Tawash Restaurant
We didn’t end up at the Brussels. As we walked into the souks, we smelled a whiff of grilling meat and decided we wanted Arabic food while we could get it. We walked up and down and decided this was the night to eat at the Tawash.
The Tawash is gorgeous. Somebody put a lot of thought into it. You can eat outside, along the walkway, or outside on the balcony, or outside on the upstairs terrace. Or you can eat inside, in a private dining room, or in a large dining room that can be separated by tent-like hangings that drop down between tables. It is beautifully thought through.
We chose the balcony – we wanted to be outside, but I don’t like to eat right out on the street, with people walking by and oogling my food.
We started with hummus and baba ghannoush, served with hot hot bread:
And then we had two great dishes, a traditional Kepsa (mensaf in Jordan) which is rice cooked with delicious spices and, in this case, chicken:
And a shrimp dish, the shrimp marinated in yoghurt, then fried, accompanied by fried vegetables, sort of like tempura – the batter was very light:
And we finished with strong, grainy coffee:
If you have special guests in town for only one night, this would be a great place to take them. It is a beautiful building, it has character and charm, the food is very good, the service is attentive without being intrusive, and it has a kind of magic, a uniqueness that sets it apart from the chains of restaurants also in the souks. If the weather allows you to sit outside – do so. Part of the charm for us was the great parade of humanity passing by as we conversed and ate. It’s an altogether lovely restaurant.
Which Restaurant??? Which Hotel???
From Gulf Times
Restaurant at five-star hotel ordered to close
Municipal authorities have ordered the closure of a restaurant in a prominent five-star hotel in Doha for non-compliance of regulations, says a report published in a local daily.
The hotel authorities have been charged on the count of not obtaining health clearance certificate for the staff employed in the restaurant. A charge-sheet was framed by the prosecution after a full investigation and the matter has been referred to a court of law.
“It is the result of the periodic random inspection carried out by the authorities on all the eateries,” says the report.
Papaya Fights Cancer
Researchers: Papaya May Fight Cancer
From AOL Health News
By Marrecca Fiore Mar 11th 2010 11:23AM
A study from researchers at the University of Florida finds that papaya has a dramatic anticancer effect against a broad range of lab grown tumors such as those that cause liver cancer and lung cancer.
In a paper published in the Feb. 17 issue of the “Journal of Ethnopharmacology,” University of Florida researcher Nam Dang, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues in Japan say they made a tea using an extract made from dried papaya leaves to fight cancers of the cervix, breast, liver, lung and pancreas. The researchers say the anticancer effects were stronger when cells received larger doses of the tea.
Dr. Dang and his colleagues also documented for the first time that papaya leaf extract boosts the production of key signaling molecules called Th1-type cytokines, which help regulate the immune system. In addition to papaya’s direct antitumor effect on various cancers, the signaling of Th1-type cytokines suggests possible therapeutic strategies that use the immune system to fight cancer, researchers said.
The papaya extract did not have any toxic effects on normal cells, avoiding a common and devastating consequence of many cancer therapy regimens, such as chemotherapy.
The success of the papaya extract in acting on cancer without toxicity is consistent with reports from indigenous populations in Australia and his native Vietnam, said Dang, a professor of medicine and medical director of the UF Shands Cancer Center Clinical Trials Office.
“Based on what I have seen and heard in a clinical setting, nobody who takes this extract experiences demonstrable toxicity; it seems like you could take it for a long time — as long as it is effective,” he said in a statement.
Researchers exposed 10 different types of cancer cell cultures to four strengths of papaya leaf extract and measured the effect after 24 hours. Papaya slowed the growth of tumors in all the cultures.
In a similar analysis, the team also looked at the effect of papaya extract on the production of antitumor molecules known as cytokines. Because the papaya was shown to promote the production of Th1-type cytokines, this raises the possibility of future use of papaya extract components in immune-related conditions such as inflammation, autoimmune disease and some cancers.
Bharat B. Aggarwal, Ph.D., a researcher at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, already is so convinced of papaya’s restorative powers that he has a serving of the fruit every day.
“We have always known that papaya has a lot of interesting things in there,” Aggarwal, a professor in the center’s department of experimental therapeutics who was not involved in the UF research, said in a statement.
“This paper has not gone too much into identifying the components responsible for the activity, which is just fine. I think that is a good beginning,” Aggarwal said.
Beirut Breakfast
One of the first things that happened when I came back to Doha was my friends took me to breakfast at the Beirut. When they invited me, I was puzzled. The Beirut, as I remember it, was a place on Shara Kharaba (Electricity Street) where you drove up and guys in baseball caps came to your car and your ordered and they brought the food.
My friends are conservative, and fully covered, abaya and niqab. I could not imagine them sitting in an all-men kind of place.
But no, they took me to the NEW Beirut, down in the Souq al Waqif, and oh, what a treat! Everything, all the good foods they always had at the Beirut, only now you could sit at a table and eat! There is a family area upstairs (with a very nice restroom, by the way) and downstairs all the bachelors eat (meaning any male without a female with him) and then there is outside seating which is great when you are meeting up with western friends.
Today I was meeting up with one of my very best friends, a souk buddy, who enjoys just roaming and experiencing as I do. Actually, she had an agenda, and that will be the next blog entry, but we have been friends for a long time. Partners in crime. We egg each other on.
Most of the time we would order felafel (little balls of cooked ground chickpeas – garbanzos – and parsley, deep fried – sort of like hush puppies) and fool – beans, and hummous, with oil or yoghurt or meat. I would see guys eating bowls of stuff, though, like cereal bowls, only it wasn’t cereal, it looked maybe like oatmeal. We asked what it was, and they said it is like breakfast chickpeas and hummos with fried bread – fattoush – with yoghurt over it. So it sort of is like oatmeal, only it isn’t oatmeal. It is called Fatta.
Oh. My. Friends.
All my years in this part of the world, and I didn’t know about Fatta. Instead of forcing myself to eat oatmeal, I could have been eating Fatta.
This is SO delicious. So delicious that I beg you, if it is horrifyingly fattening, please don’t tell me. It has beans, and the fried flatbread, and toasted pine nuts, and slivered almonds, all covered with a coat of yoghurt and a drizzle of really tasty olive oil. It is so unbelievably delicious; if it were equivalent of oatmeal, this is what I would eat every day for breakfast for the rest of my life, it is so good.
But I have the bad feeling that anything so delicious is probably not so good for me. I have the feeling that it is called Fatta because it will make me big and fatta if I continue to eat it and enjoy it as I did today. Oh YUMMMMMMM.
5 Minute Chocolate-Cake-in-a-Mug
LOL, sent by a good friend who knows how I love chocolate. 🙂
5 MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE
4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
A small splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug (MicroSafe)
Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly.
Pour in the milk and oil and mix well..
Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract, and mix again.
Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts.
The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don’t be alarmed!
Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.
EAT ! (this can serve 2 if you want to feel slightly more virtuous).
And why is this the most dangerous cake recipe in the world?
Because now we are all only 5 minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of the day or night!
Honey Baked Apples
“If you really want to make something I like . . . I really really like those baked apples.”
My daughter in law and I hate the term daughter-in-law and mother-in-law. We wish there were nicer words for the relationship we enjoy so much. I really do want her to be happy, and I want to make life with a new baby easier, so I am glad there is something I can do that will make life sweeter.
I made this recipe up from things we keep on hand in the house. I don’t think it matters what kind of apples you use; it is the honey, nuts and cinnamon that make this SOOOOOO good:
Heat oven to 350°F/180°C
apples – cut in half, scoop out seeds with a spoon, cut off stem or end pieces
chopped pecans, or walnuts – fill each apple cavity
honey – pour honey into each apple cavity over pecans, and drizzle a little over the rest of the apple
cinnamon – sprinkle lightly with cinnamon
cloves – sprinkle with a tiny bit of ground cloves
Spray a baking dish with olive oil (you do have a Misto, don’t you?) Place apples in, cut side up, fill with pecans, drizzle with honey, sprinkle with cinnamon and clove. Pop into oven and bake at 350°/180° for one hour – one hour and a quarter. Remove from oven and let cool slightly before eating.
This is a very healthy fruit dessert, but you can add a little vanilla ice cream and it will still taste good, LOL, it will also add calories. 🙂
This is what they look like when they are ready to go into the oven:
Famous Dave’s BBQ
Oh WOW.
AdventureMan wanted just one more BBQ meal to tide him over until he returns to Pensacola. We headed for Famous Dave’s, because they are really, really good.
AdventureMan had the pulled pork sandwich with baked beans and cole slaw:
I had the catfish platter, with baked beans and a cob of corn:
The catfish came with two sauces, a remoulade and a Thai sweet/hot sauce, but I prefer the BBQ sauces:
Oh my friends – Kuwait and Qatar need Famous Dave’s!
Sleepless in Pensacola
It’s cold in Pensacola. The high tomorrow will be 47°F/8°C and the lows are around freezing. You think of Florida as being warm and sunny, but with the chill wind, it is COLD. Luckily, we brought some cold weather gear.
But when a Florida baby is born, they get lots and lots of clothes of lightweight cotton, and no heavy duty sleep-blankets. Heavy duty sleep blankets are for those babies up north – AdventureMan and I know, because we went looking for them tonight, for our little grandson. Even though they have turned up the heat, Florida houses can be chill in the cold weather, and we searched in vain for a good sleep blanket.
There are new ways of doing things, different from when we were raising our son thirty years ago. Now you have to be sure the baby is sleeping on his back (we were all told to be sure they slept on their stomachs) and there can be no blankets in the crib or bassinet, no soft toys, no pillows. They recommend sleep sacks because the baby stays warm and comfortable, while lowering any risk of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). They know so much more than when we were raising children.
I was able to spend a few hours with my grandson today, holding him while his parents napped or relaxed. AdventureMan made a big pot of nourishing and delicious Beef Vegetable Soup. He is spending time with his grandson now – when the grandson squawks, AdventureMan starts describing one of Napoleon’s campaigns and within minutes, the squalls diminish and baby is sound asleep. LLOOOLLLL! He is on duty now, while I have crawled into bed. This being a grandparent is great stuff – we get to sleep all night; Mommy is nursing, and so she has night duty. They both have big circles under their eyes and are talking about the effects of sleep deprivation – if you’ve ever been a parent, you will know exactly what they are talking about.
Think I had better order a sleep blanket!
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