Fuul of it

Fuul (a bean dish, kind of the Egyptian version of re-fried beans) is practically a national dish.  Actually what makes a national dish anyways? 

In any case, it's very filling, nutritious, and cheap.  All good reasons to eat it.

Hubby made some last night, and it really is very filling.  It's eaten quite often during our fasting month of Ramadan before the fasting begins in the morning, to help keep you full throughout the day.

It's also commonly eaten here for breakfast, as it's cheap and hot and as I said, filling. 

Meat is so expensive here and many people just can't afford it at all, so fuul or other items are their "meat".

Hubby makes a mean fuul, I'm not sure if I like his or his mom's better.  They are slightly different.  Though in either case, I have to ask them to leave off almost all the oil for my portion.

After the fuul is cooked with any combination of salt, pepper, cumin, fennel or other spices, it is mooshed to break up the beans and then you can add lemon and my in laws add oil.  I don't like to add too much oil, taking what was a healthy food and making it unhealthy, but that's just my opinion, and I'm pretty picky about food stuff. 

So... right now, belly full of fuul.  :D

:::

The clogged drain was a bit of a drama.  We thought the owner was bringing by a plumber to unclog the drain, and in reality he was bringing by the plumber to have a look and the plumber said some sections of the pipe on the wall outside the building needed to be replaced, and he actually gave the owner a good price, which would be split amongst the tenants, but some of the tenants didn't want to pay, so I'm not sure what's going to happen with that.

In any case, that left us with a backed up pipe. 

Hubby tried some liquid stuff and that didn't work.  He tried another batch and it still didn't work.  He was quite industrious about the whole thing and actually spent a good portion of Friday working on it.

In the end, he did end up unclogging it. 

He was rummaging around in the tool bin and I was very "concerned" when I heard what sounded like an electric drill in the bathroom.

Hubby gets some great ideas but holes in pipes is not something I would consider a great idea. 

I decided to wait and see what was happening, and when he finally told me he had unclogged the drain and how he did it, I was vastly relieved to hear that he had been using a small blowing machine, like a miniature leaf blower.  lol

Anyways, drain unclogged, which is good, because we couldn't shower or do laundry or anything else much in the bathroom.  Thankfully the toilet drains out of another pipe and so that wasn't an issue! 

:::

Good news on the sewing machine front.  Ahmed's mom's sister, who has been here visiting from Kuwait, has a machine here that she is going to let me use.

Apparently she had brought it with her last year at some point while visiting to get it fixed, since it was too expensive to get it fixed in Kuwait. 

In the meantime, she had bought herself a new machine to use, and so even after getting her older one fixed the other day, she doesn't really need it. 

So, she will let me use it here in Egypt while her new machine is back in Kuwait.

The nice thing is, it's the same brand as the machine that I had in the States that I gave away before moving.  I think I mentioned, it's one of the very few things that I really regret not having brought with me.  The brand is Husqvarna, and my machine was great for the almost 30 years that I had it.  This machine of hubby's aunt is a bit older, I think closer to 50 years?  lol   But, presumably it works and we will pick it up this week insha'Allah.

:::

We had some oranges to use up and I was finding that with these particular oranges, I didn't like eating them so much, they were too pulpy and pithy and such, too much extra insides.

So I was looking around for a recipe using oranges, and most recipes hardly use any orange at all, unless you're making a tart kind of thing, which was more involved than I wanted to get, but I did find a few recipes for orange syrup!

I thought it would be great, since hubby is always looking for a sauce for anything and everything, and the recipe sounded really simple.

I squeezed the 6 oranges (kind of messy but kind of fun) and got almost 2 cups of juice.  The recipe called for 3 cups.  Hmmm....

Well, we can adapt right?  So I just lowered the amount of sugar accordingly, and mixed the two together and started the heat on the stove. 

The sugar dissolved, and I had it at a low boil like the recipe suggested, but even after the recommended amount of cooking time, it didn't seem to be condensing down at all.

I waited almost half hour (recipe stated 15 minutes) before deciding that maybe I just needed to put some more sugar in, and turn up the heat.

So I dumped some more sugar in and turned the heat up. 

Wow, well, it did get to boiling more and I kept an eye on it while I did the dishes, stirring it every so often.

It was going fine, and reducing much better, when all of a sudden it went from smelling really great to smelling very wrong!!  lol

I quickly took it off the stove and had a look at it.  It was seemingly past the stage of syrup and had turned into a sort of caramel/taffy substance.  It smelled kind of good, almost like cinnamon, but also kind of strange and different.

I waited til it cooled down some and then made hubby taste it.  He said it almost tasted tomatoey.  Strange.  He asked me to pour some on a couple of the cinnamon rolls I made the other day.  But ....oops?  I waited a little too long to pour it, and the orange "syrup" had hardened up quite a bit.  I had to heat it up to be able to dribble some on.

We'll see if it's worth the oranges or not.  In any case, it was a bit of a learning experience.

:::

I also tried to remake the cinnamon rolls using full milk instead of cream, but the dough didn't get quite thick enough to roll, yet it was thicker than a quick bread dough.

I settled on dumping it into a 8 inch square pan and sprinkling the sugar cinnamon on top and hoping it would turn out something edible after being baked.

Well, it was edible, however the texture and consistency was like that of a sponge.  Not very appetizing.  I mean, imagine biting into a sink sponge, like O-Cello brand sponges, and... ugh?  lol

I won't be making that recipe again, but I might continue to look for easy recipes that don't involve cream and or yeast.

:::

Weather forecast for the next 5 days:

Monday  95

Tuesday 96

Wednesday  98

Thursday  102

Friday  95

Although the forecast usually seems to run high, it doesn't always.  The temps will go down again before summer really starts, but it looks like it's on its way.

We've also had a lot of dust the past 4 or 5 days.  Not good for floors.  lol
Oh well.