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back in Cairoback in Cairo Everyone has been asking me if things feel or look any different here in Cairo after the revolution.  When I left, there were tanks in my neighborhood, a curfew, lots of gunfire, there was no internet, and Mubarak was still president.  Now, Mubarak is gone, the police are back on the streets, the tanks have rolled out,...

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from ancient to medieval in Cairofrom ancient to medieval in Cairo On Tuesday we started our day with a cab ride to Tahrir to see the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities. We spent a few hours enjoying the Tutahnkamun exhibit, Akhenaten collection, and other ancient art and artifacts of Egypt. We then took a taxi to the Citadel. The views of the city were stunning. We...

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weddles in luxorweddles in luxor This past week has been a whirlwind!  After seeing some sights around Cairo with Ryan, my parents arrived and we left for Luxor.  We arrived in Luxor around midday and decided to check out Luxor Temple in the afternoon sunlight.  It was incredible.  The city of Luxor creeps right up to the edges of these ancient sites,...

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Mount SinaiMount Sinai Last weekend we went on a faculty trip to Mount Sinai.  After a 9 hour bus ride through barren, empty, desert, along the eastern coast of Egypt and across the Sinai Peninsula, we made it to Dahab where the best thing about our hotel was the coral reef meters from our room.  Another 2 hour bus ride through a forbidding...

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Unfinished ObeliskUnfinished Obelisk Once we got to Aswan and after a crazy taxi experience that entailed some serious driver rivalry, keys stolen from the ignition, a chase involving a tire iron, and a group of tourists, ahem, us, quietly unloading our luggage and finding another cab... (yeah, I know, OH EGYPT!) Anyhow once we got to Aswan, we decided...

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Vegetarian Meatballs

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Category : Food, My Life in Cairo, Vegetarian in Cairo

While there are some pretty tasty meatless “meat” options available at a few stores in Maadi, they are hard to find and seem to be only sporadically available — although I’m amazed and delighted that we’ve got a few vegetarian options period!  Not to mention the incredible tofu.

And since I’ve been missing some of the delicious meatless options we used to enjoy back in the States, and since we had several jars of freshly made tomato sauce in our refrigerator, and since I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, I decided to try making my own meatless-meatballs last night. I’ve read several different recipes and have tried a few, but haven’t had too much success — probably because I keep having to substitute different things for unavailable (or at least difficult to find) ingredients like ricotta or wheat gluten.  So this time around, I decided to try using easy to find ingredients and see what happened.

Fortunately, they turned out to be pretty good (2 out of 2 vegetarians agree!), so I thought I’d share the recipe.

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Apple Zucchini Muffins

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Category : Food, My Life in Cairo

Zucchini is apparently abundant in Cairo.  They are one of those things you can pretty much always count on being available at the store… like flatbread or Chipsy, or eggs stacked up on the floor.  Zucchini’s always there, en masse, taking up quite a lot of real estate in the produce section, and reminding me I should try to work with what’s there and not keep wishing for a Whole Foods with blueberries and blackberries and lettuce that won’t stress me out.  Anyhow, the zucchini are there, pale green, and abundant.

And since when life gives you lemons you’re supposed to make lemonade, I realized that when Cairo gives you zucchini, you’ve got to do something good with it.

And I’d say, mission accomplished.

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Oooooklahoma

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Category : Cats, Family, Food, in America and Elsewhere, Travel & Sightseeing

I always have a great time in Oklahoma!  Even if it was a relentless 105 degrees.  It’s just so much fun spending time with Mimi!

We always have such a great time together!  We told stories and visited and had lots of fun.  Mimi even taught me how to crochet squares for an afghan she’s been working on.

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hello summer

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Category : Family, Food

This weekend we went to the Cary Farmers’ Market.  It was wonderful!  SO many beautiful tomatoes, beans, melons, jams, and pastries.  It was fantastic!

Surprisingly enough, now that there is a sufficient amount of time between me and my backyard laboring last summer when we had our giant tomato harvest of 2009 and the mini cornfield complete with invading bugs and sad, little corn harvest, I now have nothing but fond memories of the whole experience and can’t wait to be settled somewhere someday where we can grow our own food again.  There is something really rewarding about eating food you’ve watched since it was just a little flower.

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the rain hits the ground and the leaves dry it up

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Category : Family, Food, in America and Elsewhere

warning… sincere superlatives abound below.

Hello, America — you beautiful, magnificent, awesome, beloved country, you!  It is so good to be home.

I have been enjoying the splendors of the Pacific Northwest, complete with chilly temperatures, misty sunrises, beautiful rainforests, tree frogs, hoot owls, yellow finches, rabbits (both domestic and wild!), serene pastoral vistas, rain, rolling dark clouds, and the joy of  fleeting sunlight and blue skies.  The best part though was spending time with my delightful twin sister and her husband.  We had a lot of fun catching up (surprising how much catching up can be done between two people who typically talk at least once a day), making and eating really good food, sewing, baking, and lots of laughing, storytelling, and smiling.

Meredith put together this little montage from my week in beautiful Washington.

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the good things

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Category : Family, Food, My Life in Cairo

This weekend we celebrated Brandon’s birthday with a long awaited apple pie.  I wish I could say I made it, but really I only helped (although I fully intend to try making my own one of these days!).

I have been hearing about Brandon’s Grandma’s amazing apple pies since I first met Brandon in Arizona.  So when Brandon’s grandma offered to make apple pie while she was here in Cairo visiting in April, I was lucky enough to get the recipe and see how it’s done. We made an extra pie and stuck it in the freezer to save for Brandon’s birthday.

And thank goodness for that!  After a busy week studying for final exams we most likely would have had to stick a birthday candle in a McFlurry if it wasn’t for that pie. And oh my goodness, it was delicious!

Also, I have to confess, I think we have eaten half of the pie in under 12 hours.  And yes, that includes what we ate for breakfast.

oh, egypt…

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Category : Food, My Life in Cairo, Oh, Egypt

In my ongoing effort to not do laundry, I decided to peruse the photos I have snapped on my phone over the past few months.  Here are a few of my favorite gems.

Enjoy!

A couple of weeks ago, I ordered a Coke and was pleasantly surprised to see Santa in the 100 degree weather.  Nothing like a little Christmas in May, right?  I was just glad it says “Holiday 2009” and not “Holiday 1999.”  My favorite “food past its prime” moments are when the grocery stores tape together two boxes of expensive food (i.e. cinnamon toast crunch) with packing tape and sell them at a discount.  Judging by the date on these deals, I am guess the cinnamon toast crunch is a little lacking in the crunch department.  Still, it’s charming, right?

This next one is from when we went snorkeling recently and were on a boat.

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Fee gibna

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Category : Food, My Life in Cairo

Today is a beautiful day in Cairo. The torrential rain and hail storm we had a couple nights ago has cleared the air and magically washed the dust off of everything. We went for a walk and stopped in the cheese shop — truly an oasis of culinary delight in a desert of french fry sandwiches and fava beans.

At the recommendation of a friend, we picked up these…

Yogurt in terra cotta jars. Say what? I bet it is fabulous and can’t wait to try it.

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oh my goodness

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Category : Food, My Life in Cairo

So you may already know that one of my favorite things is ice cream.  I won’t get into it here, but I could talk for hours about gelato and ice cream, and probably shed a tear or two for the absence of pistachio gelato made with pure Sicilian pistachio butter in my life.  But as I said, I won’t get into it here.

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Picnic at Al-Azhar Park

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Category : Food, My Life in Cairo, Sightseeing in Cairo, Travel & Sightseeing

Today we packed a picnic and went to Al-Azhar Park.  It was absolutely delightful!

The park is beautifully landscaped and has truly incredible views of the city.  I had no idea exactly how wonderful the park was until today.  I first heard about it when I watched a documentary about an urban development/renovation project in Cairo this summer.  The park is located near the Citadel (I still haven’t been there yet, by the way) on the site of what used to be a “500-year-old mound of rubble in the inner city, between the eastern edge of the 12th Century Ayyubid city and the 15th Century Mamluk ‘City of the Dead’,” to quote the park’s website.

That’s the citadel.

And here’s our lunch…

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no place like Amrika for the holidays

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Category : Family, Food, in America and Elsewhere, Travel & Sightseeing

I went back to America in December.  It felt so good to be home!  But now it feels good to be home in Cairo.  Funny how that works.  I blame wanderlust.

I really enjoyed seeing family and friends and eating salads without a care in the world.  It was delightful!  I also got to spend ten days or so with my Mimi in Oklahoma.  We had lots of fun together.

What a beautiful country…

amrika

christmas donuts

We were lucky that the rest of my family arrived when they did, because a huge blizzard hit the midwest on Christmas Eve.

christmas ice

That’s the view on Christmas morning.  The snow was incredible.  Good thing we were all together!

thankful

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Category : Family, Food, My Life in Cairo

I know I am way overdue on posts. There is just so much I need to catch everyone up on… the step pyramid Saqqara, the Red Pyramid which we got to go inside, the Bent Pyramid, pyramids, pyramids, pyramids, a long weekend in Alexandria complete with Greco-Roman amphitheaters with bizarre acoustic phenomena, catacombs, the sea, and all kinds of fun, lots of fun hanging out with Meredith, the choc-full Egyptian Museum of Antiquities, moomie, moomie, moomie, catacomb,… there is just so much. Soon, I will post pictures and catch you all up.

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Mabrouk!

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Category : Food, My Life in Cairo

On Wednesday night, we went to an Egyptian wedding.  We were honored to have been invited!  Before the wedding, I started asking around to see what we should expect, what we should wear, and what we should bring.  As with many things in Egypt, if you try googling “Egyptian” anything, you have to sift through all of the articles about ancient Egyptian anythings to find the relevant ones.  It’s challenging, but what can you expect for a place with 5,000 years of history.

Anyhow, I decided I needed a long skirt, which I finally found at City Stars.  It was surprisingly not an easy feat.  I think shopping for a tube top and a mini skirt would be easier at City Stars with its western stores like Bebe and yet NO Banana Republic.  But I digress.

At 8:00pm we headed to the wedding with Youssef.  The wedding was held in an intersection of alleys lined with apartment buildings.  It was incredible!  There were bright bright lights, and colorful lightbulbs strung from building to building in the alleyways.  There was a big stage in center with a full band and stacks of speakers.  The music was really good.  There were several vocalists, a keyboardist, a guy on the drums, and someone manning all of the electronic equipment.  I really enjoyed it!  I’ll see if I can post a clip of the band for everyone to hear.  Everyone had their cell phones out taking video.  It was really neat!

the band

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Ta da

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Category : Food, My Life in Cairo

birthday cake

I almost forgot.  It turned out pretty good seeing as it came from a box after sitting on a shelf at the store for who knows how long!

Birthday Cake

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Category : Food, My Life in Cairo

cake sparklesWe splurged and got a box of devil’s food cake mix at the store.  Brandon added a splash of grand marnier to the buttercream frosting.  It’s gonna be good.  No frills, but it smells like orangey grand marnier goodness.

I just discovered this photo effect in our photo editing program, Gimp.  I promise not to make everything sparkly, but it just looked so good on this I couldn’t resist.

Gelato

Category : Food, My Life in Cairo, Oh, Egypt

gelato and smokes

I’m going to save my rant on how much I love really, really good high-quality gelato for another day, but here’s a picture of some I had today.  It exceeded my expectations!  Here it is sitting at the register.

What?  Yeah, those are cigarettes at the register.  Sorry if the fetal baby distracts from the picture.  They try to warn people about birth defects, but everyone seems to smoke here.  Not sure how well it goes with gelato.  Bleh.  And people were smoking IN THE MALL.  Coming from a place where smokers can’t smoke indoors anywhere, it was a tad surprising.  I hate smoke.  Hate it.

But gelato… gelato I like!

Breakfast

Category : Food

Using Brandon’s AMAZING ciabatta, we made commuter sandwiches for breakfast today.  I knew it was going to be a day of eating without abandon.  See that spicy mayo?  Secret ingredient… onion bowder.  Not to be confused with onion powder.  There is no “p” sound in Arabic, folks.

Delicious!

And what’s a commuter sandwich?  Only the best thing EVER made with eggs and mayonnaise EVER.  If you are ever in Phoenix (or apparently now in Santa Monica too) you have to go to La Grande Orange and eat an avocado commuter for me.  Oh man.  They are so good.  They are really made with english muffins, but since we had this fresh, yummy, chewy ciabatta on hand, it just made sense to go with it.  All ours were missing was the avocado.  We can’t get really good avocados here.  At least not right now.  It’s ok.  Don’t feel too bad for me.  This sandwich was still amazing!

Brandon’s homemade ciabatta

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Category : Food, My Life in Cairo

ciabatta and spaghetti

Another success from Bakewise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking!  I was busy rifling through old pictures on the computer, and then all of a sudden, wafting from the kitchen, came the delicious smell of bread baking in the oven.  It was like a dream, I tell you.

Sorry the ciabatta is hiding in the background and everything is out of focus.  I was in a hurry to eat.  But let me tell you, the ciabatta was perfectly chewy and delicious!  Now I just have to avoid eating the second loaf that just came out of the oven.

Oh yeah, and that would be rosemary garlic butter there in the middle.  Oh boy.