Food Shots from NRLS

Some people are talented gardeners and some of us just want to take photos of and eat the stuff that the gardeners grow.  While I loved learning about our veggie garden in Texas (and very much want to have another veggie garden one day), I moreso fall in the latter of the two roles mentioned above.  So now for my fellow foodies, here's some stuff...

Fresh-baked bread abounds here, from all sorts of bakeries.  The little market near our house sells stuff from a Korean bakery. Very fine sandwich bread.  And yes, they get Skippy in Doha.

Yummers from the Arabic bakery next door to one of the restaurants that serves camel meat (John posted a photo of it and the barber shop/saloon a while back).  These were varieties of tea-cakes (sponge-type cakes with cream frosting fillings).

As the Stewarts say: HOLY SCHNIKIES.  This is the standard sort of "Tex-Mex" around here.  The odd thing is that you can find it (hummus, tabbouleh, fatoush, etc.) in many, many restaurants, but I had to go to four huge Western groceries and two small local markets to finally get the "take home" version.  This trio of lovelies was procured from Lulu Hypermarket, a big beautiful grocery/Walmart type carrier of everything from paper towels to lentils (red beans, yes...pintos, no!).  No dryer sheets either (and the static electricity shock from a Persian Gulf clothes dryer is not insignificant).

The top photo is, from left to right, chopped olive salad (sliced green and black olives, tiny diced yellow and red and green bell pepper, whole kernel corn...maybe with a tiny bit of olive oil, but not much), then tabbouleh (parsley salad with fine chopped tomatoes), and standard hummus.  The Arabic flat bread shown above was STILL WARM IN THE PACKAGE when we took it off the shelf.

Now, different folks would maneuver this creation using a wide variety of methods.  I'm sure, like how and where to pile salsa, there's a "normal" method, but in my own home, I am not concerned with normal...and I make all sorts of obscene moaning noises when I eat something fantastic...and this is truly fantastic.  So I schmeeeeeeer hummus on the flat bread, add a couple tablespoons of tabbouleh  and about a quarter cup of that olive salad).

We hear that there are special stores where the native Qataris go for especially heavenly hummus.  Oh my...