Roasted Tomatoes
A friend brought me a huge bag of tomatoes, and also a serving of the same tomatoes roasted up – oh WOW. Roasting these already tasty tomatoes concentrates their flavor.
I serve them as a side dish. I add them to salads, and to salad dressings. I serve them as a salad with a little Balsamic vinegar. I add them to the spaghetti sauce. I make them into a roasted tomato soup, with basil (be sure to use real cream; it’s OK, it just makes the taste richer and more satisfying. If you are satisfied, you won’t eat more and the cream won’t make you fat. I promise.) They are like magic, anything they touch tastes wonderful.
Chop cherry tomatoes in half, bigger tomatoes into quarters. Place in a long flat pan (with sides; these get juicy at first) and spray with a really good olive oil and sprinke with sea salt.
Roast at 180°C / 350°F for 40 minutes, longer if you want less juice.
You will find it hard to resist eating them right out of the pan.
Meat and Fish at the Sultan Center
It doesn’t take long before you live in a country long enough that you don’t see with the same eyes as when you came. Last week, as I was shopping, I was looking for something to fix for dinner. Normally, I just see something and grab and go, but my attention was caught by how expensive everything was, and then again, by the fact that American ground beef was twice as expensive as New Zealand ground beef, and both were really really expensive – it’s ground beef!
I’ve been careful about meat ever since I read Deadly Feasts about ten years ago. The book is a medical mystery, it traces the identification of Mad Cow Disease, and how vulnerable we all are. The human variant takes ten years to develop – all because tainted meat enters our food supply, because meat producers are too greedy to pass up a cow who is stumbling and falling down.
Even those who keep it out of the human food chain often process fallen cows for animal food.
And none of that has anything to do, really, with this post. The point is, for once, instead of rushing by, I was paying attention. When you pay attention, you start to see things (again) (or for the first time.) Here, you see things routinely that you don’t see in the United States:
Lamb’s brains:
Lamb’s heart:
Sheep’s feet:
Fresh Quail:
Kuwaiti Shoom:
Saudi Shrimp (these look big, but Kuwaiti shrimp, in season, are even bigger, and the sweetest shrimp you have ever tasted):
Iranian Squid:
Nuabi (a fish caught locally)
I love Kuwaiti seafood, and this is the one I love the best of all, Kuwaiti Zubaidi:
For those of you in the US, you can multiply the prices by four for an approximate idea of how much the food costs in dollars. The dollar is slipping here, as everywhere else, prices are going up, and we are taking the double whammy.
The seafood is out of this world. Even though expensive, local caught seafood is about what we would pay for seafood in the US. Vegetables IN SEASON can be reasonable. When I want iceburg lettuce, I pay about $3/ head. I have wonderful friends who are sharing their bumper crops of vegetables this year, and oh! they are SO good, so tasty! One of my friends has tried some heirloom tomatoes, and they are doing well!
St. Patrick and the Wearing of the Green
Growing up in the USA, everyone knows, as a kid, that on St. Patrick’s Day you wear green. It doesn’t mean you are Catholic, or Christian, it means you don’t want to get a pinch, because that is what happens to kids who don’t wear green. (You know how mean kids can be!)
Later on, maybe in high school, a few people will wear orange and explain that they are Irish protestants. Most of us, as kids, don’t really know a whole lot about St. Patrick other than that he went to Ireland to convert the heathens to believe in the church, and that he cast the snakes out of Ireland.
When you get older, St. Patrick’s Day is often a rollicking night in local taverns with Irish names, where they serve stew, and soda bread, and potatoes, and lots of green beer and live music singing old Irish songs.
There are references below to the short version of St. Patrick’s life, and a longer version. The longer version is the Catholic version and, while less documented, is longer and more interesting.
This is from Wikipedia, and is a short summary of the life of St. Patrick:
Saint Patrick (Latin: Patricius[2], Irish: Naomh Pádraig) was a Christian missionary and is the patron saint of Ireland along with Brigid of Kildare and Columba. Patrick was born in Roman Britain. When he was about sixteen he was captured by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland, where he lived for six years before escaping and returning to his family. He entered the church, as his father and grandfather had before him, becoming a deacon and a bishop. He later returned to Ireland as a missionary, working in the north and west of the island, but little is known about the places where he actually worked and no link can be made with Patrick and any church. By the eighth century he had become the patron saint of Ireland. The Irish monastery system evolved after the time of Patrick and the Irish church did not develop the diocesan model that Patrick and the other early missionaries had tried to establish.
(From Who Was St. Patrick?)
The available body of evidence does not allow the dates of Patrick’s life to be fixed with certainty, but it appears that he was active as a missionary in Ireland during the second half of the fifth century. Two letters from him survive, along with later hagiographies from the seventh century onwards. Many of these works cannot be taken as authentic traditions. Uncritical acceptance of the Annals of Ulster (see below) would imply that he lived from 378 to 493, and ministered in modern day northern Ireland from 433 onwards.
Trivial
Any time I start to get all puffed up about readers complimenting me on my blog, I just take a look at the search terms that bring them in.
You know, I would love to think it is our discussions about political and social issues, the books I review, the travel destinations I recommend, the human experiences we share . . . I would love to think that.
It just isn’t the truth. Here is what brings the most people to look at Here There and Everywhere. It is truly, truly humbling.
ICHC: Dying Laughing
see more crazy cat pics
Pet Import and Export Service
Many people write asking about how we got the Qatteri cat into Kuwait, and I have to tell them that the woman who helped us is no longer here. Recently a friend passed along a card to me – there is a new woman providing the import/export help, and for those of you with people coming to work with your companies who have pets, this woman helps get the paperwork for either bringing a pet into the country or getting your pet out. She knows the bureaucracy and she knows how to get the job done.
She is also well connected with all services involved with animals; as well as import/export, she can arrange grooming and boarding, and will meet you at the airport with the papers necessary for bringing your animal into Kuwait – assuming you have arranged this with her in advance.
Here is her e-mail address – please share it with your HR departments for their resources:
petpassage@yahoo.com
A Case of Two Cities with Inspector Chen: Qiu Xiaolong
When my sister Sparkle recommends a book, I have learned to listen. I think I ordered this book about six months ago, but never cared enough to actually read it. After reading a recent Donna Leon (like dessert, I use it as a reward for reading something more challenging) I decided it was time to tackle Qiu Xiaolong.
I believe A Case of Two Cities is the first in the series; I tried very hard to make sure it was. When I first started reading it, it was difficult, but it didn’t take long to adjust. When you read a detective story written in a foreign culture, you have to park your old way of thinking, and quickly adapt to a new way of thinking. First, you have to learn what that new way of thinking is. They don’t just tell you at the beginning of the book “Here are the differences in values – you will notice . . .” no, but Qiu Xiaolong is courteous enough to take us by the hand and lead us gently into the Chinese way of thinking, the Chinese way of getting things done, and the technicalities of Chinese detective work.
As we meet Inspector Chen, a published poet, and a detective, ten pages into the book, a new anti-corruption campaign is starting in Shanghai, and Inspector Chen has been given a special assignment – a qinchai dacheng – as “Emperor’s Special Envoy with an Imperial Sword.” Even though imperial days are long gone, this warrant gives him emergency powers to search and arrest without reporting to anyone – and without a warrant. He is to seek and find Xing, a corrupt businessman who has caused huge loss to the national economy and is in danger of tarnishing the Chinese national image, and Xing’s associates.
Just as in the Donna Leon books about Commissario Guido Brunetti, and the Bowen books about Gabriel duPre, and James Lee Burke’s books about New Orleans, and Cara Black’s books about Aimee LeDuc, the detectives and investigators have to walk a fine line between going after the criminal and overstepping their warrant – stepping on the toes of those also engaged in corruption so entrenched that it has become a way of life. Each of these detectives has to maneuver that treacherously fine line – who determines when corruption has become too much? It usually puts their own lives in danger at some point, as those manipulating the system and making a fortune out of it do not want to be caught, do not want to be exposed, and will go to great lengths to protect their ill-gotten gains.
And just as in the above books, the book is more about the actual process than the crime itself. Inspector Chen must go about his task indirectly, having chats here and there, gathering threads of information with which he tries to weave a plausible tapestry of events.
As I was reading A Case of Two Cities, I kept making AdventureMan take me out for Chinese food! The meetings are often held over food, and the descriptions are mouth-watering.
Best of all, when you read these books, you get a tiny little glimpse into another way of thinking, another way of doing business. We are all human, we all have the same needs, and we differ in how we go about getting those needs met. We differ in the way we think. It helps to enter another way of living, another way of thinking, it helps to visit through these books so that we can increase our own understanding that our way of doing things is not the only way, maybe (gasp!) not even the “right” way! Maybe (crunching those brain cells really hard to output this thought) there is more than one “right” way?
More Mubarakiya Sights
It seems to be heating up quickly. The months when perusing the souks in daylight hours are coming to an end. We are trying to make the most of it while we can. A few more quick snaps from the Mubarakiyya Market on a quiet Friday:
Vegetable market public art I hadn’t spotted before:
Traditional clothing-seller:
Bath supplies:
Foodstuffs:
Those of you who live here walk right by these stalls all the time, and never notice that they are disappearing. I have been perusing old books about Kuwait, even some not so old, and Kuwait is changing so rapidly that even books only 10 years old or so have become outdated by the rapid passage of time.
For those of you not in Kuwait, there are malls. There are SO many modern malls. As in other countries, some are more upscale than others, but they are malls. In most, you are not supposed to take photos. In most, you will see the same stores you will see in any other country. Mubarakiyya is special because it is still an active market in the old style.
Lazy Mubarakiyya Friday
For our non-Kuwaiti friends, Friday is the day off in Kuwait if you only have one day off, Friday and Saturday for a few. It’s the perfect time of the year to visit the Mubarakiyya Souks – not too hot, not too cold and always something interesting to see. Grab your friends and family, and have lunch in the square where all the restaurants are.
In our two years of visiting the restaurant, we never realized the menu was on the bottom of the kleenex box:
Bread making:
So good!
Kebab making:
Busy in the tea stall:
The tea stays HOT on the table tea-grill:
Something Stupid
I had a birthday a while back, and decided that I was no longer going to mourn my Cuisinart, stuck in storage lo, these last ten years while my husband and I vagabond around the earth. I had bought a cheap food processor in Germany, and left it behind (whew! bought it when the dollar was $1.20 to the Euro, those were the days!) and then I bought a cheap food processor in Doha and brought it with me, but it doesn’t grate Parmesan, and . . . well, it isn’t a Cuisinart, and I really loved working with my Cuisinart. Isn’t it wonderful when they invent a piece of machinery that truly decreases labor, and is a pleasure to use?
I just bought a little one, knowing I will get rid of it when I leave. It is 110 volts, so I could even take it back with me if I wanted. The very first thing I grated was Parmesan cheese, and it was good. And then I grated cheddar, and it was good. And then I chopped onions and parsley, and it was very very good. I used it three times.
Yesterday, I went to grind some sausages and it only worked for one second, then quit. I checked all the plugs, checked the fuse box, checked everything I could. I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working.
Then I figured it out. I had fried my beautiful new Cuisinart. Can you figure out what I did?
I will show you a close-up of the transformer, maybe that will help:
Yes, I plugged my sweet little 110 brand new Cuisinart into the 220/240 output plug instead of the 110 output plug.
Do you think it can be fixed? Is there somewhere in Kuwait I can take it and get it re-wired? (Sigh.)
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