Meat, cheese, beer, and then more meat please

I had the most shocking realization today- I’m practically a vegetarian. No, not even that, I’ve essentially, and quite inadvertently become a vegan! My favorite foods are: Meat, cheese, fried meat and cheese, beer. This was not a pleasant realization. There’s a paucity of meat here; I expected to be feasting on lamb and kabobs galore here, but they don’t really have much lamb going on. I met and surmounted that little disappointment. “Meat” in Yemen means mystery, greasy goat. Actually it’s completely delicious but unbelievably expensive. I only had it once because it’s outrageously overpriced and also because goats eat GARBAGE, ALL MANNER OF ROTTEN MATTER, AND EVEN FECES. Goats are nasty. There aren’t any grazing lands around here so the goats just roam free around town and “graze” on trash and bottles and newspaper, the invariable giant mounds of litter, and whatever happens to be lying on the ground next to them. Gross. Initially I ate a lot of chicken (and longed for a rare steak) but now I cook at home most of the time and just make whatever I can from the ingredients I can get at the local shop near work. There is NO cheese here except kraft-wannabe-singles and unrefrigerated cream-cheese squares, I don’t drink milk (because my mother shamed me once when I tried to drink some as a child..) and the eggs are sold in crates out on the sidewalk. In the sun. In the well over 100 degree, miday, Yemeni sun. Can’t that kill you?!?! Why don’t they refrigerate their dairy products?!

Yemeni Staple Foods: tomatoes, onion, chili peppers. I’d say 90% of Yemeni cuisine largely consists of these main ingredients and of course, carbs. Other main food items include cucumbers, parsley, potatoes, bread, rice, ships (French fries), and beans. Lottttts of bread, rice, and beans. For every meal. Bet you didn’t know that beans cooked with onion, tomatoes, curry powder and chili is breakfast food! I recently had the joyous moment of discovering a vegetable clearly in the zucchini family, super exciting!
I have my favorite fruit/vegetable seller. He has a little stall across from the school, and I am fiercely loyal to him. Yesterday when I came by he was sitting up on the roof of a big van sifting through some big cardboard boxes. Upon seeing me he reached into a box and grabbed an unfamiliar and oddly proportioned piece of fruit. It kind of looked like a porcupine (like needles! Is needles still alive?!) with blunt spikes. He tossed it down to me and I eyed it dubiously. When opened it was filled with a mushy, white substance and looked extremely rotten. He motioned for me to eat some of it and I was all listen… I’ve been sick a lot lately.. I’m good on the rotten fruit, thanks though. He was insistent, and I acquiesced (damn you peer-pressure!) it had a sweet almost milky flavor but had these huge, hidden seeds in it and I almost lost a tooth. I broke it up into a few pieces and shared it with some of the kids crowded around me. We really had a moment there.
I saw some of them for sale at the big market in crater today and they had the most absurd English translation for them, something like “creamy, white, filled apple” I was just cracking up by myself in the produce section.

And speaking of cracked teeth, this is practically the longest I’ve ever gone without cracking or chipping a tooth because I don’t have Dave “LDB” Bender CRUSHING grounders at me from and extremely close range when a) my back is turned b) I don’t have my glove on or c) I’m just not bothering to pay attention to practice

So I’m getting pretty adept and creative cooking with vegetables. I’ve got some great recipes to use if I ever, clearly because of situation not by choice, have to practically become a vegan again.

Painfully American!

This weekend I invited Ben to my apartment to grade papers and enjoy the "Painfully American Feast" I was about to create. I wanted to showcase my flair in the kitchen! All in all the menu consisted of:
-chili-curry chicken burgers
-salsa
-"faluga" which is an ice-cream like treat made from stale bread, burned milk and salt. Just that discription alone is remarkably off putting, but really it's quite tasty. You eat it from a small plastic bag that you bite the corner off of and then suck out the melty goodness.
- non alcoholic beer battered onion rings (which were gross)
- and I finally made Fasoolia, a local spicy bean dish
soo... not so Amerian after all but the chicken burgers had a Kraft singles cheese like substance on them and that's about as American as you can get. Delicious!

coffee snob, and rightly so

My last vacation I went to Sana’a again. At that point I still didn’t have residency or work permits for my passport so I couldn’t leave the country. I happened upon a place called Coffee Trader. It’s the new “Oasis of Tranquility”. That’s pretty much all I did on my vacay. I went there every single day, I had my own spot outside under a big umbrella, monopolizing an entire area near lush flowers and shrubberies. After the second day they knew my order (giant, bucket o’ black coffee, and keep those refills coming) it was fantastically good- clearly being the first real coffee I’ve had in almost four months. I get the occasional Turkish coffee, or the special ginger coffee you drink at qat chews, but mostly here “coffee” means Nescafe. My first week in Yemen I was fooled in that regards on multiple occasions. The host/hostess would offer coffee and I was all YEAH! Yes please! Coffee? Really? Thanks! And then I would have a mighty battle masking my crushing disappointment when I realized they just meant Nescafe. I held out at first- refusing to buy or imbibe in the gritty, noxious, instant brew. Please, I have some standards I will not sink below. I drank soooo much tea. The tea, called “shay” is pretty awesome. Also I’m a dang expert at making it. It comes in two forms, “shay haleeb” tea with milk, or “shay ahmar” red tea. Both are super delicious, served boiling-lava hot in handle-less cups (Handle! Handle! Handle!) with cardamom, mint, and LOADED with sugar. That’s finally what made me switch to Nescafe, all the dang sugar I was ingesting day after day. I already talked about the Yemen15…
So I reacted with surprise as much as horror yesterday when after a big gulp of black Nescafe, I gave a deep, contented sigh and smacked my lips appreciatively. WHAT? I have always been considered a coffee snob-purist. Yemen, you’ve done it again! and again and again!

Heaven on my palate

Today Ben, Matt and I went for an adventure and then found a local Salta restaurant. Salta, a spicy meat stew-like item of meat, onions, chilies, yogurt and spices, is the national dish of Yemen and quite singular and delicious. They cook it on huge iron pots and serve it boiling-lava hot with bread. Every meal we have had to sit in a private “family” section because I am a lady.
I feel like I’ve only really talked about food and transportation thus far, but really, those two acts have comprised 75% of my time thus far.
Previous to arriving in Yemen I had entertained thoughts of losing weight while I am over here and returning as a tan, thin lady. BUT THE FOOD IS SOO GOOD. The portions are just huge. HUGE. We haven’t even come close to finishing a meal yet. Platters of rice, vegetables, lamb, chicken, mutton, fish. And hummus, tabuleh, yogurt, chili sauce… endless food. Yemen is a little slice of heaven.

Trying to assimilate quickly becomes failing to assimilate

There are four other new teachers along with me
Katherine- my roommate/from South Africa
Ben- from Portland, Oregon!
Matt- the guy who found me in Jordan
Amira- a recent Muslim convert who brought her FIVE sons with her from America

We are all getting along wonderfully (As we were all hanging out yesterday, Ben says “this feels absurdly like summer camp. Shall we do an icebreaker?” hah) But I’m having an especially good time with Matt and Ben. We are buddies, and its nice to be roaming around with men, not as a single, young, American girl.

Yesterday, Nafisa-our academic coordinator- took us out for a traditional Yemeni meal. Lunch is the main meal of the day and let me tell you, it was a feast! We had platters of chicken cooked with potatoes and onion on rice, huge roasted legs of lamb and goat(DELICIOUS), whole grilled fish, a variety of paste-items(similar consistency as hummus but made of chili peppers and yogurt) and HUGE pieces of bread as big and flat as a pizza to eat it with. We just dug right in. No germs in family. You eat everything with your hands and rip of pieces of bread and just get after it. To finish the meal we ended with platters of fresh fruit(mango, papaya, oranges, bananas and limes). It was just about the messiest dining experience of my life. They rolled out big pieces of plastic to cover the table but it hardly contained the fiasco that was our attempt to eat like a Yemeni.