Islamic cleric bans women from touching bananas, cucumbers for sexual resemblance
Thank you, John Mueller, for the following article, which is sadly hilarious:
An Islamic cleric in Europe says that women should avoid bananas, cucumbers, zucchini and other phallic fruits and vegetables. They may arouse sexual thoughts and that would be horrible.
Bikamasr reported, via ROP:
An Islamic cleric residing in Europe said that women should not be close to bananas or cucumbers, in order to avoid any “sexual thoughts.”
The unnamed sheikh, who was featured in an article on el-Senousa news, was quoted saying that if women wish to eat these food items, a third party, preferably a male related to them such as their a father or husband, should cut the items into small pieces and serve.
He said that these fruits and vegetables “resemble the male penis” and hence could arouse women or “make them think of sex.”
He also added carrots and zucchini to the list of forbidden foods for women.
The sheikh was asked how to “control” women when they are out shopping for groceries and if holding these items at the market would be bad for them. The cleric answered saying this matter is between them and God.
And what about the poor Moslem men, handling peaches, grapefruits, pomegranates . . . . . . ? Ah yes, between them and God.
You can read the entire article in it’s origin by clicking BIKYAMASR HERE
The Travellers’ Dilemma
The restaurants were full this Saturday in Pensacola, all the nice restaurants; there is a Beth Moore conference in town and all the ladies are out to lunch. We were lucky, we walked in just before the crowd and snagged a table at one of our favorite Pensacola restaurants, The Fish House. Great meal, great service, great conversation, and we were out in under an hour. Wooo HOOO.
Have you noticed many of the good restaurants don’t take reservations these days, not unless you are a large group, like six or more? Maybe as the economy starts to lift again, that will change. It’s just odd.
Meanwhile, I have a couple flights tomorrow, and now that I am not flying overnight, or half the world, and now that we are retired, I am flying sardine class. And the airlines don’t serve food. If you buy food in the airport, your choices are limited, and expensive, and it can be messy.
So I’ve been thinking about what to take. I need something nutritious. I need something that tastes good. I need something that can be eaten sort of subtly; now that there is not a real meal time, you might be eating with people who don’t have anything. So you also need something you can share.
It can’t have an offensive smell. We love those Japanese crackers, but in a confined space, all of a sudden you notice how FISHY they smell. Ditto sushi, LOL. Can’t eat Wasabi peas, either, because they are also odor causing, in their own way. No garlic; some people cannot abide garlic or onions.
It can’t be something that might leak in my carry on. It can’t be something that needs a utensil. It can’t be too salty, or carry too many calories. It can’t be loudly crunchy, like carrots or celery.
Do you see the problem?
AdventureMan says “You worry about things like that?” He is genuinely puzzled. But yeh, I think about these things, and try to anticipate a problem so that there ISN’T a problem.
I finally decided on some Chex Mix, and some trail mix (nuts and fruits). You can eat a little at a time, you can share.
I figure I can pick up some coffee at the airport where I change flights. I love the seasonal Peppermint Mochas, Gingerbread Lattes, etc. It’s a most wonderful time of the year 🙂
What do you take on a long flight when you will not be provided a meal?
Up the Creek Raw in Apalachicola
Near the Water Street Hotel was the Up the Creek Raw Bar, and we went there for lunch and enjoyed it so much we went back for dinner. GREAT oysters.
I don’t do raw, so I had mine steamed, but they were all good. My favorite favorite part was the Crab and Lobster Bisque. I liked the cup I had with my oysters at lunch, so I had the bowl for dinner. It was really that good.
The Crab and Lobster Bisque:
Oysters, Raw:
Steamed Oysters:
Grilled Grouper:
I loved the bisque. The place was jammed with people, having a good time. I don’t know why I didn’t like it better.
. . . Hurray for the Pumpkin Pie . . .
“You’ve worked HARD!” our water aerobics instructor told us. “You get a free pass tomorrow; you can eat anything!”
I wish she hadn’t said that. We did work hard, but it wasn’t just one day of feasting, it was pretty much four days, and we enjoyed ourselves too much. No matter how hard we had worked Wednesday morning, it wasn’t enough to cover four days.
Arriving at Papa’s and Grammy’s we were welcomed with a bubbling gumbo, a combined effort of Papa and Grammy; Grammy did all the shopping and chopping, and PaPa worked the roux, which is the butter and flour combination that makes that smoky flavored base for the gumbo. They had just finished cleaning and deveining about 40 pounds of shrimp for Thanksgiving, and threw a few in the gumbo. Oh YUM. The next morning was full of preparations, and then, mid-morning, the feasting began, with all the guys shucking oysters and eating boiled shrimp. As you drive up, you can smell smoke from an outdoor fire, and chairs and tables are out everywhere, but the shucking goes on down near the creek:
The house is beautiful, spacious and welcoming for so many people. The happy baby, who is now a happy toddler, was in heaven – he was surrounded by boy toys – tractors and golf carts and a Model A and all sorts of age appropriate toys, as well as cousins, aunts, uncles and a lot of hilarious rough housing. Why is it kids just love the terror of being turned upside-down?
For me, this was the best Thanksgiving with the family; finally I am beginning to figure out who is who from year to year. I still have to ask questions, but they seem more comfortable with me, and I had some really good conversations, sort of beyond the polite-passing-the-time conversations. I’m not that great in big crowds, but now I am beginning to have some good one-on-ones, and for me, that’s a great Thanksgiving.
And on, man, the food. Tables and tables of food. I don’t know how they do it, but I saw the list of cakes, and there must have been twenty cakes on THE LIST. They each have responsibilities, and somehow, it all works.
Three turkeys, all carved, and so much dressing (which I grew up calling stuffing, it all depends on where you grew up):
That green container is AdventureMan’s first foray into cranberry chutney. This one was a little tart, but tasty. As are darling daughter in law so diplomatically put it, “I would probably like it more if my taste buds were accustomed to having cranberries without sugar.”
About half of the sides were sweet potato casseroles; you can’t believe how good these are. This year this front dish was one of the favorites, squash cassarole:
This photo doesn’t begin to do justice to the desserts – holy smokes:
So the biggest brother blessed the food and we ate around one, then we visited for a few hours, people going back and grazing a little. Then the next generation cleaned everything up and got all the food packaged up and put away. About an hour later, that broccoli salad started calling me, and I went out to try a little more and discovered it was all put away, but a partner in crime knew where it was, and we pulled it out and had some, which started a whole landslide of second-platers, just when everything had been all put away, LLOOLLL!
It was a great day, a day full of thanks for all the things in life that really matter.
My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
I wish I had more self-discipline, and read more heavy weight books, but what I find is that when I read heavy non-fiction these days, it falls over when I fall asleep. Mostly, I read the New Yorker, or catch up with my news online, while listening to NPR.
I don’t know how I got My Life in France, if I ordered it or if I bought it in B&N. I’ve had it for a while. We’ve always loved Julia Child; her programs were a hoot, and she was an accomplished woman who never took herself too seriously. I will never forget one time I saw her on a Martha Stewart Christmas Special; they were doing a tall Croquembouche, and at one point, Julia was not throwing on the caramelized sugar strings the way Martha wanted her to and she grabbed the little thrower-thing out of Julia’s hand to show her how. I gasped! That is like grabbing a spoon from the Queen of England, no! No! You can’t grab a spoon from Julia Childs! You can’t show Julia Childs how to do it, Martha, you BOW to Julia Childs!
Julia Childs, classy woman that she was, just watched Martha with fascination and never showed an ounce of annoyance.
The book is hilarious. While alive, she worked with her grandson, Alex Prud-homme, gathering correspondence – she was a copious letter writer, and people in those days kept their snail mail to refer back to, the way we keep e-mails. They sat in her sunny garden, and he would ask her a few questions, and off she would go, regaling him with stories of people, places, occasions, parties, and especially FOODS.
Julia Childs worked for the OSS in World War II, the forerunner to the CIA. Stationed in India, she met her husband, and after the war ended, they married. Stifled in her California life, and and Paul jumped at a chance to live overseas. Imagine – Paris! She had to adapt to a totally different way of life, totally different living space, a totally different way of shopping for food, and she had to learn to cook. Since she was in Paris, and because she is the woman she is, she signed up for cooking classes at the Cordon Bleu, where she worked hard to master the techniques to successfully produce the sauces and delicate flavors which makes French cuisine so delicious.
She also moves to Marseilles, to post-war Germany, and to Norway, and manages to produce two books, each of which took, literally, years to finalize, because of her attention to detail, and wanting to make sure that women using her books could understand exactly what to do, and when to do it.
This is a really fun book. I would have loved to know this adventurous, courageous woman, who meticulously tested every recipe for Mastering the Art of French Cooking and changed the lives of serious cooks in America. No, I have never cooked from her book. No, I don’t have her book. I have a Larousse Gastronomique, from which she worked to get the ‘true’ Frenchness of French cooking, but I don’t have any cook books by Julia. I have put out a hint, though, and I am hoping to get one for Christmas. 🙂 Not just for me – AdventureMan is making serious inroads into adventurous cooking. He has mastered blackened fish tacos, and seared tuna, woo hoooo! He is working on the ultimate cornbread. Just wait until I get him started on the quintessential French Onion Soup, or even – maybe – French bread!
Cajun Specialty Meats / Cajun Express in Pensacola, FL
This is just such a sweet story, a moment of magic, so I am going to share it with you. A group of foreign visitors was taken to have lunch at this place, the Cajun Speciality Meats in Pensacola, and as they were trying to decide what to order, the waitress noticed they “weren’t from around here.” In short order, plates appeared at the foreign visitor’s tables with all kinds of samples of the Cajun specialities offered at this restaurant, and the visitors were totally wowed.
So was I, when I heard about it. It takes so little to make an impression, so little to make people glad they visited our country, and these little moments of magic just make me so proud of the generous spirit it demonstrates. I hope the people at Cajun Meat Specialities got as big a thrill from doing it as the guests did from receiving it.
So, back in Pensacola, we are hungering for some of that gumbo, and laughing, because actually Pensacola has a lot of Cajun influence, too. We didn’t really have to go to Louisiana, there is a lot of it right here in our own back yard. I told AdventureMan the story of Cajun Meat Specialities, and he said “Let’s go there!”
So we did.
It is such a cool place. I did not realize that in addition to serving hot meals (gumbos, etoufees, Po’boys, boudin) they also carry a grocery store full of prepared Cajun specialities, all frozen. You just take them home, thaw, heat and serve. I am thinking how easy it would be to do a dinner, and never really have to cook, LOL!
As their name would imply, they also have fresh made andouille sausage, and other meats:
We had the Cup and a Half: a cup of seafood gumbo and a half portion of Po’Boy – Yummm:
They are on Heinberg, the street behind McGuires’ Steak House:
Pocher’s in Breaux Bridge, LA
“Where should we eat?” we asked our guide, and laid out some of the recommendations we had received.
“Oh, Poche’s isn’t for tourists,” he said, “There are nicer places where tourists go, places with tablecloths and sometimes dancing in the evenings. People like us who live here go to Poche’s.”
Heh heh heh – that’s exactly the kind of places we want to go. We call them the Michelin Red R’s – good local food at reasonable prices. Off we go to Poche’s.
When we walk in, it’s like walking into a grocery store, but we knew we were in the right place. At the end of the counter is the serving line, and the daily specials. They still had rabbit. You don’t find a lot of rabbit served in the US, so this was a treat for the little French country niche in my heart.
AdventureMan had the Etoufee:
You can see, the portions are gi-normous. We could not eat our entire meals, nowhere near, no matter how delicious they were. We did buy some of the Poche’s Pecan Praline for the drive back to Pensacola, oh yummm.
This is a really fun place, a real people’s place. It’s just north of Interstate 10, outside of Breaux Bridge. You can even order from them online, or see what they’re serving for lunch today by going to Poche’s.
Here are their daily specials:
DAILY PLATE LUNCHES
Monday-Saturday 10:30AM – 2PM
Monday
Smothered Beef, Pork Backbone Stew, Baked Chicken, Crawfish Etouffeé, Mashed Potatoes, Pork & Beans
Tuesday
Smothered Pork Chops, Smothered Rabbit, Meatball Stew, Crawfish Etouffeé, Fried Chicken, Smothered Potatoes, Green Beans
Wednesday
Marinated Pork, BBQ Ribs, Stuffed Pork Chops, Crawfish Etouffeé, Fried Chicken, Potato Salad, Field Peas
Thursday
Pork Roast, Sausage Stew, Crawfish Etouffeé, Fried Chicken, Corn, Yams
Friday
Fried Catfish, Fried Shrimp, Crawfish Etouffeé, Chicken Stew, Marinated Turkey, Potato Salad, Cole Slaw
Saturday
Pork Backbone Stew, BBQ Ribs, BBQ Chicken, Stuffed Pork Chops, Boneless Pork Chops, BBQ Ribeyes, Green Beans, Fried Potatoes
Sunday Menu
10:30AM – 5PM
BBQ Lunches – A Tradition for over 30 Years
BBQ Chicken, Pork Steak & Sausage served with Homemade Potato Salad, Rice Dressing, & BBQ Sauce, Fried Catfish, Fried Shrimp, & Crawfish Etouffeé
Dinner Menu
Monday – Saturday 2PM – 8PM
Fried Catfish, Fried Shrimp, Crawfish Etouffeé, Potato Salad, Cole Slaw, French Fries
Zapote in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana
It’s dark, and we’ve been outdoors for hours so we are hungry again. AdventureMan knows what he wants; his favorite comfort food is Mexican. We turn into Zapote and we know we have come to the right place – there are lots of customers, and they look like locals.
We order, and the first surprise is the iced tea – it comes in pitchers! It’s a lot of tea:
I order Camerones (Shrimp) Diablo and AdventureMan orders Carne Asada. Both real good. 🙂
No, I don’t know why it came with french fries, and no, I didn’t eat them. 🙂
Bon Creole in New Iberia
“OK, but I want to eat lunch at Clementine’s,” I replied, as AdventureMan is scheduling some Cajun Country Swamp Tours for the afternoon and the next day. We drive back into New Iberia, and make sure we are going in the right direction on the one-way Main Street, only to discover Clementine’s is closed on Monday. Oh, Aarrrgh.
But I love my iPhone. I love it because I can put in an address, and it shows me how to get there, when to turn, where we are . . . I love it. I love it because I can put in “great food in New Iberia” and up comes names – and ratings. The highest rating other than Clementine’s is a place called Bon Creole, and it is on the one way street, St. Peters, going in the opposite direction of Main Street, so we turn around and head back in the other direction.
We are HUNGRY. So when we miss it the first time, and have to go around the block, AdventureMan says “I think I saw it, but it looked closed.” I think I saw it, too, but it looked . . . like some dive. As we come around the second time, we see a button-down-shirt-and-chinos kind of guy coming out, so we know it must be open, and he looks like a working local, not some tourist like us. And did I mention we are hungry? We decide to give it a try.
You walk in and order at the counter. I can’t say we got a warm welcome. The woman behind the counter wasn’t rude, she was just working hard, and there really wasn’t a smile. I ordered the daily special, but it was already gone. “OK,” I say, “I’ll take the gumbo, and some potato salad.”
“Potato salad comes with it.” She doesn’t even look up from writing down the order. So far, we are not encouraged, but there are a goodly amount of customers inside, and as we wait for our food, we get to listen in on all the town gossip, which is not unlike town gossip in most towns, who drinks too much, who is going out on who, and can you imagine someone wearing that to church?
Our food arrives, a bowl of gumbo, a bowl of rice and a bowl of potato salad, plastic utensils.
And then, with the first bite, everything changes.
“Oh, WoW!” I say, and my eyes open wide. “Wow!”
AdventureMan is having the same experience. “This is REALLY good!” he says.
We are quiet now, eating this totally delicious seafood gumbo. We are both busy trying to figure out how they made it taste so seafood-y, lots of shrimp, maybe some crab, but the gumbo itself, essence of shellfish, it is SO good.
What if we had judged by the exterior and had ended up in some plastic and mediocre place? What if we had missed this totally awesome seafood gumbo? This gumbo was seriously GOOD.
If you find yourself in New Iberia, hungry and looking for some seriously good gumbo, here is where to find Bon Creole:
Bon Creole also has a lot of fried dishes; we were just looking for something not-fried, but if you like fried, you too will like Bon Creole.
Avery Island and Tabasco Sauce
Sometimes it’s funny why people make the choices they do. We knew one of the first things we wanted to do on this trip was to visit Avery Island. There are a lot of little reasons. First, was that when AdventureMan was young, he was sent to a far away country, Vietnam, to fight for his country. Most of his time was spent out in the jungle, and they carried most of their food on their backs. They ate something called C-rations, little meals, like with cans of food, and the Avery/McIlhenny Tobasco company made little tiny bottles of tabasco sauce to include with each meal package. It’s a small thing, but those little bottles of tabasco sauce made a difference to those soldiers.
Later, as we flew in and out of the Middle East, Delta had a special short feature on Avery Island. Long story short, we’ve always wanted to visit there, and now we had the opportunity.
(You have to see this mosquito statue to appreciate it; it must be about 5 feet long and 4 feet high, and there are several of them. )
It was a beautiful morning, and the drive was beautiful, too, cool and lovely. Avery island is surrounded by a kind of river/moat, so it really is an island that once used to be a sugar cane plantation. As soon as we opened our car doors, the mosquitos came at me; I am a mosquito magnet.
The tour of the factory had already started, so I scooted over to the country store, which is a really run place. Who would think there could be so many products devoted to Tabasco Sauce?
Oops! Time to get back over to the factory for our tour, which is like 5 minutes, then a 10 minute movie. Just before the movie starts, the guide (who also works in the gift shop while the movie is running) gives each person tiny sample bottles of several Tabasco products – cool!
After the movie, we get to tour alongside the factory and go into the museum. Very cool. Thousands and thousands of tobasco bottles being filled, and each day they post which country(ies) they are sending this batch to. Today is Ireland.
Tabasco is made with a secret formula of specially grown tabasco peppers, vinegar and salt. Lucky for them, they have their own salt mine on the property. Just about everything they need to make tabasco sauce, right at their fingertips. This was a fun tour to take, and one of our dreams was fulfilled.
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