arbuclo

Excellent info and thanks for the tips to survive a family meal. I'll try to remember that. Can't wait to try these new ingredients that you're all helping me identify, paricularly freekeh.

Hi! I grew up in Three Forks and I thought I could mention it here since forks are food related! (Though the name actually comes from the 3 rivers that form to make the Missouri river.) I really am unsure on the skewers. You're right in that they're hefty metal ones. Since you can eat them at the shop, they have tables out on balcony perhaps they're only for consumption there. Anyone else know the answer?

Thanks for the tips and vote of confidence! I'd love to stuff myself silly on some new cuisine made by people in their own homes!

I'm unsure as to whether the Quran says anything about eating with your left hand but as I understand it, it's a hygene thing. Won't explain more as I'm sure can figure it out!

I couldn't agree more and part of my "cunning plan" was that she'd hopefully share with me if I shared with her! I always love to learn about what people eat in countries I'm not very familiar with, but I'm a bit shy about asking.

They smoke mostly apple tobacco, though I don't know if it's actually tobacco nor how it gets "appley". Where I live I'm mostly surrounded by western expats. I believe one of my immediate neighbours is Arabic but they've been away a lot and we haven't yet met them. To date nearly everyone I've met has been from the UK. I'd swear I was in London except the weather's way too nice for that! That's one of the big reason's I'm looking forward to starting work in a couple of weeks. The local office apparently is only about 15% westerners and the rest are Arab nationals or Asian. Might be able to report more on Eid experiences of food later. I did have a lovely Sri Lankan experience, though. The woman who comes to clean my house once a week is Sri Lankan. I like to bake quite often and have to give much of it away or my husband and I would be 400 pounds each. Since I'd been giving her muffins, cookies, etc, she made us string hoppers and potato curry in return. And even better, it happened on the day the sea freight arrived and I couldn't move all the things out of the kitchen to prepare a meal anyway! I asked her more about string hoppers and she's gonna show me how she makes them.

Just had a Columbian passionfruit, or at least that's what the Goodies fruit boy told me it was when I bought it. He said it was like caviar inside! It looked nothing like the passionfruit that grow so easily in Australia. And it didn't taste a lot like it either, it's not tart at all.

Ok, here are our gas bottles. To add perspective, the small one is about 2 feet high and the bigger one is approx 3 feet. The writing may indicate the volume, what do you think??

andiesenji and Pan, thanks for the info so far re my mystery foods. Pan, funny you should mention the smoke. Just last week we went to a wine tasting dinner at Verre (Gordon Ramsay's restaurant here) and we were sitting not far from about 6 smokers. It was very difficult to figure out bouquet and flavour of wine when all I could make out was cigarette smoke! Fortunately there was an extra table and they could move us. Smoking was supposedly going to be outlawed in malls, I think it was (an article came out in October last year). However it may be like many laws here and not really enforced. So, people smoke anywhere and it can be unpleasant for a nonsmoker. They do have non-smoking sections in restaurants, though those aren't necessarily that effective. Fortunately this time of year lots of doors are open because the weather is terrific. Also there are a lot of high ceilings around which help too. Additionally, there is smoke from the sheesha pipes to contend with. Oddly I like the smell of sheesha smoke; much preferred to tobacco smoke.

Thank you for all the lovely comments on my pictures and nice comments in general. You're all so nice!

and more questions without pictures. Red spinach, which looks a little neonish, does it taste like regular spinach? It could add some interesting colour to spinach fillings, that's certain. Darn, can't read my hand writing for this one. I think I wrote down "hab haries" which looked like barley. Does that vagueness ring any bells? How about frike? It looked a lot like cracked wheat. I swear I do this every trip to the grocery store...write down the names of things that I don't know then try to goodle it. I only figure it out about half the time. I suspect it's because of the variances in spelling... (I'm not gonna take the blame for being a dunderhead!) And another question, though food appliance related. What's with putting salt in your dishwasher? Here all the dishwashers have a place where you put in special dishwasher salt. To soften the water? I find it ironic since the water here has salt removed and then we put it back.

OK, let's play "what IS this and what DO I do with it?" (and I don't know the answers so you could just make stuff up if you wanted! ) If you have links to info or recipes, I'll love you forever! This picture I took because I thought "super seeds" was a riotous claim. Why are they super? Do you get a cape when you buy them? Do they let you have xray vision and a bionic ear? Why are the Iranian ones orange? Have they used too much fake tan? Been cavorting with carrots? I need answers (or, as you can see, I'll come up with some freakish stories of my own)!! The section these were in had a couple of signs that identified the fruit and veg, though I didn't seem to be able to work it all out and of course it didn't tell me how to use 'em. I think the sign indicatd that the brown rock things were "koorka". Hope they're softer and tastier than a rock! They've sure met the ugly stick, haven't they? I worked out that the middle things were banana flower and banana "stick"?! from the sign. I've seen banana flower before unsure how to use it.

Day 2: The cat like things had to be fed first...again, demanding little things that they are! I ate one of the apricot walnut muffins, a baby banana and had a glass of tongue twisting grapefruit juice.

LOL, who knew that the gas was such an interesting subject! No gauges on the darned bottles. I only noticed that the bottle was running out because it was taking so darned long for the pot to boil. Then I observed that the flame was low and kinda intermittent. I looked at the bottles to see if they had the amount of gas written on them but I'm not sure they do. And I'm a horrible judge of volumes without a measure mark, though I'm very certain that they're much much smaller than 250 gallon! I'll try to take a picture. Yep, they deliver and our water is delivered too. (The water here is desalinated and it still tastes salty. Not too thirst quenching for us so we buy water. Each of the 5 gallon bottles costs 8 dirhams, delivered!) [edited to clarify]

so sad about the barrels... I was indeed fascinated by how preciously the Goodies man was taking care of those fruit and veg. Everyone should treat their food that carefully!

Oh, I haven't! Will write that down to read. Thanks. Currently I'm reading "Beard on Food" which looks particularly odd when I'm reading it while exercising at the gym!

Wow, you'll be just down the road from me, how cool! Can't believe you've spent a fair amount of time in Montana AND Alaska too. No one does that! I'm hoping you'll be able to help me out with some of these excellent questions people are askin. Uh, I'm pretty sure Snapple is labeled as Snapple. I'd have noticed for sure if it said Is Nipple. Hilarious! [edited for typo]

I almost took pictures of the Middle Eastern cheeses at Carrefour yesterday. I just get a bit wary of taking pictures when there are a lot of people around since there are various groups of people here that don't want their picture taken for reasons of law or religion. But the selection at this Carrefour wasn't that extensive, anyway. Verjuice and Suman, do you have a feel regarding how the imported labour have influenced the cuisine here? My thoughts so far are that restaurants and cafes here are reasonably right down the line as far as a particular cuisine. For instance, you go to an Italian place or an Indian or Japanese one; there aren't many fusions. The local labour, though, has influenced the food by causing demand in the shops for their local foods and also, of course, there are cafes and restaurants that serve their homeland cuisine. Traditional eating customs...hmmm, eating with the left hand only? Since there's such a varying ethnicity here it doesn't seem to be a big deal that everyone eat only with their left hand in public. Oh, and yes, all the signs are in English, though there's usually Arabic too. I have been speaking to some colleagues and other westerners that have been here awhile and it's unusual, apparently, to find westerners that speak and read Arabic. The locals are well versed in English and take pride in it. Therefore with all this English around there's not a huge incentive for busy expats to learn much Arabic.

Yeah, a local expert! Maybe you can help me out since I'm so new. Where should I go to show people a real Dubai food experience? And do you have any comments about open air markets?

Dubai doesn't like too many open air food markets since it gets so hot! I'm very new here and haven't seen any roadside food carts like you might find in Bangkok. However my guide book says there are a few around. I'll see if I can get to one. According to the book, the stands primarily serve shwarma. (Here's a funny story about shwarma: web link.) As for buying food supplies at open air markets, not many of those either. I went to a fish and veg one a couple weeks ago. I only bought some dates and figs because you have to buy big amounts of stuff and with the 2 of us... There's supposed to be a wholesale fruit and veg market, though it may be under cover. Haven't been there yet either. Anyway, I'll see if I can post some pics this week!

I really have no idea how many people they'd serve in a day. Goodies is in a big and popular shopping mall. Also there were a lot of people wandering through and they'd only just opened for the day, so it looked like it'd be busy from the get go. I was only in there briefly one other time and it was busy then too.

No idea! Would they really climb into a running fridge? I'd never heard of a locking fridge til I moved here. Any fridge experts out there? How 'bout you, therese, having researched fridges for your reno?

Ooops, meant to add this link regarding Australian native pepperberry above in case there were enquiring minds...

Yeah, Muslims aren't allowed to get a license to buy alcohol. However, that license only seems to be checked at the liquor store (and even then you can still buy but you have to pay cash, wink wink). I've seen Muslims in traditional attire drinking alcohol in bars too, but then again, this is liberal Dubai.

LOL, good one! I'll keep my eye out for any such stories.