One!

A year ago my mom and I posted our very first Persian food recipe — for a huge rice-meatball stuffed with prunes, caramelized onions, raisins and walnuts, served with its own tangy and savory broth, otherwise known as the yumalicious koofteh berenji. It feels both like yesterday and also forever ago that we started on our excellent adventure of blogging. It’s a happy milestone and I’m a bit verklempt.

Starting this blog has been a rewarding experience – no doubt about it. It gives me and my mom (who was the muse and catalyst for creating Fig & Quince) a stimulating venue to bond and it has triggered (and I hope it will continue to trigger) precious stories from my father (ordinarily a man of a few words) that otherwise would have remained hidden treasures. It has also offered me a positive way to express and channel my love for Iran — to trade saddening homesickness for a passionate mission of cultural-exchange and a happy pursuit of recipes and stories — and into the bargain, it has even rekindled my romance with an old flame – photography – big time.

A huge pleasure of this venture has been that of getting to know many interesting & diversely delightful people, bloggers and non-bloggers alike, that I’d never have had met otherwise with the cherry-on-top bonus of forging and fostering meaningful connections and budding friendships. Continuing in this corny manner (once I get mushy this way there’s no going back till I get on the subway and am promptly cured of my infatuation with humanity) I have to say that I’m grateful to-the-core for everyone who reads this blog and keenly appreciate your emails, comments, links and any-other-way (including telepathic) gestures of support. It’s definitely fuel for keeping on with keeping on.

Let’s have a virtual slice of cake!



While you are enjoying your sugar rush, I’d like to tell you that Fig & Quince will have its very first guest post (by one of the aforementioned fascinating people I have been lucky to meet via this blog – so excited!) and that also we’ll have our very first giveaway (something made by moi as a token of saying thank you to toi) in the coming week or two.

And oh, the amazing rainbow cake with the marzipan bunny decorations? My sister made it all from scratch with her very own delicate hands for the birthday of a special quelqu’un fond of bunnies and rainbows — impressing young and old and ageless.

Khoda hafez till later.

ps. This is a tadigh cake! Invented by my father as a little joke on someone’s birthday.