Baking, cooking and sugar plum fairies

Posted on by

Saturday afternoon a shiny, new stove arrived at my front door! The other stove was only nine years old but had seen much wear and tear, burners refused to turn off and heated up randomly and recently a buzzing noise from inside started catching the attention of my children. Still, I was so very grateful to have a stove as many people do not.

img_3262

Stove from Osama and Jacki!

If you have followed my blog and life story then you already know that I cooked on a stove that was purchased from a flea market of sorts in downtown Riyadh. Two of the four burners functioned and both shocked me if I used any metal utensils. We lived with no beds, chairs, tables etc. for a couple of years and with the very bare necessities when we lived outside of compounds. My parents supplied any luxury items for our family (new towels, clothing, shoes, kitchen gadgets, toys)  and we fought to hang on to those. We have all learned to be grateful for the smallest of things and realize material items cannot bring happiness, but they can make life very difficult when you do not have even the basics.

I was raised in a beautiful home on six sprawling acres of pine trees and never imagined living without the basics and also the many extras that I had become accustomed to. I was unaware of the insidious cycle of abuse until it swallowed me whole and spit me back out.

But now things are different and my children are allowed to make their own choices and to be who they were meant to be.

44091350_2119183981677825_3655348276514783232_n

My nine children

Meanwhile, I sit in my comfy recliner and sip coffee while visions of jelly roll, sugar cookies and fried rice dance in my head. Thoughts drift to concoctions that will be whipped up on a brand new stove!

Happy Holidays and remember that things can get better, there is always hope!

60 thoughts on “Baking, cooking and sugar plum fairies”

  1. The photos of the food look so delicious! Congratulations on the new stove! I have read your story over the past year or two and marvel at your strength and how you have held your family together. Even though you may not have always felt it, I think God sure must love you extra special!

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply ↓

  2. Wonderful goodies photos! A state of the art stove! All set for holiday baking! Know how blessed you are living in the US. Your “other” life further & further away. Merry Christmas & Happy New year to you & your beautiful family! 🎄🎶📚 Christine

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply ↓

  4. Right, when I saw the new stove I thought back to that first or the stove in the apartment that shocked you and you had to use wooden spoons or get shocked!

    How wonderful to have the means to replace the old stove/oven! Yes, we count our blessings!!

    Enjoy your new kitchen tool! I know tasty foods will be made using it.

    Merry Christmas to you and yours! xx

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply ↓

  23. Nothing like a new stove to get the creative juices flowing!! You deserve the very best of everything my friend. And yes we should count our blessings for what we have, its no until you go without the basics to make you appreciate them even more. Happy holidays my friend and better yet, Happy Cooking…xxx

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply ↓

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.