Poppy Seed Cake

The best thing about Elizabethland is that there is always something good cooking (ok sometimes I experiment and it's not so good) or a project to do, some music playing, a dance to work on or a party goin' on...

So here is one of my favorite cake recipes...you will need to go to dance class after this one cause it's very fattening! I always prefer to use organic and high quality ingredients, which make all the difference in this tasty treat!

preheat oven to 350*, butter & flour an 8 x 8 cake pan

Soak 1/4 cup poppy seeds in a bowl with 1 cup of milk or soy milk for about an hour.

Mix in a separate bowl and set aside
2 cups flour, I use a combination of unbleached white & whole wheat
1/4 cup non instant dried milk powder
1 tsp cinnamon
2 1/2 tsp baking powder

Add the following to the milk & poppy seeds
2 eggs
3/4 cup oil (or melted butter, plugra is best)
1 1/2 cups of sugar, I use the organic kind it's browish
1/2 tsp vanilla
and whisk this all up.

Add the dry ingredients & mix somewhat gently till it's all nice & wet.

pour into cake pan & bake for 45 minutes.

next Rebaked potatos aka that recipe that I was told "if you ever change this I will cut your fingers off" Ok!!! I will never change it! hehe

Warning! Mother bragging here!

Jilly Bean the Pirate Queen!
She's coming home tomorrow! She lives in Portland now and goes to school at Pacific Northwest College or Art, which I cannot afford...unfortunately...
BUT I'm so happy she will be with us. Here they are at her school giving out bicycle helmets to students because so many people in Portland ride bikes, including Jillian. I actually am not sure that is her in the picture but I must say it looks like her. She is a wonderful artist, pianist, actress, dancer. She is my baby girl. I'm so thrilled she will be home with us for a month. I'm so proud of her for being in college and finishing her junior year going into her senior year. She is doing what I wish I had done with my life, going to art school.
Of course, I did spend my life raising such marvelous artists which was a JOY!!! The others are Jasmin (finishing school in Archetecture, I'm very proud!), Jared whose comic book will be published in April it's an anthology of H.P. Lovecraft & has illustrated one of the stories, Jason who is a wonderful writer and music person who graduated from Columbia this year. I adore them all my heart just bursts with love for them.
I am blessed!

that's me at Hips of Fury!

Too much to do!!!

I actually started on Blogger with the intention of posting less belly dance related information, BUT there is so much going on that I need to promote that I'm going ahead and posting this here too:

There is so much up with me and here I am putting it all into one post! Because basically I'm still relying on Tribe to get my info out to the world.

#1- She'enedra is doing Oasis at Forbidden City this Saturday night! There are lots of amazing dancers on the list of performers so come out and see it! Make a reservation with Kashmir if you want a table or else you can just buy a ticket online at this link...
http://www.bellydancing.ws/

#2- I am the Featured teacher on LARaqs.com so you should look at that to see what all is happening in L.A.!!!!
here's the link for that
http://www.laraqs.com/

#3- She'enedra is dancing to the music of Sol Y Luna at Tribal Fusion Faire on Saturday night...I just went to rehearsal with the band last night and they sound fantastic...I'm just happy I'll be able to say I knew them WHEN! You can listen to samples of their music on myspace
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=186821507&MyToken=464f8f28-19b5-406f-aed8-5cb95a59de45

and here's the link to Tribal Fusion Faire for workshop sign ups etc...
http://www.meddevi.com/tribalfusionfaire/

#5 - I teaching a WORKSHOP at Tribal CARAVAN 2008! Sign ups are open now! Please take my class! It's going to be so fun, I'll teach you my special Polynesian/Belly dance fusion combos! It's called Island Influences! Here is the link!!!
http://www.tribalcaravan.com/workshops.html

more stuff later....

My first post

So the first thing I posted on Blogger was a video of me & my friend Ayse dancing at the Bedouin Bazaar, I look fat in the video, I don't like that...BUT I do like the dancing. It's not the best dancing I think I can do but it's nice. Anyway, that's what I am is a tribal dancer. I wonder if most people realize when they watch us dancing that most of what we do is improvisational, yes in a group of people even! Amazing isn't it? I would really like to teach some workshops to other types of belly dancers to show them how lovely it is to build an improv vocabulary. How you can look choreographed in the spur of the moment to any music. I could go on on this subject for quite some time, but I'm not going to do that tonight.

HELLO Blogger readers!

Elizabeth Mahina & Ayse Ceramin dancing at Bedouin Bazaar!