Another slow week, which means a short blog post this time. After a long work day on Monday, I took a spontaneous trip to the school swimming pool with a couple kids in tow.

We practiced swimming, splashed, and even had a spirited game of marco polo, then headed to Wafae’s house for soup and Moroccan pastries. (I have been specifying the type of pastry every time because I am aware that you, my readers, are extremely discerning and absolutely need to know whether each pastry is Moroccan-style or French-style.)

This is a special post dedicated to Alyce, the mother of my good friend Alan Levine. Alyce, who passed away unexpectedly two weeks ago, would get up every Sunday morning, bake cookies, and hand them out during the week to anyone who looked like they could use cookie-inspired happiness. A couple of days later, Martha Burtis threw together Cookies for Cogdog, inviting Alan’s friends to bake cookies and share them as a tribute to Alyce.

So last Saturday I got up early and made an enormous batch of sugar cookies, coating myself, my kitchen, and far too many kitchen implements in flour.

I suppose this post should, logically, be preceded with another titled “How to Cook a Tagine”. But you know me- I don’t do anything half-assed. I’d never cooked a tagine before, so naturally I made my first one in the woods over twigs and stones. Mustapha and I surprised his sisters by whisking them away last Sunday for a picnic in a forested glen by the ocean. After arriving, we spread out a big carpet to sit on, piled up the containers of ingredients, turned on some music, and got to work.

Week six, week six. As everyone gears up for the start of the school year, it’s become increasingly difficult to find that ideal balance between life and work. I spent long hours at school whipping the library into shape, then worked on the aforementioned secret edtech project from home most nights. This was complicated by the fact that Ramadan was followed immediately by Eid, a two-day holiday, on Wednesday and Thursday, so most of the work at school had to be put on hold until Friday.

Still, I managed to get away from my books and my PHP code every once in a while, if only out of a sense of responsibility to my readers. If I didn’t do interesting things each week, there would be nothing to write about. And definitely no photos.

This post represents an important landmark: my first experience cooking traditional Moroccan food. After nearly three weeks of walking through my apartment building, surrounded by tantalizing smells, I finally learned how to make harira, one of the most delicious soups I’ve ever tasted. And lucky you, I’m going to post the recipe! This soup is usually the first thing served during iftar, and it’s a Moroccan specialty.

Well, technically these could be antelope cookies or star cookies or platypus cookies or… well, anything. Although I challenge you to find a platypus cookie cutter. Baking sugar cookies is guaranteed to make your inner child very, very happy. So dig out your cookie cutters, rolling pin, and food coloring, because you’re in for an evening of unbridled, floury fun.

Dear friends, family, colleagues, casual acquaintances, and indifferent web surfers,

You may have thought that I had stopped cooking delicious deserts to pursue other, more social pastimes. Maybe I threw a wild party, watched a football game, or even went clubbing. Not so. I’ve been quietly cooking and baking away during my few waking hours away from work, but simply haven’t found the time to share my experiments.

I’m of the firm belief that tarts are among the most rewarding of desserts to bake, because it always looks like you’ve put way more effort into them than you actually have.

I’ll admit, I sometimes have odd cravings. Raw carrots, candy hearts, frozen peas… the list goes on. But earlier this week, after consuming some mediocre lentil soup at a mediocre falafel joint in my neighborhood, all I could think about was lentils. In a lentil-induced haze, I ran to my local supermarket and bought a handful of ingredients: carrots, celery, tomatoes, onion, garlic, and–you guessed it–lentils. After two hours of chopping, sautéeing, ransacking my spice cabinet, sprinkling, simmering, and stirring, something new and delicious was born.

Let’s imagine that you, dear reader, are filled with admiration for my cooking projects and immediately run to the kitchen to try out each of these recipes over and over. If this is the case, then you have a veritable swimming pool of pesto sitting around, waiting to be used. And you’re probably sick of eating it with pasta. Well, here’s some great news! You can have fresh, homemade pesto pizza! Yum yum! And it’s so easy!

Ever wandered, drooling, past a bakery window and wished that you could have a tart of your very own? A tart to cherish, to love, to pile high with freshly sliced fruit? Well, now you can!

As is often the case, I volunteered to provide dessert for a social occasion without actually knowing what I’d make. Or if I had the necessary ingredients. Or even the time. This tart is the result of an hour of frantic online recipe browsing, leafing through cookbooks, and running around Harris Teeter like a madwoman, and another hour of stirring, accidentally powdering all nearby surfaces with confectioners’ sugar, slicing fruit quickly rather than safely, and pouring hot jam.