OH Conchita …
you make me so hungry … 8) 
so I’ll phone my mother to cook al-Shish Berak and al Sharhat and …al-fattoush wowwww… :o
and don’t forget al Kabsah with meat and spicy rice and with al-Airan " yoghurt with garlic" … 
i can’t be patient more … I need to eat
bye … and see you after lunch :lol:
Well, Hercules, my problem is that over the past four years or so ONLY women from the Middle East have been interested in me. I really dislike a lot of these women’s habits – especially the very rude way they push food on people again and again and again, even after the people have said no – but this is who is interested in my company.
Conchita, you can be assured that I have had “the real stuff”, and it’s the real thing that I am so disgusted by. One of the problems for me is that so much Middle Eastern food is so heavy in raw onions and garlic that you can smell it across the room. I don’t mind things like stuffed grape leaves, although I couldn’t eat them every day, but a lot of the other dishes are really nauseating to me. As for the comment about running away from the Middle Eastern woman to find better food, are you really incapable of interpreting people’s writing if they don’t use smileys? Your comment on it sounds like it came from a teenage girl in the 1970s.
Hercules, if you came to my city, you’d probably find the local cuisine boring, because it’s more or less German. It’s very good, but nothing special. However, we have various types of local dishes from various parts of the country, such as a lot of New Orleans style dishes (including fried alligator), things from Texas, and various special types of pizza that don’t exist in Italy.
By the way, when my niece was 7 years old, she asked me to draw her a storybook “about a kitty”. I found the idea of a book about a kitty boring, so I pretended I thought she’d said “kibbee”, and I created a story about the adventures of a plate of kibbee. She was angry and crying about it at first, but she nonetheless did her job of coloring in the pictures I drew, and in the end she thought the story was funny. Her teacher read it to the class.
Herc, have you ever tried cooking yourself, for a change? Or maybe it’s a matter of your mother not letting you into the kitchen at all :lol: !
Then, you’d have a bit of a problem if you lived in the Mediterranean area. I personally would find life terribly dull without onions and garlic! I enjoy not only the flavour, but the smell, both of which I find delicious and comforting. Bread and cheese [i]and /i onion, for example, are something I simply can’t resist!
( :lol: , then pouting, then :lol:, then stamping my foot, then :lol: again, then almost going into a tantrum and then 
).
I’ll take that as a compliment, Jamie, thank you very much (there comes an age when you can’t afford to be too choosy about certain things!). I was a teenage girl in the seventies, so that’s me after all! If someone had told me that when I was twenty, though, I’d have been upset!
You are so lucky! Strangely, Now more and more chinesemen like to stay in the kitchen room. In their words “Making foods is a kind of art!” , and most of them enjoy it so much! Very Good! :lol:
In the Spanish Basque Country (I’m not sure about the French one), they have men-only cooking clubs, also known as gastronomic societies. Women are gradually being allowed in some of them, yet only to sample the mouth-watering traditional Basque dishes ‘their’ men prepare.
By the way, if you ever go to San Sebastian, don’t miss the unique and fantastic gastronomic experience of ‘pintxos’, real masterpieces and the Basque equivalent of ‘tapas’. These are a wide selection of appetizers or tiny savoury dishes you are served in almost every bar in Spain, where (to start with) you are traditionally offered one with your drink. ‘Tapeo’ is almost a sport, certainly an art and definitely a pleasure here!
Not all Arabs are Muslim, as you know, so not all Arabic cuisine is halal. Christian Arabs, for example, don’t care if a lamb was slaughtered by a Muslim or not, as is required under halal rules, and there’s nothing about having a Muslim slaughter an animal that makes its meat healthy or unhealthy.
Interestingly, since halal is basically the Muslim equivalent of Jewish kosher, in the United States Jewish and Muslim food stores are often stocked by many of the same suppliers.
Hi, Conchita, “pintxos” ," tapas" and “tapeo” sound like some special cooking names, right?? Here you say " these are a wide selection of apptizers or tiny savoury dishes you are served in almost every bar in Spain." That is really interesting , because few bars provide unique foods here except coffee , desserts or some snacks. Your bars sound like resteraunts . It is really a good idea of business. 
You’ll be sorry you asked, FangFang 
. Food is a pet subject of mine and, once I get started on it, I can happily ramble on and on about it! But I’ll do my best to contain myself.
If there’s a business that always thrives in Spain, whatever the economic situation, it’s bars and caf?s. ‘Tapeo’ is going on a bar crawl (or going from bar to bar having drinks and ‘tapas’). Of course, you can stay in the same bar all the time, but it isn’t nearly as much fun. These places are also called ‘tascas’ or ‘mesones’ – if you ever come to Madrid, you really should experience the cave-like mesones.
The terms ‘pintxos’ (‘pinchos’ in Spanish) or ‘tapas’ are used to mean nibbles, tiny snacks or titbits (their Middle Eastern counterparts are ‘mezze’). It’s not always finger food, though, since you often need a toothpick or a little fork to eat them. Tapas can be anything from a few olives, fresh marinated anchovies or Manchego cheese wedges to the typical potato omelette, fried squid or the so-called Russian salad.
As they say, if you can’t eat it with one hand while holding your glass of wine in the other, it’s not a ‘pincho’.
arrakis.es/%7Ejols/tapas/index2.html
en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Tapas
hub-uk.com/interesting/spanish-tapas.htm
For a good insight into food history, not only in Spain, but in the rest of Europe, you can visit the following link:
you are right … Fangfang
Herc
Oh Oh… Conchita …you caught me … :oops: :oops:
I tried to cook in the past , but unfortunately our kitchen’s walls became black and so dirty , and that was after my " secret cooking operation"… … :shock:
so , my mother took me a promise to don’t do any new cooking attempt …
or I have to clean the walls …again 
:lol: :o
by the way …Have your children ever tried to cook any meal ? and what was your reaction ?do you like that doing and you’ll support them to do that?
Herc
:lol:
What did you try to ‘cook up’, I wonder?
Yes, they have, ever since they were tiny, in fact. Though it’s not their favourite activity, they know how to prepare quite a few dishes by themselves: simple things like rice, pasta, eggs, chips, fish fingers, salads, but also waffles, cakes or meringues for example. As a vegetarian of sorts, preparing things like hummous or falafel has no secret for my son.
I definitely encourage and support them in this important part of their apprenticeship for life. Cookery should be taught in all schools, if you ask me.
PS: There’s a Syrian speciality my daughter and I like very much; it’s ‘amareddine’, that lovely dried apricot paste. I know you can make it into a drink, but we just eat it out of the packet, as a sweet.
I must tell you that what you wrote about “Halal cuisine” isn’t true …???
Because our cuisines and traditions don’t follow religions Blindly…
The slaughter is the oldest way the mankind know , and The Islam adopts it as a way , and I know that is the most healthy way because it allows the blood ( which we told not to drink ) to get out of the body of the lamb ( for example ) ,and this way ( The slaughter )is known worldwide and it doesn’t related to religion or group of people.
However,In my country The slaughter is the way we (Muslims & Christians & Jewish )use in our cuisine so
IN OUR CUISINE ALL ARE HAAAALAAAAAALLL…
Herc
Hey,
no one mentioned Hungarian food yet!
I know everyone likes their own kind of food, but guys,
you know that our food is unbeatable!
The only good things missing here are the shrimp, crab, and lobster, now those little ugly creatures are goooood, but we don’t have them.
We might would have them,if we had a sea.
Funny thing that we had once, but it’s gone now, with all the shrimps,and crabs.
Never mind, I’ll eat these big ones they left for us.(hamsters, guinea pigs,bears)
By the way,when I was working in contraction in Canada with a friend of mine, there were some Canadian kids working in the same house. We had our lunch at the same time, so were talking about things, and somehow I said we Hungarians eat hamsters. My friend got me at once, and he asked them if there was anything wrong with it.
Man, you sould’ve seen their faces!
After a while I told them it was a joke, but I could see they didn’t believe it, the smile was frozen on their faces and they were still scared of these Balkanian Barbarians.
It must have been because I told them that my favourite food is nothing else than rosted blood of babyhamster’s.
(I bet they still believe Hungarians are hamster-eating heartless monsters.)
This friend of mine wanted to make sandwiches with hamster-shaped meat in them showing them we meant business, but I made him stop, 'cause it would’ve been too much fun, they might have run away and never come back.
After this story of mine I know you can’t wait to recognize me in your favourite restaurant working as a cook.
Spencer
I’m starting to think I’d be better off waiting, Spencer! :shock:
Tell us about some of the other “tall tales” and “whoppers” you told the poor Canadians, Spence. 8)
Amy
PS
Did you mean that you worked in construction for a contractor?
No, I was working in a construction.
I was insulating the house.
Is there another way to say it?
Spencer
No more tales , hey , I’m not THAT bad
Well, If it were true i wouldn’t be so shocked . Because man has tried to find everything that can be eaten in this earth, and it has been inherited so well from our ancient ancestors 
that is why SARS started, people ate wild animal and transferred the virus to Human being, H5N1 also, you fed a poultry and then they transferred virus to you,
Okay, I’m only going to make myself feel more hungry than I already do, but the following are some of my favorites:
(deep breath)
Indian
American (USian)
German
French
Thai
Italia
…Italian is my favorite cuisine.
Chinese
Mexican/Tex-Mex (second-favorite cuisine)
Hungarian
Greek
Spanish
Holland or Belgium (not sure which country invented them)
Caribbean
Cuban
well that’s enough I suppose.
I’m not sure if some of the American listings actually originated in America or not… but they’re commonly eaten here, anyway. hehe. In the ase of Chicago-style deep dish pizza, it really is way different than that found in Italy: toppings on the bottom, cheese in the middle, sauce on top.
and of course, steak… my favorite is the rib-eye steak.
…followed closely by the NY Strip steak.
Hi Tom, I thought you were a vegetarian – just kidding. By the way, I noticed your new signature. Is that a line from a song?[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC listening, question-response: When is the deadline for the city-hall expansion story?[YSaerTTEW443543]