All things food

So I started to allude to food in my previous posts, but I think it deserves an entire post all on its own. 

The food here is as varied as the people who call this place home.  There are plenty of Arab food vendors around covering most if not all of the middle eastern countries specialties, tons of Indian restaurants, and of course American fast food.  The restaurants are typically decent deals, especially if you're willing to eat at an Arab food joint or some other "ethnic" restaurant.  For example, my friend Jon and I had a long day today running errands and taking his car in for it's scheduled service.  We stopped at one of our favorite restaurants here called Turkish Al Bukari and got take out.  We ordered 2 Shish Tawook containing grilled chicken chunks, homous, cucumers, and french fries.  On a side note, french fries come with EVERYTHING here, including being put in sandwiches, casseroles, and just as a normal side to almost any food.  I always thought you got fries with everything in the states, but here they would put them on a salad.  Anyway, I digress, we also got 3 cheese and meat pies (turkish bread wrapped around spiced meat with cheese and then baked) as well as 2 fresh juices.  Our total for this feast was 54 Qatari Riyal, or about 15 dollars.  We were both stuff and all for about 7 bucks a person!  In the same breath, however, you can go to the Ritz Carlton or any of the other hotels and spend 54 riyal on just a cup of coffee!  It all depends on where you want to eat.  Another excellent and cheap place is where we went on our first night here and again for my birthday, Hot Chicken.  It's a hodgepodge of cuisine, they have Indian, Chinese, American, Arab, and everything in between on their extremely long menu.  It's delicious and cheap, 4 people can eat for about 25 dollars or less.  The best part about these restaurants is that they almost all deliver.  This even includes the American fast food joints!  It's very strange to be followed into your compound by the Hardees delivery car or the McDelivery mopeds.

The grocery stores also reflect the varried cultures and people that live here.  I know I've mentioned Carrefour before and it is still our primary grocery store, but we have also visted a few other grocery stores, our favorite being the Lulu Hypermarket.  Hypermarket simply means that they sell things other than food (kind of like a Super Walmart or Super Target.  There is an incredible variety of spices (which I've also mentioned before), types of canned foods and vegetables, and of course produce.  Again, like the restaurants, if you want "American" food or products expect to pay a hefty chunk of change.  If you're willing to experiment and try something different, the possibilities are endless.  Some of the fun things we've tried are kiwi jam (delicious!), spiced roasted corn (kinda like corn nuts), and the wide variety of Arabic sweets.  Also amazing is the amount and variety of lamb that they sell.  They literally have any cut of lamb from entirely whole all the way to lamb chops.  The lamb also comes from many different countries, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Egypt, and many others.  It's also fairly cheap to buy, comparable to ground beef in price.  All of this is not to say every store has everything you need.  Some items are stocked infrequently, one day they are there, the next you can't even find the tag for the item.  Canned pumpkin and real maple syrup are two things that come to mind that you buy when you see them, even if they weren't on your list as they may or may not be there the next time.  The produce is also similar in that you never know what kind of quality will be there or if they will even have what you need for a particular recipe.  Finding substitutes for ingredients has become a new game and I'm learning a lot about it from friends who've been here awhile already.  Another thing about living here is that I'm learning to make a lot of base ingredients that I never bothered to make myself in the States because prepacked items were so easy to find and decent tasting.  Chicken stock is one thing you cannot find in cans or cartons.  They sell bouillon cubes, but that's about it.  So I'm learning to make my own stock.  Pasta sauce and pesto are also in the works as even if you can find them, they aren't very good and expensive.  I'm also going to attempt to make pizza dough, as all I can find are frozen crusts that taste like saltine crackers.

Overall, my favorite foods here have been the fresh juices, the fresh Arabic bread (basically pita bread) and the spice.  The juices here are simply amazing.  Not only can you find about any kind of prepackaged juice you'd want (Strawberry, kiwi, guava, peach, pineapple, mango, banana, etc) but also fresh refrigerated versions of them as well.  My favorite is strawberry juice mixed with a kiwi lime juice and topped off with some ginger ale.  So delicious!  There are also juice stalls everywhere where they will make you any type of fresh juice or combination of fruits that they have.  Let me tell you, fresh strawberry kiwi juice is phenomenal and so simple.  All they really do is blend up freshly cut up pieces of fruit with some sugar water and ice!  Simple but so amazing.   The Arabic bread is also delicious and extremely cheap, 1 riyal for 5 pieces that are about 1 foot across.  We've used it as a pizza dough substitute and of course to make sandwiches and pita chips.  And finally, the spices.  I know I've said lot about them in other posts, but I still can't get over how good and cheap they are here.  1 kilogram (2.2 lbs!) is 9 riyal or about $2.50!!! Even the more expensive spices like white pepper or imported spices are only 30-40 riyal per kilogram.  Even at 40 riyal per kilogram, that's only about $5 per pound!  I definitely will make full use of how wonderfully cheap and plentiful the spices are here!

Well, that's my take on the food here.  If you have any questions about the food, just post a comment and I'll try and see if I can get you an answer!