whole wheat pumpkin cinnamon rolls.

What is the difference between cinnamon buns and rolls? I feel like the icing is different for both. Otherwise, they seem to be pretty interchangeable, from what research I've conducted on the good old world wide web. Which is kinda annoying, I feel like there should be a difference but whatever, who am I to start an occupy Cinnabon movement .. speaking of which, I guess they're also called cinnabons at Cinnabon. What the hell man! It's so important it needs three different names?!

Anyway, let's talk about these pastries, oozing with heavenly glaze and exuding cinnamon-y enticement.

chives flatbread.

A while ago, I was in a mood in which I wanted to make a lot of things that used yeast. But since bread recipes often call for a lot of flour, I picked this spring onion flatbread to work with.

Or rather, "I picked this spring onion flatbread with which to work."

I still can't consciously end a sentence (in writing) with a preposition. Funny, just yesterday my brother was going on about weird ways of speaking. Let me clarify.

Actually, for those of you who just want to know about the flatbread, scroll on down to just before the recipe. There, you shall find a lovely paragraph describing this yum flatbread.

When I used to read food blogs (or anything, but food blogs had it the most), I used to dislike reading "yummy" and "yum," which don't give a hint to how the food was actually good. And my adjectives need to have purpose! But look, I just used yum. Maybe it's because it's early, and my mind is literally blank or maybe because it feels like forever since I've written a blogpost. But I just used yum. I. don't. know.

Ok, on to more important things.

chicken fatayer.

Very sorry for the picture quality - all taken at night, therefore have yellow tinges.

Ever write an entire blogpost, complete with EVERYTHING, including a long, detailed recipe, and then have it deleted because your computer decides to only save the draft after writing three sentences, and then goes oh, why save the rest? It's not like it took an hour to type or anything.

So I am sorry, but I cannot retype an hour's worth of creativity and detail. A short post will have to suffice.

I am not too knowledgable about Arabic cuisine; I was just browsing on tastespotting one day when I came across a picture of doughy triangles that appeared to have some sort of filling. The caption read Chicken Fatayer. I had never heard of it before, so it grabbed my interest.

(^that's what got saved. silly blogger.com tricks are for kids ... WOAH. woah wait I just had an intense revelation. TRICKS are for kids. TRIX are for kids. has anyone ever noticed this before?!!?! this is ridiculous. i never knew ... i can't even .. )

The dough has been separated into balls to be rollen out.

I googled the dish, but there is not much online about it. This is what I gathered: chicken fatayer is an Arabic pie. The term pie here is in the sense of how spankopita is a Greek pie. Fatayers can have fillings ranging from meat, to spinach and cheese (see how similar different cultures can be?), to just cheese. The filling is enclosed within a bready yeast dough. Yum.

monkey bread.

Ever since being back home, I have not been particularly inspired enough to make interesting things. Yes, I have baked some new things and increased the number of new recipes in my recipe book (really just a composition book where I record a lot of recipes I have tried), but I haven't been inspired.
However, that pull-apart bread I made the other day really got me hooked to working with yeast. It's not easy, which makes me love it even more. I want to eventually bake up some loaves of good, crusty bread and experience the delight of freshly baked bread. But until then, I need to be satisfied with pull-apart loaves & monkey bread.


Yes, I made monkey bread. And trust me, in no way did I settle by making it. A couple friends came over a few days ago, and it was almost obligatory that a baked good be offered. I decided upon monkey bread for a few reasons.

orange pull-apart loaf.

I have seen recipes for cinnamon and lemon pull-apart bread before. And I was always enticed by the rustic look of this bread. I would imagine peeling away thin slivers of sweet bread laced with flavored sugar and enriched with layers of butter. However, it was not until a friend re-introduced to me a link to the cinnamon sugar version that I made this. And I was *yarely the entire long, sticky, messy process.