The BIG anniversary dinner

Some of you may have read about our BIG dinner already HERE on SouthSoundEats.com.
But it's probably safe to say that most of you haven't SEEN the seven-star dinner we ate at the Burj Al Arab's Al Mahara for our anniversary.

Feast your eyes.


Wes' main course from above: A wild selection of the sea


Our table: Shot by our waiter during our main course


Admiring the fish: Lots and lots and lots to see


Guilty pleasure: Foir gras and eggplant


A lobster "salad" that Wes ordered.


The dinning room: A small 80+ person space with one giant tank.

Best news since the election!

THE

FIRST

TACO BELL

IN THE UAE IS

OPEN!!!

The last two weeks of Monday Cake

I'm a bit behind with the big Monday Cake reveal (two weeks to be exact) so here's a feast for your eyes. Sadly, these will be the last Monday Cake pictures for some time as Ramadan begins Sept. 1 and signals a whole month of no food in the office.

Key lime pie (made with Indian limes)
My personal favorite thus far was this pie. Complete with homemade graham cracker crust and whipped cream. I was excited for the whipped cream because it gave me a chance to use my new piping bag.



Carmel cake
I actually didn't know such a cake recipe existed until I had a coworker request it. While the cake itself was a pretty easy one to make — unwrapping all the tiny caramels and melting them down was not. The icing for this cake also provided me a cooking lesson. I found myself making it twice! There is a fine line in cooking butter down to turn it a nut brown color and cooking butter down and burning it.

Some get ready for Ramadan, I get ready for Vegas

While other's will be fasting (the whole country in public during Sept 1-30), I'll be doing the EXACT opposite in Las Vegas. What amazing timing.

I'm still debating if I want to be a VERY nice wife and pre-make some dinners for Wes and store them in the freezer so he can eat them after sundown. We'll see how nice he is the next few days.

I do think it would be interesting to be here the whole month and try to fast with everyone. Perhaps I'll do so on my return from the States. I will probably need to after eating ridiculous meals at Craftsteak and Fleur de Lys.

Monday Cake, part 5

Last week I got adventurous and did a double selection: Carrot and coconut cupcakes.
Gotta love the fresh and abundant produce of the UAE!
All 36 cupcakes went in a flash.


Pretty-little coconut cakes


The collection

Monday Cake, part 4

This week's selection was a multilayer devil's food with chocolate ganache.
It took one hour to properly make the ganache (I am without an electric mixer). I think shaving down 2lbs of chocolate and beating it into the boiling cream was well worth it.

Alas! The holy grail

It's probably been eight months since I last had my fix of an 'original flavor pretzel with butter and salt'. While I did confirm the existence of Auntie Anne's in the UAE before I left the States, the pretzel chain had eluded me. That is, UNTIL I ended up in Dubai for an afternoon of snowboarding (Yes, there is snowboard in the desert. More on that later).


EEEEEEEEEE! Look how happy I am!


Thumbs up for tasty pretzels

While the pretzels were the same... the dipping sauces were sadly not. NO HOT SALSA CHEESE!!!! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! OH, THE HUMANITY!

That small difference aside, I made Neil pose and gorge with me. Though I was hungry, I could not do a buy 3-get-1-free deal on my own.

The only way to make a Monday (our hump day) a good day

Meet the newsroom tradition I started, now dubbed Monday Cake.
This week's selection is a bit misleading since it's not cake. It's pie.

These tasty samplings were packed with apples and spices. And yes, that's my homemade crust on both.

Pie x 2

Me, my desk and pie