6 Hour Lunches

I hate that this picture is so dark. From left to right, these lovely ladies are: Julie (1st grade teacher), Fatima Zhara (PreFirst Aide), Amina (PreFirst Aide), and Fatima Zhara (1st grade Aide). One delightful Sunday, Julie invited us all over for a traditional Moroccan lunch. Since she and I both have absolutely no skills when it comes to cooking, we convinced these locals to help us out. Fatima Zhara (1st grade) is an amazing cook. She created a list of things for Zakia to get on Friday, so that she could show us all the different ingredients. They were set to arrive at 11:30 a.m. and were on time, so we started our cooking adventure. Among other culinary skills, we learned how to chop up a whole chicken, how to store herbs in the fridge to keep them from going bad, and how to serve mint tea - Moroccan style.

We ate our chicken dish with bread off of one single plate (with our right hands, of course). Our salad was served American style. It was delicious. After hanging out on Julie's awesome balcony (with an amazing view of the garbage below), Fatima Zhara taught us how to make and serve mint tea. Our first major faux paus was serving fruit with tea - apparently, we were supposed to serve the fruit after the meal and before the tea.

Julie was a true hostess with the mostest as we took the fruit away and added cookies to our tea party. By then, it was 6 p.m. and our wonderful lunch was dying down. The three lovely Moroccans took their leave and Julie and I marveled at how full we still were after 6.5 hours of lunch! No wonder restaurants don't open until 8 p.m. :) Next up - more cooking lessons from our dear friends and a shopping trip! Apparently, CAS does not provide its teachers with appropriate Moroccan serving dishes and we must find the right ones in order to host true Moroccan fiestas!