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After a lovely little slumber party, Katelyn, Mae and I awoke on Friday morning itching for an Egyptian breakfast. Usually, this breakfast consists of some sort of combination of ful, falafel, bread, salads, and eggs, and although it would be easy to buy any of these ingredients from a restaurant, we decided we wanted to do it ourselves.
So, we leave the apartment and head to our favorite bakery (the one where they sell Balah el-Sham (a dessert called "dates of Lebanon/ Syria (referred to commonly as Belad Al Sham, or the nations of the Sham). The dessert is fried doughy goodness and when you take a bite, like a gusher, it bursts with a sweet syrupy liquid. They are just fabulous). But anyway, we went to this bakery to look for bread- specifically Egyptian bread- Eish Baladi. But, they only had Eish Shami- bread Shami style (Lebanon and Syria). This was not good enough for us. So we asked him to point us to the direction of the nearest Forn.
Now here's the crux of the blog post:
The Forn:
An Arabic word for oven, the forn is a bakery which serves government subsidized bread to the community. You might have heard about some protests a few years ago when the government wanted to stop subsidizing this bread, and the whole country erupted out of fury. The government caved, and the subsidized bread continues to exist- although there is a huge controversy surrounding this whole issue. To the best of my knowledge and understanding, although I'm certainly no economist, government subsidized food causes a whole slew of not so ideal consequences, and for these reasons, the UN tries to discourage government subsidized food. For instance, the system is really susceptible to corruption- bakers bribe their inspectors, bakers sell the cheap flour for higher prices etc, the subsidies make people reliant on the cheap bread which makes things more difficult in the long run, as the whole bread economy is reliant on the government to function. So, if the government wants to stop subsidizing and spend the money on other projects, and currently (according to a NYtimes article, the Egyptian government is spending more on bread subsidies than housing and education) they run into a ton of popular protest, as seen in 2008 (and 1977). There are also plenty of environmental consequences when farmers are given incentives to only grow wheat leading to the mass production of one product. On the other hand, with most Egyptian families surviving on $2 a day, 20 loaves of bread for 1 pound couldn't be more ideal. And, ala fikra (by the way), the word for bread in Egyptian Arabic, eish (as opposed to Khubz in Modern Standard) means "life" in Arabic- kind of giving you a sense of how important and central bread is to lives of Egyptians.
Bread from the forn is 5 piasteres (basically 5 pennies) and you can buy 10 loaves of bread for half a pound. Pretty great deal.
Anyway...
we arrive at the forn to see that it is basically a hole in the wall.
Luckily it was a Friday so everyone was at prayer and it wasn't too crowded, but usually you see lines and lines of people waiting for their bread.
When we reached the counter, we see that the bread is rolling straight from the oven onto the counter. You are supposed to bring your own bag in addition to something to lay the bread on to allow it time to cool. We had neither of these things, so we ran around a little bit looking for something. Finally, we buy a newspaper.
Ok, take 2.
We reach the counter again, give them half a pound and they give us 10 pita loaves.
They are smoking hot and difficult to touch, especially considering the only thing separating us from them is a measly copy of Al-Ahram!
So following the example of everyone else there, we lay our newspaper down on the sidewalk, put our bread on top, and allow it to cool for a minute (and also we got laughed at for taking pictures of this whole situation!)
Anyway, after picking up our bread and a few miscommunications with the falafel and ful guy (we asked for a carton of falafel and he gave us a carton of falafel mix), it was time to put our breakfast together.
Mae was in charge of the ful- we ordered ful with tahina, and she mashed and mixed it all up, added salt, pepper, cumin, and lemon juice, just like her grandfather taught her, Katelyn made cucumber, tomato, and onion salad, and I was in charge of coffee, tea, juice, and setting the table.
Tada! A perfect Egyptian breakfast.
P.S Only 3 people have responded to my poll. Now this may merely be a true reflection of my readership, in which case, thank you to my 3 loyal readers. But if not, if I do have more readers than just my parents, please respond! If only to make me feel good about figuring out how to put a poll a my blog!
I'm not so interested in any of those things. Talk about the camel vending business you've mentioned getting into, you know, like the camel vending machines you'll put in gas stations like york peppermint patties that people rent out and ride to save the environment... or how you're going to set up a peanut stand outside the president's office and yell "Peanuuuuuuts tayou" until he gives you a government post and you can get him to declare war on Freedonia then switch sides again until, at the end, you get a chance to throw fruit at Margaret Dumont.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's what I care about.
- Ari
OMG! Your brother is just too much! However, before I read his comment, I wanted to tell you that my two favorite posts this time around were the one that you just wrote and the one about Yom Kippur- when you first got there.
ReplyDeletebar bar---i miss you!! (I miss you too keeks!)
ReplyDeleteAh, sorry. I just got to reading this, but it looks like the poll has already closed.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the interesting posts!