Welcome to my culinary world where cooking is considered as an ‘art’ and not a ‘rocket science. If you are among those who find pleasure in home-cooked food, you are in the right place. You can find all sorts of recipes from easy, quick, simple family meals, daily food, party food, or any exotic copycat recipes of a restaurant dish.
Shanazrafiq.com is all about Breakfast recipes, Main Course, Grills & Kababs, Variety of Curries, Desserts, Menu plans, Cooking Tips, and Cooking videos specializing in Indian Cuisine along with other international cuisines like Mexican, Chinese, Persian, and Arabic. Along with the written posts on recipes, find some amazing videos regularly added to the Youtube Channel a repercussion of this blog.
Love to Cook started in the year 2011 when I decided to quit my day job and stay at home. Blogging emerged as a result of uploading tried recipes for my own record and sometimes to even share with my loved ones. The blog gained, even more, popularity when I first started my Food Page on Facebook solely dedicated to it.
The main goal and mission of this blog are to help people who either hate to cook or have no knowledge of cooking by giving them easy and practical recipes which they can enjoy with their loved ones. ‘Food’ is the only means by which a whole family unites during meal times. Be it a family get-together, weddings, or festivals food takes the center stage. Along with providing tested and practical recipes, my blog’s mission is to promote ‘home food’ among the future generation and to make them aware of the health benefits of having home-cooked food rather than opting for junk food.
I am Shanaz Rafiq, the person backstage of this blog creating recipes in my cozy kitchen, trying to capture the images of food into my camera, and unveiling my talent to the world through this platform.
I am a proud Indian and hail from the city of Mangalore, living in UAE at present. Oman holds a special place in my life with all my childhood memories and it is the place where I was brought up and did my basic schooling. I also had the most memorable moments in the city of Mangalore where I got a chance to complete my B. Com graduation at St. Agnes College. For the first time, I visited Bangalore after I got married where the other part of my loving family resides. This is where I got a chance to learn more quality cooking and some of the finest authentic recipes from my mother-in-law.
I worked a full-time job in several places in UAE, which left me under-utilized, underpaid, and creatively suppressed. This is when I realized that I should rediscover my true talents and follow my dreams.
My love for cooking started when I was very young helping my mother in the kitchen and watching her cook with utmost love. Later, it became more intense when I started to watch cooking shows, especially Sanjeev Kapoor, and note down the recipe in my diaries. I would then attempt each recipe and casually click a picture of it and preserve them as a record. This way I had a pretty good collection of tried recipes along with the pictures. The idea of blogging struck me when I was prompted by one of my friend encouraging me to take my passion to a next level.
My blog started humbly to help my close ones and friends with recipes and make their lives easier. I then realized that more and more people are taking interest in my recipes and was gaining popularity in my community. Initially, I had no big plans for turning my blog into a full-time job. I tried to invest in myself by taking up an online course in Photography which helped me polish my skills in capturing food in form of pictures to make it look more appealing and artistic.
In the year 2016, I started making food videos which came as a huge request from my readers. I was more than delighted to see the success of my videos going viral all over. Within a short period, I managed to get a mean number of subscribers to my Youtube Channel. This way I have set a goal to upload one recipe video every week. All the backstage job is done solely by me, be it video shoot, photoshoot, prop set up, editing, uploading, and publishing. All this is possible due to the love and support which I receive from my loved ones, friends, and my blog followers. I sincerely thank each one of you who contribute to sharing my work and giving it more exposure.
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