fattoush

Hi Friends,

Here is a long promised Middle Eastern recipe. Most of the stuff I’ve tried making I don’t feel good enough at to not just completely copy someone else’s recipe. The thing I have been making a lot of is lemon bars this week. People bring us over lots of plates of food which all have to be returned full. People here seem to like lemon bars (and chocolate chip cookies) and I need any easy food to make to fill up the plates when I give them back.

My most exciting news of the week is that I’m off tomorrow with a bunch of people from work to visit Jerusalem and Bethlehem for two nights. I never really expected to go there, so it feels kind of surreal…

Since it’s rained there are wild flowers (weeds?) bursting out all over. I think that will only be more over there, where it’s further from the desert and there is a lot more rain fall.

Ok, the recipe.

Fattoush (Salad)

SERVES 6 -8
Ingredients

* 2 cucumbers
* 6 green onions
* 4 tomatoes
* salt (about 2 tsp)
* 3 pita bread, day old
* 1 head romaine lettuce
* 1 bunch fresh mint
* 1 bunch flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
* 2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
* 1/2 cup lemon juice
* 1 teaspoon ground sumac (a sour middle eastern berry – in middle eastern grocery stores?)
* black pepper
* lemon wedge, for garnish

Directions

1. Whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice, sumac and black pepper. Set aside.
2. Dice the cucumbers, tomatoes and green onions and put them together in a bowl. Sprinkle with salt and allow to stand 10 minutes. (I use the oven for this)
3. Toast the bread until lightly browned then cool. Once cool enough to handle, break the bread up into 1 inch pieces set aside.
4. Chop the romaine lettuce, parsley and mint.
5. Pour off the juice from the tomatoes and cucumbers collected in the bottom of the bowl.
6. Mix in the lettuce, parsley, mint and lemon juice dressing.
7. Add the bread at the last minute and serve.

Only mix up what you think you will eat. The bread gets soggy and (I think) yucky if it sits in the salad overnight.

pictures from the dead sea

Hi Friends,

Sorry this post is so late. Once again, our internet at home is not working and I keeping working at work rather than posting blogs…

Highlights from the week

1. Visiting a friend for lunch at her house in a town on the edge of the desert. Lunch for her family and the two of us included 3 main dishes and sides. Everyone in her family was really fun to talk to and I got to try new dishes, one with egg plant and lasagna Middle Eastern style.

2. Dreaming that I met people named Milianay and Fodi, “full” and “empty” in Arabic and being all excited that I new what their names meant-yes, I spend a lot of time studying.

3. The sun is back.

4. I can understand more and more of what the girls who live upstairs say when they come to visit.

5. There’s always something new and unexpected going on at work.

Low lights

1. Feeling sleepy all the time (because I’m not getting enough excersize? culture shock?)

2. Our internet and vonage phone don’t work.

3. There’s always something new and unexpected going on at work.

Happy to be here and missing Boston at the same time…

Here are some pictures from our time at the Dead Sea.

Looks like normal water…

Across the sea is Jericho and above it, the mountains of Jerusalem.

How I Got to the Lowest Point on Earth*

Hi All, Sorry i didn’t post for a while…I’ve been having rolling internet issues. For a partial explanation, see below.

Hopefully my next post will include a recipe. 🙂

How I Got to the Lowest Point on Earth
Setting:

Second floor apartment on hillside in desert city.

Characters:

Two housemates, mid-twenties. They speak “arab-inglish/arabeezee” with a smattering of other half forgotten languages.

Mwasayrjees (plumbers and other handy men)

Kind friends

Kind neighbors

Kind bosses

Contributing Factors:

1. Toilet in bathroom leaks around base. Many mwasayrjees enter and exit.

2. Pipe in wall bursts flooding entire apartment over night. Much mopping and fixing follows. Kind friends and mwasayrjees enter and exit.

3. Kitchen sink leaks under cabinets in such way that water first appears from under stove several feet away. Much confusion and many weeks of mopping ensue. Mwasayrjees enter and exit. Finally one tightens a pipe…problem solved…except, the cardboard wall of the cabinet under the sink is extremely damp. Mold grows in the desert.

4. Radiator leaks in bedroom threatening precious items on floor near radiator. Mwasayrjee enters and exits.

5. Condensation develops in cabinet above stove despite metal cover designed to protect against such event. Condensation gets into salt so that about 1 ½ cups whoosh into batch of bread dough. Housemates clean.

6. Apparently dry cardboard boxes stacked in a corner are moved. Behind them, mold blooms in the desert.

7. Kind neighbors enter and exit frequently.

8. Radiator leaks in kitchen. Mwasayrjee enters and exits.

9. Toilet in guest bathroom leaks around base. Mwasayrjee enters and exits. Will come back later with parts.

10. Internet stops working. Kind friends try to find out why. Turns out housemates never paid the bill. They should have gone to the internet provider and asked for their bill. Duh.

11. Kind bosses help find discount rate at hotel with sea views and consent to day off. (Note: see previous blogs re: flexible local interpretation of weekend)

12. Thirty-minute shuttle bus ride brings housemates to 1,300 ft (410 m) below sea level.

Result:

I lean back on fluffy cushions at the lowest point on earth, enjoying a view of what many think of as the most holy city on earth, reclining on the mountain tops across the Dead Sea. Light glistens on the buoyant saline waters. Gentle breezes tousle the palm fronds. So far all the pipes appear to be in perfect working order.
* The Dead Sea is the Lowest Point on Earth according to the hotel brochure.
**If you have detected a Wodehousian tone, I agree, Jeeves could have probably cleared the whole situation up much more handily.