Anissa's Blog

I have recently moved to Sicily in search of sunshine and a place that reminds me of home (Lebanon & Syria) but where I do not have to worry about ISIS! I am being facetious of course but Italy seems a safer bet than the Middle East these days and the great thing about Sicily,…

Ramadan is the most important time of the year in the Islamic calendar, a time when people fast from sunrise to sunset, not even letting a drop of water into their mouths. The dates vary each year, going backwards by about ten days because Muslims follow the lunar calendar.   The first day of the fast is announced…

It’s been a while since I gave you my belly dancer of the month. Too much traveling and too many different things to work on, but my life has been a little more relaxed recently, and here is my choice for this month, a resplendent Samia Gamal, who, with Tahiya Carioca, is my other favourite belly dancer.  And…

I am coming to the end of my Sicilian stay, and this year I managed to be there for orange blossom season even if I arrived at the tail end of the season. I had Amy come back to visit, and one of the first things we did was to go down to the citrus…

Cauliflower is a very fashionable vegetable nowadays. You will see it on restaurant menus from San Francisco to New York to London, prepared in myriad ways from sliced thick and served as steak, to roasted, to grated and used instead of flour as a base for gluten-free pizza, and so on. But using it to…