Happy birthday to me!
I dunno what bit me, but I spent most of yesterday in the kitchen so that I was able to serve this to my esteemed family: Middle Eastern type bread, hommus, marinaded fried eggplant slices, falafel and baba ganoush.
“That’s no baba ganoush,” I can hear the Arabs say. All I can say to this is that it’s not just the Moslawis that are cheap. *pokes aNarki in the ribs* I found that it does influence neither taste nor consistency if I use the whole eggplants, including the skin. Makes it a lot darker though…
April 7th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Arabian vegetarian food 100%.
I hope you rocked the guests. :happy:
April 7th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
I was one guest short (my bro-in-law got sick
), but actually, I did. I don’t think my father will request that I make that kinda food again, but he deemed it edible and even had a second helping of the marinaded eggplant slices.
April 7th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
urgh…
April 7th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
What are the round brown things? What’s in them? They look a bit like hush puppies (very spicy fried corn meal). Don’t ask me where the name hush puppy came from. I know, it sounds like there was some cruelty to animals involved somewhere along the line! Glad you had a nice birthday feast!
April 7th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Hm, looks like I should have added “from left to right, top to bottom” when naming the dishes. Those are falafel, David. They consist mainly of chickpeas. The recipe I used adds onion, garlic, parsley, soaked bread, flour, baking powder and various spices.
Hey, I have 1.5 bottles worth of olive oil, hardly used at all, with a few crunchy bits floating in it, to give away. Any bidders?
April 7th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
But, but…Mel, it was your birthday! Why were you doing the cooking? Someone was supposed to cook for you!
I like spicy. Was any of it spicy? Anyway, it all looked hmmm…interesting.
Ummm, no thank you, I think I’ll pass on the olive oil with the crunchy bits.
Have a Happy Easter all!
April 7th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
But, but…Mel, it was your birthday! Why were you doing the cooking?
Er. Because it was my birthday? You are the second person who seems to be confused by me throwing my birthday party and providing food and all. I guess I should move to another country. Preferably not Iraq at the moment, so it will have to be America, it seems…
Well, most of it was rather garlicky. As I wasn’t quite sure how frying would change the taste of the chickpea dough (which tasted rather horrible anyway) I was a bit too sparing with the chopped chilis, cos those were really, really hot, and I was afraid of spoiling he falafel (those chilis even smell hot….). I threw chopped chilis into the marinade for the eggplant slices, so those turned out to be nicely hot…. and garlicky.
My sister was hoping her husband didn’t like the food I gave her to take home for him, so that she could eat it. Bad, selfish sister…
You could sieve the oil. Maybe it’s even a bit spicy now…
Oh, yeah, right. And happy Easter to everyone!
April 7th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
I guess they’re just confused that today it’s both your birthday and Saturday? I mean, most of the time your birthday would be in the week so you’d have your party on another day than your actual birthday.
Anyway, enough blattering about weird cultures containing lots of Muslims and Christians. HAPPY BIRTHDAY.
April 7th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Friday…..
Please, don’t forget to mention the heathens….
Thank you.
April 8th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Hey!
~`are you feeling naughty??
(You can come visit Res. It’ll be fun. k?)
Saw your comment @ Caesar’s. (woot-woot! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TO YOU!)
xx,Res.
April 8th, 2007 at 1:13 am
How shall I put this without seeming ungrateful for the birthday wishes…?
This may come as a surprise to you, but there’s people out there who are not interested in porn stories and pictures of spanked women.
Naughty certainly has its place but spanking crosses a line at which I’d say “Oh, can I knock out your teeth now, please?”
*hides behind Caesar*
April 8th, 2007 at 7:13 am
np. see ya in the funny papers!
April 8th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
….. whatever that may mean.
*realizes the futility of her trying to hide behind Caesar and steps out*
*brushes imaginary speck of dust off Caesar’s shoulder and grins at him to hide her embarrassment*
So. Habibi. Made any inquiries yet?
April 8th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Happy brithday Mel,
Falafil seems wow. and vever mind the creativity you added to baba ganoge as long as you like it
April 8th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Wow, Attawie, long time no see! Thank you.
So. What do reliable sources say? Has Attawie relaxed a bit by now…?
April 9th, 2007 at 4:03 am
hurrr.. please.. why dont you put this in your old blog? i keep going there by mistake and its such a hassle and everything to go D’OH! and manually redirect here.. plleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease????
April 9th, 2007 at 6:55 am
actually the baba ghanoush or whatever its called in english, it looks close enough to its native kin.. good job there!
April 9th, 2007 at 7:05 am
spank*
April 9th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Falafels are vegitarian? All this time I thought it was some wierd Iraqi (unknown) meat ball. Amazing what you learn in these blogs.
April 9th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
aNarki, it’s too early in the morning to try and make sense of all that. Ok, it’s noon. But I just got up. You know what I mean….
Hah, I am sure you’d have loved to taste my however-it-is-spelled.
The recipes all spelled it the way I did, but the way Caesar pronounced it (sounded more like “baba ganoo”) and Attawie spelled it I am having serious doubts as to what may be right. Heeeeeeeeeeeeeelp!!!!
*picks up a number of coins, tightly closes fist and punches Res in the mouth*
I did warn him, didn’t I…?
Jhondie, welcome. I see ppl are flocking over to me from Caesar’s blog…
)
(Seriously, I am getting more referrals from Caesar’s blog than from Treasure of Baghdad’s; it’s a weird old world…
Hah. I brought some of the bread, falafel and hommus over to my Turkish colleague cos he had been nosy already when I had mentioned that I had obtained a recipe for bread from aNarki’s mom. Anyway, a friend of his (the husband of my other Turkish colleague) was there as well and later complained that the meal had not contained any meat. When my colleague told me that, I told him that ppl who are not familiar with falafel tend to make the meatball mistake, so he just should have been thankful that my colleague shared my birthday food with him, considered the falafel meat balls (preferably pork
) and shut up. 
Falafel isn’t merely vegetarian, it’s even vegan, Random Fluctuation in the Space-Time Continuum be praised.
April 9th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
I think you may need some more coins!
(let’s try to be nice,k?)
Just wanted to get my two cents in. (It wasn’t very nice to say you’d punch my teeth out~~to begin with. A couple of good spanks, amongst consenting adults, believe it or not, is not unusual, strange, or, perverted.)
Spank*spank! (lol!) This, I promise, will be the last comment I make upon this matter.
Love ya anyway, (despite your married stats)…Res.
April 9th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
@ Res: Oh, trust me, I was being nice. You wouldn’t wanna see me going nasty on that topic.
) insisted it was highly funny and deserving of the topic.
Actually, I was considering taking out the teeth punching bit from that first comment but a young man (Does Kh.J. mean anything to my faithful readers of old…?
So I am not the only “conservative” person around.
Failing to see anything in it despite the power vs. humiliation aspect, I consider that topic offensive and would prefer it if the mentioned consenting adults kept it to their own bedrooms, thank you.
Let this be the last dialogue on this matter, and you’re welcome to visit.
Who said I was married…?
@ aNarki: Happy now, Mr Senile? Just for your esteemed self I went through the tedious deletion process of all cookies concerning either Google or Blogger and then - heart thumping with suppressed anxiety and palms getting clammy - I logged on to my Blogspot account.
And…… SUCCESS!!!!! 
The only thing that I don’t know now is whether or not the thing for non-working auto-direct works, as my browsers merrily obeyed the command.
I still don’t get though how you could repeatedly end up at my old blog. Poor, confused man; what will become of you once you reach my venerable age…?
Talking about favours and blogs; I hope you’ll keep the Blogger comments even though ppl are just not getting that they’re only supposed to read them, and leave new comments on HaloScan. Sorry you have to deal with that.
As an aside, please go and check Caesar’s if you haven’t already; it seems he wants to talk to you.
Where are you hiding out anyway? Still recovering from your Auntie B. experience?
P.S.: @ Caesar: If you go to that kind of blogs too often you’ll go blind.
April 9th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Er. Because it was my birthday?
Yes, but that’s just it. It should be a day where people give you things.
Hmmm…I like garlicky. Now if you want hot, then you’re talking Habenaro peppers.
April 9th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Well, yes, I mean, like…. books and stuff. And things. But people usually don’t give parties and birthday food.
Oh, those chilis were pretty darn hot as well… That’s why I was too scared to use them, lol. Like I said, they even smelled hot. Never had that with peppers.
April 9th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
i really really dont feel like going out or even online ATM.. i just sit home and download stuff. pah. i dont feel like meeting other NEW human beings. you are right, my evaluation of the human race just got bumped a whole lotta notches down..ugh. so frustrating. this kind of people are EXPENDING OXYGEN I SHOULD BE BREATHING.. argh
thank you for the redirect but i dont think it worked.. at least not on this end.. did you close the meta tag with a /> instead of a >?
i rewrote the corrections i made twice, they kept disappearing.. if they do i’m emailing this to you.
i’m heading over to Pentra’s as i write this.. what’s up?
married? who is it this time?
April 9th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
oh and about the comments: well.. people, a number of which, HAVE misunderstood the purpose of the old BLOGGER comments.. but..
well, its like this: i dont really care where i get comments, i mean:
i am an anarchist (no kidding, i JUST found that out. seems anarchy is NOT chaos. i hate chaos, but i do like anarchy)
so again, my motto on that matter is:
“do what thy will.. post where thy will..
just dont troll/spam the threads”
also, this guarantees the freedom of choice thing.. see?? SEE?? i’m a GOOD ARAB! there is one of those alive!
April 10th, 2007 at 12:35 am
Well, at least come online and meet other old human beings.
*patpatpatpatpats you*
Well, I dunno, maybe my colleague A. is paying me back now for that marriage story with you?
Oh my Random Fluctuation in the Space-Time Continuum, he’s spreading it all around the world now!!!!!! 
Um. We’ll discuss that good Arab thing another time, ok? Like when you’re next supplying me with ethnic insults….
Camel driver…..
April 10th, 2007 at 4:17 am
Does one need a license to drive a camel?
Interesting factoid: I recently learned that somewhere in the U.S. (maybe Texas, can’t recall) people get together for camel races. Some dude from Australia was interviewed about his camel, which he has been racing for several years now. Apparently, these racing camels are quite ornery and don’t take orders very well from the jockeys!
April 10th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
I can testify to the tastiness of Mel’s Arabic food.
It was great.
And my husband didn’t like it very much. He nibbled a bit around the edges and gave me the rest, so I could eat all the delicious things again on Saturday, hurray!
April 10th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
I guess you’ll just have to prove that your camel prod is good enough. After all we’re talking of ragheads, er, Arabs here; what qualifications would they require someone to have…?
Hm. Bad, bad brother-in-law.
April 11th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Happy Birthday
a little late 
April 11th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Better late than never. Thank you.
Now I only need to know yours.
April 12th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
bit late of a reply, more like an interjection: no matter!
Jhondie: Falafel are made out of Hommus (chick peas), or Bagilla (broad beans) and ONCE i’ve seen it made with Fasoliya even (red beans)
you can know which by seeing the insides of it: if it is yellow-brownish, then its Hommus, if greenish then its Bagilla, and if white-ish then its made from Fasoliya
BUT this does not keep other colors from showing up, i’ve caught falafel with RED insides, with GRAY insides, and i swear i once ate a falafel which had a BLUE TINT coloring inside.. i didnt dare ask what was in it cuz i was dead hungry and that was all i found.. tasted a bit more sweet than usual.
anyway, after the beans are mashed, they are then lumped together and fried, which gives Falafel that “meaty” look..
its basically the poorman’s meatball.. full of protein, at 1/10th the price!
April 12th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
oh, minced onions in the mix cause the RED tint..
point of the matter is, its 100% vegetables cuz its TOO CHEAP to add “meaty” components.
April 12th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Mel:
bout the ethnic thing.. Camel Driver is a classic and all, BUT, i notice you havent yet tried “Goat-Lovers” or something along that line :))
just change Lovers into something a bit more.. to the point. it will be enough to rile many a Harem-keeping, Blue-bearded, Tea-Drinking Mustachioed Sand-Kissing Aye-Rab at you.
(you can also exchange the Goat bit for Camel or Boy, they have both worked for so much time)
i just wish the retards/Oxygen-wasters who make up ethnic/racist names were more creative. its no joy talking like them anymore.
April 12th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Tut mir leid, herzlichen Glückwunsch nachträglich.
April 12th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
@ aNarki (and Jhondie a bit…): You can also get green chickpea falafel. Or at least not strictly yellow ones. (Weren’t the ones at your family’s fave place greenish inside as well, or am I hallucinating? Anyway, they tasted like chickpea falafel.)
I made mine (mostly; I decided Oregano belongs on pizzas, but not in falafel) according to some Syrian recipe I found on the net, and the parsley I put in - according to the recipe - did add quite a greenish tint.
*remembers the falafel and drools a bit*
Well, maybe you should start making up better names then……, you….. four-eyed tea-drinking raghead. Hm, that did sound a bit lame, sorry.
@ Omar: Danke, thank you, shukran.
Kein Grund, sich zu entschuldigen… Wann hast du denn eigentlich Geburtstag?
April 12th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
OKay. I apologize. Thank you, for inviting me to comment.
~~Res: hangs head in shame!
I’m glad I still have all of my Teeth.
You know, all of your points are well taken. You were right..I, in my over-blown ego thought everyone would flock to my “abode” and embrace me with open arms.
I forgot that not all peeps are into the “hanky-spanky”
There is so much more to me than this one aspect~~fantasy, mostly.
You’ve taken my “winks,” with a grain of salt, and I thank you ~~truly~~for your tolerance, in regards to my shameless behavior.
I will be back, to read, and comment…if you don’t mind. You don’t need to visit me at all. There are all kinds of blogs out there. Yours is sweet.
I’m truly ashamed of myself.
xx,Res.
April 13th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Hi, Sis!
Seen “Staplerfahrer Klaus” yet?
April 13th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Hehehe!
Res,
You should be spanked for messing with my Melantrys!
April 13th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
*whispers to Res* “Not all the ladies love to be dominated sexually! I don’t like to dominate a girl either!”
*hugs his german lady*
April 13th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
*Shouts-out to Caesar* Be good, friend! Keep hugging!
*Smiles, at Caesar’s German Lady*
poof!
…and, he was gone!
April 13th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
@ Res: Apology accepted.
Just please keep a low advertising profile concerning your blogs…
@ Mafdet: Ok, I watched it….. again. Maybe I can urge other people (of a non-squeamish nature) to go and watch the movie in your newest post over here. Ok, the narration is all in German but it’s not really that necessary to understand it all. A short info can be found here anyway.
@ Caesar: Well, some people sometimes do deserve (regular) punishment….
*starts to mumble incoherently, although it may just be possible to discern words like “Iraqis”, “fuck” and “odd, half-baked passports”*
April 16th, 2007 at 3:49 am
‘appy Birth, you!
April 16th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Thank you.
*hands the Kid a few syllables and letters*