By the time I got to the kitchen today I was already struggling to keep my eyes open. Because of some unexpected desk work (database queries and statistic verification), I’d skipped lunch. I’d skipped breakfast too, but that was primarily due to being out of Special K. So while I was cramming to get the desk work done by early afternoon, and people kept coming in with things for me to work on, I still had to make the daily shopping list, figure out what to do about cabbage, and deal with being sore from playing soccer last night.

Soccer was a good time. As Hil and I headed down the street to the field after cooking, eating, and having my mohawk taken care of, we were escorted be the typical guy with the machine gun. Right about the time we hit the field, I’d noticed smoke coming from the direction of the office. More smoke than if someone was burning trash. Maybe the field was on fire? They recently redid the electricity in the neighborhoods, maybe they didn’t do it right? Then it looked like there was smoke coming from the petrol station nearby, except it wasn’t a dark smoke. More of a whitish-grey. I pointed it out to the guard, who wasn’t too concerned (as far as I could tell, but he didn’t speak English, nor I Kurdi…nor did he seem to care at all). That’s when the truck came around the corner, turning to drive alongside the soccer field. DDT. It really is just like that black and white picture in the history texts. You got your truck, your driver hanging his head out the window, and a guy in the bed by the barrel of DDT just hanging out and sipping a Coca-Cola. The kids run around in the stuff, no one moves off the street or closes the windows. I’m pretty sure the neighbors, who like to kick it on the curb in the evenings, old man in his pajamas, little baby cradled either by mom or grandma, not even they moved their lawn chairs inside.

Myself, I’m not very hip on bioaccumulation, so I got the guard and Hil to cross the street so we could at least be upwind from it – there was no way we were going to outrun it. Well, we cross the street about the time the truck got to be 100 feet away, and that’s where it stopped. It sat there, just spewing out a cloud of DDT. The cloud got bigger, and bigger, but then lo and behold, one of our AK-47 carrying guards appeared out of the fog and the spraying ceased. I think I might have to get one of those so people will listen to me more. It might make me a great public speaker.

Yeah, so we got to play DDT-free soccer. It was a really good game, probably the first one where passing was a regular occurrence, I scored, and that was the night. The next day was just not good, but I still had to cook.

Chicken tagine with apricots and almonds;
Eggplant pilaf with cinnamon and pistachios;
Roasted curried cauliflower.

Take away the cauliflower, and it was a damn fine meal. Its not that the cauliflower was bad, it just didn’t go with the other two dishes. Might have been the grape vinegar and curry powder. But those other two dishes were delectable.

There’s no tagine in the kitchen. For those of who don’t know, a tagine is a traditional Moroccan cooking apparatus that looks almost identical to one of Madonna’s mid’80’s boobs. Circular and conical. Made out of clay. No jiggles about it. You put your food in there, put a flame underneath, and as the juices evaporate and waft up they condense on the conical lid before dripping back down onto the food. This is all a theory because I’ve only seen a picture on a tagine, but I believe it gives your food a nice glaze. A pan with a lid works too, and at the end you can just add cornstarch (or Iraqi corn flour) to the leftover sauce and it’ll thicken up proper. Luckily, we had a pan with a lid. Maybe tomorrow I’ll provide some details on the pitiful kitchen outfitting. Now why someone would invent a conical lid, well that’s just crazy.

The chicken was hella tasty. Nice and succulent. Meat cooked with fruit used to seem stupid to me. Why combine the two? You got your meat group, you got your fruit group…anything made out of the two will just be sterile and unable to get your taste buds up. Or look something like Condoleeza Rice. But it’s not true! Meat and fruit should be getting together all the time! A little bit of tangy sweetness never hurt nobody, and this dish proves it. Glazed apricots and chicken is a good thing together. I didn’t even try to get blanched almonds, to be toasted as for the final topping, but the plain ol’ almonds still added a nice crunch and taste. I think blanching involves boiling something in water, but I didn’t want to trouble myself.

The eggplant pilaf was awesome. Even though I’d cooked it, it took my mind a minute or two to place the ethereal, warmth of a taste that was pervading my mouth. The flavor seemed so natural, so in place that it couldn’t have been an ingredient. It was more than that, like some sort of Zen for the tongue. Well, it turned out to be cinnamon. Regardless, it was still great! Crushed some Iranian pistachios to put up top, and add a little something-something for my teeth to enjoy. Now there was also dill in the dish, added at the ever end before serving. Dill and cinnamon didn’t seem like a pleasant combination on paper, but I went for it, and I liked it.

I didn’t do any sort of cabbage salsa. I thought a little more about it, and someone should have slapped me for coming up with that idea. Who the hell wants cabbage in their salsa? That’s a place for tomatoes, tomatillos, poblanos and corn, not no cabbage. Besides, we don’t get limes here. When you ask for limes, your get a bag of wood chips, scooped up out of some gutter someplace. And back by that gutter, you got some Iraqi kid laughing his butt off that he told some other guy he had some special limes to sell. Meanwhile, you got me in the kitchen looking at this bag of brown turds trying to figure out what the heck I asked for to get this in return? Cinnamon sticks? Coriander? I only figured it out after giving it to the experts (the old ladies that speak Kurdish and only Kurdish). They poked around at the bag for a good five minutes before telling me, by way of the Kurdi-American, that what I had in the bag were bitter lemons.

I don’t intend on cooking with them unless I’m feeding beavers.

Latest cabbage update: Cabbage and apple slaw for tomorrow (I’m grilling outside). Looking for sauerkraut recipes, because we can get beer here and there’s South African’s in the neighborhood and all the ladies like to talk about their sausage. Maybe I’ll make potato and sauerkraut perogies sometime. Anyone know of an alcoholic beverage to be made with sauerkraut? Sauerkraut brandy?