n'eco's: natural store & cafe

This quaint little café with a warm, rustic feel will make you feel right at home. Walking in, you are welcomed by warm yellow and brick walls, and a terecotta floor. Delicious smells waft from the stone oven and kitchen, assaulting your senses before you have a chance to seat yourself. A tree planted firmly in the centre reminds one of all that is natural here and an open kitchen encourages consumer interaction. Everything available is seasonal, fresh, prepared as orders are placed and a hundred percent Pakistani!

N‘eco’s serves at the moment, an all natural, partly organic, all-day breakfast, selection of sandwiches, salads and desserts. Planning to branch out slowly but steadily in to main courses, they’re doing a good job of developing and perfecting their recipes. A tree planted firmly in the centre reminds one of all that is natural here and an open kitchen ensures encourages consumer interaction. Everything available is seasonal, fresh, prepared as orders are placed and a hundred percent Pakistani!

The food was simply delicious and each item left a distinct flavour on the palette. The flat-bread with prawn, basil and chilli flakes, drizzled with crème fraiche was unique and bursting with flavour; with the naan-like bread offering a somewhat desi feel to it. The chicken breast sandwich in brown bread with smoky chilli aioli and lettuce was chargrilled to perfection, with a hint of smoky aroma that dazzled the taste buds. N‘eco’s is also the only restaurant in town to offer a mayo-free potato salad!

With fresh juices, chilled drinks, teas and coffees available, we find it endearing that both sparkling and still water are free! On the counter at the deli sit a wide variety of tarts, cakes and pies, both sweet and savoury. The Moroccan tart, with roasted courgettes, tomatoes and pesto was, like most other things on the menu, truly inimitable and though crumbly, a tasty delight. Stuffed though we were, we couldn’t resist the desserts, and scoffed down a slice each of the divine banana chocolate and lemon curd tarts.

Brain-child of Nilofer Saeed, the successful entrepreneur behind Copper Kettle and Hob Nob, n‘eco’s uses all natural, all Pakistani, ingredients, striving to get as much organic produce in as Karachi allows. Boasting a deli and a wonderful basement store N‘eco’s stocks exciting products like rose-infused sugar, lemongrass salt and wooden toys hand crafted to encourage young minds to grow in a less clinical way. Saeed seems to be quite the trend-setter, with all three enterprises being the firsts of their kind encouraging others to follow suit.

Creative Director, Amna Sana, is quite the foodie and accredited her passion with a formal cookery apprenticeship at the prestigious Italian Culinary Institute in Costigliole D’asti, Piedmont, Italy. Her vision for N‘eco’s, where she developed recipes and created the menu, was for it to reflect the feel and atmosphere of, “a simple Italian grandmummy’s kitchen.’ Her extensive knowledge of nutrition, beneficial and curative properties of ingredients, combined with her capability of creating fine food is, as she says, “a labor of love,” and helps her provide customers with “nutritionally sound, responsible food,” never compromising on taste.

Whenever you drop by make sure you try the caramelised bananas on pancakes generously doused in caramel and trickled with cream; absolutely divine.

N'eco's is located on 8C, Lane #1, Bukhari Commercial Area, Phase 6, Defence Housing Authority (DHA), Karachi.

N'eco's is open 6 days a week from 8 am to 10 pm and is closed on Mondays

or check out their facebook page! :)

we the pakistanis...

It appears to me that Pakistanis have way too much time on their hands, and really no life; they just can't seem to stop nitpicking. Whether it's facebook or as I read in a letter to the editor, "banning shisha smoking", people need to learn to be tolerant of the beliefs and actions of others so long as they're not causing direct physical harm to other people. The west picks on the Muslims, and can't seem to leave them alone, while we then go ahead and pick on ANYTHING that resembles western culture, donning it "unislamic." So someone wants to draw the Prophet (pbuh)...that's their prerogative! Nobody is asking us to take part in it, and by condemning it verbally we are doing more than enough. It is a different belief system, no need to start a war over. No need to block facebook!

Tolerance only comes with education. A sound education where you come in contact with a variety of people from different backgrounds, beliefs, colour and creed is where you learn the basics of coming together as human beings. It doesn't matter what differences lie there so much as the similarities. We have to come together as human beings, before we an come together on the basis of religion. We have to believe in the greater good of the human race, before we can be selfish.

I like to think I'm a rational person. I have a good educational background, I've lived abroad, I've never had any qualms with the west, and they've never had any issues with me. I visit their countries and they check me thoroughly; and I am glad. With the situation nowadays I would prefer that they are vigilant lather than lackadaisical. Just as I would not let a stranger in to my house without an insight in to who they are and what business they have there, why should a country let people, especially those coming from a country packed with suicide camps, in without good reason. Their vigilance saves lives. For that I am grateful, because at the end of the day, less trouble across the border means less trouble within. If only we could be so attentive, rather than busy finding fault with every trivial thing under the sun.

There is more to life than facebook, youtube, second marriages and late-night-packages on cell phones. Wake up Pakistan. If you let these little things cloud your judgement and get you worked up, you'll have no energy left to fight the big things, the ones that really matter, the ones that infringe on your day to day lives. I promise you it's none of these.

nutella chocolate brownie mmm.....

If you’ve ever looked for heaven, there’s a tiny bit of it dwelling at Hotspot in the form of a warm, gooey, extremely chocolatey brownie, layered generously with Nutella and if you’d like, lathered in whipped cream. The perfect pick me up comes sprinkled with chunky sliced almonds and your choice of ice cream, though I find vanilla to be the most complimentary. Guaranteed to wash away any blues, induce a sugar high and leave you having a better day all round!

zazuma's work.in.progress

initially when it was only 1/4th completed

now almost more than half way through...should be complete sometime before next weekend - or so i hope! unfortunately i don't get to show my loom all the loving that i'd like, and sometimes it feels neglected and dusty :(

ps. his name is khyber the 3rd :)

pss. check out some more samplings at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=11977&id=222200006&l=63ad17f1b6

Weaving for my friend...

So i've been on my loom a while now, just testing and trying, not much one can do with an 8" warp! But then... my friend, we'll call her Zazuma Lolita, came over and DEMANDED that i make her something, anything. Unfortunately she's leaving before I put on my REAL warp, which will be 30-some inches wide. So i got to work. I thought n thought...and thought some more. I was kind of stuck. I couldn't envision the "perfect" thing for her. Then, just like magic, it came to me...and now i'm working on making a border for her, 3 inches wide, and 60 inches long, to go as a panel on the front of her top. It's a sea green and pale blue combination, that reminds me of the fluidity of water, and reflects on her calm personality that often goes haywire! With a cotton weft and polyester warp, it makes for an interesting contrast. I cannot wait to see what she does with it. It's about 1/3rd complete at the moment, pictures soon! :D

Sticks & Stones can break my bones, but words…they just break my heart

In today’s world we effortlessly throw words around, not realising that they can hit someone with more weight than we knew they carried. It’s not uncommon to hear the words ‘love’ and ‘hate’ tossed back and forth between friends, family and lovers. Yet do they ever stop to think just what that implicates, before it leaves their lips?

Love – noun [luhv]
A profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person

Hate – verb [heyt]
To dislike passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest

The two words above, poles apart, yet not nearly the opposite of each other; for the opposite, and this is just food for thought, trivia, if you will, is ‘indifference’. To love or to hate a person is to be passionate about them, to feel fervently for them, in either a negative or positive way. To be indifferent, on the other hand, is to not care at all. We cannot feel such an over zealous adoration or fiery disgust for an inanimate object or activity, and to therefore say one loves or hates blue, for instance, would be a gross misuse of the word and the English language, in the way they are intended.

Similarly we find ourselves calling others amongst us ‘stupid’, or ‘idiotic’, again, not comprehending what they imply. Whether we refer to someone as, quite literally, mentally inadequate behind their backs or to their faces we are calling in to account that they are damaged. Unless we are medically qualified to make that assessment we should probably stick to ‘silly’ or better yet ‘inexperienced’ or ‘irresponsible’, if that is what one means to say.

I find it hard to find the right words to put my thoughts and feelings in to accurate speech, but then again, it’s probably better to say nothing at all, than to utter things we don’t mean. The second the sound rolls of your tongue forming the words you will emit seconds later, they’re out there, and though, proverbially they can be taken back, their implications will not easily be forgotten. They will resound through the person(s) they were directed at. This is a fact learnt through observation and experience.

We all recall the names the school bully called us, as if it were only yesterday. We remember every word our parents said that made us feel worthless, and we also remember the words spoken that made us feel loved. Words, unfortunately, though quick to leave the lips, echo through our whole lives, and for this reason, we must be careful what we say, we never know who may take it to heart.