Baha'i-inspired ART!

"O My Servants!

Ye are the trees of my garden; ye must give forth goodly and wondrous fruits, 

that ye yourselves and others may profit thereform. Thus is it incumbent on everyone to 

engage in crafts and professions, for therein lies the secret of wealth, O men of understanding! 

For results depend upon means, and the grace of God shall be all-sufficient to you. 

Trees that yield no fruit have been and will ever be for the fire." 

-Baha'u'llah, The Hidden Words.

***

I'm one of those who loves to click #Bahai on Instagram and browse through all all the pictures with that tag! Through the tag, I've come across so many Baha'i artists around the world whose art I really enjoy and absolutely love! I'm going to share with you some of my favorite Baha'i-inspired art works!

1) Elika Mahony's bookmarks with gorgeous beads!

See more

2) Dr Smile's "sometimes I make jewellery". I've been following Alex Rawhani on instagram a few years now - he's a dentist, musician, model...I enjoy his weekend posts of his children's and junior youth classes in South Africa. There was this one post he made many weeks ago of a ring he designed in the shape of the African continent, with the Greatest Name in it. I absolutely adore it! I grew up in Nigeria, so seeing this made my heart explode!  

Sayaw Pilipino!

The title means Filipino Dance! I'm going to share with you the last 

three times I performed traditional Filipino dances. 

1) The Filipino community in Abuja is HUGE. Every year, we celebrate the Philippine Independence Day either at the Embassy or at the Sheraton. There's always a program - songs & dances, and I joined them for the first time in 2013. I was part of the La Jota dance (it's with a partner, and we have to clack bamboo castanets with our fingers). This was my first time seeing this dance. There were so many other performances - latik (men hitting coconuts on their shoudlers & knees); a flower dance (bulaklakan), a hat dance (subli), a candle dance (pandanggo sa ilaw), a royalty bamboo dance (singkil), and in the end...hiphop! 

So many Filipinos were involved! See the bamboo huts behind us? A couple of Filipinos put these together. They were placed on stage, and while they made the stage look beautiful and local, they served as our changing room! 

costume practice - this was the hiphop dance in the end. We danced
to Laki sa layaw (jeproks) with sunglasses! It was an absolute
fun way to end the show

our elegant La Jota dance

Olives & Cheese: four ways

Olives + feta cheese = Oleese! This is my second favorite snack (first is yoghurt & chips!) First time I tried this combination was in Sheffield - I found these Apetina packs in Sainburys & Tescos... I've always loved feta cheese...olives not so much, but the photo of the two together (on the packet) got me curious. So I tried it, and fell in love! 

One day I added some fresh spinach to the end of the toothpick, and that snack time ended up feeling like lunch time.

I remember the day I made this - sliced olives, with feta cheese in between, on a toothpick. It was a few days after Nawruz (new year/March 21) in Iran. I was tired of all the kebab and sweets from the festivities, so my idea of a healthy break was this!

 We brought feta cheese from Iran to Nigeria, and then I bought fresh olives from a Lebanese-owned store in town. No toothpick here - I literally ate these with my fingers.

 My most recent combination - feta cheese stuffed in pitted olives! This took some time to prepare, but it's absolutely divine! One bite into the olive and you taste the creaminess of the cheese!

As for backgrounds (veggies in the first two; garden plants in the second two pictures) - they were necessary, for the oleese to be instagram-pretty! hehe

Home in a sip

My instagram followers probably know this already, but I still want to write about my 

#AsahBara mug!! because two months later, and the hype hasn't died yet!

I discovered Asah-Bara on instagram, literally through the "discover" button. If I remember correctly, I sent them a DM inviting them to my first Rooftop Bazaar, and then one day just as my family and I were leaving our home to go to the Philippine Independence Day Celebration, Xoxa and her friend stopped by to take a look at the rooftop. She came back down saying how much she loved the view, and then she signed up. As mentioned in my previous post about the bazaar, I made personalized posts for the vendors, so looking for pictures for their poster was the first time I really got to go through their page. Their insta-feed is so beautiful!

Poster for 1st bazaar

Poster for 2nd bazaar

I was in love with what I saw! Xoxa is the #BossLady of Asah-Bara. She and her team design mugs, glasses & diaries. Each mug is unique - and yet, you can still see something similar in all of them. Each post ends with "That's the spirit of Asah-Bara", so maybe that's just it! But the patterns - the triangles, the dots, the spirals! Wait, I don't think whatever I write will do justice to their art - this would actually require an interview with Xoxa and her team...so I'll just skip to 

the part where I ordered my first mug! 

Turbo-licious!

Let me introduce to you my absolute favorite cooking machine - the electric turbo oven! My family and I use this a lot (for chicken, beef, pork, fish) - present in our kitchen in the Philippines, 

Iran & Nigeria, because it's the fastest, easiest & healthiest way to cook up some meat!

You put the food inside the glass body (don't know how else to call it haha!) usually on top of a grilling rack so that the fat from the meat can fall to the bottom. Place the cover on top, set the temperature and timer, and then hot air starts to blow. We've used the turbo to cook for our family of 4 and even for guests up to 12 - it usually comes with two grill racks so you can place the shorter one under the taller one and cook more! The grill racks allow the hot air to go all around the glass body/ over and under the meat, so everything gets cooked well...and very fast because of the pressure. 

This is how I typically prepare chicken at home: First I marinate it (basic - garlic, salt, black/red pepper). Place it on the grill rack...While cooking, you can see the fat from the chicken melting to the bottom. This is why the turbo oven is very healthy! It melts all the natural fat from the meat away, and in exactly 30 minutes, the chicken is ready - very soft and very very juicy in the inside, with crackling crispy skin! Beats fried chicken a million times!

 Here I am lifting the chicken with the grill rack - notice the oil left at the bottom. 

A year's reads

Last weekend, I met some of the Baha'i friends in this area for the first time since I got back to the Philippines. After a lovely round of prayers and breakfast, I went over the host's bookshelf - this is a habit I have (I LOVE going through people's bookshelves). I haven't been able to keep books since 2012 because of non-stop traveling/moving from one place to another. As far as I can remember, the last book I bought and was able to keep was in December 2013 (I can't tell you what it is - it's a controversial book, and I left it in a controversial country haha). Back to last weekend - I found this family's shelf very interesting: it was a mix of science and religion! Most Baha'i families's shelves that I've gone through only have Baha'i books, but this one had books from other religions as well, and a lot of sciences. As always, I picked out a book and asked permission to borrow. I only started reading "Your Best Brain" by Prof. John Medina recently and I love it already. It made me realize how much I've missed reading words and paragraphs that are not on CNN.com. I read news articles everyday and I'm so immersed in current affairs that I've totally forgotten about other literature. After this book, I plan to visit a bookstore and buy myself a new adventure. 

In this post, I'm going to share with you all the books I've read in the last one year (since August 2015) - most of which were borrowed off friends' shelves in India. 

1) Baha'u'llah: The Promised One, by Gloria Faizi
It took me several weeks to read this little book - because it made me cry a lot. It's beautifully written. It's filled with stories about the early Baha'is, particularly the difficulties they faced. The descriptions of the horrific opposition they faced --- it's stories like the ones in this book that make me feel really blessed to be a Baha'i...and constantly remember to seize the opportunities I have today, which are very unlimited compared to the early believers, and teach the Faith...through words and deeds.
*Read more about Gloria Faizi in this link

2) In Grandfather's Barn, by William Sears
This was the book I got from the same shelf right after returning the previous one. I wanted something lighter...so I picked this book because of its cover! I wouldn't really call it a book for children, but the writing was a lot simpler ...though you had to do a lot of reading between the lines. It had a lot of humour...but it was deep...very deep... about "faith".

Teacher's Day is Students Day!

This blog is having a lot of throwbacks! Well, it's because I had such a wonderful experience in India but the memories are just locked away in a dropbox folder. I'm so eager to share them now!

sweet farewell gift from my senior animators

Today is Teacher's Day! We never celebrated teachers day in my schools in Nigeria, and I don't remember anything in University. So last year was my first time, not as a student but as a teacher! We had half-day work at City Montessori School (CMS) - I was greeted with "hi ma'am! here's a pen for you!" Yep, got a bunch of pens that day. I followed the teachers as they hopped from class to class - each class had a presentation for them. The two most memorable were with one 8th grade section and the naughtiest 6th grade section. In Grade 8, they did a comedy show! One boy was in front, making hilarious imitations of some of the teachers, including the junior in-charge who was present. We laughed so much because he was such a pro, especially at imitating her shouting! It got a bit awkward when he imitated another teacher insulting the students. Then suddenly one of the teachers said "do Farzaneh ma'am!" I thought to myself 'I don't think he can pull it off, I haven't spent enough time with this section', and you won't guess what happened... He walked to the door and put on a pack bag and walked to the front. I laughed like a hyena - he noticed that detail about me - I carried my pack bag to all my classes (I never left it in the staff room because I always had my laptop with me, and I also always carried coloring pens/crayons and chart paper around). This boy stood infront of us and said "everyone stand up, let's pray." So the students played along (they stood up and they started to chant "O Friend, in the Garden of they heart" then he stopped them and said "Wait, you stop laughing. Let's start again" ....oh yeah he got my serious face on point!! IT WAS SO FUNNY! The other students laughed too, but my fellow teachers in the room looked lost - they didn't know I started each class with a prayer...guess I was the only one who did that.

The next class I went to - well, I didn't even want to go there.

Bread Pizza

I'll let you in on a little secret - I'm terrible at making dough. I've tried kneading pizza dough a few times, and yes I got the right texture (it came out soft and moist) but I could never flatten it out equally on the pan (some parts were always thick, some thin). But I love pizza. I love making my own pizza too. So how am I able to make pizza when I can't make proper dough? I substitute! Here are some of the tricks I've pulled off, using three kinds of bread!

1)This is Lebanese bread (you find them everywhere in Nigeria. I haven't found anything exactly like it here in the Philippines - closest is the Greek pita bread). What I do is was spread some ketchup on the bread, drop some slices of hotdog, tomatoes, mushrooms, then some mozzarella cheeze and into the oven. I take it out when I see the cheese has melted. This is insanely delicious! When it comes to pizza, I always prefer thin crust, and that's exactly what I get here because this bread is thin - so the edges are a bit crispy and the middle really soft. 

The only challenge is there's no way to slice this! You either have to tear the bread in half (tricky) or just hold the whole thing and enjoy! You can also roll the bread like a shawarma ;)

2) Your regular square bread!

I've done this multiple times, especially when I was in England, but the only picture I have is the one time when I folded the pizza into a sandwich. So same steps as above - spread ketchup, add the hotdog and cheese and put in the oven. I don't keep this in the oven too long because this bread toasts easily - I still want it to be soft, and not crispy all over (I don't want it tasting like biscuit pizza lol).

I apologize for this poor photo! but you get the point :)

3) This next one is a trick my Dad and I did in Iran this year. My mom is the dough queen, but she wasn't around. SO my Dad went to a bread shop (Iran has their own kind of bread; they're not into square bread or baguettes. Their typical bread is almost similar to the Indian's naan). The bread shop my Dad went to was one where they made noon sangak (go to google here). The bread is cooked on top of hot stones, inside a brick dome. The bread is usually turned twice inside before taken out.  My Dad requested them to give him a half-cooked bread, meaning, to give him the bread after being turned in the dome only once. In the picture below, you'll see the bread flat on the baking pan, with tomato sauce on top. We overloaded our pizza with toppings because Iran has amazzzinnnnggg fresh vegetables -mushrooms, zucchini, tomatoes, olives, onions, green pepper (and really cheap too, compared to Nigeria or the Philippines) and mozzarella is also really cheap there! the chicken salami too.

I put this on my instagram some time ago - pizza competition with my mom. Of course she did better because no substitution comes close to reeaaallll dough!!

See Seafood!

I believe that every family (or shall I say foodie-family lol) has that one favorite place in common to eat out. Think back to your childhood. Or perhaps even now? Or perhaps you don't go there as often anymore but you continue recommending it to friends? Here in the Philippines, our family place is "that seafood restaurant". Yep, that's how we call it. Of course that restaurant has a name 'Yatai Ramen' but if I tell my parents or brother let's go to Yatai Ramen, they'd have no idea where I'm talking about. Someone brought us there several years ago, and we just kept coming back. During my University years here, my family would visit me once every year and I'd drive them straight from the airport to this restaurant. My brother and I have celebrated birthdays there, and I've brought a few visiting Baha'i friends there as well. Of course the Philippines has its national/popular favorites (eg. pancit - noodles and pork adobo) but then we also enjoy an abundance of seafood
(coz we're a bunch of islands!)

seafood market with a variety of shrimps, fish & clams

Yatai Ramen is only one of dozens of restaurants in an area called Dampa (along Macapagal, near Mall of Asia). On one side you see the seafood market and on the other side you see lots of restaurants. Yatai Ramen also happens to be the first you see when you enter. You have to go to the market first and buy your fish, then bring it to the restaurant and choose from their menu how you'd like your fish cooked. This is really good, because at least you've seen that your fish is fresh. And besides, the is very organized and is always clean, but you have to do a lot of bargaining. Sometimes we walk all the way til the last stall before we can find cheaper shrimps. Our family pick is ALWAYS shrimps and mussels (tahong). Four the four of us, a kilo of each is ideal. We bring them over to Yatai Ramen and ask for the shrimps to be cooked in "chilli garlic sauce" and the mussels "baked with cheese and garlic". This is our classic order. 

perfect for 3 - 4 people. 

I went there few days ago and I was really impressed with how the taste never changed - the richness of the chilli garlic sauce on the shrimps and the generous quantity of cheese on the mussels are the same! My parents actually tried making these at home before - my mom bought mussels and baked them with cheese and garlic, and my Dad once tried making a chilli garlic sauce for the shrimps (but with Nigerian pepper, so it was chilli chilli garlic hehe). I realized the recipe is really simple, but certain long-time-favorites are just better enjoyed NOT at home :)

Pictures from that seafood place

This is their delicious baked mussels! See the cheese and the garlic
Sometimes I scoop it out with a spoon, sometimes I suck it off the shell. 

Family orders. Picture below is with a visiting friend from Japan.
We usually start off with spoonand fork but we always end up 
having to get our fingers dirty (and yummy) peeling the shrimps

This was on my 20th birthday - see how we nothing was left in the end!

The Green Sauce

I only discovered pesto sauce in University - there was this pasta place along Taft Avenue (Manila) that had really good pasta. My friend recommended the one with pesto sauce and chicken. It was so good that it remained to be the only thing I ordered whenever I went there. After those University years, I never had pesto sauce again (I guess I just never craved it). While in Iran this year, I found lots of parsley at home and you can guess what happened next. I googled for ideas. What came up? Pesto Sauce! The ingredients were already available at home and it looked really easy to make - parsley (although most recipes call for basic leaves), olive oil, nuts (most/well almost all recipes call for pine nuts but I had no idea what that was, and we had looooots of walnuts at home, so hey why not?), garlic and cheese (so many cheese with fancy names, I couldn't be bothered. I just used grated cheddar). So I put all these in the food processor and I had it! Well, I had to keep pouring in olive oil little by little because the blend was just too thick (I'm really a measurement-free cook; the kitchen seems to be the only place I rebel).

When I proudly sent photos to my parents of my first pesto sauce, neither of them knew what it was! Perhaps it's just not popular? Can't blame them - I only discovered it a few years ago. The first thing I did with the sauce was use it as a spread. I brought out an old baguette from the freezer, made little slices and french toasted away! (french toast - bread soaked in beaten egg, then fried in a pan with a little butter). 

Step 1 - french toast; Step 2 - feta cheese; Step 3 - pesto sauce;
Step 4 - tomato; Step 5 - bon appetite!

this was the plate arrangement for my instagram post

then this was the journey to my belly!

A few days later, I brought out the remaining pesto and mixed it with pasta and canned tuna chunks! Voilá! There's so much happiness/satisfaction in making a dish that you've enjoyed eating for years - for the first time! Note to self: learn how to make carbonara sauce.