My friend at work has been telling for ages to buy my spices from Samraa Adan spice shop but I haven’t been cooking much at that time and I ignored. This year things are different and I wanted to use fresh spices in my food. I asked my friend and she suggested this same place again. I gave it a shot this year because I want to try new flavours in my cooking. I got there at about 11:30am. It’s a tiny shop. It wasn’t crowded when I came in, minutes later it was filled up with people mostly housewives and retired men. For some reason I felt like I’m one of them.

I haven’t tried out their spices yet but I can tell they’re good by the smell. I can’t wait to try them with cooking. They’re not that expensive. I paid KD 4.650 for a 1/4 kilo of meat & chicken marag spices, 1/4 kilo machboos deyay & laham spices, 1/4 burger spices, less than a 1/4 kilo veggie sambosa spices and 1/4 kilo tandoori. I think that was it. I wanted to buy more but I thought I’ll wait until I’ve tried them out and finished what I have before getting some more.

Location: Sharq. If you know sharq toys, keep it to your left. Take the roundabout to the left. Sharq police station should be to your left and drive a little. It will be on your right hand side.

I can’t fight my urge to buy mint, rokka and parsley even when I know I have plenty at home.

A few weeks back during ramadam my brother was at the co-op looking for today’s fresh milk. Funny thing he found tomorrow’s date printed on it so he left without buying any. How can they state on the milk carton that it’s fresh when it’s not! It makes us question if all dairy products sold in co-ops are really fresh or not?

I tried it out yesterday and it tastes very good.

My family liked it too, thumbs up.

Hassan and I just finished eating our share of leftover lasagne. I hate leftover food but due to our hunger we both ate quietly.

P.s. three of us are down with a bad cold, but Rami and me got it from hassoni.

I seriously hate making salads but I love eating it, though I really love the smell of finely chopped cucumbers.

Last week I got back on track with cooking and I decided we’re having steak for dinner. I’ve never ever cooked steaks before. I was so clueless as a child in math class.

What I did: I rinsed the steaks first and then I added some spices to them. Fried my steaks for 2 minutes on each side. I prepared my marination which included black pepper, soya sauce, bbq sauce, smoked tobasco, lemon, green pepper and onions sliced into thin circles. Poured it over my steaks, covered my dish with foil and placed the steaks in the oven for about an hour and 30 minutes to cook.

While it was cooking, I prepared the side dish of mashed potatoes and steamed veggies. The last thing I remembered was the mushroom sauce so I called up a friend for some tips on that and before the steak was ready, I let out a huge sigh. I was done! The steaks were amazing. I didn’t know I can cook so damn well lol.