(Image from gigwise.com)

The metaphorical blizzard has hit and there’s no turning back. I think I’ve done fairly well this year in fact, but a little browsing on iTunes today brought me over the threshold: they have a ‘Christmas’ genre. Perhaps they always have had it, but today I spotted it. Don’t get me wrong, nobody in my house, whether living permanently or just popping in to read the gas metre is starved of Christmas music in December. It’s too catchy, too evocative, too cheery and calming. There’s Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’ alongside Harry Connick Jr. singing ‘Let it snow’ (I know, I know, it’s Cairo, but still…), next to the Pogues ‘Fairytale in New York’ and ‘Silent Night’ from Kings College, the Ronnette’s ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa’, Bing Crosby & Judy Garland’s version of ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’, Chuck Berry’s ‘Run Rudolph, Run’, Burl Ive’s ‘Frosty the Snowman’ and Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas’ – plus another 4.5 hours more of music (it was more, but I decided to delete dupilcate songs last year). I don’t even like Mariah Carey. I really don’t, but give me a Christmas song and well, I can’t really help myself.

About a week ago my cousin’s cousin (what does that make her to me) asked the question to her Facebook friends: is it too early to play Christmas music? I couldn’t decide. Now I say, “You go girl!”

I’m still containing my desire to hoist up the decorations. No Poinsettia can be purchase before 1 December. That’s my rule. But come 9am on that day, I shall be getting my Christmas Roses and (what will make do as a) Christmas tree. Then I will start the painstakingly delightful process of individually stringing stars up from a beam on the ceiling.

This year I started buying decorations in August. It’s not that I don’t have any, it’s just that I didn’t have those decorations (wooden angels that hang on the door). Yesterday I cheekily added a simple, white clay angel that holds a little candle to my stash. I guess this is the year of the angels. I’m itching to take her out of the wrapping, but no, no, I’ve been telling myself, wait a few more days, December will be here soon.

Mr S, coming from France, doesn’t share my UK/North American/German festive cravings. Candles, marzipan, chocolate, mince pies, Christmas cake, stollen (because of the marzipan), pfeffernusse, homemade truffles, cinnamon, spices and cloves. He just doesn’t understand. He didn’t even know what Christmas cake was until last year! Utterly unimaginable to me.

But I’ve started working on it. Bereft of advent calendars when he grew up, this year, aged 36 in a few weeks, will get his very first painted card with doors (not one of those chocolate ones, but one with different pictures behind every door – because what’s the point in knowing there’s the same thing behind every door?) at breakfast on 1 December. This year too, we will add mince pies (homemade by yours truly) to our December menu, and the arrival of Big Mama and Lil’ Bro should see stollen, pfeffernusse and Christmas pud pausing on his virgin taste buds.

“..There’s a happy feeling nothing in the world can buy,
When they pass around the coffee and the pumpkin pie
It’ll nearly be like a picture print by Currier and Ives
These wonderful things are the things
We remember all through our lives.” (Sleigh Ride)

And a little PS for all you bah-humbug types: sssshhh!

Shopping in Cairo reminds me of my high school German teacher. Her name was (and hopefully still is) Mrs Burgess. She had a daughter working for some time in Eastern Europe, so our German grammar instruction would sporadically be interspersed with stories about her daughter’s trips to the grocer’s. There were generally two paths these stories would take. Story A involved there being nothing in the shops. Story B would involve spotting something and queue all night if need be to buy it, because it would be gone tomorrow.

Well the shops in Cairo are stocked. What they are stocked with though can sometimes be a little odd. There is a strange stock control system in operation that can see one shelf of every shop in Cairo choca-block with one product for a week, after which, it disappears for months. So, like in Story B, when you find something you want, grabbing it is essential. Today, after looking for tartlette cases (just because I thought they’d be good to have) and a coffee grinder for a good six months, I stumbled across both of them when I was looking for, wait for it, shelves!

Of course, there was only one coffee grinder left, so following a mad dash home in 42C to get more money, the six month search was over. Rather coincidentally, Mr S has been dropping not so subtle hints over the past couple of weeks about how he really wants a fruit tart. A French fruit tart. Since we are yet to find a fruity tart here up to the specifications of my cute, but gastronomically demanding, Frenchman’s taste buds, it involves me making said tart – entirely from scratch. No nipping out to M&S for pastry shells, chopped fruit and custard here, no siree! And I must fess up to not being the best pastry chef.

So, whether it was out of love, or excitement at finding the tartlette cases, I’m not sure, but I embarked on pastry making (in hot weather – not advised), creme patissiere making and pitting cherries…

The French taste buds are yet to pass verdict, but no matter. I’m over the moon that I managed to not burn anything, not undercook anything and get 6 out of 7 tartlettes out of the cases without breaking them!

I am now into my second day being gastronomically challenged. The mere whiff of chocolate on Mr S’s breath is enough to leave me clutching my stomach. And being the person who loves Mr S and (in the office days) was brought chocolate by her far senior colleague every time he asked for something awkward to be done because he knew it was her Achilles heel, this is a bad sign.

It started off well: a good friend’s birthday dinner. Let’s call her Noonie. Noonie has a Sudanese mother who doesn’t do things by half, particularly when it comes to food. The menu was pretty much Egyptian and Momat Noonie (Noonie’s mother) was in the kitchen for two full days preparing the food.

This should have been more than a little anecdote about how much food is prepared for special meals in this part of the world. It should have been a big Tsunami-alarm with flashing red lights of a warning. But no. Having lived cocooned in The Hood for 18 months, it was a mere funny story.

Out on display was a profiterole tower a good 25 cm tall on a wide plate. All made by Momat Noonie. Dessert, it turned out was to be twice as much: there was something else in the fridge. That was until Noonie’s boyfriend turned up with a massive birthday cake. Treble the fun.

As dinner came out on the table the adrenaline started pumping. ‘Bloody hell,’ I thought (I think out loud!), ‘How many people are we?’. There were eight of us in total. In fairness there could have been a couple more, but they couldn’t make it. So, say ten people were expected. Here was the spread:

1. Stuffed vine leaves on a very large plate in a tower to about 15cm tall
2. A large bowl of fattoush (salad drenched in oil with croûtons from Lebanese bread)
3. A large plate/tray of cheese sambousak (pastry parcels stuffed with cheese and then deep fried) and
4. Vegetable sambousak (pastry parcels stuffed with veg and then deep fried)
5. A large plate of kobeibah (meatballs with pine nuts, deep fried)
6. A large plate of beef fillet
7. A large plate/tray of chicken cordon bleu
6. A whole stuffed duck resting on
7. A large tray of sorghum (fried)
8. A two bowls of beetroot
9. Yogurt and cucumber salad.

I hadn’t seen so much food since the swanky buffet and it’s pretty clear why it took two whole days to make! Hats off to Momat Noonie – everything was absolutely delicious. Having not attended a feast like that for almost two years, it had totally escaped me that taking what I wanted to eat, finishing it and putting my knife and fork together, did not convey that I had ‘had sufficient’ (as my Grandmother says). No sooner had the cutlery clicked than I found a large piece of duck on my plate with some chicken following in quick succession. Instead of finishing, I had pretty much indicated that I had not had enough! This plate I left pretty unfinished. Not a signal that I didn’t like the food, but that I was satisfied (read here: stuffed like a Christmas turkey).

After we’d all finished (part finished) our seconds or thirds, the table still looked like it had barely been touched, and everybody waddled over to the sitting room to drink tea, hold our stomachs, joke about how full we were and glance nervously at the now foreboding profiterole tower.

Strong eaters that we were (or pretended to be in my case), it wasn’t too long before the dessert hiding in the fridge made its way out. Beside the towering profiteroles and the huge cake, we also now had a ginormous (8cm tall by about 30 diametre) chocolate cheesecake covered in Oreo cookies. One bite into my sliver of Momat Noonie’s cheesecake and it became apparent that the topping was, wait for it, melted snickers bars!!

And so it came to be that I was forced onto a diet of chamomile tea, yogurt and not much physical activity due to my burning belly.

If you correctly guess what this is I might make you some. If you finish reading this post, you might not want to guess.

Mr S and I have fallen into a bit of a routine when it comes to meals. Generally speaking, I will prepare starters and desserts and he makes French culinary masterpieces for the main. It works well.

Or it worked well. A distinct flaw became evident last night as we (Les Parents et moi) arrived home from our little exploration of the neighbourhood. We had passed a TBK motorcycle delivery man, who, upon seeing me pointing out the bike to Les Parents, did a U-turn and stopped to give us menus. I told him that I had one already and I really liked the burger. He carried on handing us the menus. It wasn’t until he drove off that I realised I’d not been speaking Arabic. Or English. Nope, FRENCH. Why on earth could that not have happened in my French GCSE?!

So, as we took off our shoes and put our bags down, Les Parents looked at the menus we’d been handed. I suddenly heard a voice inside me screaming, “Say you want burgers! Say you want burgers!” as I realised Mr S definitely wouldn’t be here for dinner and the sad truth hit that my starter-and-dessert-making has rendered me incapable of cooking main courses.

They didn’t appear to want burgers (Mr S later told me they are not very keen on them) and seeing as it was their first night here, I felt like I should at least make an effort. Les Parents are extremely kind and polite, and even said they liked the meal. In all honesty, with no false modesty, it was a horrible meal. The pesto tasted more of garlic than pesto, the presentation was, no other word for it, sorry, crap and the bread..well, the oven is Egyptian made. Some Egyptian things are well made, some are not, and our oven falls into the second category. On this occasion, the heat of it melted the timer causing it to fail..and the bread to burn. Gordon, Delia, Nigella, Nigel, Ainslie, or anybody else who can wear a tall white hat (and command respect), I am not.

So, if you get invited to dinner chez insteadi, you might want to gently inquire about who the chef is that evening before accepting.

I signed up for the gym’s annual ‘Transformational Challenge’ the goal of which is to lose body fat over a three month period. There are usually some good prizes for the biggest losers, but having never been one of them, I can’t remember what they are. I don’t envisage that changing this year.

One of the best parts to the challenge is the week before the initial weigh in and body measurement. Obviously, starting to lose weight before the challenge begins is counter productive, so I tuck into whatever I feel like. Remorselessly.

So, for lunch today, I ordered from a The Burger Kitchen. I once reviewed a hotel restaurant for a local magazine before Ramadan. It was rather a difficult review because it was my first Ramadan in Cairo and other than the bread, I had no idea what food I was reviewing was. It may have been the worst Iftar and Sohour food in the world, but I wasn’t the one to judge.

I am, however, a little more familiar with burgers. Perhaps too much so. But, really a good burger that hits the spot is quite welcome at times. While it wasn’t ‘the best burger I’ve had in my whole life’ (because that award goes to Big Mama’s homemade patties) it was definitely up there with the best I’ve ordered.

And that’s before we get to the chips. I’m talking UK-style chips here. They call them wedges, but in fact they are thick cut potatoes and they are great. Even taste like potatoes (quite a feat these days).

But the piece de resistance is the Mushroom Max Burger. It contains mushrooms. Real life fresh mushrooms. Not preserved in formaldehyde (aka canned). Yum yum.

If you feel inclined to check them out, The Burger Kitchen.

Just don’t blame me if you end up pinching more than an inch.

Mr S has been working hard. So hard that I’m feeling a little guilty. So, to ease my guilt and give him something nice to come home to, I got baking.

All went well and a delish, fluffy cake emerged from the oven. No time to decorate before his return, so he tucked into the nude cake after dinner.

The next day, I decided to decorate. No problem that the cake was cut, I made mini sandwiches by cutting shapes with cookie cutters. Then I doused them with melted chocolate.

As I was cutting and dousing, it occurred to me that the extra bits of cake from between the cookie-cut bits, could be used for a trifle.

Ah yes, I thought, a lemon trifle (lemon cake and lemon curd). Yum. But there was no sherry. Opening our recently replenished drinks cabinet, I spotted a nice new bottle of Drambuie. Just the thing.

Two small bowls with cake at the bottom, each covered with a tablespoon of Drambuie.

“Hmm,” I thought as I licked the spoon*, “Perhaps one isn’t enough. But what time is it anyway? Oh, after four, fine, it’s not too bad to be licking the spoon, it’s G&T time.”

Another spoon of Drambuie.

“Oh, I do like Drambuie,” I thought, licking the spoon again, “I’ll just add one more.”

Over the smooth gold went. And yum, another spoon of Drambuie for me. Then I saw a problem: not all the cake was wet. I mixed it all up, but to no avail.

“Gosh, looks like more is needed,” I mused. “Oh, well, it tastes good anyway.”

More went on.

At this point, logic prevailed and I decided that it had to be enough and continued with the other ingredients.

About ten minutes later, it was time to whip the cream.

“A spot of Drambuie would add some symmetry^ to the dish.” thought I and proceeded to add a few drams.

Plus one for the cook.

Everything was finished in time to be chilled before Mr S’s arrival and the kitchen to be tidied in good housewife fashion.

It wasn’t until he had eaten a few mouthfuls of the drenched cake at the bottom that Mr S deduced the reason for my overtly cheerful behaviour that evening.

And politely left the rest.

And fair dos, so did I.

*I do not lick the spoon and reuse it if I’m cooking for anyone other than Mr S!
^Symmetry? Must have been the Drambuie!

I’m off again tonight for a few days break over Christmas. It’s been wonderful in Cairo over the past couple of days as it is completely empty. Journeys that can take 1.5 hours take 15-20 minutes with no traffic. I was even feeling a little nostalgic about my former life living in the centre.

All good things must come to and end and it seems this is even more the case just before I depart. True to form just after finishing my superbly delicious, juicy orange tonight, I realised that I’d eaten at least one maggot.

Take me away!

I just popped out to get some shopping at a local mall and see the new shops. I heard some time ago there were going to be some new foreign shops, but didn’t pay much attention at the time. Well, shiver me timbers, they are here. From the British High Street direct to Cairo, so far we have La Senza, Esprit and Accessorize. Opening soon are Next, Body Shop, Evans and Top Shop!

It has been by far the most surreal experience of my life. Cairo is carved into my brain as being many things, but a place with access to half-way decent shops, it certainly isn’t. When I first came here, you couldn’t even get a Mars Bar, never mind a pair of knickers that weren’t made with cheap, gaudy synthetic fabric and fat elastic. If you needed a new pair of jeans and didn’t fancy acid wash (in 2000) it required a flight home. If you needed some jumpers that weren’t directly from the 70s seventies (or eighties if you were super lucky), it required a flight home. If you needed socks that wouldn’t set your feet on fire the minute they rubbed against the inside of your shoe or were three sizes too big, it required a flight home. One of the things that made wealthy people instantly recognisable was their foreign clothes, marked by a quality that just couldn’t be found here. Favourite conversations were, “What a lovely [insert here any apparel], where did you get it?” with the response, “Oh, this? In [insert name of European or North American country]“. It didn’t matter if the thing came from Walmart or Matalan, the fact that it was purchased overseas gave it huge kudos and by extension the wearer, who must be fashionable if they were shopping overseas.

This has all but ended. In other areas of town Mango, Esprit, Virgin Megastores have been open for a while with loads of others reserving stores too. At the upper end the boutiques have been importing for a while and the new Four Seasons has an extensive designer label offering.

So, having tripped over my jaw as I entered the mall, I stumbled in a daze of British High Street-hits-my-Egyptian-backyard stupor through the rest of my shopping. In fact, so punch drunk was I that I forgot half of the things I went there for and now can’t remember half of what I saw.

It all came to a Hatton end when turning the corner of an aisle, I found extra products in the metre and a half wide organic section. What were they? No, surely not. Just after I’ve trained Mr S into picking them up when he’s on work trips to Paris..rice cakes. Rice cakes. ORGANIC RICE CAKES! I still can’t believe that I found them. Not only that, but they had more than one variety. I think about four. Four? This is Egypt! And different formats too…swoon.

So spaced-out was I that I barely noticed the four teenage boys following me around.

Dying for a burger, I called McDonald’s yesterday (yep, home delivery in Egypt!). First time I didn’t get through. Second time I didn’t get through. Third time… At one point I was lucky enough to be answered and then I was hung up on. Undeterred, due to this craving for nasty fast food from the deepest pits of my belly, I called a few more times and finally placed my order. Within half an hour I would have my burger.

An hour later I called up and asked where my burger was.

“On the way” came the answer. Nothing to argue with really because it could mean it’s just come out of the freezer or it’s just downstairs.

As fortune had it, this time it was just downstairs. The delivery man handed me the bag and I could feel the cold fries and minimal warmth coming from the burger.

After speaking to the manager I sent it back, refusing to ‘wait ten minutes’ for a hot one to be delivered after a similar event last year that took 3 hours. I did mention that I was going to call Hardees instead though.

Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang. “Yum, yum” I thought, although now, I was kind of wishing I’d just had some bread and cheese an hour and a half earlier, as not only would I not be hungry, but the guilt of eating a juicy processed burger was beginning to settle somewhere in my stomach.

I opened the door and there stood the McDonald’s man with my original order piping hot AND free.

Apart from my shock, because this isn’t a standard policy in Egypt, I faced a dilemma: with my Hardee’s now on the way, I definitely couldn’t tuck into a MaccyDo’s. I asked the cleaner if she’d like it. She looked at me in a state of bewildered wonder, like she’d just won a competition she hadn’t entered, and said yes. I told her to go take a plate if she wanted and she paused a bit. By now she’d looked into the bag and was beaming. “I think I’ll take it home with me, if that’s ok” she said shyly.

I suddenly realised that this junky burger that I ordered partially because I couldn’t be bothered slicing a bit of cheese was gem enough to her that she couldn’t imagine eating it alone: she was taking the bounty to share with someone.

How gluttonous, wasteful and downright over-priviliged and spoilt I felt when my Hardees arrived.

So much was my guilt, that each mouthful was difficult to chew. I wolfed it down, trying to get rid of the evidence, because as much as I wasn’t enjoying it, after seeing the look on her face, I couldn’t possibly throw any away.

Atayef bil ishta