Sheep Balloon

More Eid el Kibir - this one's from Julie...

Ever wonder the most effective way to skin a sheep? Blow him up like a balloon first, of course!

Organ Tagine (Stew)

**WARNING: Unappetizing photos of traditional meals**

Here are some more of Julie's pictures from Eid el Kibir. Check out the organ stew at Fatima Zhara's house - lung, stomach, intestine, etc.

This meal is traditionally eaten for dinner on Day 2 with the sheep's head. Not very sad I missed out on that meal and had homemade Mac n' Cheese at Stephanie's house.

What do you do with the head?

**WARNING: More nastiness from Eid el Kibir!**

Julie took some great pics of her experience at Fatima Zhara's house - she even got to experience the sheep head barbecue! All over Casablanca, on the day of the Eid, people stood in the streets with their blazing fires, so that each family could bring their sheep's head to be put over the fire. I was inside with Sabah's family, so I didn't get a chance to see this firsthand. However, I did get a detailed account...

Step 1: Completely sever the head from the rest of the sheep.

Step 2: Bring sheep head and hooves to the fire people around the corner. They'll have other heads and hooves already cooking.

Step 3: Have them place your sheep's head over the fire.

Step 4: Place sheep head back in the bucket to bring home.
(Tip: Make sure they get it nice and crispy!)

Step 5: Scrape hair off of the sheep head to prepare for cooking. (Tom - doesn't this remind you of the boar head? We totally should have put it over a fire before skinning it. Now I know the trick for next time...)

Step 6: Steam sheep head and serve for dinner! Unfortunately, I don't have any pics of the final product, nor did I eat any sheep brains. I'm sure it was delightful.

PS: Happy 21st Birthday, Pat! We are probably having so much fun in Kenya right now! Love you.

My Favorite Color

My favorite color is blue, so I was pretty excited to see Dan and Lori's bathroom - I will definitely have a toilet this color in my future mansion in Monaco. It used to have a white seat, but the third shade of blue goes soooo much better!

My bathtub will match the toilet because I'm classy like that! Feel free to steal this design idea - it's too pretty to keep to myself...

Merry Christmas!

As you read this, I'm travelling through the wilds of Kenya - making more memories and enjoying time with the fam! Although I'm far away, I did want to make sure to wish everyone a MERRY, MERRY CHRISTMAS! Happy Holidays!

Thanksgiving in Morocco: A Family Event

Thanksgiving in Morocco was a great family bonding experience. We all played important roles in getting a turkey and turning it into a delicious meal. I had to have someone at work call a butcher to order a turkey and then was given directions in French, Arabic, and English to give to a cab driver.


Mom, Katie, and I went Thursday to pick up the turkey ("bibi" in Arabic) in a petit taxi. Luckily, the taxi driver agreed to wait for us and bring us back home as the butcher shop was not in a busy area of town.

Katie and I had the 9.5 kilo bibi in between us in the back of the cab. Note the great packaging - two purple, plastic grocery bags. We all laughed pretty much the whole way home!


When we got home, Katie was in charge of carrying the bibi up to my apartment. It was quite the arm workout.

Not only was our bibi very large, it also had an enormous neck!

Mum and I used tweezers to finish plucking the turkey. It was a long process....

Pops' job was to remove the organs and clean out the turkey.

The bibi barely fit in the oven and my oven's not the most reliable appliance out there, but we managed to get it cooked. We had our Thanksgiving dinner with Julie around 8pm the night before they all left - it was wonderful!

The Heart of Marrakech

I've been to Marrakech twice now - once in October and then again with the fam over Thanksgiving. Both times I was able to experience Djemma el Fna, the heart of Marrakech.

Tahir Shah provided this description of Marrakech in his book In Arabian Nights. (Side note: Tahir Shah also wrote The Caliph's House about moving to Morocco and his kids go to my school - both of these books are great reads on Moroccan culture and life. I highly recommend them.)

"The narrow passages of the medina swell with tourists, except in the blazing summer months, when a searing drought blows in. I used to think the tourists were set to destroy the soul of the city. After all, there are towering hotels, guides, and restaurants wherever you look. The tourists have certainly brought wealth and have heralded change, but their effect doesn't penetrate.

Jemaa el Fna by day

Jemaa al Fna is the heart of Marrakech. By day it's a turbulent circus of life - teeming with astrologers, healers, storytellers and acrobats. And when the curtain of dusk shrouds the city from the desert all around, the food stalls flare up, creating a banquet for the senses. A quick glance and you might think it's all been laid on for the sightseers. But the longer you spend there, the more you come to see the truth. The tourists take photographs but they don't connect.

Jemma al Fna by night

With its outlandish customs, Jemaa al Fna is a focal point of folklore, a borehold that descends down through the layers and sub-layers of Morocco's underbelly. A lifetime of study couldn't teach you all it represents. To understand it, you must try not to think, but to allow the square's raw energy to be absorbed directly through the skin."

When I got to this passage in the book, I felt I needed to share it - it's such a great description of the effect of Djemma el Fna.

Eid el Kibir: Day 2

**WARNING: Actually, not really much of a warning here - these pics are quite mild.**


Eid el Kibir doesn't end with the sheep slaughter and cleanup, or even with the fat wrapped liver skewers. I was invited back for lunch on Day 2 of the traditional eating frenzy. This time, I got to help some more - I skewered the marinated sheep meat for brochettes and rolled the ground meat and spices (called kefta here) into pieces that could be thrown on the barbecue.







While I was helping with food prep, Reda was chopping up the pancreas to barbecue with the kefta and brochettes and Sabah and Aisha were divvying (sp?) up the sheep meat. At least a third of the meat needed to go to charity and everyone took some of the other two thirds home with them - including me. First visitor I have in Morocco is going to have sheep for dinner - yum!
















I missed out on Day 2's dinner, which was the organ tagine (Moroccan stew) and the sheeps' heads. Hopefully, I'll get the pics from Julie to post about the sheep head experience. I didn't get to partake in that part of the tradition. I guess that means I'll have to experience more of the tradition next year!

Moving the Sheep

I have to give Julie credit for the filmmaking that you are about to see. I wasn't even there, but this was too funny not to share!

This is a video of the morning of the Eid, when Fatima Zhara & her brothers brought Julie with them to pick up their sheep from the garage down the road and bring it home. Did you know that sheep growl? This sheep is not being cute and saying "baaa" - it is not happy and the sounds sure prove it.

Ahh...helping out a neighbor is such a great thing. The little kid was awesome, but another neighbor had to come out and show the most effective way to move a sheep down the street.

I'm Outta Here!

I'm off to Marrakech for the night, then London tomorrow, and finally Kenya on Sunday. It's going to be a crazy, hectic weekend & following 2 weeks and so I'll be out of touch until I get back to Casa. Don't fret- I've scheduled some pretty awesome blog posts to post in my absence and I'll be coming back in 2009 with lots of stories from what is going to be a wonderful vacation! Happy Holidays Everyone! Yay for Winter Break!

Holiday Spirit!

Despite the fact that I have a Christmas tree with lights and some Christmas potpourri & hand towels courtesy of Mum, I can't escape the fact that it's getting close to Christmas and I'm in a Muslim country. Our PTA winter holiday event had tons of holiday decorations and Christmas crafts, as well as Santa Claus, but the rest of the city doesn't look like this.
This is the second Christmas that I'm spending out of the country and I'm kind of missing a few things. It's not so much Christmas itself, but the days leading up to Christmas...

For example: I haven't been able to find this with my local DVD guy and it's not playing on every television channel (I don't even have television channels).

And this...my dear Uncle Kev called me yesterday as his family was making the povo - man, I miss rolling out that dough! BTW, no povo is complete without the raisins!

I'm still hoping that Mike and Mum can pull off some outfits like this on our Kenya adventure. And you can't beat the bonfire in the snow, especially with the trail ignited by tons of gasoline. I love Georgetown Lake in the winter!

Most of all, I think I'm going to miss another year of ice fishing with Pops on Georgetown Lake. I hope Ryan and Tom are out there this winter catching lots of fish for us to smoke this summer!

Don't get me wrong - I'm totally excited for our trip to Kenya this year and I look forward to seeing Christmas in London on Saturday. I figure I'll get more in the spirit once I'm there. I can't wait to see all the lights and garlands! Yay Christmas!

Deprived Childhood

At the PTA's holiday festival, I volunteered to lead a Christmas craft for a couple of hours. I was a little unsure of what "Orange Decoration" meant, as orange pomanders were not a part of my childhood. Susan taught me to tie ribbon around an orange and use pins to keep it in place. I also put additional Christmas themed sequins with colored pins in various places and pushed cloves into the orange.

I had never even seen this before! I do love the smell of orange/clove, so I brought my example home with me and will keep it on my desk until it starts to rot! I can't believe my childhood was so deprived that I did not discover this until age 27...

Christmas Presents

Just so everyone knows...this is what I would like to buy everyone for Christmas this year. When I lived in Thailand, the Thai flip flops were the best thing ever. These shoes are the next best thing and they are all over Morocco. Most men wear the bright yellow version and ladies wear all different styles to go with their different djellabas. Just like a djellaba is like a bathrobe, Moroccan shoes are like wearing slippers. This is my kind of style!

Petit Taxi

I bought a TV a few weeks ago! I now get to watch my dollar DVDs on a television instead of my laptop, which makes me pretty happy. Julie and I took a petit taxi to Marjane to get our TVs. One of the not so great things about not having a car is transporting electronic items home. We both bought TVs and had to find a petit taxi willing to take us across town. Our boxes were just folded at the top, since they were opened to show us they worked before we took them out of the store. I didn't get a picture, but check out the petit taxi photo below and imagine a TV and 3 people inside, with one TV on the roof. I was totally freaked out the whole way home, but we made it!

My main form of transportation - the petit taxi

Eating the Sheep: Rated PG-13

**WARNING: These images aren't that bad, but if you're grossed out by raw animal organs, don't scroll down.**





Once the intestines and stomach is rid of all the poop, it's time to boil pieces of the stomach and remove more nastiness. These stomach pieces were boiled with garlic, lemon, and other herbs.



The lungs, heart, liver, kidneys, and other organs were then boiled in the water the stomach had been boiled in.

Unfortunately, or fortunately actually, the stew made with the above organs is not the first meal of the Eid. Instead, pieces of liver are chopped up and wrapped in the fat that was hung on the clothesline. They are then skewered and barbecued. Not the most delicious thing I've ever tasted, but I kept myself from vomiting!

Although the sheep organs are the main event, other side dishes, such as Moroccan salads and artichokes, are served as well.

Here's Sabah chopping up the intestines for the stew (Dinner on Day 2). I was only able to try the stomach and lungs before the nausea set in, but I'm sure the intestines were just as tasty.

Election 2008

Another late post...here's the file cabinet in Cheryl's classroom. One interesting thing about living overseas is the United States Presidential Election. You can post whatever you want in your classroom and no one is going to tell you not to advertise your political views. Cheryl had this Obama poster front and center in her classroom before the election and wore an Obama pin to school each day.
The day after the election, parents came to school and shook American teachers' hands to congratulate them on Obama's victory. So not okay in the US public schools, but hey - we're in Morocco.

FYI

Just some things I've encountered recently...

1. I bought mandarin oranges yesterday. For 1.6 kilos (3.5 pounds), I paid $1.00 US. Not bad, eh?

2. At work today I helped put on a parent workshop called "Reading at Home with Your Pre-First Child". Only a few parents showed up, along with one nanny who had questions "on behalf of Mehdi's mom". Kind of like the parent who asked if she could send her secretary to parent/teacher conferences. Really?!?! How uninvolved can you get?

Eid el Kabir: Cleaning Up and Food Prep (Rated PG-13)

**WARNING: Some of these pics are just plain nasty!**

Once the sheep are slaughtered and skinned, the real dirty work begins. A layer of fat is rinsed in water....

Then it's hung on a clothesline...

This is to be used later for the skewers of liver wrapped in fat.

The liver is the first organ cleaned because it's the first one eaten. The heart, lungs, kidneys, and spleen are all cleaned out and set aside to barbecue for breakfast the next morning.

The grossest part was the one I participated in: the digestive system. Check out this tub o' organs - yes, that is poop.

The stomachs were split open and poop placed into a garbage bag. Then, they were put in a bucket of water to be rinsed.

I got talked into helping with the intestine. Kind of like cleaning out a sausage casing, but instead of rinsing salt & water, I had to push poop through and out to the garbage bag. The family got a real kick out of me partaking in this part of the tradition, so they took a bunch of pics of me doing the dirty work.

Next installment: what we actually consumed. :)

More Photos

If you're looking for more pics of the Eid el Kibir slaughter, check out my Flickr set.... http://www.flickr.com/photos/casablancalady/sets/72157611003468276/

Eid el Kibir Sheep Slaughter: Rated PG-13

**WARNING: Bloody, gorey pics and description below - make sure your stomach can handle it!**

This post is coming in a few segments, as there's a lot to tell. I spent most of the day with my neighbor's family celebrating the Eid today. At 9:30am, Youssef and Ghita came up to get me to watch the sheep slaughter. The family killed 3 sheep, one for Sabah and her husband who live on the 1st floor of my building, one for their daughter Aisha and her husband Mounir, and one for their daughter Yasmine and her husband Reda. Aisha's daughter, Ghita, was just as fascinated by the sheep slaughter as I was, but her brother Ahmed and cousins Inez and Lina were a bit young and stayed inside. Youssef, Sabah's brother, was nicknamed the "Sheep Serial Killer" as he was involved in the killing, cleaning, and cooking of all 3 sheep. They are such a wonderful, welcoming family. I'm so glad I ran into Sabah by the elevator yesterday. After today's events, I feel like part of the family! Gotta love Moroccan hospitality. :)

I showed up as the first sheep was jerking around on the floor of the terrace. Once he stopped moving, his head was completely severed and his feet broken so that he could be tied up and skinned. The second sheep was full of energy - it took a couple of people to wrestle him down. Note the blood stained floor from sheep #1. The jerking of all 3 sheep caused quite a bit of blood splatter on the walls, flowerpots, chairs, and table. I got to clean up some of that later...

Meanwhile, the butcher was skinning sheep #1.

After the skinning, the butcher took out the organs and put them all together in a big bucket.

Sheep #2 was making an awful racket. The rasping sounds as he tried to get air through his severed windpipe were pretty much just ignored. As the butcher finished his skinning and organ removal process, Sheep #2 had stopped splattering blood everywhere and died.
So he was tied up to be skinned. By the time this was finished, Mounir led sheep #3 out of the stairwell to be slaughtered.

With one swift motion, Reda slit his sheep's throat and the whole skinning/organ removal process began again.

Stay tuned for more info about what comes next: cleaning/eating of the organs & fat.