Green Oranges

Ahlane!
After my quite heavy political statement of yesterday I wanted to lighten up the mood a bit. I had a wonderful afternoon today. Ramadan comes with its perks: finishing work early.

After work I walked into town with my two wonderful colleagues, aimlessly at first, then in quest to seek a rheumatism bracelet for Laila and then, when passing a fool seller on the street my colleagues succumbed to the temptation: we shall have fool for dinner! Fool is actually something that Egyptians (at least from what I have heard) have for breakfast. It is a special type of brown bean boiled into perfection which you then eat either as is or, which is more frequent, served with different "sauces" or seasoning. We bought boiled beans plain from the man on the street and set out to find some other ingredients for the accessories my colleagues were cooking up in their minds as we walked along Saad Zaghloul.

Not far from home we found some open fruit mongers and bought tomatoes, parsley, coriander and some green oranges. Actually I didn't know what they were until food was ready on the table: two delicious types of fool (tomato/garlic/parsley/coriander and olive oil/fresh lemon juice) brown pita bread, onion and olives. I had initially thought that these green round citrus fruit were lemons (or huge limes) but I asked and got the answer: green oranges.

Wicked - new tasting experience! I thought it would be really sour, since not ripe fruit tends to be just that but when sticking my teeth into it I felt an enormous sense of happiness of having discovered a really basic and silly little thing: one can eat and enjoy (really enjoy!) immature oranges. Of course I had to know if they were not just another kind of fruit, that one actually is meant to eat raw but no - apparently not! So here is the thing, oranges grow in Europe too, how come I did not know this before? Do we not eat green oranges because they are called oranges and everyone expect them to be orange? Do we not eat them green because by the time they get to our shops they have ripened in that unnatural exported fruit type of way? Probably a combination of the two. I believe that had I seen a green orange in a supermarket in Sweden, would not have chosen it, I had gone for the orange one. (Some day I will post a separate post on the wonderful fruit one get here).

See what little pleasures one misses when one stays in one place all ones life and sticks to old habits and patterns of thinking. Ok, I will not make this into politics...I will just say that I have a mission: candied green orange peels - mmm. Cannot wait to move into my new flat next week - then I will start cooking and exploring this country for real.

God natt.