Lebanese food

I LOVE the food here. It´s super yum. Right up the
street from me is a chawarma guy. I had to lay off
though because it was just getting to be too much, and
the stuff really is greasy. But I have not been able
to lay off the Arab sweets. There are at least ten
patisseries within a 4 minute walk from my door. And
it´s all this stuff that I never knew about before--it
goes way beyond baklawa and kunafa. Namora is my
favorite. I´m eating this stuff way too much.

The typical Lebanese mezza is great. Olives, white
cheese, hommos, baba ganoush. Lots of salads and
vegetables and beans. All right up my alley.

A parent had us over for dinner. It was an amazing
extravaganza of six courses. It started with the nuts.
Then the cold stuff--salads and dips. Then came the
meat. It was like every type of meat. She just kept
bringing the stuff out on skewers. And then
desserts--not just the Arabic sweets, but a creme
caramel she had made, and cut up fruit. She sent us
home with apples and figs from her garden. That set
me off on a two week stint of eating teen
(figs) all the time. They don´t always have that in
the souk, either, so I was compromising with the dried
stuff, which is soooooo good. But again, I had to
stop. It´s too easy to pig out on that stuff.

The pizza in this country is pretty much all
disgusting. And people here seem to eat a lot of
pizza. They make little bagel size ones and make them
for parties and eat them for lunch. They´re worse
than the frozen stuff you´d get in the U.S., or at least
comparable. They also eat a lot of French fries.
Sometimes they make sandwiches out of pita bread and
just have French fries with mayonnaise and ketchup inside them. . .. ew!

They also sell ice cream on the street, which is more like rubber. Spooning it out of the cup and into your mouth is like pulling silly putty. I was going to break it with my hand before I threw it away.

There´s one Chinese restaurant in Aley, and it´s
actually pretty good. There are actually some Chinese
people who work there. The only East Asians in
probably the whole mountain. There are many South
Asians, mostly from Bangladesh, who are the ¨help¨in
many people´s homes, including my students. One of
the girls dressed in a sari for Halloween that her
maid let her borrow.

They eat this stuff called manoushe. You can get it
with zaatar (a mix of spices which is mostly thyme)
and/or jibna (cheese). So the first time I had it, I was like, I´ve had this before. And then I
realized that back in the U.S. of A. we call this a
quesadilla, except there´s all this grass stuff on it,
that gives it a kind of bitter taste.

My friend got to spend a Sunday with a Lebanese
family. And they had a lot of raw meat, like cow
brains and such. She said she couldn´t really eat it.
She used her khibiz (pita bread) to cover half her
plate. But of course the people caught on and asked
her what was wrong. We´re sure she offended them.