Cauliflower Salad
With the warm weather coming back in, it’s time for nice cool salads again. Cauliflower is expensive in Kuwait – most countries where I have made this, it is reasonable, but in Kuwait, I guess it is very special. Probably because it is more of a cold weather vegetable. You can get it here, but even in the markets, it is dear.
Ladies seem to like this one a lot more than men do, or at least AdventureMan doesn’t like it, but it disappears in a heartbeat at a ladies lunch:
1 head lettuce
1 head cauliflower, broken into small pieces
1 lb bacon, fried crisp and crumbled (in Kuwait, use beef or turkey, and make sure it is crisp!)
6 green onions, sliced, especially the green parts
Blend together:
2 cups mayonnaise
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
Layer lettuce, cauliflower, bacon and onion in large salad bowl. Spread dressing over the top. Seal with Saran-type wrap and refrigerate overnight. Toss just before serving.
(In the interest of waistlines, I usually use a cup of non-fat yoghurt in place of one cup of mayonnaise; it isn’t quite so rich but the difference is barely discernible.)
(In Kuwait, mix up the mayonnaise, sugar, parmesan cheese first, and give it plenty of time for the sugar to melt; sugar in Kuwait is not refined as finely as in the US, and sugar grit in the salad dressing is too distracting!)
Goat Grope
I love living in Kuwait. Just when you start to take everything for granted, you get a little jaded, you even start driving a little like a Kuwaiti, something happens that reminds me I’m really not in Kansas, and I get a big grin. The other day, on a back highway, we came across a whole herd of camels. We used to see these all the time in Qatar, but this is my first time seeing camels just out roaming in such large numbers in Kuwait. Just reminds me how amazing life is, this little girl from Alaska is out watching a camel herd in Kuwait. Just too amazing for me.
In the middle of the most opulent housing areas in town, you will hear roosters crowing. Sometimes, near the Eid festivals, you will hear sheep baaaaaahhhhhh-ing.
Leaving a local store recently, I heard a very very loud, desperate cry, like “NNNNNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH” and I looked around and there was a woman, and her son, and a very reluctant, very large, totally freaked out goat. The little lady has one of those camel whips, and she is whipping the hell out of the goat, the son is pulling on the muzzle, the goat has his feet dug in and is rearing back and howling for dear life.
Goats really are not my favorite creatures. I find them very . . . hmmmm.. . . . goaty. They have these filthy beards that always have stuff caught in them, they have these weird cold eyes that sort of pop out of their heads, and there is nothing cute about them, but this goat’s screaming really got me. At the same time, watching these two grown-ups with this very very stubborn goat made me laugh. To get the goat across the road, the son had to pull with all his strength, and the little old woman had to get behind and push. I wish I could have taken that photo, but I was busy turning my car around to go back and get any shot I could get.
And THAT is why I tell you to always carry your cameras in your car!
Sweet and Clear
The morning dawned sweet and clear, it is 50°F / 10°C and there is no dust! No dust! If there is one thing a dust storm is good for, it is that it makes us truly appreciate how sweet it is when there is NO dust storm.
Looking at the forecast for the rest of the week, it is soon approaching 90°F – March is the great transition between winter and summer. It happens too fast for me, I wish for a few more weeks of the temperate weather, when we can go out and walk and breathe the cool air (when it is not a dust storm.)
People are already talking about putting away their winter clothing.
Al Ahmadi Minaret
I see a lot of new mosques going up in Kuwait, and I see a lot of renovations. I just wish someone would spruce up this beautiful old minaret in Al Ahmadi. Looks to me like it is well-built, just needs a new coat of paint. And then I start to wonder, do mosques have committees, like churches do? We have the committee for the church grounds, the committee to take care of the altar, the committee to welcome new members, the committee to work with church school programs for the children . . . it goes on and on!
Do mosques have citizens committees?
Cell Phone Terrorist
I have my own personal terrorist. Somehow, somewhere, he got my phone number. If I forget to turn my cell phone off, he calls at around 2 in the morning. If I just hang up, he calls again.
He called me last night, again. After two calls (I wasn’t awake enough the first time to think about turning my phone off) I did turn the phone off and first thing this morning, cup of coffee in hand, I called him back.
He answered, sounding very confused and sleepy, and maybe Bangladeshi.
“I think you have the wrong number,” I said, and hung up.
Fifteen minutes later, he called again.
“Wrong number,” I said, and hung up.
AdventureMan asks me why I don’t put the phone on silent. I guess I could, but I would probably forget to put it back on ring the next day. I could leave the phone in another room at night, and I probably will.
More Dust 5 March 2008
This is what the morning looks like. There is dust in the air, there is dust on my windows. This dust is not like sand blowing around; there isn’t anything accumulating on the roads, at least from what I can see. The temperature has dropped once again, and it is 57°F / 14°C at 0630 with “heavy blowing widespread dust”.
New Crop Palm Trees
Sitting over a long lunch, a friend asked me if I could remember my earliest impressions of Kuwait, and all I could remember was that the traffic speeds scared the hell out of me. Then, yesterday morning, we were driving on 40 and my memory was jogged; I remember moving here from Qatar and thinking how GREEN Kuwait is.
Qatar is impeccably clean. Street crews are out all the time, insuring that the highways are immaculate. There are beautiful flowers and wide boulevards. But when you leave Qatar, you realize your eyes are starved for green. I remember landing here the first time, and seeing pockets of green, even in very desert-like areas. I love the way the government has planted trees, especially palm trees. Your mind may not always register them, but it makes for a nicer environment.
I noticed recently a new crop of palm tree antennas. I think this is a total hoot. A generation ago, everyone in this area was buying Eiffel tower replicas for their roofs to bring in TV signals; now the communication towers are being disguised – and I love it. I blogged about this a while back but this time, I am going to challenge YOU – take your camera and open your eyes. When you see a disguised communications tower, shoot it.
How do you recognize them? They are taller than any real palm tree you have ever seen. They have no dead leaves and nothing on the trunk. They tend to be near hotels, but I also see them occasionally in a residential district.
You can blog it, or you can send it to me as a JPEG attachment and I will publish them. Be sure to tell us where it is taken. Here is the one I saw at the Hilton:
Here is the previous entry on Palm-Tree-Antennas.
And bravo to whoever came up with this idea – it is clever and it is a great disguise for those communication towers. Gives me a grin whenever I see them.
No sunrise today; the dust is rolling in and the sun can barely be seen. The temperature at 0830 is 66°F/19°C.
And Everything Went Wrong
Five minutes ago there was another accident outside my house. I was on the phone before I even spotted it, calling 777.
The guy who hit the other guy is backing up and . . .DRIVING AWAY! There must be 20 witnesses with cell phones looking dumbfounded as he is driving away, but not so dumbfounded they are not taking photos of the car with their cell phones and writing down the license number. I am sorry, whoever was the hitter was dumber than dumb.
777 rings and rings. Some man finally answers, sounding annoyed, and when I ask for the traffic police, he says something – it didn’t sound very nice – and hung up on me. (The women must have gone home. They are always polite, efficient, and competant.) When I dialed the local police directly (yep, we’ve talked before so I DO have their number) NO ONE answers.
It is time for prayer, but . . . 20 minutes later, the hit car is still causing all kinds of traffic problems and no one can do anything because no police are coming.
Update – two minutes later, there are cops, there is an ambulance, and there are 20 people showing photos to the police of the numbskull who hit and run. Don’t you just love technology?
Sabille Shop
I love sabilles. Sabilles are localized charity, “in a dry and thirsty land” they are provided by generous souls that the thirsty might have cool, fresh water to refresh thenselves in the heat of the day. You will see them at mosques, along city streets, in every neighboorhood. They come in fanciful shapes; if you type “sabille” into the HT&E search window, you will see more. I love the Kuwait Liberation Tower ones, and also the water-tower wannabes, but I also like the ones that look like old castles or old doors or jugs. I love it that people go to the trouble to make something utilitarian interesting, even artistic.
Recently, I found a shop in the Wafa Mall that sells sabilles:
The shop is called Fine Things, and also has some fancy presentation boxes and this, which looks like a mail box to me, but might be for collecting charitable donations, or . . . ? I might be totally wrong. Your guess is as good as mine:
I like this tiny little mall because it has commercial kitchen supply shops with all kinds of display cases and things you don’t find very often. There is also a mattress shop; I always laugh when there is a family shopping there for mattresses because the parents don’t say “NO!” to their kids, so the kids are JUMPING ON THE MATTRESSES! The salesmen seem unable to ask the parents to make them stop.
Just-Before-Sunrise 3 March 2008
Sunrise this morning was just another sunrise, no clouds, nothing to distinguish itself. But – just before sunrise – a whole other story:
It is 72°F / 22°C and very hazy, the kind of haze that also sends people to the hospital with aggravated asthma.
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