Making Mahshi

Two trips to the grocery store, 15 tomatoes, 3 onions, 10 cucumbers, 13 eggplants, 17 zucchini, lots of grape leaves (from our own vine!), cloves, cinnamon, allspice, salt, pepper, rice, olive oil, tomato paste, friends, some arguments over tomato paste quantities, greasy fingers, laughter…

We were all so exhausted after dinner! We sat around drinking tea with mint in it. The scent of jasmine floated in on the night breeze from the vine draped over the wall downstairs. I can hear the traffic purring at the bottom of the wadi as I sit here typing, but the friends I cooked with are not that quiet of a bunch!

We bought the zucchini and eggplant hollowed out. The general consensus was that it’s “too hard” to do for yourself…

The stuffing: rice, tomatoes, garlic, spices, onions, parsley

How to stuff a grape leaf: don’t put too much rice in!

Roll!

After filling up the pot, we boiled them in chicken stock. Ok, Maggi brand bullion cube chicken “stock.”

Yum…although I am thinking about how to adjust the flavors a little when I make it myself! And I might take on the challenge of doing my own veggie hollowing. Ok, I’d probably regret it. We ate this with cucumber and tomato salad and yogurt.

Charming Downtown

Just wanted to give ideas of what different places around the city look like.

Jabal Amman, one of the hills the city has been built around for millenia. There was a lovely breeze that day so it wasn’t too hot for walking around in the afternoon. And being in the old part of the city feels so much more magical than the new area where I live.

This picture just will not insert right way up! But I love looking at the trees over the wall.

View of ruins from Jabal Amman

on the left: Thousand year old roman ruins
right: pine trees and old houses from photos above
foreground: laundry

This picture is NOT intended to be disrespectful. Every city has it’s unique forms of litter…I find used tea bags to be a charming new permutation.

I have a new route I walk to work. Here are a few photos I’ve taken on the way home. It’s been brilliantly sunny here…and pretty hot. Today there’s a huge wind and a lot cooler. Some people are telling me the wind has a sand storm in it’s wings. We’ll see 🙂

I’m trying to learn how to take pictures of people discretely. I want to show what people look like here without disturbing anyone or being too touristy, but I’m pretty sure one of the girls from the college campus I walk by saw me 🙂

On the way home from work.

Flowers growing over a wall on my street.

STOP

I was trying to take this picture discretely…I can’t tell if the girl is staring at me or someone else…

I think you can get the idea of this view from my friends’ house even though my hand is so shaky. And I like the double moon effect.

Grape arbors like the one on the left of a building on a street near my house are really common.

This vine grows in the yard of the building I live in, but it’s been trained up our tree and onto our neighbor’s arbor (I think the building was empty for a long time before my landlady bought it).

The grapes look almost ripe…to me. People have been eating them sour here for a while.

Fourth of July

So I did get to have fireworks for the fourth of July. I cooked at my American friends’ house; coleslaw, green salad, potato salad, brownies, apple crisp, ice cream (I didn’t make that), hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken, chicken burgers, and some Arab friends came too 🙂 so we made fattoush (see the recipe below) and and grilled meat on skewers.

It was all delicious…and so fun to be with friends from all over the world 🙂

It’s been a beautifully cool day with a big breeze. After dinner we went outside and there was a big moon and a bunch of stars and I could smell jasmine on the breeze.

(Actually, I just learned it’s another flower that smells the same as jasmine. It’s name is almost exactly the same (full) as the word for beans (fool) so I’ve been quite confused for a while…)

We went over to my house where we could set off fireworks on the roof and my friend’s younger brothers set off the fireworks for us. We were pretty close underneath them and the two year olds with us cried until it was over. Then they laughed and fell right to sleep from exhaustion at experiencing so many emotions.

Mabruk ‘Eid Istiklal Ameriki 🙂
Happy American Independence Day!