Monica learns to cook and eat like an Egyptian (sort of)

As many of you can probably guess, being a vegetarian in Egypt is not easy. In fact, Al Masri El Yom, a leading Egyptian newspaper, published an article about being a vegetarian in Egypt.

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/world-vegetarian-day-eat-healthy

If you're not eating meat, you're eating bread and bread and rice and bread and pizza and bread and candy and bread and carb after carb after carb. Little to no protein sources. No big yummy salads. Needless to say, if you're not trying to gain 3000 pounds, it's a little tricky.

So, here's what I've learned.

1. Mohamed Ahmed.
A little restaurant in Mohatet al Raml (downtown) whose shakshuka makes me purr and my belly jump for joy! So far, it's the only shakshuka I've found in Alex (although I'm sure there's more) and it's a terrific break from bean/bread based dishes (although I tend to eat it with ful and hummous).





This time, we also tried ful besalsa (ful with kind of a spicy tomato sauce) and had some gebna maaliya (fried white cheese). It had kind of a grilled taste, very tasty.

2. Juice. Ahh, juice. Pomegranate juice, pomegranate and banana juice, pomegranate and orange (my favorite) juice. I was lucky enough to move into an apartment right next to this jewel of a juice stand: Aseer Meka (aseer means juice). Famous for it's boreo shakes, an Egyptian version of the oreo which is apparently packed with 600 calories per 6 cookies. Aseer Meka is known all around Alex for the place to go for juice. And that's saying a lot since there's a juice stand at every corner in this city. It has 2 locations, 1 next door to my apartment and one 2 blocks away. They make every kind of juice, smoothies with yogurt, and wear these awesome tshirts- I'm hoping by the end of the year to be good enough friends with them to get one for free. But with my 2 juices a day habit, I'm sure it won't be hard. Best part: pomegranate and orange juice is 2 and a half genay (around 45 cents)



3. Cooking. Last week, my (new) roommates Nada and Mae (more on our apartment in the next post) threw a potluck dinner party (note the spelling all of my friends back home) known as a "dish party" in Arabic. Katelyn and I took on the task of making Mahshi Warah Einab which are basically stuffed graped leaves. You can make Mahshi in grape leaves, peppers, or cabbage, with meat or without. We got the recipe from Nada and embarked upon what turned out to be a bumpy ride.



First, a bite of koshari at ana misho to work up our energy (and some chocolate fateer for dessert) (see what i mean about the carbs!! oh boy.)
Next, a trip to Fathalla super market to buy all of our ingredients (it took us about 15 minutes to find the salt).
Finally, we were ready to cook.



First, we cooked the rice (which apparently we were supposed to wash first) (and apparently was the wrong kind of rice).
Then, we start chopping some veggies, washing some grape leaves, making some sauce out of tomato paste. Everything's going fine until Mae's mom and our friend Aya came in, saw us cooking in horror and said "what are you doing!? You can't put the sauce on the rice! You can't put the Mahshi in the oven! You have to use chicken fat on the rice so that it will stick together! You needed to let them soak overnight! gaaaaaa!!!" (see, everything has chicken fat! even things I thought I could eat). So, we worked through all of our issues together. We put butter on the rice instead of chicken fat and mixed the rice with the veggies and some spices



stuffed the grape leaves and rolled them kind of like egg rolls (but it was cool because they are shaped like oak leaves and so you fold in all the different pieces. It was fun)



Then we put them in a pan, put them on the oven, and then threw the tomato sauce on top and let the grape leaves stew and cook.



In the end, they weren't the greatest grape leaves ever made, but our friends were very encouraging and we are looking forward to another try soon.
Also present at the dish party: Muluchia (a VERY Egyptian green veggie soupish thing, originally thought to be vegetarian but it contains chicken fat), Macaroni Bashamel (kind of like a hamburger helper mac and cheese), sambosas (both cheese and meat), a Lebanese yogurt dish, chicken and rice, filo dough and beef, koshari, boreo mud pie, boreo shakes, and delicious marble cake.
Also this week, in our Egyptian Colloquial class, our teacher, Ustatha Radwa, gave us a cooking class to help us learn all the words for cooking. We made Turli, a stew like dish with sausage, eggplant, zucchini, potatoes, peas, carrots, onions, peppers, cumin, cinnamon, salt, pepper, and rice. Rawda was very sweet and made me some without sausage :). We also make Gulash, a dessert very much like baklava with peanuts, coconut, raisons, filo dough, lots of butter, and a syrup/ sauce with water, half a cup of sugar, a little lemon juice, and some vanilla.

So though it's tricky, and I miss American food terribly, I'm getting through it!