Clip It And Don't Lose It.

It has been ages since I've posted to the blog and truly I feel bad about that. Life has a way of getting complicated and busy, especially here in Egypt where nothing is as easy as it should be, nor as easy as it was some years ago. Power failures, internet failures and no time to leave the farm due to work that we are doing here all make it hard to take photos and post.

But I had two women who wanted to go to see the Menawat Sunday market last week, and I have some lovely photos of a country market in Giza. One friend needed a donkey harness for the donkey at her farm that hauls the manure cart, while the other was a visitor who was up for anything interesting...and the Sunday market is interesting. Imagine all the goods in a large supermarket unwrapped, unpacked and then distributed along narrow dusty streets and you have roughly the idea of a village market. You will find EVERYTHING there if you have the time to look for it. One of the things that I noticed that brought a huge grin to my face was this enormous pile of wooden clothes pins. My housekeeper is a tiny woman and the washing line at the house is quite tall, so clothes pins go missing regularly. She often will just tug at a sheet and the pins separate flying in opposite directions. When I saw this, I knew that I needed a shot of this place where the missing clothes pins must go to breed.

Turnip seller Abu Sir

 In the fall when they plant the berseem for the winter the villagers plant turnips as well. Sometimes they are planted in with the berseem crop and harvested with the second or third cutting of the berseem. Other times they plant them along the borders of the beds and harvested as needed. Turnips in Egypt are generally eaten raw like the radishes that are closely related. I like to cook the greens but this isn't a common dish. Generally they are cut and pickled in a simple brine solution and eaten as an accompaniment to almost anything.  She was enjoying  the winter sun in Abu Sir and snacking on some of her wares.

Market Smile

If you are sitting in a car in Egypt you may find yourself the object of children's curiosity. The easiest way to entertain them and yourself is to haul out your phone and take pictures. The children will be delighted and are dying to see their photo, and you get something like this little girl in Abu Sir. 

Colourful Cleaning

Village families don't own cars for the most part and there are no shops out here so salesmen come out and wander about with pickup trucks, donkey and horse carts and motorcycle trucks filled with goods that households might need. This man is the local version of the Fuller Brush man.

The Souq After The Feast

A couple of weeks ago I posted a photo of the Maadi souq on the last day of the feast. We needed a few vegetables, but mostly we wanted to get out and wander around, so it was off to the market....which we found almost totally empty. This is much more normal.

Taking a Test Drive

Suppose you want to buy a cart horse. Of course for most of us, this isn't likely but for a lot of people it is much like buying a used car. You need to look it over to see that there are no dings and scratches and then you need to see how well it accelerates and so on. But how to do that? At some of the horse fairs they tie a wheel of a cart to keep in from rolling and then ask the horse to move it quickly.

Full Service

I suppose it's pretty obvious that I love cooking and eating, and I love the fruit and vegetable stands in Egypt. This one carries all the usual seasonal fruits and vegetables (you have to go to expat heavy areas like Maadi for broccoli) and also has a small stand at the end that sells hummous el sham, a cross between soup and a refreshing drink that is a light tomato broth with chickpeas.

On a quiet day the men who run the stands find it more comfortable to sit across the little road to watch their shop and chat about the events of the village and world.

The Argument For Slow Food

I LOVE our vegetables. They make cooking an almost spiritual experience. These are all fresh, less than a day or so from the fields, and there isn't a speck of wax on them. Yum.

The Colours of Tools

The other day while taking a scenic route out of downtown Cairo we passed through Septeya, a district that is basically the giant Home Depot of Cairo. This wonderful area specialises in tools and construction materials. As a life long hardware store addict, I'd rather go to Septeya than City Stars. The brilliant yellow of the storefront and the glitter of metal and colour hanging out to view caught my eye.

A Fine Line

For Egyptians who don't shop in the big supermarkets, purchasing food is a much more immediate experience. Fruit and vegetables are bought at the stand and meat is bought at the butcher. The butcher does the entire job of selling meat, from beginning to end. This camel is likely destined for dinner tables and possibly only a few hours from now.

The Accessory Stand

Visitors to the Barragil horse fair can buy horses, mules, donkeys, wagons, spare parts, and lovely bright woolen attachments to add to the harness decorations of shiny brass.

Lunch At The Horse Fair

I went with a couple of friends to the Friday horse fair in Barragil, a semi-urban area near Imbaba. One friend, an older man who has a passion for mules offered the ride and three women went with him. It's not all the sort of place that tourists would go and not even the sort of place that most women go. The woman running the lunch tent was about the only other human female there and while we did attract a certain amount of attention, most of it was relatively polite. Little boys should basically be put in cages from the age of twelve to about twenty-five, I sometimes think.

The Corner Store

When I came to Egypt in the late 80's most "supermarkets" were about this size. Now we have huge hypermarkets that stock everything under the sun and quite reminiscent of Europe or North America. It's nice to have a lot of choice, but there is something also soothing about going down to the shop on the corner for a packet of sugar and chatting with the owner about the local gossip.

Just Waiting

Having furniture reupholstered in Egypt is fairly inexpensive compared to outside. Wood generally has to be imported, but we manufacture a lot of fabrics and for the most part the labour costs are lower than in Europe or North America. Buying furniture usually means the higher cost for the wood and such is included and sometimes it can take a while to find the particular look that you want. In Old Cairo a lot of furniture is made to order and this set was just sitting in an alleyway waiting to be collected for delivery.

The Ghost of A Cow

Many Egyptians like their meat fresh, very fresh. On Thursdays very often one will see a beef carcase hanging outside a village or city butcher, possibly covered with a damp cloth to keep flies away and preserve freshness.

The Rolling Machine

Stuffed grape leaves are a favourite dish in Egypt, and at least in the old days a woman's cooking skill was partly determined by her ability to roll small tight stuffed grape leaves or cabbage rolls. The filling might include some ground meat, but more usually is seasoned rice. While at the Souq el Goma (the Friday Market) in old Cairo we found this gentleman who had a wonderful gadget that he was demonstrating. It was a rolling machine for grape leaves. What is the world coming to?

The Essentials

A large section of Khan el Khalili is set aside for the herbalists and the oil merchants. They sell the essential oils of flowers grown here and oil distillations of herbal remedies. An oil mixture to encourage the growth of hair includes such oils as those from the seeds of basil, arugula and a number of other plants. I can't say if it worked, but it smelled interesting.

Every Colour in The World

Egypt is a big fan of recycling. There are men who drive around the cities and villages calling out "Roba vecchia", which in Italian means old clothes, but they are not looking for old clothes at all. They will take broken machines, metal that will be weighed out for purchase, almost anything that you want to get rid of. Even the trash here is picked over and the glass is recycled, the paper, the plastic, the metal and so on. Then in the case of the glass, it goes to the glass blowers' district where they melt it and re-use it to make glassware in lovely colours. A lot of this is sold in Khan el Khalili which is an old market area that encompasses many city blocks in Old Cairo. It's a major tourist destination but it is not just for tourists. Cairenes go there to buy brass, glass, herbs, and other items needed in the house.