Iftar vs. Cinco de Mayo

On June 8, we joined our teammates at their house for a special dinner.  Two sisters (and their families) had invited both of our families to break the daily fast of Ramadan (called Iftar) with them.  One of the sisters cooked for FIVE hours at our teammates' house, and then she left to change clothes, get her family, and go gather dishes with her sister.

They brought back plates, bowls, glasses, serving platters, etc for the evening meal.

The ladies dished up bowl after bowl of goodness, and Kylie, Karis and I would try to find places for all of it on the plastic table cloth laid out on the floor.  It was nearly impossible.

We finally resorted to putting stuff on the kids “table.”

This is what the "adult table" looked like when we got started.  Dolma, salad, sweet rice with raisins and almonds, olives, yogurt water, and orange juice

Doug and our male teammate sat in the front room with the men, talking.  All the other kids entertained themselves with different things.  But what surprised me was that when we heard the mosque’s call to prayer and we knew the time of iftar had come, no one started eating.

Basically, if the women weren’t ready, it didn’t matter if you were hungry or not, no eating was happening.

Here are the sisters in the kitchen putting everything into small bowls so that each dish is accessible for each person on the table. 

They don't do a lot of "passing around."  You kind of eat what's just in front of you, so you want to make sure it's ALL in front of you.

The table continued to fill. Chicken, beef, goat, rice, soup, okra, bread, dates....

(Most people here break fast with three dates first.  This tradition stems from the belief that this is how Muhammed broke his fast.)

I didn't take a picture at the table's fullest (sorry), because we immediately started moving bowls over to the "kids' table," so we'd have a little breathing room.

 

I took this when we started putting things on the kids' table 

And this is the view in front of my place setting!

We asked if we could bless the meal; they agreed, and then they all broke fast with three dates.  After that, it was every man for himself.  Hands were flying everywhere reaching for food. 

It was so delicious!  I don’t know how they were going to eat breakfast around 2am, because I knew I would be full for the entire next day.

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As much fun as visiting at the table was, it was soon time to clean up.  All the older kids helped get everything in the kitchen, and then the two national ladies kicked them out of the kitchen so we could get down to business. 

I washed dishes for 3 hours while they put food all kinds of places.  They were splitting it between families, trying to find containers, drying dishes I had washed, separating out which dishes were whose, and re-packing the dishes in boxes and containers.. 

When those ladies left at 11pm, that kitchen was spotless!  I was pretty amazed, and I’m kicking myself for not taking a picture of all the dishes stacked on the counter to show you.  It reminded me of the kitchen scene near the beginning of Disney's “The Sword in the Stone,” with tall towers of dishes, barely standing up straight.

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As a comparison, this is how I did Cinco de Mayo at our house this year.

Plastic plates! small bowls of salsa, small bowls of cheese, two bowls of chips, and two bowls of taco meat. 

The taco soup, spanish rice, pinto beans, yogurt, guacamole, cheese, salsa, and basically everything had to be passed around.

It was delicious, and clean up was SO much easier, but both events were full of fun and making memories.

Getting Help from Friends

I can't find evidence that I've ever written about these pictures either.  They're from last year, but they've been sitting in my list of posts saying "draft" for a long time, so I'll assume I never posted it.

Growing up, when someone in my town passed away, all the stores would receive a piece of paper with the information on the viewing and service of the individual.  That way, no matter where you went in town, and even if you didn't read the small town paper that came out once a week, you would still get information on the deceased in a timely manner.

In this country, a piece of black cloth is tacked to the wall in the neighborhood of the deceased.  It includes their name and some other stuff, but your guess as to what the "other stuff" is is as good as mine.

I do well to read this language when it's printed in a book, but if it's handwritten, I feel like a teacher all over again trying to decipher my students' handwriting.

And even if I could read it, I might not know all of the vocabulary.

I've shown you a funeral tent from somewhere else in town before, but this was one was on my street last year.  It blocks the entire road and stays up for three days.

My neighbor who used to live by me asked if I'd like to go with her to the funeral tent.  She let me borrow a black head scarf, and off we went.  We sat down, made some small talk with those around us and head nods to other people around the tent, and then after about 10-15 minutes, we told the family "bye," and left.  

I haven't learned all the funeral protocol yet, but sadly, there are enough around, that I'm sure I'll learn enough before I wish too.

After we walked back, my neighbor invited me in her house to help make dolma, but first I went across the street and got Keira to come back with me.

Little kids were playing in a swimming pool on my neighbor's front porch, and I knew she would like that.

I took this picture from inside the kitchen, looking out at Keira who was decided how wet she wanted to get while being fully dressed.

I've shown you dolma before, but here is a new picture.  As a reminder, it's a tomato/rice/spice mixture stuffed into different vegetables that have been hollowed out.  

Here, they are using zucchini and eggplant as bottoms and tops.

It's quite a process, and you can see how much rice they still have left in this picture.  

They are making a pot of white dolma (pink bowl) and red dolma (blue bowl).

Keira decided getting wet fully dressed was worth it.

But then my little miser brain had a problem when they decided to pour the water out after only an hour or so of swimming.  

At this point in the summer, our city was only sending water to the houses occasionally.  I remember having trouble getting all of our clothes washed, and sometimes, we all couldn't take showers on the same day.

And now, I see all this water just going out the gate into the street.  

Ouch!

Well, at least the gutters got clean ;)

Of course, after a couple of hours, I forgot about the water when the delicious dolma was served.  

Everyone here just uses their fingers or a spoon to scoop out of the dishes, and sometimes they don't even use individual plates or bowls and eat right out of the dishes.

I am so grateful for these neighbors and all they taught me.

Even though they have moved away, they often come back to see some family that is still here, and it's nice to catch up.  

I really need to plan a trip out to their new home because I still have some of their dishes from the last time they brought me food.

Talk about your bad neighbors....me :)

Learning to cook "Womans' Food"

It seems that a main entree for many meals is a food called "dolma."  However, if you ask most men, they will say, "I don't like it.  It's woman's food."

I've seen men eating it, even gorging on it, but we know better than to call it anything except "woman's food."

We've had it several times.

It's been brought to our house by the neighbors, and we've had it at a couple of picnics.

It's the dish in the upper center, to the left of the meat and rice.  It is a seasoned rice (and sometimes meat) stuffed into various vegetables.

There is also white dolma and red dolma.  (You can see the difference below).  I prefer white, but that's just me.  I also prefer it stuffed in an onion skin or grape leaf.   The one thing I do not like about dolma is the large bean-type things they put in the pot with the dolma to cook.  You can see them on the tray below.

Ok, so back to this house where we stayed for 5 hours.

About 11, the ladies headed into the kitchen, and we asked if we could watch and learn to make dolma (at least I think that's what we said).

It started out simple enough.

Did I mention we cook on the floor?

The daughter in the background is making salad with white pomegranates and other wonderful things.  Later she poured a pomegranate syrup over it.  It was my favorite dish on the table!

Also, notice on the tray in front of me the insides of cucumbers.  One of the ladies let me try to scrape out the insides of a zucchini.  Let me just say it's harder than it sounds, and she had to "fix" mine after I tried.  The skin has to be pretty thin to stuff and cook properly.

The raw rice is mixed with tomato paste, parsley, a LOT of salt, a bitter/lemon salt which I don't have a translation for yet, some other spices, and oil.  Yes, that liquid you see is oil, not water!

She is scraping out the last tomatoes, and the tray is now full of all the things she will stuff with rice: grape leaves, onion skins, tomatoes, bell peppers, egg plants, and zucchini.

These are the bean-type things at the bottom that I don't like.  Of course, I may have discovered on this day that I was eating them wrong.

I was just "eating" them before, but on this day, I saw the ladies put one bean in their mouth and eat the inside of the bean and take the skin of the bean out of their mouth (kind of like you would eat a sunflower seed).

Maybe I'll try it one more time when given the chance.

This is the beginning of the grape leaf wraps.

Stuffed tomatoes are sitting upright in the pot, and she is stuffing one end of a zucchini and then closing the other end with another part of the vegetable like a puzzle.

I had never seen these long onions before in America.  The long shape definitely makes them easier to roll than a round onion.  You can also see the zucchini "puzzle" here.

The pot is getting full!

Finishing off all the grape leaves.

There is no more rice, so to help keep the heat in, she covered the top with the remaining grape leaves.

I didn't realize they had a couple of dishes already cooking, so I thought dolma and salad might be it.  But then the mom also brought in this very crispy, thin naan bread she had made.  It is so thin and fragile, that it breaks easily.

Not all women know how to make this, but it has a special quality.  It will last almost forever.

 When you are ready to eat it, you wet it by sprinkling a lot of water on it.  All of a sudden it is like a flour tortilla, bendable, and lunch-ready.

This lady took it outside to use the water on the porch.

Then, so it wouldn't be so damp, she covered it and put it in the sun for a bit.

I actually have some in my cabinet that I've had a while.

I don't ever wet it.

When I want something that kind of reminds me of a tortilla chip, I reach for a broken piece.

This particular naan has trouble holding salsa in big chunks, so I have to spoon a little on a little piece a little at a time.

But any way you can get salsa in your mouth is a good thing, right?

Chips and salsa are one of "this woman's" favorite foods.