Carbonara and Camel

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

How does one spend the such an American holiday in Africa? With camel burgers of course! My weekend went as follows:

Friday, we rented an apartment in Ifrane so we could have a mixed-gender cooking secession with... wait for it... BACON! Our wonderful friend Felix from Germany went home last weekend and brought back a suitcase full of "haram" or forbidden substances, including bacon and "Quality Bavarian Beer". -According to him the only good beer comes from Bavaria... I told him I'd have to taste more to confirm this rumor. My lovely and talented Italian friends Alice and Sophia whipped us up an AMAZING carbonara, and showed me how to make it. It was exquisite.

The entrance to the labyrinth that is the Fez Medina- Parts of this city are over 1,000 years old.

 Awhile ago our Moroccan friend Nour heard about our camel burger experience and was highly disappointed in our selection of resturant. "That isn't how you really eat camel in Morocco, that is where the tourists eat" -In his defense, our former selection of camel-burger restaurant WAS owned by a British guy, and there wasn't a single Moroccan in sight. I stand by how tasty that first burger was though. Saturday morning we headed out to Fez for some real Camel. The place turned out to be not far past the gates of the medina, not hard to spot if you looked for the right sign (see photo-yes that is a real camel head). Next to the sign was a little stall serving only camel meat- to make a sandwich you had to get the bread from across the road.

 Twenty dirhams later I was eating an authentic camel sandwich.  It was made of ground pieces of meat and larger chunks mixed together with some sort of ketchup-like sauce. I wouldn't say I'd like a steady diet of it, but it wasn't too shabby. I washed it down with some mint tea and these weird berry things. They were tart like a raspberry but kind of crunchy on the outside and sweet on the inside.. When I asked our friend what they were, he said he didn't think they had a name in English.. Oh well, they were tasty! 

We also did some shopping, where I managed to buy five scarves, various cheap but pretty pieces of jewelry, and a couple of christmas presents for the guys in Sweden. We spent most of our time trying to complete our Spice Girls Halloween costumes, but with sadly no success. -The costume total would have been about $50 for each of us, and none of us were willing to spend that. On the way home we did some serious brainstorming and all managed to come up with something- As the new owner of five beautiful scarves, I took the obvious route of gypsy, the ultimate last minute Halloween costume. We played apples to apples (why do the non-native speakers always win!?!?) and chilled until the club opened at midnight. Our group danced the night away and woke up extremely late the next morning. Not a bad Halloween weekend all in all.
Tonight is the big night for goblins and ghouls, and there are a couple of parties going on. But sadly, I am dressing up as someone who has a serious head cold and has been laying in bed all day. Damn you Halloween cold! I'll be drinking lots of fluids and watching Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride to finish the day off... And Facebook stalking everyone's Halloween costumes from back home. :D
When you live abroad it's funny how holidays that were such a big deal at home don't matter where you are. No trick-or-treating, no reeses peanut butter cups... (sad face). Wait, then I remind myself that instead of having reeses and the RMC costume ball, I'm having camel burger and mysterious berries. I really am having a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Next week I'll be in the desert, riding camels through the sand dunes and watching the goings-on of Eid al-Adha celebrations in Merrkesh. It is a strange, strange life. More later!