, delicious breakfasts, ranting posts, and gorgeous pictures. I hope I didn’t make you hungry. For what its worth, that breakfast was one of the best I’ve ever had, because I had it with my true self 

I am Jester, the Online Games Store

This post is long overdue but the past few days have been quite hectic. A while ago I received an invitation in the form of an ancient scroll. It was quite interesting indeed especially given that I love everything ancient or historical.

The scroll introduces Jester and tells his story as a King’s jester Jester -or a clown/comedian- who fell out of his dimension to land in ours and particularly in Kuwait of all places.

Poor Jester. However, not long after I received Jester’s story in the scroll -which is quite creative I have to say- I received a bag from Jester.

Insdie the bag was a little box. What’s it about?

Chocolate coins? Retro! Plus it gave me the feeling of a treasure hunt for some reason.

Do you remember this paper game? I think I’ve last seen it when I was a teenager! Cute!

The paper game is actually an invitation! Nice!

Sadly I coudln’t make it to the event the invitation was intended for and I’m very sorry I didn’t for it was a games night! Do you like boardgames? Well, if you do -and I do!- then you would know that the sellers of boardgames in Kuwait are very limited and the ones that are sold are pretty stale! I have two special edition Monopoly games both bough from the USA, one is the LOTR edition and one is the internet edition, and I treasure them both. Now via Jester you can order a boardgame online and have it delivered to your doorstep in 2 hours! I might be having a new boardgame gathering night soon, you never know

Thank you Jester for both your scroll and your invitation. Hats off for having an original business idea. Very creative indeed. For more about Jester and to purchase boardgames online you can check out Jester’s website (link), like their facebook page (link), follow them on Twitter (@Hello_Jester) or on instagram (@hello_jester).

Bloggerettes Night at Brush Cafe

 

The other day I was invited for a “Bloggerette’s Night” in the newly opened “Brush Cafe” in Adaliya area. I’ve heard good things about it and since the weather was quite fine I headed over there with my camera with the intention of sitting outdoors.

It was a cloudy night with the feel of rain in the air. As I sat down on a table outside I noticed the menu designed to look like a painters slab of wood holding the paint. What’s it called again? I realize now that I don’t know its name in any language, Arabic or English or otherwise. Fashla!

As I was contemplating the menu two salads appeared and sat on the table! Greek Salad and Cesars Salad.

Next landed an array of different sandwiches made with croissants and what I presume is a grilled chicken sandwich.

I couldn’t take pictures of everything for there were plenty of food but I did take pictures of the interior which relates to the name of the cafe by being decorated in a painter’s gear.

Can you guess who the Arabian Coffee Dallah belong to? Of course the one and only Al-Noury :p

 Next it was desserts time. There were two kinds of waffles: one with chocolate sauce and one with caramel.

Tiramisu.

Apple Pie.

This molten chocolate cake with a gooey center of melted chocolate oozing with the first bite.

And last but not least, the dark chocolate fondue.

I had a great time with my fellow blogerrettes at Brush Cafe that day. As the place was reserved for us only I noticed that many many customers came to the cafe and they were disappointed when they were turned away. I heard good things about their breakfast as well so I will be heading out to try it on a fine winter morning soon insah2 Allah.

Thank you Brush Cafe for your invitation and thank you my dear Pink Girl for extending the invitation and hosting the event. Thank you for the cute little giveaway brush with my blog’s name on it.  Brush Cafe is located in Adaliya Area right next to Kababji. For more information about Brush Cafe you can call them on 55717133, follow them on twitter (@BrushCafe) or Instagram (@BrushCafe).

Bubbles, Bubbles, Bubbles…

I don’t know what came over me but for quite sometime now I’ve been obsessed with trying to take a good picture of a blown bubble. You know the kind? Comes in a tube blown by children in parties or gardens? Moves fast and comes in all colors of the rainbow? I’ve tried and tried, different settings and lenses and finally I came with a few half decent ones. I must warn you that from now on you might notice quite a few bubbles floating here and there in the pictures my future posts

Breathtaking Sunset in Kuwait

Yesterday evening as I was about to shut the curtains I saw a hint of pink in the sky so I took out my camera and snapped shots of what must be the most gorgeous sunset I’ve ever seen yet in Kuwait. The weather is beyond gorgeous, the clouds are puffy and gorgeous, and yest for the third time I’m saying the word gorgeous in the same paragraph to describe the awesome sunset of yesterday. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gourgeous!

Don’t you just love the weather in Kuwait this time of year? If you ever wanted to visit Kuwait, now is the time to do so up until the first of March.

Zafaf Magazine and Lalique Beauty Center’s Gift

 Zafaf magazine’s issue for November came with a big white bag from Lalique’s Beauty Center. Inside the bag are two of Lalique’s beauty products: Lalique Magic Shampoo and Lalique Magic Hair Mask. I haven’t tried them yet but I will soon.

Thank you Zafaf Magazine and Lalique Beauty Center for your gift. To subscribe with Zafaf Magazine you can contact them on their website (link) or on Twitter (@ZafafMagazine). For more about Lalique Beauty Center you can contact them by calling  +(965) 25747447 or you can follow them on Twitter (@LaliqueCenter)