Dear Reader (hi mom),
I apologize for neglecting you for so long. It's not that I haven't been cooking or engaging in fringe professional historical work for the past year, it's that I was too lazy to document it for the rest of you. I'll admit that this is because I'm lazy and selfish and terrible and understand that there are no actual consequences for being lazy and selfish and terrible on the internet. Come to think of it, those may actually be prerequisites for its use.
But things have changed. (Oh how they've changed!)
Our adventure in Beirut ended not in the fiery cataclysm that so many of you had hoped for, but, rather anticlimactically, in an actual job. WHICH, I turned into a real professional historical temp at the AUB, then parlayed my success there into a sparkly new gig in the Gulf. Remarkably, my new employers actually read this blog and still decided I was the sort of individual they wanted to have around them for the foreseeable future.
Though we've only been here a month and a half, the Emirates has already demonstrated itself to be an oasis of sorts (Ha ha. No more puns) for the fledgling epicure. If you want something, it's available somewhere for a price. And usually that price is oddly less than you'd expect to pay.
As they are forced to cater to at least five continents worth of expats in addition to the needs of the local population, supermarkets here are really the first I've seen to truly deserve the epithet. Imagine Best Buy grafted onto Walmart with a top notch seafood section, a bakery serving everything from turnovers to Persian flatbread, a cheese cooler that stretches for miles and a produce selection that occupies an acre and has a section dedicated to South Asian foods, which include terrifying gourds that appear to be in the terminal stages of an advanced sexually transmitted disease (don't ask how they got it).
The sheer opportunity presented by this has already crippled me. I've swapped one cooking rut for another but shall work through it, dear reader, with your help.
Next up: I take on the Nile Perch, a fish that could swallow a toddler and would gladly do it for the sheer hell of it, but which tastes delightful in a soy glaze. (It's gotta be from all the toddlers).
I apologize for neglecting you for so long. It's not that I haven't been cooking or engaging in fringe professional historical work for the past year, it's that I was too lazy to document it for the rest of you. I'll admit that this is because I'm lazy and selfish and terrible and understand that there are no actual consequences for being lazy and selfish and terrible on the internet. Come to think of it, those may actually be prerequisites for its use.
But things have changed. (Oh how they've changed!)
Our adventure in Beirut ended not in the fiery cataclysm that so many of you had hoped for, but, rather anticlimactically, in an actual job. WHICH, I turned into a real professional historical temp at the AUB, then parlayed my success there into a sparkly new gig in the Gulf. Remarkably, my new employers actually read this blog and still decided I was the sort of individual they wanted to have around them for the foreseeable future.
Though we've only been here a month and a half, the Emirates has already demonstrated itself to be an oasis of sorts (Ha ha. No more puns) for the fledgling epicure. If you want something, it's available somewhere for a price. And usually that price is oddly less than you'd expect to pay.
As they are forced to cater to at least five continents worth of expats in addition to the needs of the local population, supermarkets here are really the first I've seen to truly deserve the epithet. Imagine Best Buy grafted onto Walmart with a top notch seafood section, a bakery serving everything from turnovers to Persian flatbread, a cheese cooler that stretches for miles and a produce selection that occupies an acre and has a section dedicated to South Asian foods, which include terrifying gourds that appear to be in the terminal stages of an advanced sexually transmitted disease (don't ask how they got it).
The sheer opportunity presented by this has already crippled me. I've swapped one cooking rut for another but shall work through it, dear reader, with your help.
Next up: I take on the Nile Perch, a fish that could swallow a toddler and would gladly do it for the sheer hell of it, but which tastes delightful in a soy glaze. (It's gotta be from all the toddlers).
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| Oh my God! Why are they in the water with it?! Photo taken from Google Images http://www.ventureco-worldwide.com/africa/uganda/fishing-for-nile-perch-at-murchison-falls-uganda/ |
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