My First Newspaper Interview!

Picture Courtesy: Deepa Pant

As I am writing this I am still on cloud seven from happiness. As my large fingers (true) are typing what I’ve been intending to share with you for a long time, but waited until it happened, my heart is beating fast and I don’t know where to begin.

When I had just started this blog in late January, I sat in front of my computer for hours pretending I was doing something important, but in reality sneaking a peek at my blog stats, counting the few comments I had received for the hundredth time hoping the number would increase every time I looked. Little did I know that all I needed was patience:) Thanks to blogging, today I have many loyal readers, I’ve made and hope to make many friends from around the world and I’ve just had my first interview published!

A month ago I received an email from Deepa Pant who asked me whether I would be willing to be featured on Arab Times Kuwait newspaper where Deepa was a freelance writer. Arab Times is the largest English language newspaper published in Kuwait. Deepa discovered my blog through the Internet, found it interesting and the idea to write an article about Azerbaijani food was born. An article about me, Azerbaijani cuisine, my recipes? - I thought. I’ve only been blogging for less than half a year, and honestly, I don’t have a whole lot of recipes on my blog yet. Needless to say, I was thrilled, ecstatic and was going around the house singing crazy songs and sure enough, bothering the rest of the family with my “soprano” voice

Deepa and I emailed each other back and forth with questions and answers. I had to work out a nice Azerbaijani menu and we finally decided that summer dishes would be the most appropriate for this time of year. Our choices were: Pomegranate Salad (Nar Salati), Yogurt Soup with Fresh Herbs and Chickpeas (Dovgha. Coming soon), Stuffed Eggplants, Peppers and Tomatoes (Badimjan, Biber, Pomidor Dolmasi. Coming soon), and Tandoori Bread (Tendir Choreyi). It was so much fun to work on this project! Apart from being a talented writer, Deepa is an amazing person. We quickly became friends and promised each other to feast together whenever and wherever we meet:)

Deepa, thank you very much for the opportunity!

You can read the interview in PDF files below (in the second link, scroll down to the middle to read the rest of the article)

http://www.arabtimesonline.com/pdf08/july/6/page%2027.pdf
http://www.arabtimesonline.com/pdf08/july/6/page%2028.pdf

And these are the pictures published in the paper.