Cooking lessons

No, not the kind where you pay someone to teach you how to bake a cake, but the little ad hoc culinary tips one gets from rather unlikely sources while waiting at the butcher counter in Lulus. This week was no exception.

There I was, patiently waiting my turn so I could have some lamb ground up for kebabs (the general practice is that you pick your cut of beef/lamb/veal and ask the butcher to grind it for you), and I smiled nicely at the elderly gent in skullcap and dishdasha next to me. He seemed a little worried that I wasn't yet being attended to by the butchery folks, and decided to speed things up a bit by asking me what I needed. I told him -- ground lamb.

And then I said the magic words: For kebab.

When I say 'magic' I mean MAGIC. This brought forth a very detailed set of instructions and ingredients from the gent, starting with the advice that I should use a mixture of beef and lamb and ending with lots of finger-lip smacking gestures. In between, he decided that I needed help picking out a hunk of beast to be ground up and so examined all the per-kilo prices for me until he found a suitable one (the 40-Dhs-per-kilo-cut was quickly ruled out). Then came more ingredients that he had forgotten to list earlier -- onion and bqdwns. Yes, bqdwns (can someone buy these people a vowel please?). You know, greens. I think he must have sensed 1) that I didn't speak Arabic and 2) that there were, in fact, about 56 different types of greens available at the Lulus, so he decided it was time to take our carts together over to the herb section of the produce department and look for bqdwns together. I assumed it was coriander, but I was wrong, as he pointed to the coriander (cilantro, for you Yanks) and said "Not that one. Other one." Ok, got it. Parsley. I found the little parsley sign, complete with pictograph for the illiterati, and there was the Arabic translation:

بقدونس

You know -- bqdwns.

He seemed pretty impressed with my Arabic-reading ability, so decided it was time for another forgotten ingredient to be mentioned - 'small like onion, but not onion.' Oh great. Here we go again. It was like playing Password in the produce section. The first thing that came to mind was shallot, but I quickly remembered where I was. Yes, shallots are available at the French-owned Carrefour, at something like a million dirhams a kilo, but only the French actually buy them. So what else is 'small like onion but not onion'? It helped that he held up a finger to indicate how small 'small' was. It did not help that he kept saying 'thum', since I associated that with the finger and figured he just got confused about which one of the five was his thumb.

Then I got it.

Thum = garlic.

I spelled it out for him (tha - waw - mim, pronounced "thoom"), he confirmed my spelling, I thanked him for the help, and we returned to our solo grocery shopping tasks. The fat expats who were staring at us the entire time did the same.

I didn't really have the heart to tell him that I already knew how to make pretty damned good kebab, but I learned two words in Arabic that I'll probably never forget.

Shop 'til you drop: Going to the mattresses

Five extra readership points if you know what that means.

Today's post means something different.  We're not bringing our fantastic memory foam hybrid mattress with us (we'll need it to sleep on when we come back home for visits, and besides, I think it's time we graduated to queen size).  So we need to buy a mattress once we arrive in Abu Dhabi.

I know what you're thinking.  Why am I wasting space in the ether (not to mention my morning) writing about something as mundane as a mattress?

Think about it.  Unless you're one of those people who survives on three hours of sleep, you spend one-third of your life on a mattress.  So it's pretty effing important.

As usual, we set out on the mattress hunt in our usual way:  I do the silent research, and Mr. Socially Gracious actually talks to the people.  It works great, and those of you who know us know why.

And we found the place to buy a mattress.

It's not just that we discovered (to our happy surprise) that there are identical sorts of mattresses to what we've spent the past five years on in Abu Dhabi.  It's, to quote Dennis Denudo from The Castle, the VIBE we got from the store manager of (get this) The Living Room Furnishing store.  Here's the story:

Once I located the contact information for this outfit (which, incidentally, sells mattresses, not living room furnishings), Mr. S-G fired off an email asking if they sold the kind of mattress that is not all tempurpedic foam, but some sort of hard latex at the bottom and a few inches of memory foam on the top.  This is what he received in response, just a few hours later:

Thank you for your email.

Yes we do have mattress in our own brand, Europedic Memory Foam, which are most reasonably priced and come in following combinations:

8cm Ultra High Density Foam, topped with 8 cm Europedic Memory Foam

Dressed in Feather Touch Terry Fabric and borderline finish

Perfect Comfort13 cm Ultra High Density Foam, topped with 8 cm Europedic Memory Foam

Dressed in Feather Touch Terry Fabric and borderline finish 

All Materials used are anti-bacterial

Memory Foam is temperature and Pressure sensitive

Absolute Comfort - Twin layered

15 cm Ultra High Density Foam, topped with7 cm Europedic Memory Foam

Topped with 3 cm super soft Europedic Material

Dressed in European Knitted Bertha Fabric 

All Materials used are anti-bacterial

Memory Foam is temperature and Pressure sensitive

Ultimate Comfort  - THE Ultimate Sleep Surface for luxurious rest

15 cm Ultra High Density Foam, topped with 10 cm Europedic Memory Foam; specially contoured Encased in UCHD Foam wall to provide comfort and durability over edges

Dressed in European Knitted Bertha Fabric

All materials used are anti-bacterial

Memory Foam is temperature and Pressure sensitive

All mattresses carry 10 year manufacturer’s Warranty

Please do call if I can be of more assistance. Appreciate if you can call me or send me your number so I can call you to discuss this further. For location maps please see The Living Room Furnishing in wikimapia / google maps in dubai / abu dhabi / al ain

Kheman Ganwani

The Living Room Furnishing LLC

Abu Dhabi 02 621 0322

Dubai 04 422 7466

Al Ain 03 755 0428

Al Ain 03 755 3099

For Locations please search wikimapia.org or maps.google.com for the living room furnishing dubai / abu dhabi / al ain

HOLY RAPID RESPONSE, BATMAN!

Upon thanking the fellow, we received yet another email telling us how much he was looking forward to having us visit his showroom and supplying us with the mobile number of his colleague and the specific location of the store (by Madinat Zayed Shopping Centre, behind DHL/behind the corner of Al Falah Street/Sheikh Rashid Road = Old Airport Road).  Yes, that's the address.

Needless to say, we're pretty confident where we'll be shopping for a mattress in Abu Dhabi.

Shop 'Til You Drop -- Furniture and Household Goods

As I mentioned, shopping seems to be one of the official Abu Dhabi national pastimes.  There are malls everywhere:  Abu Dhabi Mall, Al Wahda Mall, Marina Mall (which, despite being touted as the best mall in Abu Dhabi, doesn't actually have a website), Madinat Zayed Shopping Centre and Gold Souk, Khalidiya Mall, Al Raha Mall, Al Muhairy Centre, and the tiny little Liwa Centre.  

And those are just the MALLS.  I won't even get started on shopping in nearby Dubai.  Hey, that rhymes!

Let me get something straight before I continue:  I'm a bit of an evolutionary mystery because, despite the fact that I'm a woman, I detest shopping.  Don't get me wrong, I like buying things (sometimes), but I don't like having to leave my house to do so and I really don't like paying retail.

But even though shopping is in my Personal Catalogue of Anathema, it's something that will just have to be done once we arrive in our new house that should be on the top of the city's condemned buildlings list villa next month.  We're not bringing much furniture with us, so we'll need sofas and chairs, a dining room set, beds for our room and the guest suites, office furniture for my husband (I can't do without my good old Ethan Allen), bookcases, lighting, curtains, a barbeque, and some portraits of the Crown Prince.

So where to start?

Fortunately, there are plenty of places to go for these and other things, and prices to suit various sizes of pocketbooks (including the Shylockian Austerity Budget and the Ebenezer Scrooge Husbandry Program).  Here's a handy little list:

Furniture

Ikea (yeah, yeah, I know)

Home Centre

Homes r Us (in the Madinat Zayed Shopping Centre)

The One (winner of the Stupidest Website on the Planet Award)

Pan Emirates

Natuzzi (sorry, Dad)

Marlin

Eldiar

Kitchenware

Carrefour

Ikea

The One

Jashanmal

Bed linens

Home Centre

Carrefour

The White Company (new!!)

Zara Home

Curtains and re-upholstering

Shadows

Christmas decorations

Home Centre (nice to know, but I haven't quite nailed down where we're going to find a Christmas tree to put them on...)

Gardening supplies

Ace

Plants

Mina Zayed Plant Souk

Miscellaneous electrical

Carrefour

The Abu Dhabi Co-op

Jashanmal

Plug Ins

and pretty much every shop on Electra Street

I'm not quite sure where we're going to find that portrait of HH, but isn't it a damn good thing for us that shopping ranks second to falconry as the national pastime?

Shop 'Til You Drop -- White Goods

White goods are so pretty,

Satin-finished steel,

If you go to Carrefour

You can get a deal!

Those lines will make a LOT more sense if you are familiar with the soundtrack to Hair.

This is the first in a what will probably be a series of shop-til-you-drop postings.  Because not only is shopping one of the official UAE national pastimes, it's also necessary -- at least until you get that 3,500 square foot villa furnished and outfitted with appliances.

Yep, that's right, I said *appliances*.  As in white goods.  The refrigerator, range, dishwasher, and laundry facilities are all conspicuously missing from villas in Abu Dhabi.  Actually, there is a refrigerator standing in the yard outside the villa we are trying to rent, but I don't think that counts.

I don't really know why the culture of take-your-appliances-with-you exists over there. Particularly when you think that a significant number of expats leaving a villa might not be moving into another one, but moving OUT of Abu Dhabi.  And it's not just the appliances that go, but the curtains, light fixtures, and even the light bulbs.

What this means is that it's a priority to buy those appliances within a day or two of arriving, and if you're anything like me, that means you'll want to have done some research beforehand. The most efficient way to get that research done is to send your husband over there armed with a shopping list and a notepad and have HIM run around the appliance stores.  But not everyone can do that, so here's a short guide to appliance-hunting in the capital:

Go to Carrefour.

Ok, maybe that's too short.  But my scout -- er, husband -- seemed to have excellent luck there and reported the following:

LG refrigerator

Indesit cooker

LG convection microwave

LG washer/dryer

Sony flatpanel television

Sharp canister vacuum cleaner

and a flash Maytag dishwasher.

Now doesn't he deserve a round of applause?  Particularly since we're talking about a man who doesn't cook, doesn't do laundry (well, at least not very often), doesn't believe in dishwashers, and doesn't watch television.

There are other places I could send him -- Costless, Jashanmal, Better Life  -- to name a few. But why?  After all, a dishwasher is a dishwasher, at least once you get up into the astronomical price ranges of brands like Miele and Bosch.  And unlike here at home where we plan on using an appliance for ten to fifteen years, the farthest ahead we need to think about our Abu Dhabi kitchen is about two years.

Assuming, that is, that we actually HAVE a kitchen to move into in a few weeks.