Eating in Egypt #2

What are memorable meals?  Often they are meals eaten with family or with friends, and I have many such happy memories.  In Egypt certain meals were memorable because of where we were.  I remember eating mussels (called balah el baht or sea-dates in Arabic) at a restaurant called The Seagull  on the Mediterranean coast near Alexandria.  This restaurant was owned by a older German couple.  A few animals such a gazelles were in cages near the entrance.  A monkey was renown for strolling through the restaurant on a lease, amusing the guests, but mercifully he was not in attendance the day we were there.  I remember the eating sea-dates as we gazed over the sunlit Mediterranean, cooled by a slight breeze. I don't remember anything else about the meal. 

Here are 3 teachers from my school
with my husband at the end of the table.

Some meals were memorable because of who we were with.  I remember eating bratwurst and cherry pie at the Christmas Bazaar held in the Cairo American College (prep school K-12) compound in Maadi, a suburb of Cairo, formerly the British colonial enclave.  My husband and I happened upon teachers from my own prep school (American International School) in Heliopolis. 

My husband with our school  art teacher.

 Another happy moment was when my husband and I visited the terrace of the Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan. Aswan is the most southern city of Egypt, the location of the first cataract and the Great Aswan Dam.  Most Nile cruise ships now run between Luxor and Aswan.  The British colonial era Old Cataract Hotel, featured in Agatha Christy's Death on the Nile, had a very popular terrace where one could drink tea (in my case a latte) and eat pastries while looking over the river scene. Once again we stumbled on some other teachers we knew and were all so happy to see each other and exchange stories of our adventures, we made quite a ruckus. The more mannerly British patrons stared at us with some annoyance or maybe just surprise. 

This picture of my husband shows a better view of the fuloukas (sailboats) on the Nile seen from Old Cataract Terrace.  Sadly, last I heard, the terrace is now restricted to OCH residents only.  Sunset was the most popular time to be on the terrace, and then it could be a bit crowded.

The reason it is called the OLD Cataract Hotel (as opposed to calling it the Cataract a la Death on the Nile is because a tall, modern eyesore called the New Cataract Hotel has been built near the old one.

One of the high points of my life (not to be compared to the birth of my two sons) was eating a box breakfast in the Valley of the Queens.  On a trip to Luxor with another group of teachers (living and teaching in Egypt for ten years, I came to know many groups of teachers), four of us took an early morning cab (about 6:00) to the Valley of the Queens to buy tickets to the tomb of Nefertari (Ramses II's favorite wife).  This tomb had recently been restored at great expense with money raised by Western archaeologists mainly for their own research.  However, the Egyptian government couldn't pass up this opportunity to make some money, so they struck an agreement with the archaeologists to let only 100 visitors a day see the tomb.  Tourists would visit the tomb in small groups and stay only 12 minutes at a time, because of the deteriorating effects of human breath on the wall paintings.

The 100 LE Egyptian pound at that time
was about $30 American dollars.

We arrived early to purchase our tickets before they were all sold out.  The tickets to this tomb were $30.00 each, in addition to the $12 or so we paid for the other tombs we visited in the Valley of the Queens.

The goddess Isis leads Nefertari
on her journey through the Underworld.

After we purchased our tickets, we sat on an out-cropping of rock and opened up the breakfast boxes prepared for us by the Sheraton Hotel in Luxor.  It wasn't a feast:  a chocolate-filled croissant, a boiled egg and Laughing Cow wedges of cream cheese are all I can remember of this repast, but the desert morning air was cool, the sky was blue, the desert moonscape bright. My cup seemed to run over with feelings of peace and well-being.  I knew I'd remember this moment for the rest of my life.

It wasn't long before a 'guard' in a galabea came and told us we weren't supposed to be eating there.  We were mostly finished so we discarded our boxes in the trash can, and took our turn in the tomb.  The tomb was cool.  Most tombs are.  After only 8 minutes the guards began to shoo us out.  I was rather annoyed.  We'd been promised 10-12 minutes. I suppose it takes two or so minutes to get one group out and another group in.

Epilogue:  Recently, I talked to a friend who had seen Nefetari's tomb since I returned to the States.  She said her tour of Nefetari's tomb was not at all restricted, either by time or numbers.

Eating in Egypt #1

Eating is one of the greatest pleasures of life.  At least it is for me.  Recent events continue to spark memories of Egypt including memories of food and places where we ate the food.

Double click to see the full effect of
the embroidery

One meal I'll never forget was served to my husband and me as part of a bus trip for ex-pats in the Sinai Desert at a place called Ain Musa (Moses' Spring).  Many springs in the Sinai were called Ain Musa.  If a tribe lived near a spring, I guess that tribe like to think that it was the spring Moses was said to have created by striking a rock.  The Bedouin tribe near this spring was our host.  They were dressed in their best...at least the women were:  long black dresses and scarves lavishly embroidered in varieties of red.  Most of the men wore bright white galabeas or robes. 

I took a close up photo of the needle work on my Bedouin
dress ( bought in Al-Arish) as an example of how beautifully embroidered these dresses are.  . 

Fava beans, called foul in Egypt, served with a generous amount of olive oil and lemon juice, are a favorite breakfast.  These men were heating up their foul over an outdoor fire.

We were invited into their homes.  You can see how proud this father is of his daughters.  Once on a Sinai trip with the Egypt Exploration Society, a woman remarked to me that our Bedouin Land Rover driver was quite good looking. I thought to myself that I'd never seen a Bedouin who wasn't good looking.

This Bedouin woman is kneading flat bread that looks like  pizza dough.  It is baked in a cavity in the ground, lined with stones.  I can't remember how the stones were heated to bake the bread.  They may have been set over hot charcoal at the bottom of the hole.  Our baker is working in an outdoor lean-to made of corn or sugar cane stalks.  Her children (also dressed for company) are eating warm bread. The spots of light in this photo may have been caused by sunbeams coming through the cracks in the wall or roof.




For our afternoon meal our hosts served a dish called 'fet ta.' This is not cheese, as what we call 'feta' is called 'white cheese' or 'gibna ba dah' in Arabic.  Fetta in Egypt is prepared with white flat bread ( shami) cut into little bite-sized pieces, then mixed with rice.  A greasy, but savory broth made from beef neck bones and neck bone meat is poured over the bread pieces.  The meat from neck bones is considered premium beef.  The visitors gathered under a large white tent with the flaps raised.  We were seated on rugs and served on metal plates.  The fetta was warm and satisfying. However, swarms of flies thought it was warm and satisfying, too.  It was the job of one man to fan the flies away as we were given our food.  Of course as we ate, we had to continue to discourage the flies that seemed to feel we should share our meal with them.  At the time of this tour, I had lived in Egypt long enough to be undeterred by thoughts of germs - even though the flies shocked even me.  I noticed that the other ex-pats were good-naturedly waving the flies away, too.  Maybe like me, they had lived in Egypt awhile.  Maybe it was because the food was good, and in the middle of the desert it was eat or go hungry!

Click on any picture for a better view.

If you want the recipe for fetta, which you probably don't, just ask me and I'll email it to you.

Egyptian Spring

This spring with Egypt in the news, I remembered the ten springs we lived in Egypt in the 1990's.  Spring in Egypt can begin as early as February, but often comes later.  Sometimes it is accompanied by the Comseens which are winds that can blow clouds of black and/or pink dust in from the Sinai.

  My husband and I lived in an apartment in Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo near the airport. My husband grew up in Heliopolis which has many apartment buildings, old and new, and many old villas, some built by King Farouk,  his family, or movie stars of the Egyptian cinema.  We often walked through the streets particularly in the spring, because I liked to take pictures of the exotic flowering trees and gardens.  (Any of the following pictures can be enlarged with a click.)

 One of my favorite trees was the Jacaranda with purplish-blue flowers. It looked by pieces of sky fell and caught in the branches of the tree.

Some of the most spectacular of the

trees were the Royal Poincianas.  I don't have a close up of their blossoms, but each blossom was very complex, with a tiny white flower forming in the center of each red flower as it matured. If you double click on the picture you can actually see the little white center.
 Remember the song,

"Poinciana, your branches speak to me of love. Pale moon..."? *
 Oooo, too romantic!





Once when we were ambling through suburban streets snapping photos, a guard at one of the villas told us we couldn't take pictures.  "Why not?" my husband demanded.  We ambled on.  Very few of the older villas appeared to be occupied.

The front gates were generally locked. This one is chained.  It didn't appear that anyone ever used the front entrance.  They still had a gardener, however.

These Red Silk-Cotton Tree blossoms are bright red with a fleshy, rubbery texture.  Some times the weight of the flowers would cause the branches to break and fall to the ground.

I thought the overgrown, neglected

atmosphere of this garden was very nostalgic and mysterious.  I think the red flowering arbor is Bougainvillea.

The Bougainvillea comes in several colors:  orange, yellow and white.  But I only see red in all the pictures I took.
Bougainvellia is called Gohenamia (go hen a may a) in Arabic which translates as 'of hell,' I guess because of its fiery color and thorns. 

I think this tree on the left is Pink and White Shower.

The Golden Shower was quite common, too.  Its bright yellow petals fell like snow and form drifts of gold in the streets' gutters along with the ubiquitous litter.  As common as they were, I can't find one picture of them.

One February we visited my husband's cousin in his villa in Fayoum.   These are almond blossoms in the almond grove.

This picture shows a Poinciana on the villa patio.  And isn't it romantic?  Now where's that 'pale moon'?  That night the the power went off (no surprise), and I sat on the balcony in intense darkness and looked at the stars.  My husband was downstairs visiting with relatives in the kitchen.  The cousin's teen-aged son (attended an English school in Cairo)  came upstairs to bring a flashlight and kept me company telling me about the areas of Fayoum he avoided because of the 'religious fundamentalists' living there.

*YouTube - Poinciana (Johnny Mathis, Four Freshman, and more)

Fulton of Kings Row Fame

Fulton is a short drive from Columbia.  In 1940, Henry Bellamann published his novel Kings Row, which was purportedly an expose of the snobbish socially closed society of small town America just before the turn of the century.  Stalwart citizens of Bellamann's home town thought they recognized  themselves or other townsmen in the book.  Some say that the  book was banned from public library.  Later Hollywood made a movie based on the book starring (as you well know) Ronald Reagan. After Reagan became president, Fulton changed its attitude toward the movie and the book.  Now book clubs and other groups can schedule tours of the town and houses of leading citizens who might have been included  in Kings Row are identified.

However that is not why the Columbia docents took a trip to Fulton.  After World War II, Winston Churchill was voted out of office, and was somewhat depressed (so the story goes).  Our Missouri president, Harry Truman invited Churchill to share the podium with him at Westminster's College's Commencement service.  Churchill accepted and delivered his famous 'Iron Curtain' speech at this time.  Since then the college has established a Churchill Memorial Museum, was awarded a church designed by Christopher Wren, and a block from the Berlin Wall.  Subsequently, Westminster College's commencements have been graced with speeches by Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher. 

The curator gave us  a tour of the Churchill Museum.  Churchill had a long public career, as you know.

Here is a photo of a reconstructed WWI trench.  Our education director, Cathy poses to illustrate the height of the trench wall.

The museum archives are chuck full of Churchill memorabilia, not only about Churchill, but items from his time.  By law very little can be turn away.  Here is a photo of a donated Churchill lamp and a doll representing Queen Elizabeth at her coronation.  The dress was loving sewn by hand by a Missouri resident.

Flags are carefully rolled
up and stored on ranks.

This stained glass work of art shows a Phoenix rising from the fire, as the Wren church has risen from the ashes of WWII.

Enlarge by clicking on the photo.

 Christopher Wren designed the church given to Westminster. It  was bombed during WWII, and the wooden roof as well as everything inside it was incinerated.  A private charity, wanting to save an historic church, had the stones numbered and shipped to the college.

A sketch of what the church might have looked like before the fire, appeared to be nothing like the church built on campus next to the museum.  In the sketch, the walls were crenelated around the roof and the church tower was square. Here is a photograph of  Westminster's Wren church. It is a favorite place for weddings and choral concerts.  

The docent group ate at a great little restaurant downtown called Beks.  Afterwards we went to Cathy's house, pictured above, for dessert.  It was built in 1905, about the time of Bellamann's novel.  I complain too often about Missouri weather, but this was a lovely spring day to cherish.