Food

This is the description of food that I promised earlier. During Ramadan, everyday at sunset (around 6:45 here) the call to prayer goes out and everyone can break their fast. You break the fast with a traditional meal called the ftur. Typical of a Moroccan ftur is a bowl of dates. I discovered that I love dates and will eat lots of them back in the states. By the bowl of dates, you'll find a bowl of shbakia. This is a fried thin pastry that is folded around itself many times. It's coated in honey and sprinkled with sesame seeds. Then you move on to the eggs. The eggs are hard boiled and you take one, dip it in salt, then in cumin, and eat it plain. After the eggs you make your way to the bread. There is bread with leaven and bread without. The bread with leaven you use to dip in your soup and as a spoon to pick up other food. You do this with three fingers on your right hand only (dont use the left). You pinch the bread between your thumb and 1st and 2nd finger and scoop things up with the bread. The unleavened bread you pick up, fold in on itself, and eat it plain, or you can take a wedge of a pretty mild cheese and spread it accross. In front of you, during the ftur, you will find a soup, harira. It has a little spice to it. Its a kinda thick broth with chicken and chick peas and other things I havent identified. You eat this with a spoon, but you hold the spoon a specific way.

After the ftur tea, coffee, and pastries will be brought out. The mint tea is delicious, and a staple of Moroccan culture. It is always mint tea. It is served in smallish tea glasses with alot of sugar. It is a sweet drink and doesnt taste much like the tea I am used to in America. The coffee is similar, lost of tea and milk. As you sip your tea or coffee often pastries will be brought out. These are fluffy pastries, with a sweet dough, and with a little bit of chococalte lining the bottom of the pastry to add a little sweetness. Either this our you will find pastries with a little bit of lemon jelly running through the middle.

After they eat the ftur at 6:45ish and then the tea and pastries. Then around midnight you eat another meal. This meal isnt like the ftur. It will be something like chicken and potatoes which you communally eat with your right hand off the center of the table. Then after that they eat another meal around 3:00 am, right before dawn when they have to fast again. This is another meal like the midnight meal. Then when I wake up at 8:00, Mama makes me another breakfast! So basically I dont remember what hunger feels like. Since they eat during the night during Ramadan, they sleep throughout the day until late afternoon. This has been hard for me to sustain because I have school early. No complaints though. The food is great.

Peace