Halloween-inspired Dinner

It's my favorite time of the year! Halloween! 

For me, Halloween has always just been a time to be creative. It's not so much about scary and creepy, but... it is more fun when it's scary and creepy! Last year I prepared three halloween-themed desserts using gummy worms, so this year I'm going to share with you a few more ideas of quick and easy-to-make halloween-themed food/snacks. Someone helped me with this - it took us about 5-6 hours to prepare the following for our "life after death" devotional gathering:

Appetizer: Deviled Eggs

Boil some eggs (for around 8 minutes) then peel the shells off and cut in half. Scoop out the yolk and put in a bowl. Add some mayonnaise, chopped chives, some salt and pepper and mix until it's almost paste-like, then place it all in a piping bag. Press the mixture into the egg whites. The spider is basically just black olives! 

I know all my spiders are missing a pair of legs...so this isn't technically a spider anymore. 

For aesthetic purposes, I also placed some dried squid (a Thai snack) around the eggs. 

 Main: Bloddy Spaghetti & Meatball eyes

with Bone Sticks

X made the meatballs - your typical ingredients (ground pork, onions, garlic, flour, egg, bread crumbs) shaped in a ball then fried. For the sauce, I sautéd some onions and garlic and used one can of corned beef. We didn't blend tomatoes; we used the ready-made Del Monte Spaghetti sauce (a large Italian style, and a small "sweet" style). After mixing the sauce and the pasta and placing the meatballs on the spaghetti, we turned them into eye balls with a thin slice of cheese and a thin olive ring! 

The bone sticks are basically white bread shaped like bones, and toasted! The excess part of the bread was used for the meatballs (instead of buying bread crumbs). 

Main 2: Finger in a bun

This was probably the creepiest looking on the table! "Halloween hotdogs" came up when X and I googled for halloween food ideas. It's so easy to make - just get some chicken hotdogs, then slice a little part of the top (to look like a nail-less finger) then a few lines in the middle (to give more details to the finger) and boil! Smear some ketchup inside the bun before placing the hotdogs inside, and also add a little more ketchup in the lines/knuckles. Sick!!

Dessert: Slimy worms

The base of this is gulaman (gelatine). It's a mix of green and black. The gelatine is flavorless, so I just added sugar to make it a bit sweet. Then I made another gulaman mix that's color red (instead of adding sugar, I added strawberry juice powder), then I diced it all up to look messy and poured it on top of the first layer of jelly. I poked a few holes around and inserted gummy worms. In the dark, it looks bloody and muddy...and the texture of the diced jelly on top made it look like the gummy worms were moving around. 

Dessert 2: Cupcakes 

X was in her comfort zone when she started to bake. The smell coming out of the oven was absolutely heavenly! Here's her recipe:

Cake batter:
(2) 1/2 cups sifted flour
(1) 1/2 cup white sugar
2 tbs baking powder
1 stick melted butter
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup water or milk
1 tbs vanilla extract
3 eggs
1/2 cup melted chocolate
1/4 cup instant coffee (mixed with water)

Frosting:
2 cups unsalted butter
2 cups granulated sugar
(1) 1/2 tbs vanilla extract

These ingredients made us 30 cupcakes!

For the topping, we had bought some chocolate oreos which we wanted to crush and pour over the icing, to look like soil. But a few hours after we got home, we couldn't find the oreos. Turns out my brother stole them from the shopping bag! Good thing we bought some gummy eyes, so we just used those instead.

Drinks

I wanted to make Chapman (a popular Nigerian drink/my childhood favorite) but I completely forgot to get grenadine syrup (non-alcoholic). So this is just Fanta and Coke mixed together. Then more candies! Gummy worms on the jug and gummy vampire teeth on the glasses!

Our table set up

Those decorations on the wall were all hand made. I just searched on youtube
"how to make halloween lanterns" and "paper spiders"
Learn something new every day :) 

Celebrating 200 Glorious Years

Last October 20th to 22nd (from sunset to sunset), millions of Bahá'is and their friends all around the world celebrated the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Bahá'u'lláh, the Founder of the Bahá'i Faith. Many communities have been planning and preparing for this since a year ago...because the bicentennial anniversary is more than just a get-together or a single event. It's beyond that. It's about inviting our friends, our family, strangers to 

"seize the opportunity to find out who Bahá'u'lláh was and what He represents".

www.bahai.org

In Manila and Makati, we celebrated almost the same way as last year, but with a few more activities example we held a photos and books exhibition at the Regional Bahá'i Center. For a whole month, leading up to the celebration weekend, my role revolved around coordinating the documentation of the celebrations all around the Philippines. That meant reaching out to Bahá'is in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao to learn about their plans, to share photo guidelines with them, and find ways to receive their photos immediately after their celebrations not only to share on our official Facebook page Bahá'i Faith in the Philippines but also to share a select few on the newly launched bicentenary website of the World Center www.bicentenary.bahai.org 

Playing that middle-role, of receiving then sharing, was a very unique experience.

Music in honour of the Bicentenary Birth of Bahá'u'lláh

A friend of mine in San Jose Occidental Mindoro (Jeff Lomat) composed a very beautiful song in honour of the upcoming Bicentenary Birth Anniversary of Bahá'u'lláh. It's a song about how knowing Bahá'u'lláh and serving His Cause has inspired him and changed his life. 

"When I was younger, I always busied myself with worldly things. In 2011, at the beginning of the previous 5-year plan, I was invited to attend a conference, and from there I was given the opportunity to serve as a mobile tutor. I felt so blessed that despite my shortcomings, I was given the bounty to serve. A month into serving, my view of life changed! I realized that my persona life becomes better when I think of the well-being of others and when I participate in activities that contribute to community-building process. I would like to share a particular quotation that really touched my heart "Let each morn be better than its eve and each 'morrow richer than its yesterday". For me, this change happened when I knew Bahá'u'lláh, and I wanted to offer my life in the path of service for Him." - Jeff.

This morning, Jeff posted on Facebook that he had composed a song for the Bicentenary celebrations, and if we wish to hear it, we should send him our e-mail address so that he could send the file, and so I asked for a copy. 10 seconds into the song, I was already in love with it! 

The melody... and then his voice (his voice is really really good! flawless)

 I'm not fluent in Tagalog, therefore I didn't get the lyrics right away, so I thought to myself why don't I get the lyrics and make a video? That way, he can share his music...

Foroozan: the OG

It's been two years since my dear grand father (my Dad's father) passed away in Iran. During these two years, I've always wanted to pay tribute to him, by writing a little piece. But every time I plan to start, I never know where to begin. So I've decided to write with the words that have already been put together. I'll be sharing four of my favorite stories that friends/family have told me about my grand father, Ahmad. I've met him so many times in my life and we've made a lot of wonderful and happy memories as a family, but somehow my favorite stories of him are the ones told by others. 

Fun Fact: my grand father was not born Foroozan.
His family name was something completely different/but very long too.
When he became a Baha'i, he changed his last name to "Foroozan" which
in farsi means "shining". So I'm just a third generation Foroozan 

1. A second cousin of mine once told me that ever since she was very young, she was always fond of my grand father. Even though all their relatives were against him, and said all sort of nasty things just because he is a Bahá'i, she stayed close to him because she thought he was "different" and she was always curious to understand why. She said that once upon a time in the village they used to live in, there was a lady who was known around to be sort of a "prostitute". One day this lady became pregnant and gave birth to a boy, but the man who made her pregnant kept denying that he is the father. Everyone in the village of course knew he was the father, but he never admitted. The law in Iran (back then, perhaps even now?) is that illegitimate children won't be granted a birth certificate. Knowing that this boy, born out of wedlock, would face such difficulties (not just that he won't get a birth certificate, but he'll also grow up not having or knowing a father), my grand father intervened in their private lives and kept insisting to the man that they bring this case to court, until he finally admits he's the father. My cousin does not remember anymore what the result was, but she just remembers how no one in the village cared, but my grand father did. He'd always fight for justice, for his rights and the rights of others, even when it was none of his business. 

2. There's an old man who I always see at our home every time we travel to Iran. I've been seeing him for so many years - he goes out with my grand father, he helps my aunt with house work... Last year I finally decided to ask someone what's our relation with him. She said that this man and Ahmad have known each other for so many decades; they used to live in the same village (before moving to the city).  This man and some of his friends were once on a mission to kill Ahmad (yes, that was very common back then - fanatics would kill Bahá'is because they were told it's their way to heaven).

Behind the scenes: Bicentenary Trailers

I still remember the exact day, the exact moment when felt like a huge lightbulb flicker over my head. This was the idea to make a video/trailer for the bicentenary celebrations. I was walking back from work one night and I suddenly remembered that a friend had told me that the Bahá'is of the UK made a nice animation/video with some sort of "coming soon" at the end. She said she'd send me the link, but a few days later I remembered it and realized I hadn't yet seen the video. I started to imagine what the video might look like, then new ideas started coming to mind. What if I make a "coming soon" trailer? I started picturing an invitation card, the National Bahá'i Center sign, a guitar... When I got home, I rushed to my room, took out a little notebook and jotted down all random thoughts, and after a few moments on my chair, bam! I jumped over to my Mom's room and "announced" this idea which probably made no sense to her! That same night, I wrote in our Manila Bahá'is group chat that I'd like everyone present on Sunday because I wanted to shoot a video.  

Eventually, I re-wrote my notes and even typed out some sort of script, to guide myself just so that I don't forget anything, because my ideas were all over the place! When Sunday came, I walked up to the friends one by one and asked "do you want to be in my video?" Everyone was absolutely willing to join. The first scene was a little challenging because I was just getting used to taking a video with my DLSR. I usually use my camera for photos, and my phone for videos - so this was my first time using my camera for videos. But after the first scene, I got a hang of the camera and everything went smoothly. We shot the different scenes - some in just one take, and the others in just two takes! 

This was also my first time directing a video. Before this, I had only made vlogs where it was all about "me" but this time I had to work with people. It was really really fun; I really enjoyed working with my friends, shooting and editing. Of all my videos so far, this continues to be the one I am happiest for! 

Trailer 1: Save The Date

*as of October 2017, this video has 22,000+ views and 500+ shares on facebook!

I wasn't really planning to make another video after that. But exactly two months later, a new idea hit me.

Mother & Child collection

Last weekend, while visiting some old family friends, we discovered that one of them turned part of her house into a museum! It's filled with over 1,000 pieces of art work (paintings, sculptures, textiles, dolls etc) depicting a mother and a child. She calls it her Mother & Child Collection. 

Some items were bought by herself wherever she travelled to, and some were given to her as gifts. Every space in the house was filled with art (from gigantic wooden sculptures to figurines on the shelves) - in the the kitchen, the bathroom, on the window sills, and at the corners! Some art works were funny, some were thought-provoking, some were really sweet, but everything was just beautiful. Of course I did not get to see every single item (you'll need to spend hours in that house if you want to see everything) - but I took photos of some that I really admired. This will also show you the diversity of the collection:

Recipe: Kimchi

My family's relationship with Kimchi goes waaaayyy back to even before I was born! In our early years in Port Harcourt, Nigeria my Dad used to work at a Korean company, so we'd always join the Korean families whenever they had get-togethers/picnics. And my parents are the kind of people who always love to learn how something is made (which is why my Mom makes ah-mazing home-made hummus, tabouli, and my Dad makes incredible egusi soup!) So early on, they learnt the art of Kimchi, and it has stayed in the family for more than two decades now. Until recently, it was always my Mom making it - not just for home consumption, but also for sale. Now I've been forced to learn (thanks to my Dad's cravings and his broken hand.) 

In the last two months, I've made Kimchi three times - the first two under my Dad's supervision, and today I made it 90% on my own! Here's how:

1. Chinese cabbage

Depending on how much Kimchi you want to make, get some Chinese cabbage. Last night I got three big ones, sliced them all in half and soaked them in salted water overnight. When I say salted water, I mean 20 full spoons of salt mixed with water. Salty water helps soften the cabbage. You don't need to soak overnight; a few hours is fine. After that, you take the cabbage out of the water and rinse thoroughly (to take out the salt). Then slice the cabbage - it's up to you how big or how small, but I went with 4 slices per cabbage. Squeeze and place them all in a strainer to take out all the water. Keep aside.