Ramadan Cooking Tips

Published on by Eve CrabappleLeave a comment

It’s that time of the year again! This year I wanted to make Ramadan extra special and do my utmost to spend this valuable time doing beneficial actions that would bring me more knowledge and hasana such as reading Qur’an, listening to lectures and writing in my Islamic journal, and less time being miserably tired in a hot kitchen. My household consists of me, my husband and my cat and since we both work outside of the home full-time, coming home after a long days work to start preparing for Iftar is probably the last thing I want to do. Here are some tips I came up with to help with that:

Cook in bulk

 

For each Ramadan meal, my husband and I have a sort of routine that consists of a soup, salad, breek (Tunisian fried egg and potato pocket), and then the main dish which is usually a pasta or rice dish. As soon as I found out Ramadan was today, last night I spent time cooking up a huge dish of chorba (Tunisian soup) and have it stored in the refrigerator at the moment. I also prepared the filling for the breek so that all I have to do is fill the phyllo dough and fry them for fresh-made breek every night. i estimate that I’ve cooked enough breek and chorba to last us through Thursday. This means that all I have to do is cook a pasta or rice dish when I get home from work to have a delicious spread for Iftar, which will be no big deal since I’ve already completed tip number two below.

Prepare your ingredients

 

Last night as I was cooking, I diced one extra onion, minced a two bunches of parsley, peeled the potatoes, already minced the garlic, and cleaned and trimmed the meat so that today when I arrive, all I have to do is put the ingredients in the saucepan and I’ll have a delicious meal that took no effort to prepare. Cutting and dicing takes up the majority of your time and so does the clean up that needs to get done after doing all of that. Preparing and storing your basic ingredients takes the time and effort out of your Ramadan meal.

Cook and store time-consuming dishes during the weekend

 

 

Like I mentioned before, I cooked a big pot of soup on Sunday that will probably last me through Thursday but I can do the same for the pasta sauces that I make. Sauces and soups are time consuming dishes since they need to sit and simmer in order to bring out the best flavors. This would be best to do during the weekend when I can take my time and not try to rush it because I’ve got other dishes to prepare in time for Maghrib. Once I’ve made the sauce in bulk, I wait for it to cool and then store the sauce and freeze until I’m ready to use it.

So there you have it, those are my 3 tips for easy Ramadan cooking. If you choose to use any of them I hope they help you to maximize your time on more beneficial actions. Ramadan is about the benefits to your soul and I plan on writing more posts on that — but it sure is nice to have a good meal at the end of the day!

signature

Book Review: The Fred Factor by Mark Sanborn

Published on by Eve CrabappleLeave a comment

“When your life is at low tide, when your professional commitment is wavering and you just want to get the job done and go home at the end of the day, what can you do?”

This small, yet engaging book answers this question by examining the work ethic and commitment to service of one extraordinary person who is employed in a seemingly ordinary position — that of a postman. His name is Fred and the book begins with an interaction between him and the author that inspires him to write this book on transforming any life — your life into the extraordinary through 4 basic principles: how to make a real difference each and everyday, how to be more successful by building strong relationships, how to create value for others and how to reinvent yourself. Understanding these 4 principles gave me a new perspective on the true influence that I hold in my life and others’ lives and I’ll give you a couple of tidbits from the second and third principle that spoke to me.

As far as building relationships go, I consider myself an introvert. This doesn’t mean that I’m shy, in fact I love giving presentations in front of large audiences, but I don’t like making small talk or speaking to others about myself on a personal level (don’t I sound lovely!) so when I approached the subject of relationships in this book, I knew that I’d have a lot of takeaways. There are “The Seven Bs of Relationship Building” according to the author and the first principle is: Be real. We’ve all heard this before, but what caught my attention was that “this is the direct opposite of the prevailing wisdom in our culture today, which is ‘fake it until you make it'”. I’ve read books and watched videos on this subject and have tried to apply this principle but in the end I’ve always felt like I’m becoming someone that isn’t natural or genuine. Sanborn suggests the alternative to “always do your best at being yourself…let these actions come out of who you really are, what you truly believe in, and the things you are committed to.” What a breath of fresh air this principle was to me!

The third principle is about creating value for others without throwing money at the problem. Sanborn has a lot to advice on how to accomplish this, but the simplest for me was to “do what you’ve always done, but do it better than you’ve ever done it” or as H.J. Heinz coined in 1869, “do the common thing uncommonly well”. If we all find ways to ways to do common things (sending emails to clients, taking phone calls, etc.) very well, we would probably be able to transform these situations from negative to positive experiences or from good to world-class interactions. This principle made me brainstorm all of the ways, both big and small, that I interact with the world, not just at work, and think of ways to improve their quality.

I couldn’t possibly cover all of the valuable material that is shared in this book, so you’ll just have to read it yourself, but I’d like to leave you with this quote by Martin Luther King Jr. that I feel encapsulates the entire message of the book: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.'”

signature

Book Review: “I Dare You” by William H. Danforth

Published on by Eve CrabappleLeave a comment

It is a rare and beautiful thing to read a book and know that your life will never be the same after having read it. Your mind becomes alert to new truths that you’ve always known but now have seen them articulated in writing and understood.

You can never forget this book. You will either apply its instructions and see your life change in unimaginable ways or you will not and live with the regret to know that if you had summed up the courage and energy, your life could be very different.

This is really powerful stuff, if properly wielded.

image1

I found this book in a thrift store for $3.99. It was a hardcover book, a little dirty, in the business section. I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but it said, “I Dare You!”, and I just can’t back away from a dare. And I’m eternally grateful that I dared. It’s a short read; I finished it in a day since it dared me to (ha!) but this is a book that I’ll need to keep by my bedside and refer to until I’ve internalized its lessons.

I don’t know if this is a popular book. I haven’t heard it talked or written about, so I’m going to guess that it isn’t. But that makes its teachings all the more valid to me. I’m so fed up with those feel-good self-help books that make it seem like all you need is “positive thinking” and “visualization” to “manifest” the life of your dreams. I know that those techniques can help, but there is a heck of a lot of old-fashioned hard work and hustle that goes into living the life you want as well, which is conveniently omitted from these books. I guess it makes sense to leave that important part out — you probably won’t sell as many books if you tell it like it really is because who wants to hear that you need to continually learn, demolish your comfort zones, be stronger, faster and smarter than the average person to live an extraordinary life? No one. At least no one who isn’t serious about making some really big shifts in their life.

This is where this book differs. It gives you the concrete four-fold development program (physical, mental, social and spiritual) that will need to be applied each and everyday to be one of the 4% or 1% who actually go on to succeed with their “magnificent obsession”. You won’t know what I’m talking about unless you read this book and I’m not going to be able to better articulate it than Mr. Danforth. This book is for you if you want a method for getting the most out of life and you want a real, solid plan in place to accomplish that. Granted, some of the information in the book is dated (it was published in 1978) but the program allows for personalization so that it can be adapted for any era. So read it — I Dare You!!

signature

On Learning Languages

Published on by Eve Crabapple2 Comments

I have a lot of trouble seeing things through with the exception of about 3 things: my work, reading, and learning languages. So while my interests may come and go, ever since I was around 11 years old when I first started learning French in middle school, acquiring languages has been a relatively long-standing interest of mine. As such, I have collected a lot of methods for keeping that interest alive (even through the grammar bits!) that I would like to share with you today.

     1. Listen to music and memorize the lyrics to some of your favorite songs in the language you are learning.

I’ve found that this helps me learn and mimic the pronunciation and cadence of a language without sounding like a machine as most of those language learning programs do. Plus, you will be able to memorize the vocabulary much easily when its in a song.

2. Listen to language learning podcasts, watch youtube videos and movies with subtitles in the language.

I work and have many obligations outside of work that don’t provide me with much free time to sit and memorize vocabulary and grammar from a book (not that I’d want to even if I did) so I make language learning as enjoyable and interesting as possible. Granted, at the beginning stages of learning a language, you will need a book to learn from, however if you’re past that stage and have a grasp of the grammar and some vocabulary under your belt, start listening to the language in contexts that interest you. This makes the whole process much easier and fun, plus it’s cool see how much of the youtube comments you can understand!

3. Purchase and read from a dual language book.

These are great for visual learners. They are complete books or short stories with the foreign language on one side of the page and the English translation on the other side of the page. You are basically reading the book in the foreign language but have the English translation to help you out if you get stuck. This makes it easier to enjoy engaging in the language without having to search for the definitions!

4. Start to journal in the language.

I keep a (almost) daily journal and I alternate between different languages throughout the days of the week. This is great because you can start to acquire the vocabulary that allows you to express yourself in the language without feeling embarrassed if you make a mistake. You can start very basic (Today, I was happy.) and eventually through continued learning you’ll find yourself being able to write a pretty respectable journal entry.

5. Stay exposed to the language everyday — even if its for a few minutes.

Trying to keep all that goes into acquiring a new language in your head can be a tricky endeavor, especially when you don’t have anyone to speak with or are residing in your native country. It is crucial for me to spend some time everyday interacting with the language I am either learning or retaining.

So there are my 5 tips for learning and retaining languages. If any of you are learning a language or keeping up with one, please do let me know what works for you. I’m always interested to find new ways to interact with foreign languages!

signature

 

 

Book Review: Manuscript Found In Accra by Paulo Coelho

Published on by Eve CrabappleLeave a comment

I just finished “The Alchemist” by this same author literally about two months ago and his writing was so good that I had to go and read some more. With that said, today I’m going to be reviewing “Manuscript Found In Accra” which is the second book that I have read from Mr. Coelho.

The structure of the novel was different from most I have read in that its chapters are formatted as answers to questions that are posed to the main narrator of the book, known as “The Copt”. The backstory to the book is that what you are reading is the manuscript that the citizens of Accra compiled in the hours before they were overrun by their enemies who are waiting outside of Accra’s city gates for nightfall to attack. The citizens have little means of defending themselves from the inevitable, and so at the advice of the mysterious and wise figure of the city, “The Copt”, the citizens gather together to record not the last hours of their beloved city and the battle to come that will erase it all, but what history will truly wish to know about their civilization — their daily lives. And thus, one by one, the citizens offer the Copt their questions that he answers with the beauty and significance of answers that will never be given again and yet will eternally hold true.

The chapter that was most poignant to me was when “a man who always woke up early to take his flocks to the pastures around the city said: ‘You have studied in order to be able to speak these beautiful words, but we have to work to support our families.'” to which the Copt’s response is the articulation of an instinctive truth within me that has been skillfully put to language in Coelho’s book. Much of Coelho’s writing is like that: the transcription of a soul’s truths. It transcends all cultural, generational, religious, racial characteristics and speaks directly to the source that springs from everyone one of us. It is deeply personal, yet impersonal because it is my source, but it is also in all of you.

Although this is only my second book from Mr. Coelho, I get the feeling that his books can’t be read just once, they need to be revisited again in between the different phases of your life. When you think that you’ve forgotten the lessons in the book, you’ll have to pick it up and read it again with fresh, new eyes colored by your new experiences.

signature