Ramadan Kareem

So, we've been lacking a little in blog posts, but I'm going to try to catch you guys up a little bit.  First of all, it's Ramadan right now, and for those of you who don't know much about Ramadan, it's the Muslim holy month.  Their calendar is based on the moon, so it begins when a council of some Islamic leaders gather their camels and head towards the hills or something and as soon as someone sees the moon, it's officially Ramadan.  Basically, it's a time where Muslims are trying to focus on their spirituality and they do this in a few ways.  The most obvious is the fasting from all food, drink, smoking, gum, etc. from sunrise until sundown.  This is similar to why Christians fast--the thought is that you're taking the time you would spend eating in prayer and whenever you feel hungry that is supposed to remind you to pray or focus on whatever it is you're fasting for.  Also, the hunger is supposed to make you understand what many others in the world live with on a day to day basis.  This feeds into another part of Ramadan which is that it is supposed to be a very charitable time.  I am not exactly sure what all this entails, but I think someone said that everyone is supposed to donate at least 2% of their entire worth to charity.  Many of the iftars (I'll explain in a bit) are set up so that part of your meal price is given to charity and they have food drives, etc in the iftar tents.  I am sure that there is more to Ramadan than this, but this is just my quick summary.  For more info you can refer to the wikipedia article.

We went to an iftar with some friends last week.  Iftar is the meal at sundown where you "break the fast."  The iftar buffets can be very extravagant.  The one we went to was delicous.

Iftar at Le Meridien (sorry the photo is blurry)

So since many people are hungry and dehydrated during the day, the overall ambience in muslim cities really changes.  For one, work and store hours change.  Some stores open in the morning, but they're usually closed from about 11am to 4pm or even 8pm.  Then they're open all night until about 4am while people are up eating, shopping, and hanging out with friends.  Since people are fasting during the day, they try to sleep as much as possible during the day and then stay up almost all night.  For me, my work day is shorter by 2 - 2.5hrs a day which is definitely nice.  We're not allowed to eat or drink anything at work (this includes chewing gum) unless we can't be seen.  So there's a group of us that cram into the 4'x8' kitchen every day around lunch time and we shut the door so we can eat.  Not being able to eat at my desk really cramps my snacking routine, so in order to compensate I try to have a really big breakfast so that it will help tide me over until lunch 5 hours later.

One of my typical "Ramadan Breakfasts"

One of my new favorite snacks are dates stuffed with almonds (dark oval things on my plate above).  They are delicious and I tell myself that they're healthy since they're all natural :)  Another one of my current favorite things is "spiced tea."  They make this for us at work if we request it.  Basically it's just tea with cardamon, cloves, and some kind of bark.  I think it's similar to chai which is just the word for tea in arabic or urdu or something.  But since we can't have drinks out in the open, they guys that usually come and bring us tea/coffee are not doing that during Ramadan.  So I decided to try to make it myself as my drink for lunch.  We just have a huge jar of cardamon and another large jar of cloves/bark which you put in your tea.  I thought I was being so local, making my own spiced tea and all.  It was pretty good, but it definitely didn't taste like what the guy makes for me (let's call him "L" because i have no idea how to spell his name).  On Thursday, I was really struggling to get through the morning so I went to the kitchen to make myself a tea, and L was in there.  So I asked him if he could show me how he makes the tea.  Wow, I felt really dumb.  (1) Apparently I wasn't taking the shell off of the cardamon, (2) i learned that you don't actually put the cloves in there either, those are just used to give flavor to the bark, (3) you're supposed to break off a piece of this bark to put in there.  Needless to say, I was putting whole cardamon seeds, about 3 cloves, and no bark in my tea.  And everytime I drank the tea, the cardamon and cloves would get in my mouth.  Oops, well at least now I know how to make it :)

Cardamon, in the shell

We've also had a few nontraditional iftars.  Paul's favorite restaurant right now is called "Beirut" which serves some great arabic food.  This place has already become a regular part of our dinner rotation option for us as it is one of the restaurants in the food court that is in the mall right behind our hotel.   We walk to this mall at least once a day just to get out of the hotel and keep from going stir crazy.  Our favorite meal is Chicken Tikka which is spicy, reddish-orange chicken and comes with a huge amount of naan (which is saying a lot because Paul and I can eat some naan) and french fries (go figure).  We usually order a side of hummus and a fruit juice/smoothie or mint lemonade.  (The garlic sauce that comes with it is wonderful!)

Chicken Tikka Meal, Hummus, and Mint Lemonade

So full, but so happy