let's talk about food

Some of you might wonder what I eat while I'm here. Well there are many places to eat on campus. I haven't eaten in the "Americana" cafeteria yet, where they have McDonald's, Subway, and some Italian place. I usually eat at either el Omda or Tabasco Cafe. El Omda has the cheapest food you've ever seen, so it tends to be my favorite. They serve sandwiches for 3EGP which is less than 60 cents!! I usually get the Falafel sandwich, basically pita bread with chunks of falafel, a few veggies, and some sauce. It's filling! I recently tried the Foul sandwich. Foul (fuul) is a new thing to me! It's really just beans and is just as flavorful (and cheap) as falafel. I might start getting that more often! El omda also has kousharyi (i'm not sure how to spell it) for about 7EGP. The vegetarian kousharyi is the signature dish and half the price of the meat kousharyis. Kousharyi is a bowl of rice, 3 different kinds of pasta/noodles, lentils, chick peas, tomato sauce, and little fried onions (like the kind in green bean casserole). It is amazing!!! It's food!! It's very filling, in fact, it's difficult to eat the entire bowl. It sounds awfully weird, I understand, but at least it's inexpensive.

Tabasco Cafe has pretty much anything you could ask for, you just might not get what you bargained for. They have really delicious pizza but (like the Centrum at CLU) it's never quite the same. Even the sizes vary. There's not much sauce on the pizzas. Last night I got a veggie pizza. The veggies were mushroom, green bell peppers, and corn. Weird right? Needless to say, I won't be getting that again. They also have omelettes, pastas, sandwiches, crepes, salads, and stuffed vine leaves! I like these stuffed vine leaves! Today when I had them they were definitely different from the first time. I shouldn't make a meal out of them but just an appetizer, or share. They give you about 12 grape leaves things (about the size of your thumb) stuffed with rice and seasonings. Very different, but still yummy enough for me to eat it!

Jared's Bagels is on campus. It's in the middle of everything and really just normal bagels with normal cream cheese or butter. There's also a Cinnabon! Believe it or not. Which is just as delicious and sugar-high-inducing as Cinnabon at any old mall in the US. There are little places, more like stands, called Cilantro. I have no idea why these stands are called Cilantro. All they have are drinks like coffee, smoothies, tea, sodas, and bottled water. They are a rip-off I'm pretty sure. For instance, I once ordered a vanilla tea because it was one of their flavors of teas for 10EGP (or something) and the guy shrugged and looked a little confused. But it's on the menu! So he gave me black tea with a pump of vanilla syrup in it and charged me the extra 3EGP (for the syrup). I told him, "No! I don't have that many pounds and it's on the menu as being 10! Look! It's right there!" He really had no idea what I was talking about. He didn't charge me but still! If you get a cappuccino, about half of it is foam and it's something like 15EGP even without flavor (like vanilla) which makes it delicious. That's a little ridiculous. Good thing I'm not a candy coffee fiend.

Also, the photo is from an Egyptian restaurant I went to in a dark corner of the huge 7-story mall, called City Stars. Anyway, the food there was really good. It seemed expensive but that was when I was first getting used to the difference in EGP and USD. The vine leaves there were stuffed with meat and there were no entrees that were vegetarian. So I had hummus and baba ganoush and falafel. That really is enough food, especially when you put pita bread with everything. I remember having baba ganoush at UVTO from time to time. Now Grandma and Grandpa can think of me every time it's on the menu! Maybe they'll even order it. I like it.

I bought a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. The peanut butter was a little more expensive than you would expect. But that's all I need for a filling sandwich that reminds me of home and the familiar. I also got Nutella because the Nutella+Peanut Butter combination is amazing! I had bananas but those went bad quickly and were not the right color green that I love, so I'm not sure if I'll do that. I ate all but one, but still. Today I remembered the stash of candy from Pr. Julie I have. Gooood stuff.

Tomorrow in the early morning I'm leaving for Alexandria. One girl told me they'll have great seafood there. I'm looking forward to that food! Yum! I'll update you on that trip when I get back. And by tuesday I'll have gone to all of my classes 3 times so I will give you the details on those classes and the routine of being a student. Earlier today I dropped one class :/ and didn't add another (I'm at 12 credits, like a lame-o) but hopefully this will help me to enjoy the rest of what it means to be here instead of all that gross studying and paper writing junk. Haha! I wish you the best.