Rosette Update
I’ve been making rosettes for over 30 years now; I can’t remember a Christmas I haven’t made them. I’ve gotten pretty good, but yesterday, when I couldn’t find my traditional recipe from my Mother, and I didn’t want to take the time to boot up my laptop to retrieve it, I used one from the very traditional old Joy of Cooking and it totally threw me off.
My FryBaby doesn’t work here; I don’t have a transformer big enough and I don’t want to buy a 220 appliance I only use once a year – for rosettes – so I use a thermometer. Normally, you aim for a temperature around 370° F, but yesterday, maybe the batter was a little thinner, but the normal temperature was too high, and I found the best temperature was around 350 – 360°. All these years, and I’m still learning new tricks. 🙂
Christmas Ornaments from Here, There and Everywhere
Ten years ago when we put almost our entire life into storage, we had no idea we would be gone this long. We had no idea we would live in four different countries, and that we wouldn’t see our things again for lo, these many years.
Our first contract, I was allowed one thousand pounds. Do you know how little one thousand pounds is? Think clothing, think basic necessities – 1000 lbs. just isn’t very much.
I packed just a very few Christmas ornaments, figuring I could pick things up along the way. Fortunately for us, the next country, after Saudi Arabia, was Germany, the land of Christmas ornaments. Our tree is eclectic. It’s not necessarily a tree with appeal to anyone else; it is a very personal Christmas tree, with lots of memories and stories. Lucky for you, I won’t bore you will all of them. 😉
We are sentimental. When we can, we decorate the tree together, and we remember with each ornament. . . When he was young, our son would get so impatient with us, and our remembering!
Here is the very first ornament our son ever made in school – it is a dreamcatcher; his teacher was very into the American Southwest and American Indian traditions:
We met and married in Heidelberg, so we always have that ornament with us:
My ties to the Pacific Northwest:
AdventureMan’s love of Africa and the Middle East:
Religious symbols:
Beautiful German antique silver walnuts and pinecones:
And memories of places we’ll remember . . .
Whew! I’m tired, too! Think I will go join the Qatteri Cat in a catnap!
Brrrr. . . . Shiver . . . Cold in Kuwait
When I checked my WeatherUnderground readings for this morning, I laughed when I saw that the weather at 0630 in Kuwait was exactly the same as in Damascus, Syria, and colder than Seattle! Oh you disbelievers! Here is what it looked like:
It is going to be another GORGEOUS day in Kuwait – cold, clear and sunshiny. OK, AdventureMan, you are right . . . it is nice to have sunshine every day. 🙂
As lovely as it is, this weather is very hard on the poor, without adequate protection from the cold. Please, if you are feeling generous, please help out the good people at Operation Hope – Kuwait as they gather gently used shoes, coats and warm bedding to distribute to the poorest of the poor. No matter what you can give (they can always use your monetary donations, too!) every penny will benefit those who need it the most – the very very poor.
Bulgur/Burgul and Garbonzo Beans/Hummos – Great Cold Weather Fare
While we were staying with our son and his wife, we had a lot of fun cooking. EnviroGirl shared a great grain recipe, with like seven different grains. It reminded me that I had wanted to find a recipe for the wonderful dish we ate at Naranj, in Damascus so I Googled, and found a recipe that sounded a lot like it – and besides that, it looks really simple.
There are a lot of ingredients I cannot find in Kuwait, but burgul is something easily found. I gave it a try, and AdventureMan and I agreed, it is a total keeper. Looks pretty good, hmmm?
When we sat down to dinner, AdventureMan asked what it was called.
“Burgul and garbanzo beans,” I replied.
“What was it called in Damascus?” he asked.
“Burgul Wa Hummos” I replied, and we both laughed, because it is exactly the same name, except maybe it was called “Hummos wa Burgul,” I might have switched it. Same thing, same thing.
Of course, I changed the original recipe a little. The one we had in Damascus was sinfully butter-y.
Here is the original recipe:
Bulgur and Garbanzo Bean Pilaf
1 1/2 cup Chopped onion
2 tbl Butter or olive oil
1cup Bulgur or cracked wheat
1cup Canned garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1/4 cup Diced dried apricots or golden raisins
1 stk cinnamon
2 cup chicken broth
2 tbl Sliced natural almonds, toasted in dry skillet
Method :
• Combine onion and butter in deep wide skillet. Cook, stirring, over mediun-low heat until onion is golden, about 10 minutes. Stir in bulgur, garbanzo beans, apricots and cinnamon stick.
• Add broth and bring to boil. Stir once. Cover and cook over low heat until broth is absorbed. about 20 minutes. Let stand. covered, 10 minutes.
• Meanwhile, toast almonds in small dry skillet, stirring, over low heat, about 3 minutes. Remove cinnamon stick from pilaf. Sprinkle almonds over pilaf and serve.
• Makes 4 servings.
I doubled the butter. I added five cloves of finely chopped garlic, which I sauteed until soft. Instead of apricots or raisins, I used those dried pomegranate seeds you find in the Mubarakiyya market – can someone tell me what they are called? So tart, so beautiful, so delicious! It just made this dish.
(Wiki says: Wild pomegranate seeds are sometimes used as a spice known as anardana (which literally means pomegranate (anar) seeds (dana) in Persian)
We used about double the toasted almonds.
This was my very first time ever for toasting almonds. It took me a little longer than three minutes; maybe my low heat is too low, but it was fun, and the toasted almonds make a big difference in the final taste. I had so much fun toasting the almonds that afterwards, I also toasted sesame seeds, just to see if I could (and I could! 🙂 )
I have to tell you, this dish is delicious! We are trying to eat less meat, eat lower on the food chain, and this dish will help us to do that. We figured, we actually could add a little meat – some leftover chunks of chicken, some sausage, or even some shrimp – and it would still be really really good, and keep meat intake minimal.
Does anyone eat burgul for breakfast? It seems to me it would be good with a little brown sugar and cinnamon and pecans, or blueberries?
Qatteri Cat Trims the Tree
3:30 in the morning, and I am wide-awake. I can lie in bad and toss and turn, or I can get up and make use of all this energy now and take a nap later, which is what I decide to do. I want to get a Christmas tree up, and I am hoping Qatteri Cat will not take too much interest. Two years ago, he pulled the tree over in the middle of the night, utter chaos.
Toss a load of laundry in the washer, pull down the tree box, get it set up, lights on – it’s great putting on lights while it is still dark out (I can see the ring of fishing boats along the horizon, and I shiver, thinking it must be really, really cold out there with the near zero Centigrade overnight temperatures) because I can see where I am putting them and how they will look when it is all finished, not too many lights in one area and big empty spaces elsewhere.
And then – the ornaments. When I have my own house, I usually have one big tree in the living room and one smaller one in the family room. The big tree has all the beautiful ornaments we have collected over the years, and the smaller tree is usually a theme tree – Maybe all red and white, pepperminty, one year and all blue and silver another. It’s my experiment tree. But we never mess with the serious family tree – it is thoroughly eclectic, and that is the way we want it to be. Hmmm. I think I will do a separate entry later on the ornaments.
The lights are on – just as the sky is beginning to lighten, the Qatteri Can and I finish up. The Qatteri Cat goes and gets his babies to share the tree with. Thanks be to God, he is not showing any interest in pulling on anything this year. We enjoy the lights together.
We put on Christmas music and I get a cup of coffee so I can sit and see if the tree needs more. Here is one of my very favorite Christmas CD’s (I have a collection of very old Christmas music, along with some very good more recent Christmas music)
The Qatteri Cat says he is finished. He is exhausted. He is going to take a nap. Wouldn’t it be nice, to have the life of a housecat?
Night Flight
Arriving at the next airport, we find our flight is delayed, while a seat is found for every single passenger. As I look around, I feel dismay – this flight is like 3/4 college students. We thought with Eid having ended, the plane would be half empty – NOT so! The lounge is packed with twenty-somethings headed home to Kuwait on Christmas break from their universities in the USA.
I used to be one of those. My parents lived in Germany; my sister and I would travel home. One difference, we were flying military planes, so they would wait until a whole planeload of college students had gathered and then send us all off to Frankfurt on one plane. It was party party party, card games, laughing, talking, catching up with friends from all over Europe, some flying on to bases in north Africa and Greece . . . I don’t think we had any bases in the Middle East at that time (It was a LONG time ago!)
But payback is hell. Now I am about to board a flight full of young people like I used to be. I can kiss a good night’s sleep goodbye! Every single seat on the plane is taken, and it is a BIG plane. I prepare for the worst. I remember those days . . .
Here is what really happened: this was the nicest, most polite group of college age students I have ever met. When they gathered at the food places, they talked quietly. Most of them slept or quietly watched movies the entire flight. The flight was one of the quietest I have ever been on. The bathrooms stayed relatively clean. I was so totally impressed.
If there are Kuwaiti parents reading this blog whose college students are flying home around now, you can pat yourselves on the back. You raised young people with excellent manners. 🙂
Photo Contest at Anamigo.com
From my morning e-mails, may be of interest to my photography friends out there. Bu Yousef, send them a photo or two of your pigeons!
Hi
I’m writing to let you and your readers know about a photo contest that’s going
on over at Anamigo.com. There’s a daily prize of $25 and a weekly prize of $125,
totaling $300-a-week for the cutest pet photos (voted by users). Anamigo.com is
a new online community for pet lovers and their pets. It doesn’t cost a thing
and all you have to do is join. I’ve put together this minisite which explains
everything:
I thought this might be something you would like to share with your readers. Feel
free to steal anything from the news release and if you are able to post, or
have any questions please let me know.
Thank you so much,
Dan
—
Dan Krueger
dan@anamigo
http://www.anamigo.com
Airport Art – SeaTac Airport
Way way down at the end of B concourse, someone has painted the windows. It looks Christmas-y to me, or at the very least, wintery, but I can’t imagine they painted this beautiful painting just for a temporary display, so it must be permanent, or semi-permanent. Having pieces like this on display for people – public art – thrills my heart. It caught the eye, even of people rushing from the plane to their next gate. Even if it were only a second or two, it’s worth it, isn’t it, to have art in unexpected places?
I don’t understand exactly how this all fits together. There are three pieces, the forest and eagle, the night sky with constellations, and the people dreaming in their cottage bed. I tried to get an overview, and then broke it down into sections so you could see it better.
Even posting the photos, I see new details. It is as if the artist is playing a game with us, challenging us to spot the countless little details s/he included to catch our eye and delight us unexpectedly. Look at the little owls in the trees to the right of the cabin! Look at the way the artist disguised/included the doors on the left as part of the mural! Look at the stars, drifting down toward earth – or are they becoming snowflakes? Look at the comfortable couple, wrapped up warmly on a cold winter’s night. Look at the sun and the moon in their carriage, the moon pouring out the milky way stars . . . so many details! Draco the dragon! Ursa Major! I love the scope of this mural!
Jailed for Headscarf?
It’s a good think I read this article all the way through before I published it. I thought it was about a woman getting arrested for wearing hijab. She was not arrested for wearing hijab. Read the last sentence in the article. She was turned away from the courtroom for wearing hijab – that’s bad enough. She was arrested when she swore at the bailiff (an officer of the court who preserves a dignified atmosphere in the courtroom, or tries to.)
I suspect this policy is more a gang thing – prohibiting headgear that would cause an outbreak of violence in the court – but that it was enforced in ignorance and protest against this Muslim-American woman. They released her quickly once threatened with investigation.
Sikhs won the right to wear their headgear while serving in the US military, as a religious right. I am betting Muslim women can win the right to wear hijab – it just needs to be tested in the courts. I do not think they can win the right to wear niqab, or other face coverings into the court – it isn’t a religious requirement, and the safety of the court can’t be protected if you don’t know who you are letting into the courtroom.
ATLANTA (Dec. 17) – A Muslim woman arrested for refusing to take off her head scarf at a courthouse security checkpoint said Wednesday that she felt her human and civil rights were violated.
‘Stripped of My … Human Rights’
A Georgia judge ordered Lisa Valentine, above at her home in Douglasville, to serve 10 days in jail for refusing to take her head scarf off in court Tuesday. The Muslim, who had violated a policy that prohibits any headgear, was released Wednesday after an advocacy group called for a federal probe into the matter.
A judge ordered Lisa Valentine, 40, to serve 10 days in jail for contempt of court, said police in Douglasville, a city of about 20,000 people on Atlanta’s west suburban outskirts.
Valentine violated a court policy that prohibits people from wearing any headgear in court, police said after they arrested her Tuesday.
Kelley Jackson, a spokeswoman for Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, said state law doesn’t permit or prohibit head scarfs.
“It’s at the discretion of the judge and the sheriffs and is up to the security officers in the court house to enforce their decision,” she said.
Valentine, who recently moved to Georgia from New Haven, Conn., said the incident reminded her of stories she’d heard of the civil rights-era South.
“I just felt stripped of my civil, my human rights,” she said Wednesday from her home. She said she was unexpectedly released after the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations urged federal authorities to investigate the incident as well as others in Georgia.
The group cited a report that the same judge removed a woman and her 14-year-old daughter from the courtroom last week because they were wearing Muslim head scarves.
Jail officials declined to say why she was freed and municipal Court Judge Keith Rollins said that “it would not be appropriate” for him to comment on the case.
Last year, a judge in Valdosta in southern Georgia barred a Muslim woman from entering a courtroom because she would not remove her head scarf. There have been similar cases in other states, including Michigan, where a Muslim woman in Detroit filed a federal lawsuit in February 2007 after a judge dismissed her small-claims court case when she refused to remove a head and face veil.
Valentine’s husband, Omar Hall, said his wife was accompanying her nephew to a traffic citation hearing when officials stopped her at the metal detector and told her she would not be allowed in the courtroom with the head scarf, known as a hijab.
Hall said Valentine, an insurance underwriter, told the bailiff that she had been in courtrooms before with the scarf on and that removing it would be a religious violation. When she turned to leave and uttered an expletive, Hall said a bailiff handcuffed her and took her before the judge.
Associated Press writer Kate Brumback in Atlanta contributed to this report.
Anthony’s At the Airport
We like the Anthony’s chain of seafood restaurants in the Seattle area, and we did not know they had one at the Seattle airport. We got there early, our flight was delayed, so we decided to have breakfast. There were all kinds of options, but when we saw the Anthony’s, we knew that was where we wanted to eat.
First, as you walk in, the floor is sort of sea-like, beach and sea-like, all done in stone and concrete and glass, but in waves. I was so fascinated by having all that beauty underfoot that I completely forgot to take any photos, but it thrilled me to have artwork so beautifully utilitarian. I can’t imagine who designed it, but it delighted my heart.
And, speaking of hearts, AdventureMan and I were disgustingly good. We just got our blood tests back and while our cholesterol levels have improved, we are still borderline, and want to be careful. I am not a big fan of oatmeal, but when it is smothered in brown sugar and pecans and blueberries it is a whole different ball game.
AdventureMan had the granola with bananas and blueberries – and said it was a “Yumm.”
We loved the windows of the restaurant – it reminded us of the old Saarinen TWA wing at JFK airport, with it’s soaring ceilings and feeling of flight.
I love the care taken with the details – even the teacups:
And the reminder that Anthony’s – even at the airport – sticks close to the sea:
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