Chicken Buffalo Wings

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Eat-O-Live

Is it sports time? It is always sports time whether it is baseball, football, basketball or hockey season. Chicken buffalo wings are always a good way to go. Here’s a great recipe to have home-made buffalo wings.

Ingredients:

Chicken Wings

Half a stick of Butter (4 OZ)

4 tbsp of Hot Sauce

Few drips of Tabasco

1/2 tsp of Cayenne Pepper

1/2 tsp of Garlic Powder

Pinch of Salt

One tbsp of White vinegar

How to Prepare:

Mix the butter with the hot sauce, a few drips of tabasco sauce, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, salt and white vinegar on medium heat and whisk to melt the butter.

Once you see it start bubbling on the sides, turn it off and let it sit.

Deep fry your chicken wings or oven fry (your choice).

Put the wings in a bowl and pour some of the sauce on top and cover it with a plate or a lid and shake for a few minutes.

You can serve them as is or you can let them dry by putting them in the oven after you turn it off for 10 minutes.

I personally like them juicy.

Posted in Appetizers, Chicken | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Magic Tool

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Eat-O-Live

Most Arabic food is based on cooking vegetables with rice and meat.  One of the essential tools in the Arabic Kitchen is the hollower. I always carry mine with me wherever I go because it is hard to find other than in the Levant.

Here’s a recipe to another delicious meal prepared by the hollower.

Stuffed Zucchini and Yogurt Sauce

Ingredients:

Zucchini (about 2 lbs) 

4 Cups of Plain Yogurt

Cup and a half of Rice

1/2 Pound of Ground Beef 

Salt & Pepper

Vegetable Oil

2 Cloves of Diced Garlic

One tablespoon of Ground Mint

One Egg

One tablespoon of Butter

How to prepare:

Cut the stem of the zucchini; hollow and remove the guts of it.
Put rice and ground beef in a pot, adding salt  and ground pepper.
Melt the butter and add it to the pot with rice and ground beef, mixing all together.
Take the zucchini and stuff them with the rice and beef mixture, making sure that you only stuff 2/3 of the zucchini so it does not come out during cooking.


Using a large pot, boil the stuffed zucchini in water, skimming the froth as it appears. Let it boil for about 15 minutes.


Meanwhile, using a cooking pot pour the yogurt in it and mix it well with one egg and bring to a boil with constant stirring.


When the yogurt starts to boil, add the stuffed zucchini and hot water to the yogurt and cook it on a low flame for about 45 minutes.


A few minutes before it is done, use a sauce pan to heat one tablespoon of vegetable oil.
Add the ground mint and the diced garlic to the vegetable oil and stir until the garlic is light brown.


When the stuffed zucchini is cooked after 45 minutes, turn off the flame and flavor it with garlic, mint and vegetable oil.
Let it sit for one minute then serve it.

Bon Appetite!

Posted in Meat, Stuffed Vegetables, Vegetables | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pasta Gratin

Posted on June 3, 2012 by Eat-O-Live

Gratin is a mixture of melted cheese and bread crumbs. Here’s the recipe for the pasta gratin  (choose your favorite kind of pasta or spaghetti).

Ingredients:

Pasta or Spaghetti

1/2 Pound of Ground Beef

Diced Onion

Diced Garlic

Crushed Bread Sticks or Bread Crumbs 

Two Cups of Milk

4 Tablespoons of Flour

Salt & Pepper

Mozzarella Cheese

How to Prepare:

Boil water for the pasta, adding a pinch of salt and sprinkle of olive oil to prevent from sticking.
While the water is boiling, fry the diced onion in a sauce pan until golden brown then add the garlic and stir for a few minutes. Add the ground beef and cook until brown, adding a pinch of salt & pepper.
Whisk the milk and flour into a pot until blended.
Put the milk and flour on the burner at a medium flame and continuously whisk for 5-6 minutes until it becomes creamy.


Take a glass Pyrex oven sheet and grease it with butter.
Sprinkle some of the crushed bread sticks over the butter, creating a layer over it.
Take half of the pasta and spread it out evenly on the oven sheet.
Spread all of the ground beef over the pasta.
Add the rest of the pasta to the meat evenly.
Add the gratin sauce over the spaghetti evenly.
Sprinkle the rest of the crushed bread sticks on top of the sauce and some mozzarella cheese.
Pre-heat the oven to 425F/230C for 5 minutes and then put the dish into the oven.
Bake in the oven for 15 minutes until the cheese melts.

Posted in Meat, Pasta | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Feeding Baby – Stage Four (8 to 9 Months)

Posted on June 3, 2012 by Eat-O-Live

At this stage, it is the time to thicken the meals up a bit. During this month you can introduce your baby to red meat. Also, more fruits and vegetables can be introduced using the same method of 3 to 4 day food introduction for each new food you add to track any reactions he/she might has.

For fruits you can introduce Mango. No need to cook them before feeding.

Vegetable Soup:

You will now continue adding more food every month in your vegetable soup.
You will add eggplant and spinach to the soup in this month and one tablespoon of ground beef instead of the chicken. I add chicken and butter one week and ground beef the other week (P.S. no need to add butter to the soup when adding the ground beef since it already has the amount of fat in it that baby needs).

ALSO 🙂 I started feeding my baby some of our dinner sometimes instead of his meal if he likes it or just a taste if he wasn’t hungry. (i.e. one stuffed zucchini mixed with plain yogurt, spinach and rice, chicken and potato, just remember smashing them real well or blending them).

Egg:

A the end of this month your baby will eat the whole egg.
At the end of this month, the feeding schedule is:

Wake up            Breast/Bottle

AM                     Cereal

Noon                  Vegetable soup

Afternoon          Egg – with yogurt or fruits or baby milk- (every other day)

Bed Time           Breast/Bottle

Snacks in between meals will be orange juice, carrot juice, apple juice or water and a few spoons of fruits.

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Broccoli Stew

Posted on June 2, 2012 by Eat-O-Live

This recipe gives broccoli a whole nother taste that makes kids love to eat or at least they will not mind broccoli anymore. Go ahead try it.

Ingredients:

Two Bushels of Broccoli

1/2 Pound of Ground Beef

Diced Onion

Pepper & Salt

Diced Garlic

3 large Tomatoes

One tablespoon of Butter

Ground Coriander

How to Prepare:

Boil the tomatoes in a medium-sized pot for 5-7 minutes. After this, peel the skin off and crush into a sauce.



Melt Butter into a cooking pot.
Add diced onion and stir until golden brown.
Add garlic into the pot and stir for one minute.
Add the ground beef to the pot and stir until cooked.
Add salt and pepper and stir for one minute.
Add broccoli to the pot.

Add the tomato sauce and the ground coriander


Stir the ingredients together and cook it for 30-40 minutes on a low flame.

If desired, you can serve with <a href="Arabic Rice“>Rice

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Stuffed Potatoes

Posted on June 1, 2012 by Eat-O-Live

Don’t ask me why we stuff everything in the Arab world. I think we like to think about our food like a hidden treasure or we maybe just like to make our food looks unique 😉 

Ingredients:

Potatoes

4 Tomatoes

1/2 lb of Ground Beef 

Diced Onion

Salt & Pepper

How to Prepare:

Peel the Potatoes. Cut each Potato in half horizontally.
Hollow out the inside of each half of the potato (as seen in the picture).

Deep fry the hollowed out potatoes in hot cooking oil for a few minutes.


Using a saucepan, fry the onion until golden yellow. Add the ground beef and cook till brown.
Add a dash of salt & pepper to the beef and stir for a few minutes.


Boil the tomatoes for 5 to 7 minutes. Then, peal the skin off the tomatoes and crush into a sauce.
Stuff the potatoes with the meat and place them in a pot.


Add the tomato sauce on top of the potato and cook it on medium heat for 15 minutes..


P.S. You can also fry the guts of the potato and add it to the sauce.

Posted in Meat, Stuffed Vegetables, Vegetables | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Dubai – UAE

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Eat-O-Live

I always tell those interested in going to the Gulf for work or tourism that “I love Dubai!” Dubai is special because it was my first job outside of Syria and the first time that I had traveled outside of the country. I spent 7 months there from January 2007 to August 2007. It was a great experience and I met so many interesting people. When I went back in April 2010 for vacation, it was totally new to me. There were so many new building and shopping centers. Dubai is really the New York of the Middle East. It is a melting pot where east meets west.

Posted in Travel | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Steak

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Eat-O-Live

We bought this beautiful, expensive grill so we can have BBQ gatherings and shipped it all the way from the US to Qatar. We were so excited when it arrived.  Immediately, we put it together at 10 at night so we can go and buy the propane tank first thing in the morning. Little did we know that they don’t have adapters to hook the American grill to the local propane, burner.

Lesson learned: we buy grills locally.

Here’s another way to prepare a delicious tender steak.

Ingredients:

Boneless Rib Eye Steak

Butter

Lemon

Fresh Mushroom

Salt and Pepper

 How to Prepare:

 Heat a non-stick pan on high heat.

Season the steak with salt and pepper on both sides right before cooking.

Fry the steak 2 minutes on each side for rare, 3 minutes for medium rare, and 4 minutes for well done.

Let it rest for 2 minutes.

Melt some butter and pour over the steak then squeeze the lemon and pour as much as desired on it.

Cut the fresh mushroom and sauté.

Add the mushrooms to the side of the steak and serve.

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Green Beans and Chicken

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Eat-O-Live

Arabic food mixes meat and chicken with many different vegetables. This is another dish that introduces chicken and green beans together. When i introduced this to my in-laws for the first time, it was different to them but they were willing to try and yes they fell in love with it since it is both healthy and tasty. They keep sending me notes that they cook it every now and then :).

Ingredients :

One Pound of Green Beans

2 Chicken Breasts

One Large Onion

Butter

Salt & Pepper

How to Prepare:

Cut the green beans into small pieces (inch and a half long).
Cut the chicken breast into small one inch cubes.
Using a large pot, melt one tablespoon of butter.
Add half-diced onion and saute.
Add the chicken cubes to the onion and stir.


Add a dash of salt & pepper to the chicken and cover the pot so the chickens gets tender (stir every few minutes to prevent from sticking).


Add the green beans to the pot and stir for a few minutes.
Add water to the pot to cover the beans and chicken only, then add a little bit of salt and pepper.
Cut the other half of the onion into four pieces and add them to the green beans.


When the water starts to boil, lower the flame and cover the pot.
Cook for about 60-90 minutes checking every now and then, adding water when it dries so not to burn it.

You can serve with <a href="Arabic Rice“>Rice if Desired

Posted in Chicken, Stew, Vegetables | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Feeding Baby – Stage Three (7 to 8 Months)

Posted on May 28, 2012 by Eat-O-Live

During this month you can introduce your baby to plain Cream Cheese a little bit at a time. Also, more fruits and vegetables can be introduced using the same method of 3 to 4 days food introduction for each new food you add to track any and all reactions he/she might has.


For fruits you can introduce Cantaloupe, Watermelon and Pineapple. No need to cook them before feeding.

Vegetable Soup:

You will now continue adding more food every month in your vegetable soup. I guarantee you that your baby will love it more as you add more flavors to it. You will add 1/3 head of broccoli to the soup in this month and one table spoon of butter (yes butter), you will still remove the chicken piece before blending during this month. You will increase the meal portion as well if you see that your baby is still hungry.

Egg:

Once your baby eats the whole egg yolk, start introducing the egg white as well with the same method as the yolk little by little until your baby will be eating the whole egg eventually.

“There are different studies on whether you should feed eggs ro infants the first year or wait until after 12 months of age. Always consult with your pediatrician before introducing any, especially if you have a family history of allergy” 

“Australian Study (2010) finds infants given egg after 12 months of age are up to five times more likely to develop allergies compared to those who are introduced to eggs at four to six months, depending on how the egg is cooked.”


At the end of this month, the feeding schedule is:

Wake up        Breast/Bottle

AM                 Cereal

Noon              Vegetable soup

Afternoon      Egg with Yogurt (every other day)                Breast/Bottle (the other day)

PM                  Breast/Bottle

Bed Time       Breast/Bottle

Snacks in between meals will be 2 to 3 OZ of orange juice or water and a few spoons of fruits.

Posted in Baby | Tagged | 5 Comments