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I'm not very good at consistent blogging. Its not that there's been nothing to blog. In fact, since last post, there's been plenty of blog fodder....travels, romance, drama at work, sociopolitical upheaval, and a new four-legged friend. Its been hard to decant all this into written record as its happening.

But I'm gonna try.

Starting this weekend.

Till then, here are some pictures of the last few months...all will be explained in due time!

Cairo Kitchen

I've been spending a lot of time in the kitchen the past few months. Its not the nicest place to be in the summer, given the lack of air conditioning, but I'm finding an incredible amount of comfort in the time spent preparing things from scratch - slowly, carefully, deliberately. A dearth of ready-made ingrediants and an abundance of produce lends itself to fresher, healthier dishes. I've been making crazy noodle salads, pastas with fresh tomato sauce, fruit juices, and the occasional curry, of which two of three came out too spicy for human consumption.

I rarely have to set foot in a supermarket if I plan it right. I can get most of my fresh ingrediants on my block. Within 100 meters of my apartment building, I have an egg man, a fruit and vegetable stand, two "mini mart" type stores with dry goods and some dairy, and a kitchen supply shop for trash bags and such. My favorite place in all of Cairo might be the produce shop on my street - not the cleanest, not the nicest, but stepping inside smells like September back home, when we harvested the last of the root vegetables from my father's garden - earthy, dirty, and sweet from the concentrated sunshine of a long, hot summer. 

The vegetables get a thorough rinsing under running water and get put up to dry on my dish rack. 

I'm not as careful as I was advised to be about disinfecting fruits and vegetables (which could explain the repeated bouts of Giardia...) but I can't bring myself to put bleach, even a drop, on anything I intend to ingest. Ick.


As you can see, I've done a good job amassing spices and seasonings - some inherited from co-workers who have moved on, some purchased, some smuggled back in my suitcase from trips home.

I do have a microwave, but I only use it maybe twice a week. It was an impulse buy from my neighbors when they moved back to the States - I thought I might regret not buying it, but of course, it just takes up too much space on my counter. The toaster, however, was a worthwhile purchase.

I have a filter so I can drink the tap water, and a water heater for the sink.

My stove/oven is gas, which is a bit terrifying (turning on the oven is a whole other post).

Today I'm having folks over for brunch, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to try and make my mother's Bloody Mary mix - from scratch.
My mother loved her Bloody Marys. Bloody Mary brunch was a Sunday institution in our house, on the mornings Mom skipped church. She loved the good Lord and tried to attend church somewhat regularly, but she also recognized that He wouldn't have made vodka, tomato, and horseradish such a delicious combination for no good reason - and surely He wouldn't want her to drive to services with a buzz.
She and my father got serious about their quest for the perfect Bloody Mary mix a few years after I left home. This recipe was their preferred mix until they came to Austin and discovered Zing Zang (used by my favorite hangover recovery room, Rio Rita). They started ordering that shit by the case and having it shipped to the house. I came home for Christmas and found two cases (12 bottles per case) in the cellar.

Since Egypt doesn't exactly have a huge market for Bloody Mary mix, I figured this brunch was the perfect opportunity to try the homemade route.

In short, this was nowhere near as easy a project as I imagined it would be. By the end of it, my arms were sore, my kitchen looked like a crime scene, and I was fairly drunk.

Here's how you can replicate the experience:

1. Mince 1-2 green peppers.

2. Slice 20 (yes, 20 - I had to say it in Arabic for the vegetable stand guy to believe me) tomatoes.

3. Add some chopped onion and celery.

4. Juice enough limes/lemons to equal about a third of a cup 

5. Add a tablespoon of salt, crushed garlic to taste, and 1/4 cup of sugar to take the bite out of the tomatoes.

 6.  Add about 1/4 cup of horseradish sauce.

7.  Finally add crushed red pepper, Sriracha, or Tabasco to taste and simmer until the tomatoes turn to mush (about an hour).

At this point, the kitchen was pretty hot, and I needed a beer to cool down.

After I finished the beer, it was time to deal with the cooked tomato mush. My mom's recipe specifies either pressing the tomatoes through a food mill or a "fine sieve". I don't have a food mill (I'm not actually sure I know what that is) but I did have a small sieve and thought that would work just swell. 

Note the size of the sieve in comparison to the volume of tomato mush. I had severely underestimated the task in front of me. The size of the sieve necessitated pushing only a few tablespoons at a time of the mush through at once, and squeezing out all the liquid required a fair amount of muscle. After 15 minutes, I started to get sweaty and thirsty. A second beer started to sound like a good idea. This did not, however, do any favors for my motor skills.

At the end of an hour of squeezing, I was left with less than a quart of Bloody Mary mix, sore arms, all visible kitchen surfaces covered with tomato gore, and a pretty good buzz.

BUT - I have to say - this stuff is delicious. I'm not convinced it would be worth the effort back home given the wide availability of pre-made mix, but I'm pretty excited to serve it....in small doses....cause I might want to save some for later...'cause I did work so hard in making it and all....are you sure you don't just want some orange juice with that vodka?

Weekend in Beirut

Whoa! Busy few weeks there. With political turmoil, the pre-Ramadan work crunch, and the departure of several dear colleagues, I've been a busy girl. On top of it all, I can't seem to shake an unusually long stretch of insomnia, which has taken taken quite a toll on my productivity these last few days. Tonight I've got an early date with my bed and some complex survey analysis methods reading (to help me fall asleep), but before that I wanted to post some pictures from my recent trip to Lebanon last month. 

My dear friend H. (of the Pink House Girls) moved to Beirut shortly before I landed in Cairo and we have been trying to get together for about a year now. We finally had a matching free weekend in May and I booked a ticket for a mini reunion and a chance to see the city that had been described to me as the "Miami of the Middle East". 

The weekend before my trip, I had a minor aesthetic disaster at a salon here, and a friend who occasionally works in Beirut told me I could certainly get it fixed there. Lebanese women take their looks seriously. I saw more signage for plastic surgery centers and salons than traffic directionals. Apparently, its somewhat of a status symbol for girls (and guys!) to walk around post nose-job or face lift with bandages on display. Its such a prominent part of the culture that H. has a friend in Beirut who is actually doing her anthropology dissertation on plastic surgery in Lebanon. While I didn't get any new facial features, I did leave with a much more natural hair color. 

We hadn't seen each other in over a year (in which time a lot had happened), so we had quite a bit of catching up to do! We spent the entire weekend eating, talking, drinking, and sightseeing. We took a day to see Byblos, a town with Phoenician ruins on the sea and had an amazing lunch and conversation over a glass of perfectly chilled white wine. 

Moules frites - the perfect lunch :)

The ruins at Byblos reminded me a lot of the ruins in Tulum, Mexico. Is it just me?

Byblos

Tulum

Byblos

Tulum

 I also got to spend time with the sister of a very dear Austin friend, who is studying at AUB. She and H. have gotten to be buddies over the last year - I love how the world is such a small place!

Also, just needed to include this evidence that AUB is trying to one-up UT's tower. This is the main gate of the campus.

H. has promised to visit me in the land of not quite right if things stay stable. We currently have no parliament, no constitution and a shameless military council rewriting the rules in their favor as fast as they can. By tomorrow we should have an unofficial declaration of the winner. The official count shouldn't take much longer than Tuesday seeing as how initial reports cited turnouts of 5-7% in most districts. 

I don't have the energy to delve in politics tonight, and I'm afraid most of Egypt is in the same, slowly sinking boat. 

Actually, the revolution WILL be televised

Tomorrow, one of the main components of the Egyptian revolution - the trial of former president Hosny Mubarak - will (supposedly) come to an end as a verdict is delivered live on state TV. I wasn't able to find a time, but regardless I'm willing to bet a majority of Egyptians will be glued to their televisions tomorrow waiting for the announcement. Of course, the trial has been delayed so many times at this point that nothing is for certain - but this time I have a feeling they'll stick to schedule.

The timing of the verdict hardly coincidental. A week ago, Egypt's first ever free and democratic elections were held, and the outcome was disheartening. The runoff election, scheduled for mid-June, will pit Ahmed Shafiq, a holdover from the Mubarak era and a proponent of the current military regime (SCAF), against Mohammed Morsi, a conservative Islamist from the Muslim Brotherhood. Mind you, at the outset of elections the Brotherhood had promised not to put field a candidate. In the end, they put forth not one, but two candidates - Khairat el-Shater, who was disqualified due to a recent prison term, and Morsi, who was only supposed to be a backup.

Most Egyptians I know with feel backed into a corner. Its come down to a choice between the old regime and an experiment in Islamist democracy. Those afraid of change, Egpyt's Christian Copts, and secularists may feel that Shafiq is the lesser of the two evils; revolutionaries and hardline Islamic Salafis (whose candidate was disqualified in an ironic birther controversy) may decide it's better to swallow their contempt for the Brotherhood and vote Morsi.

Interestingly, Alexandria went to a socialist candidate - Hamdeen Sabahi - and in Cairo, the very moderate ex-Brotherhood Aboul Fotouh prevailed. However, 60% of Egypt's population lives outside these two major metropolitan areas, and tend to be more conservative than their urban compatriots. See this fantastic map (linked from Arabist.net - a great site for Middle East politicking and commentary) as a visual representation - click on the governorates for a breakdown of votes.

I'm placing my money on  SCAF offering up Mubarak as the sacrificial lamb and ensuring that a guilty verdict is delivered, with a sentence of life in "prison" (don't delude yourself - he won't actually be wasting away with the rest of Egypt's political prisoners). This may soften the people's attitudes toward Shafiq for the upcoming election. SCAF knows that an majority-Islamist parliament (which already exists after this years elections), coupled with a Brotherhood president, is likely a formula for the end of their unchecked power and influence.

As an aside: On the way to work every morning, I pass by the burned-out shell of the National Democratic Party's headquarters. (NDP was Mubarak's political party). It was torched during the revolution in January 2011, and now stands as an eyesore on the Nile.

Unfortunately, the headquarters stands right next to the Egyptian Museum, which houses priceless Pharaonic artifacts which are no doubt susceptible to, say, a controlled demolition of a neighboring building. I'm wondering if thats why it has yet to be torn down..any engineers have a clue about how this could be accomplished with minimal impact on the mummies next door?

"Till by turning and turning we come 'round right"

Those who have not realized God will wander,

homeless in this world, destitute in the next.

But watch the lovers dance with ecstasy,

as they merge into the oneness of God. - Sultan Bahu

I just returned from seeing the Al-Tannoura whirling dervishes in Islamic Cairo. It almost didn't happen, because my friend E. and I arrived just in time to see the wooden doors of the Caravanserai, hung with a sign reading "Completed" (meaning full capacity), close in our face. We were bemoaning our luck to a group of Egyptian guys sitting outside the door - and one of them just happened to be in charge of the lighting for the performance. Like most Egyptian men, he was easily sweet talked, and we were being snuck in through a side door in no time 

The Whirling Dervish performance in Cairo is now largely for entertainment and demonstration of cultural heritage rather than a religious rite. The whirling is associated with Sufism and originally developed as a contemplative practice. The repetitive spinning, along with highly symbolic positioning of the head, hands, and feet, are intended to bring the adherent into closer union with God.

The performers spin continuously for 25-30 minutes at a time to the accompaniment of tablas, tambourines, and other local instruments I cannot name correctly. A lot of dramatic flourishes are thrown in for the audience - but deviation from pure practice doesn't diminish the hypnotic effect. 

The rhythmic music and movements are a spiritual, joyful centrifuge. The base and disconsolate elements of the self are spun down and separated out, allowing the ecstatic and the divine to rise to the top - and eventually overflow.