Cranberry Beans in Olive Oil, Borlotti Beans in Olive Oil, Fasulya Bil Zayt

Cranberry beans or Borlotti beans are similar to Pinto beans in shape but taste different. The pod itself is so beautiful, it is like a mad artist's project; strokes of every shade of fuchsia. The pleasure of looking at them makes up for their high price of 3.99 per pound. I was delighted to find them at my local Middle Eastern Market and scooped up 2 pounds with the intention to make this dish as soon as I get home.

DIY: Cookie Cupcake Topper

This year I decided to actually blog about all Alya's birthday parties. All those tutorials and recipes that I promised you but never really got around to do it. This year is the year of "No tutorial is left behind" and "No unfinished projects".
 Cookies are so much fun on their own but they can also be cute cupcake toppers! The best part is that you can use leftover cookie dough that is too small to be used for regular cookies to make small cupcake toppers. Last year, for Alya's Cowgirl party,  I made cowgirl hats and boots cupcake toppers from paper, click here to read about it.  This year I thought that I ought to change it up a bit.

Tortilla Espanola: Spanish Omelette

I am not a big fan of breakfast. I don't wake up hungry and eager to eat, let alone cook something for me. However, I do know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and I can honestly attest to how I eat more at lunch time when I skip breakfast, thus I do my best to eat something. I normally eat a small Labneh or Cheese sandwiches in the morning, click here for my homemade Labneh recipe, here how to make the ultimate Labneh Sandwich and here on how to make Simple Cheese. Sometimes, when my morning schedule allows, usually on the week ends, I make Tortilla Espanola that we eat either for breakfast or brunch with a side of a simple Tomato Basil Salad.

Eid Al Adha and Hajj Sugar Cookies

Eid Sa'eed! Eid Sa'eed is Happy Holiday in Arabic. Eid al Adha is around the corner, in fact it is this week end. We are luck this year because it falls on a week end which means we can have a whole week end of celebration as a family. We also had an Eid pot lock party at Alya's Arabic School last week end. I decided to make these adorable Kaaba cookies. I used the same sugar cookie recipe, the same royal icing recipe, and the same stenciling technique. However, this year, I took it up a notch and I added edible star glitter and edible golden dust details. These cookies did not last for long, they were grabbed by little and big hands and everybody was taking pictures of them. I must say that I was very flattered especially that I spent a lot of time working on them.

Rainbow 5th Birthday Cookie

I have decided this year to make fancy cookies for Alya's birthday favor instead of giving away favors bags filled with little knick knacks that drive us, parents, crazy. You are welcome parents. Since the cookies were going to be the favors, they needed to be bigger and fancier than usual. Last year I made Cowgirl boots and hats, click here to see; and the year before I made very simple orange and red sugared cookies, click here to see.