Tag Archives: traditional

Posted on by

The Case of Potatoes

Reply

For the past several weeks of my 2in1 period of life with nr.2 addition to the family I seem to be rather craving one basic (Czech) nutritive – potatoes. Usually boiled, but in any case, I need them. I like rice, don’t get me wrong, but seriously, the amount of rice consumed in Kuwait is just way too much! I was born and raised in a potato country and as such I believe irreversibly in the power of a raw potato (good for your bones, my grandma used to say. True, she used to say fresh yeast is good for skin too – which probably is considering the heaps of vit. B contained in it – but my joy of eating that was much, much less visible.), and I believe that potatoes contain a lot of vitamins and minerals and generally stuff your average mid-European body needs for it’s survival and hence my insane craving for them in the third trimester is actually easily explainable – back to the roots, back to the healthy body with true balanced diet!
Well, whatever it is forcing me to eat ‘tatoes; Abbas maybe, considering how skillfully he made me eat a bunch of steaks – and still want them – although I am normally red-meat non-eater; today’s lunch for me is decided.
Škubánky!
[pr.:shkoobahnkee] (Or you prefer to call it kucmouch? [pr.:cootsmokh])


It’s a sort of potato boiled balls with flour mashed together and that ripped apart with a spoon dipped in butter (or lard), served with whatever you prefer – sweet with powder sugar and ground poppy seeds and a spoon of butter over it, or a certain kind of hard quark (curd) which I reckon I can’t really describe unless you are raised in Czech, or salty variant with salt and pickles, or bacon – in which case you can also dry/lard fry the potato mash.
It’s rather versatile and very cheap when it comes to materials needed for cooking – just butter, potatoes, flour, water and something to add as finishing as mentioned above, and it’s a traditional Czech meal, which I believe was also widely sported during both WWs in my country – or so said both of my grandmothers.
I believe my Kuwaiti (read: harees, yareesh, maraaq and machboos raised husband) will once again wonder what’s so wrong with his wife, that she cooks something which looks so stomach unfriendly and weird – but hey, not as if harees looks delicious on the first glance!
…CONTINUE… →

I Can’t Believe it’s Winter Time

Reply

So here we are, in the first Advent week, outside are mere 15 degrees, still sunny and the occasional rain was probably just the last week’s news. As for now, it actually can still get pretty hot over the day.
I’ve finally (!) managed to fix my SD card reader, who would think that after a year of not working I would have this brilliant idea (which, as I found out later on on Google, is pretty non-brilliant and kind of *duuuh*), and I uninstalled all generic USB drivers on my PC and let it re-install with a restart. Bam, I’ve got myself a working SD card reader. I just wish I would figure that out a year ago, so I wouldn’t be doing this clunky card-to-notebook-to-hardrive-to-PC thing… Oh well, at least I know it now, let’s stay positive! And some pictures to prove it.



I’m getting pretty fat by now which I’d say should be positive, as far as it’s not only the fluff supplies growing but also everything under them, in the order as it should and it is required. My next doc appt. is in two weeks and I am already getting paranoid if everything’s ok.
But, inshallah, it is.



I am soo hormonal nowadays. Hubby recently bought a roll from Cinnabon as a good-husband-gesture and I almost cried. Not over the gesture, but because cinnamon rolls make my stomach go awry already for few weeks, so I was torn apart between eating it and running to the bathroom and not eating it and making my husband disappointed and sad – which is what brought me to tears. The imagination of a sad husband and his good will gesture going to waste. So I pinched a little on it and than stopped with an excuse on a really full stomach. It was true after all and no lie, as the sweets arrived right after a pretty big lunch. *Phew*. Actually, writing about it makes me wanna cry too.
I’m also all tears over being far from snow, winter, miserable weather, and all these Christmas lights and awful design ideas of trees and decorations, and the smell of gingerbread and long nights and the smell of Christmas days I remember from home – a pine, an orange, some gingerbread and lots of colourful lights instead of a night lamp. Good for eyes while reading!
I was thinking about making some carton decoration for our desert home here, so my kid has fun when doing it and it’s better than TV, and our housekeeper is a Christian – so to make her a little happy and feel more friendly in this land of sand a mosques.
Will see, it’s still a lot of time after all. I am, however, definitely going to try to bake some of the traditional Czech stuff.
Oh oh and not to forget with my baby brain – my dear husband gave me a birthday present in advance again and paid for my site hosting as well as Flickr Pro account, so I can continue writing about nonsense and upload pictures nobody wants to see. Yay me! Thank you, Abu.

Back Home, At Last

Reply

Finally home! Settled again, we swiftly joined the Ramadan time, and are enjoying our moments of calm now. It’s summer, so no school for Dori, and fasting, so not much activities going on except the iftaars at my mother-in-law, which is always loud and vivid experience with so many family members gathered at once, starved and longing some Vimto and a piece of food. My MIL cooks great and enjoys a lot of rice and مرق, sambusak, spicy soups, herbs and bread. Quite traditional Arab cuisine, but really tasty – especially in Ramadan!
It’s our third day back home and sand already got up to greet us as well, so today no open-window-heater-style I do time to time to warm up the ACed room of mine.


The routine view from my window

Half of Ramadan is still in front of us and قرقيعان was celebrated yesterday and the day before, with kids dressed up in traditional Kuwaiti attires singing a song for treats, door to door – a bit comparable to Halloween or Easter in Czech, but more traditional and definitely not a derivative of any of mentioned above, but a very old tradition. Although I have to say that the maid armies kind of spoiled the traditional feeling, as well as some parties were simply going in jeans and T-shirts, so shame on you families! – قرقيعان is a nice tradition and Kuwait should take care of that heritage in a proper way, it would be such a shame to forget it.

Getting it Prepared

5

Hubby leaves to London tomorrow to pick up our accidentally-allowed tourist visas with a fine hope of legalising our stay in Kuwait later on, during the three months of their duration, and was half packing (for moving) and half picking clothes (to wear for the trip), when he stumbled upon his only dishdasha he brought to England just for my sake, when I was intending to shoot some pics with it. He forgot to bring his kufi the first time so it wasn’t possible and when he brought it a year later, I already forgot about my desire (obviously it wasn’t so strong).

Aboody

Now, when going through the hills of our clothes we managed to gather in three years of living in Britain, he found the whole set and put it on, just for me. I have that weird thing for traditional Gulf attire, I find it more sexy than jeans and a T-shirt. It just looks so clean and nice. And Abood definitely looks really shmexy in it – for me, that is!

podpis