Palm Springs California

This is the Marrakech of the new world. The Parker in Palm Springs's landscaping was designed by Elsian landscapes who are a team of designers inspired by the tradition of outdoor living.

The tradition of outdoor living needs to come back to Bahrain! I think the air conditioner took a lot of generations indoors, and its time we take them back out!

(pictures are via The Parker hotel's website)

Coffee or Tea?

I love tea, I just love it, everything about it especially the porcelain that holds it, and the beautiful strainers you can get for it, the whole ritual... but something just doesn’t cut it for me. It has a faint herbal fragrance, but coffee on the other hand is something very seductive...

The smell is already a stimulant, and so potent at that. I can be in a complete dump in the middle of nowhere and if someone hands me a nice HOT cup of coffee, that’s it, I start wearing my rose tinted glasses, its alllll good, infact I don’t know why I didn’t notice how much charm the place had before the coffee…

O well,  I'm obsessed with fragrance... 

Edible bouquet

So this is my edible bouquet quirky design. As a natural perfumer, all my essences come from, well, natural material, which is usually edible too… Sooo…. I decided to create an edible arrangement, which personally I have been itching to do for ages, but it just so happens that in this lifetime everything can take forever to manifest!

The good thing about this arrangement is that its quite fragrant and fun to look at, the negative side is that I found out that the lemons tend to dry up after 7 hours, which should give them enough time to display in a party, but they kind of go to waste the next day...

Toot & childhood memories in Bahrain

I think most of us in the Middle East remember our childhood when we think of the toot tree. It’s the closest thing I ever came to fruit picking- being from a barren dessert climate! I have picked only two kinds of fruit in Bahrain- lemons, and toot, and o of course Dates too but I kind of take those for granted!

Here is the recipe to turn toot into a jam and make it last longer

I cup freshly picked toot

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

1 vanilla pod slit and seeds scraped out and throw into pot

1 lemon

Mix it all together in a ceramic pot (except the lemon save for after turning the fire off). Turn on the fire, let it cook while stirring with a wooden spoon, until all the sugar dissolves and some of the water evaporates. Pour into a bowl and let cool before you refrigerate. If you like it thick add one tablespoon of cornstarch mixed in water into the jam and stir for a minute before you close the fire- In either case the jam will thicken once cooled.

Add the lemon juice last after you close the fire.