Meal of Destruction

Tonight Andrew and I went over to one of his friend's house for Mancef.  Literally translated: Destruction. Andrew has met a couple of buddies at the gym.  One of whom is newly married and invited us both over for dinner.  We were especially excited to be able to hang out with other married couples here.

Here we are all ready to go out with new friends.  I've realized I haven't been taking as many photos of us lately, so I thought I would start again.    In this culture, when you go to visit someone, you take a gift with you.  Earlier today, Andrew and I walked down to the souq, to pick up some chocolate.  All along the top shelf in the ducan, they have these canisters of chocolates.  As we were looking at them, one of the men who works there came over to tell us which chocolate is best and which ones are good.  Once we had decided on which chocolates we were going to get, I think he kept asking us if we wanted it wrapped.  We told him no, but then it got me thinking if we should wrap up the chocolate.  I also think I heard him say something about a wedding, so it could be that you only buy that kind of chocolate to give to someone for their wedding and that's why he wanted to wrap it.  In the end, we decided we should wrap it, it couldn't hurt.  Worst case scenario we come in with a wrapped wedding gift :)

That was the most difficult thing I have ever wrapped.  The wrapping paper here is not paper, but more metallic and the container was a crazy shape.  In the end this is what I came up with.  I'm a pretty big fan of the crazy fan on top :)

Mancef, is a delicious meal of rice, parsley and peanuts with chicken.  The thing that makes it, is a warm salty milk you pour over the chicken rice combination.  I was a little weary of the warm salty milk, but it was really good in the end.  I was also thankful that our hosts didn't make us use our hands to eat with, but gave us spoons.  During dinner they were talking about how people who are really good can roll up balls of this stuff in one hand and pop in in their mouth.  Andrew tried it (somewhat unsuccessfully), but they said that even they cannot eat it that way.

This meal was really quite delicious, and apparently it was the first time she had ever cooked Mancef before!  Notice in the back right corner of the picture, this is a glass of the warm salty milk if you want to pour extra on your spot.  We joked about the fact that Andrew wanted to drink it (they eventually made him try to drink it, not delicious).  That brings up another interesting and different thing about eating here.  You do not drink while you eat your meal.  In America we always have a drink while eating and almost ever other bite you take a sip.  Not the case here.  We were so thirsty but only had olives and tomatoes to quench our thirst.  After the meal and the table was cleared, they brought out glasses of Pepsi (aka bebsi) and a little while after that we had coffee and a little while after that we had fruit smoothies.

It was a fun night.  Good to make new friends and experience new foods and new cultures up close.  Tomorrow my friend is coming over to teach me how to make stuffed grape leaves so keep a lookout for a blog about how that goes.