We walked how far?

Well, after not being out of the apartment in 3 weeks (perhaps slightly more), the last two nights sure made up for it.
I'm always up for a good walk, but a walk in Cairo is not the same as a walk in a residential neighborhood where I grew up.
lol
I thought last night was crowded and busy, but tonight was even more so.
It was actually a little bit overwhelming, as I was tired, hot/sweaty, hungry and there was no avoiding the crowds, bright lights, honking horns, people babbling loudly, music blaring, and all this while trying to watch your step because you don't want to step in the trash that is on the roads and you never know what that puddle might actually be from and you don't want to step in a hole.
Phew!
By the time we got home tonight all I could say was thank God! The neighborhood where my in-laws live is relatively quiet, though during the day it is fairly active. It's not a main street like we will live on when we move but it's not "dead" either.

Anyways, let me post some food photos like I said I would, and then I will get to telling about last night and tonight. I guess this will be a long post.
lol

This picture shows um.. hmm.. not sure what to call it. They have a similar filling as something called atayif, but the atayif is made of mini pancake looking things that are then folded in half, and these are made from phyllo dough that is filled with a cream and then rolled over and over and then fried. After frying, my MIL soaks them in the sugar syrup.
I tried one the other night. They are alright, but to tell you the truth the sugar syrup is a bit over sweet for me and so I really mostly avoid everything she makes that has it.



Next we have the brownies that I made. I'm not putting the pictures in order, they are getting added by where they are stored alphabetically. lol



Here is the first picture of the lentil soup that my MIL was making. After she cooked it on the stove, she put it through the blender to get it smooth, and made one pot of just the smooth, and another that had a bunch of garlic and bread.



Here is the garlic/bread version. I think I can skip showing the plain version.



Next we have some of the cutest things my MIL has made. Not sure what she calls them but my name for them is meat egg baskets. lol
They started out as a ball of spiced ground beef that had been stuffed with a hard boiled egg (peeled of course). They get wrapped in foil and then boiled in a pan of water. After they are cooked that way, mom cuts them in half shortwise and then fries them. After taking them out and draining, she put a stalk of parsley or something in them to make them look like little baskets. They were too cute.



We also had that rice dish I talked about a little while ago that when I saw it I thought it looked like a pineapple upside down cake. This isn't a great picture as you can't really see the tomatoes well, which looked like cherries in a pineapple cake. That's potato mounded on the top that reminded me of pineapple.



Last up for now is the sugar balls. They are made of flour, and a couple other ingredients, but nothing fancy. MIL squeezes the dough into a ball shape that gets dropped into the oil to fry, and after frying they are soaked in the sugar syrup.
The ones in this picture are actually a day old so they are not shiny and glistening like they are when they're fresh.



With the exception of the brownies (which I made yesterday) and the sugar balls, my MIL made all of this stuff for our dinner on Thursday. Wow she was busy!!!

I took some pictures last night of the roast lamb we had. I didn't know it was lamb til after I was done eating and they asked me if I liked lamb. Oops. I guess I do since it tasted good, but I hadn't had any since I started eating meat again.
But those pictures aren't uploaded yet, maybe I'll get to them tomorrow, along with the pictures I took of the apartment tonight! Yes... finally I got to see it!

Well, last night we went to look at stoves and kitchen items that we'll need to buy to at least get started.
The stove place we had wanted to look at was closed so we just walked on to the kitchen place. Actually, we had been to this place before, it isn't just for kitchen stuff but that's what we went for. It's up on the 4th floor and thankfully the a/c was working this time, unlike last time we visited.
We found many things that we will buy insha'Allah, including pots/pans, plates, silverware (pretty pretty silverware! :D), and a host of smaller items. They have pyrex baking dishes and serving bowls/platters, all kinds of kitchen do dads and ... well... a lot of stuff! lol
I can't wait til we can actually shop and buy the stuff, but we don't want to buy it til we're going to take it straight to the apartment, and that wasn't going to happen last night.

I had wanted to go to the apartment last night but we ended up going tonight instead.
There were many new things since I had been there last. There was a new kitchen sink but we are going to end up replacing with something that will fit down inside a kitchen cabinet. The washer was hooked up (and I found the instruction booklet, all in Arabic - how useful!), the mattress and box spring, the fridge, the temporary kitchen cupboards (which are smelly and need to air out because of whatever finish they painted them with - it smells horrid), and the green room. Which was... not what I was expecting. Maybe it was just because it was dark outside and the only light was coming from a bulb hanging in the ceiling, but it was just a LOT brighter than I wanted. Insha'Allah when I see it with better light I will like it better.

I took pictures of stuff and will post tomorrow or soon.

After we had our fill of swimming on our new bed with the a/c on, and generally basking in the glow of new apartmentness, we left and walked to another branch of the same kitchen store that we went to last night.
They had mostly the same stuff, but a few more items and better laid out.

It turns out that the vacuums here use bags that are not disposable. They are the same shape as the disposable ones, but they are made of some type of cloth that you pull out and there is something on the bottom that holds it shut and you just take that thing off and empty out the junk. I was like... what??? Where's the vacuums that have the bags that you throw out??
It seems that those are a fairly NEW development here and that people don't like them. I imagine it is because you have to pay for them and people are poor and cheap as well. :p
I told Ahmed it was fine, we could get one that you had to empty, but he was going to have to do it. Gross. And dusty.

After we looked around at the store, which was not just crowded full of very LOUD people, but also had a loudspeaker that was being used constantly and that was on full blast and that I couldn't seem to get away from, we left and walked down the street a ways to another area. It is where hubby used to get my munchies from when we lived on Pyramid Street.
Well... we passed by a cigarette factory on the way. Wow. Just wow. The smell was overwhelming and disgusting and I could taste it in my mouth. I was very glad to get out of the vicinity of that place. I couldn't imagine living near there. And it was right in the middle of a crowded neighborhood full of housing and stores.

We finally got down to the bakery, which took some time of walking through the loud, bustling street, and we were looking at what they had. We had looked at a couple of other bakeries on the way.
It seems that during the month of Ramadan, everyone makes different sweets instead of their regular kind.
Well... we were looking at what this place had and I was thinking about what we could buy, when I looked down on the ground (the bakery is open onto the street itself) and I saw the most ginormous cockroach.
Well, lol, after hubby saw it, we left.
I don't think it bothered him so much but he probably figured I wouldn't want anything from the bakery after seeing it.
It wasn't necessarily inside the bakery, but the bakery is open to the elements and just... yuck.

I told him if I EVER see a roach that big in my apartment, that I will actually leave the apartment and find someone to kill it. I am a strong woman, but that is just too much. The small dark colored ones I think I could kill, but this one was some weird brown and yellow color and so large!!!!

Anyways, after some MORE walking, we got to a bus and ended up riding that back home.

Wow, I'm beat!

Also... I think I figured out the thing that bothers me the most about Egypt. The cleanliness. Or lack thereof rather.
It's pervasive, and really, no matter what part of Egypt you are in, you can't get away from it. There might be areas that are somewhat cleaner, and some that are very dirty, but it just never stops. It never ends. There is always another pile of dirt, another pile of trash, another pile of broken bricks. People freely toss their litter in the street, and all manner of litter.
I'm just really super tired of how dirty it is here.
I will need to find a way to adjust and deal with it though as long as I'm here.