I feel like a lot of us Muslims, especially online, conflate gentleness with lenience, softness in speech with softness in our conviction, quietness with weakness.

For example suppose a Muslim brother or sister is struggling through a hard time and is discussing bad practices, haram interactions or even authubillah, taking one's own life etc. You might be correct when you comment they are wrong, you might be correct when you quote sahih hadith to provide evidence as to why they are wrong. You might be accurate in the words on paper, but is the behavior accurate in following the sunnah of our kind, considerate, beloved Prophet pbuH?

But does that mean we should bend the faith to coddle people who are on the wrong path? Obviously not. So then what should we do? It's not easy, for sure. But I think taking the time to add some words of empathy, without taking away from the Truth, is a practice we could all do a little bit more. When I point this out the response I often get is "Well, am I saying anything wrong??"

But... that's not the point.

Also with reverts/converts, I often see brothers especially get overly zealous in teaching and correcting, but that can be overwhelming especially for new reverts. So having patience, giving space to learn at their pace, this is also the gentleness that I believe is the sunnah of our Prophet pbuH.

Even with, or in fact, especially with non-believers, like say someone is gender confused and is asking to have certain pronouns to be used. As Muslims, it's important to be firm and uncompromizing in our Islam and not affirm their confusion. But as Muslims it's also important to have adab, so calling them names and being dismissive is not sunnah either. So what can we do? Personally, I like to simply avoid engaging if possible, and when I do, I stay respectful but completely avoid pronouns.

I also think about how I am, and we all are, ambassadors for Islam. So our behavior, our every word and action represents Islam to the people we engage with. Our adab is the first act of dawah.

I just want to remind myself, and also call on all my Muslim brothers and sisters, to recognize that we can be gentle and righteous at the same time, and lets put in a bit of effort, in the name of God, to be empathetic in our words, both in person and online.

Jazak Allahu khairan!

I think writing dates on your fridge contents and perishables is such an underrated habit for home cooks.

How relevant this is for people might vary, depending on their households and cooking/eating habits, but personally this has been extremely important. I have some markers (water soluble) with a magnet on them, from the dollar store. It's stuck to the fridge, and when I put anything in tupperware or ziplock bags, I just write the day it was prepared/bought so I know when it needs to be finished by or thrown out. And when I wash the tupperware it just washes off with water.

I'm embarassed to admit, there have been a couple times when I ate leftovers / rice that was older than I remembered, thinking it was fine, and got myself quite ill, and this habit of writing dates has probably saved me a lot of suffering.

For people doing more intricate cooking like making sauce preparations and fermentations where the contents are not necessarily visibly identifiable, labeling is also very important, (and good chance you already have markers in your kitchen that have become as central to your kit as your knives and pans)

I just wanted to give markers the love it deserves for its contribution to the kitchen. Thank you markers!

I want to Enable Writers to Produce More Independently

I see a lot of people writing lyrics, some people singing it with a guitar, and many people wanting help with production. To this end, I think having a basic capacity to prepare a demo with a DAW would be very enabling for all Song writers. So I put together a relatively short setup/tutorial to help you get started with Reaper as your DAW and a few basic free Plugins, so you can make your own Demos. If you want, you could even do full production with this with a little bit of time and learning!

Downloads:

Reaper: REAPER | Download
(This is the base DAW you need. It says 60 days trial but actually you can continue using it for free. It's only a one time payment though, so I paid.)

SynthV: Trial Synthesizer V Studio 2 Pro for Free | Dreamtonics
(with the trial you can use it indefinitely but have up to 2 voice tracks + instrumental track, and use it as a VST3 Plugin. If you want to make more than a demo, and need more tracks its a one time purchase.)

VoiceBanks: Voice Databases for SynthV Studio
(these "lite" voicebanks are the free ones, and out of them I would recommend ANRI (female) and ASTERIAN (male) for general use, but feel free to explore the others and even consider the paid ones if you want)
Also just to clarify Voice banks / Vocaloids are NOT AI

Piano VST Plugin: Upright Piano VST - 99Sounds

Guitar VST Plugin: amplesound.net

Splice VST Plugin: https://splice.com/instrument
(This is a multi instrument plugin which comes with a base set, but you can also download a lot of other instruments, many for free. I often use this for the strings and drums)

Set up / Basic Use:

1. Download everything in Downloads.
2. Open Reaper and go to Options >> Preferences >> Look under Plugins / VST. Check that you see the folder where all the other VSTs were downloaded is included, and if not, add the path to these VST Plugins.

https://preview.redd.it/d6kzhk1q8hsh1.png?width=635&format=png&auto=webp&s=559cccae77d19be8d30227e834ba0b1d23874e2c

3. Set your base Tempo and Time signature at the bottom right. You can use the 'tap' feature to set it to whatever you have in your head too.

https://preview.redd.it/m8tw059j8hsh1.png?width=672&format=png&auto=webp&s=49e3e7c35711d84df6a2afc1d8d2e879c59a0cac

4. Use the Plus button to Add a new track, and the FX button to add a Plugin to it

https://preview.redd.it/txdly1279hsh1.png?width=391&format=png&auto=webp&s=12142cf1508bd6c92ad8937a1463b6435d9a2b31

5. You can control each track with these options from left to right: track name, volume, Mute, Solo

https://preview.redd.it/xexyi7gydhsh1.png?width=491&format=png&auto=webp&s=2b0a02a04d4a9dbf7deb7ee8ba506de22cfd65bf

Instrumental Tracks:

6. If you added an instrumental plugin, and this is for an instrumental track, drag over however many bars you need and then hit "insert" key to create a MIDI track. You can now click it to enter the Midi View and edit it, adding notes

https://preview.redd.it/9guzrf5u9hsh1.png?width=788&format=png&auto=webp&s=83a1ed208459adb81187efc8bf44af834dc2590c

7. In the Midi View, you can control the grid at the bottom, including the rhythm type. The "volume" in Midi is actually called "velocity" (not exactly but in general) and you can control it at the bottom. You can also enable/disable snapping with the magnet button at the top.

https://preview.redd.it/cj5wspnakhsh1.png?width=597&format=png&auto=webp&s=7dea3d1efe788ba00fb7bf1cd889c6e44056572c

https://preview.redd.it/20j2g6dkkhsh1.png?width=373&format=png&auto=webp&s=4d1b8d8921574119bc29635f35dfe76699f54e1c

8. For a multi-instrument plugin like Splice, click FX to enter the Plugin, go to Library, and make sure to select the instrument you want for that track:

https://preview.redd.it/onemg72ichsh1.png?width=810&format=png&auto=webp&s=fb1129ece22b784b41a923ef9c2ddf47cd4fbcd6

Synth Voice Tracks:

9. If this is for the SynthV vocals track, you do not need to add a Midi track on Reaper's side. Click FX to enter the Plugin. You can do all the voice generation within the plugin. Select the voicebank you downloaded/installed earlier

https://preview.redd.it/oc0gooiaahsh1.png?width=1906&format=png&auto=webp&s=be42356b6e0fb9ca93a11978dd0ba60b7c9d22da

10. Add notes and lyrics. Tip: if you want a word to be across multiple notes, you can use "+" for new syllables and "-" for continuing the previous syllable:

https://preview.redd.it/k4h5gve9bhsh1.png?width=986&format=png&auto=webp&s=773adb05a5442a9a55b1c83af02f1e32894a8147

Recording Tracks:

11. If instead of a synthV you want to record your own voice or live playing, hit the red button on that track to arm the track for recording. If its not recording correctly, go to Options >> Preferences >> check Audio / Device and make sure the correct devices are selected.

https://preview.redd.it/rdzf641mbhsh1.png?width=647&format=png&auto=webp&s=978a6acd7d91f5d163f108c5e8c2c961ade3580a

Good luck!!

This should serve as a good starting point for preparing a basic demo for your songs! Obviously there's stuff like Envelopes, Routing/Ducking, EQ (which can be done natively with ReaEQ) and other Plugins, but this should help you get started and you can learn as you explore, create, and find the tools you need.

For more in depth guides There are YT playlists like this one: REAPER DAW Tutorials - YouTube

There's also a sub for the DAW if you have more questions: r/Reaper

If you have any specific questions too, feel free to ask me here! I'm no expert myself, but I'd love to help if possible! ^_^

So recently I learned two things, firstly its how to get crispy skin chicken thighs with a cold pan start technique. Made it a couple times with just salt and pepper, comes out great, simple enough, I think I got it down.

Secondly I also got into marinades with fruits like kiwifruits, got a couple styles that are balanced and perfect to pair with respectively different carbs.

Some of you might know where this is going... 😅

I marinated some chicken thighs with a marinade with fruit in it, meaning a marinade with sugar in it. I patted it dry on the skin thinking it would be enough and went through with the cold pan technique, and because the sugar in the marinade was still there, instead of the skin getting crispy and removing itself from the pan, it made a caramel that stuck and burned the skin off before the meat could finish cooking.

So yes retrospectivly its pretty obvious but when using the cold pan technique avoid marinating especially with anything with sugar in it. Cooking isn't simple addition, I should have known better ahahah

A lot of us meal prep, especially if we’re living alone or on a budget, because it’s much more time and energy efficient, and often cheaper too. The one downside is it often leads to having the same meals multiple days in a row, or having the same 2-3 dishes in a rotation over a week. I know a lot of people are okay with this, especially people who are eating for a diet or fitness regimen, but I’m sorry I can’t do it, it drives me mad lol.

So something that’s helped me is prepping in a way that I can change it up as I go. For me, Japanese curry is a staple, and I’ll freeze ziplock bags/tupperware with single servings in them so I can adjust each serving differently:
So obviously the first meal, I’ll have it with rice. (カレーライス)
The second time I add some dashi and have it with udon. (カレーうどん)
Next, I’ll add butter and garam masala to it when heating it up, and enjoy it with naan / any bread
And lastly I’ll add milk and butter to it, and turn it into a “curry soup” which I’ll have with baguette.
If I have a weekend, a fun Japanese classic I’d also do is get pizza dough or any such bread dough, and fill it with the curry mixed with a bit of extra roux (flour+butter) to thicken it a bit more, then fry it to make curry bread. (カレーパン)
Back home we’d jokingly call this 変身カレー ~Transforming Curry (変身like Power ranger transformation) this way, even if I have one curry meal a day, it doesn’t feel too bad.

I know other cultures have cool stuff like making risotto then turning it into arancini. Let me know if you know of any other “variation” techniques.

Coming from a very "traditional" Japanese household, I grew up being fed by a kitchen owned by a grandmother that kind of "scoffed" at canned produce, and honestly I get it, espcially if you're an expert granny, and especially since Japanese cooking puts a lot of emphasis in 旬 or seasonality, you'd have the logistics down to use up fresh produce without wasting it.

But as I started cooking more regularly while living alone, I found myself trying to cook just like how granny did, but ending up wasting a lot of fresh produce due to mismanagment. This also affected how I go grocery shopping because I hesitate buying veg I might waste.

Nowadays I always have frozen spinach, brussel sprouts and peas in my freezer, canned corn, beans, peach etc. in my cupboard and dried lentils in the pantry next to my box of rice. My meals have become more consistently balanced, and I've drastically reduced my food waste.

I just wish I had embraced canned, frozen and dried veg earlier.

I think its always challenging to explain the Islamic paradigm for an audience who is fundamentally unfamiliar with it, and without using terms like hikm, niah etc that would be understood by a Muslim reader ahaha😅

Let me know if you have suggestions on how else I could have explained, JazakAllahukhairan!

and like realistically for a home cook, how often should we be changing our frying oil as a minimum? Like every 3 times or? I guess it might depend on the volume of oil too?

Do you guys have ways to clean the oil? I know apparently there are ways other than filtering but I haven't tried them.

Also when I replace the oil, right now I put the old oil in a bag and throw it away like that but is there a better way?

Edit: Thank you all so much!! <3
I'll just summarize what I'm getting: Shallow fry (I do this too), using a corn starch slurry (this seems popular), egg white (I'd have to try this but would be great), A lot of people only fry occasionally so reuse is not a question/issue. For people who do fry stuff, seems like going by smell/color to decide when to change the oil is common, which makes sense since how many times you can reuse the oil can depend on what you're frying.

I definitely am not typing this with one hand after slipping while cutting an onion with a blunt knife while distracted.

Also most of you probably know this but just in case, the steel / honing rod is not for sharpening the knife, its for aligning the edge so please get a proper sharpening stone / knife sharpener.

Firstly this is really not a big deal, I know, call me petty,

but I just wrote what I thought was a very thoughtful and meaningful post about kitchen logistics in a subreddit about cooking. I took some time to make it useful but also a bit funny, like I put in a bit of effort. Then the first comment was "AI Slop." and then someone saying "I'm tired of reading 2 page essays" and like I get it, I personally hate AI and what it's done to content quality. I do art, song writing, translating, like its personal for me. I also know there are type I and type II error both in systems and as humans. But getting something I put a bit of effort into called the very thing I hate, felt like an attack on my own integrity and that's what really bothered me. It's also a community I thought was very supportive so coming from such a communtiy was definitely unexpected.

Again, I know its not a big deal, I have bigger issues to deal with and so do you all. I knew if I let myself, I would get into a long comment cat fight, a battle of attrition, so I preemptively just deleted the post but.... Yeah, didn't feel too nice. 🥲

So onion and garlic seem to be the foundation for dishes acros the world. But not just that, in different regions there are different varieties, like in Japan we have ネギ (negi), ニラ (nira), and in Western cultures you have leek (which funnily enough in Japan we call 西洋ネギ which means Western negi). The fact that alliums in oil is the base for stews, soup, stir fries and such from across the world from Jamaica to Japan, like it can't be a coincidence.

Is there something about the chemistry? An oil based aromatic? Or maybe even a nutrition thing?

Do y'all have a favorite allium to cook with? For me I think it's confit garlic, both the garlic and the oil can be great to have to upgrade anything I make. I think it's popular to confit in olive oil, but I actually prefer to confit it in a neutral oil, so that I can use it for both Japanese dishes as well as more Western dishes. (hmmm actually.... Maybe it would be cool to keep a set of 3 confits; in vegetable oil, olive oil and sesame oil?)

Since starting to work from home again, I've started having time to make breakfast, but I was recently questioning the very idea of "breakfast foods". Like why are eggs, toast, cereal, pancakes, bacon, etc. considered "breakfast-y" in the West, while other foods can feel somehow wrong in the morning?

Just for context, I'm Japanese, I come from a relatively old/traditional family, so we have a very distinct breakfast culture from the West, which I experienced and noticed after moving to Canada.

I'm sure a part of it is convenience, like breakfast foods tend to be quicker to cook, (like eggs vs other proteins) instead of like stews and such (though soup can be break fast-y so definitely not a hard set rule). Another matter that's especially relevant in Japan is probably smell, so things that smell strongly like curry would mean we would leave the house to go to work/school and meet people while smelling like what we ate, which would be considered inconsiderate especially in Japan (which goes into a whole other topic of what people consider smelly because we don't consider natto and grilled fish as smelly while people of other cultures might). I could also imagine toast becoming a breakfast food from a culture of baking bread at home; you don't necessarily have time to make fresh leavened bread in the morning, so toasting bread from the day before to 'refresh' it would make sense.

But apparently there's also some interesting corporate history behind this. A lot of what we consider a “traditional breakfast foods” especially in the West, was influenced by food companies and advertising. The famous example is the promotion of bacon and eggs by Edward Bernays in the 1920s. The thing is I can't say its just completely corporate conspiracy because like take corn flakes, sure it was intentionally marketed as breakfast food, but it genuinely makes sense as a breakfast food in terms of convenience.

But it's definitely not all corporate conspiracy, like eggs being in breakfasts across cultures makes sense because households used to have chickens at home, and picking fresh eggs in the morning to use in the morning was part of the lifestyle. So there are definitely organic aspects to our breakfast food culture.

So how much of our perception of breakfast is actually cultural, how much of it is marketing that we've internalized? And is it possibly narrowing our approach cooking? I don't intend to reinvent the wheel but could we maybe reverse engineer what makes breakfast what it is, and recontextualize it into our lives today to make a new "breakfast" culture?

How about y'all, What foods do you consider breakfast foods in your culture? And do you know where it comes from?

(Also as a caveat this isn't about what "should" be a breakfast. Obviously people "should" eat whatever they want, whenever they want.)

So I'm from Japan, and I love cooking, but cabbage has never been an exciting ingredient. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate it but I think most of us in Japan don't have a particular opinion on it. You put it next to tonkatsu, or under the beef in a gyuudon, that kind of thing.

I moved here to Canada a while back and to put it lightly, my financial circumstances have not been the most stable. I've always liked to cook, but I became more concious of the $/100g small text on the shelves, and cabbage has become an increasingly central player in my food situation. We all know its cheap, but also it lasts forever in the fridge, (which I never expected from a green veg honestly). But the biggest realization (or I guess shift in perception?) was that it kind of works with everything.

Stir fried and it works great on top of fried rice, and instant ramen, turning it into a full meal.

In soups and stews it becomes soft and sweet when boiled (Including miso soup, I never used to put it in but now I kind of wonder why not because it works really well with the earthiness of miso).

In dishes like pasta with not enough veg, I throw some cabbage in to boil with the pasta.

Also as a side dish, recently Yamitsuki cabbage has become popular on social media, but it adds great texture to my meals that tends to err on being mostly soft stuff on carbs.

The reason why I say "a shift in perception" was I found it interesting how Western cooking seems to treat cabbage as a central dish ingredient, while in Japan we treat it more like a side character to be thrown underneath as a pillow for whatever you're already making.

So since moving to Canada I've started to really appreciate it more. I'll see a whole cabbage at the grocery store for a few dollars and think, oh that's basically a week's worth of veg right there. It might be the most boring vegetable in the world, but it's one that I think should be a pantry staple alongside onions.

Edit：I'm from Kanto so while we do eat Okonomiyaki and Yakisoba, it's much less than in Kansai, and it certainly isn't as prevalent in our home cooking. For us it feels more like a special thing at summer festivals.

Right now I just buy however many I need for the day if I'm making something specifically with potatoes, but it's so much more cheaper to get them in the big bags. I used to buy the bags but I always found that by the time I got to the last few potatoes they'd all be going bad so I stopped because it was a waste.

What do you guys do? Are you like me and only buy potatos as you need or do you have a strategy for storing potatoes or cooking potatoes into something you can freeze? I tried freezing mashed potatoes but I found they always came out with a sub optimal texture after freezing. I think one challenge is I'm Japanese so I eat rice more often, and I crave mashed potatoes and other potato dishes sometimes, just less frequently

Full Recipe↓ Day 23/100 | YAKITORI

I recently found an underrated channel doing a series of Japanese recipes using only ingredients you can find at TESCO, and I especially found this one for making Yakitori at home really interesting and informative, because it features tips on making it as close as possible with the kind of produce you can find in a western grocery store (which helps becaues I'm Japanese but I live in Canada, I think this person is in Dublin? But it's still very applicable because the produce seems very similar).

So the leeks in Western supermarkets tend to be very thick, so if you try to do the normal yakitori process using it, it doesn't get cooked through before the chicken is cooked, so peeling it down until its the perfect size, around the size of normal japanese negi, makes for the perfect cook!

(Thank you Mod-san for letting me check with you before posting! ^_^)

I've been eating a lot of instant noodles, its cheap, it's easy, it's filling, it's gotten us peasants through challenging times. It's fine on it's own, but I think even we deserve a little extra sometimes.

How do you all "jazz up" your noodles?

I have a few I do but here's are two frequent go-to for me:

Tan Tan Style:
Start with Buldak Noodles, but in the bowl only put 3/4 of the spicy sauce.
Then add Peanut butter, Honey, a bit of soy sauce and rice vinegar
Mix up the sauce before tossing the noodles in it. Add some sesame oil if you have it.

I grew up in Singapore where we had Tan tan mian at a place called Crystal Jade, and the flavor ends up being kiiiinda reminiscent of that!

Creamy Egg Style:
Start with Buldak Noodles
Add a raw egg in the bowl and mix
Once the noodles are ready, put it in the bowl and mix with the egg vigorously (Let the heat of the noodles cook the egg)
Then put in the sauce packet, mayonaise, salt/soy sauce to taste

I know they sell the carbonara buldak but personally I like this better and I get the protein from the egg.