Taste of "Home"

After all our adventures this past week, including a nightly dinner out, Craig and I decided to try cooking at our apartment. The kitchen is small, but it has everything we need - stovetop, oven, full-size fridge, two plates, two bowls, two glasses, two sets of silverware, a tiny frying pan, a small sauce pan, and one medium sized pot. The nearby 24-hour grocery store is small, but it stocks an enormous variety of food in a tiny space. As a result, our dinners at "home" here look very much like our dinners at home in L.A.

Sunday night, we decided to make steak, potatoes, and Brussels sprouts. This is a favorite meal of ours at home, so it seemed like a good place to start. At home, we would grill the steak, but that obviously wasn't an option here.

The steak, as it turns out, was a challenge. The only frying pan we have is a "one-egg" frying pan - one of the smallest frying pans I've seen. So we thought we would pan fry each steak and finish them together in the oven. I've learned how to turn on the oven, so we thought we had this all figured out. Things went according to plan until we checked on the steaks in the oven. After ten minutes in the oven, the steaks were cooler than they had been after searing them. All told, it took over an hour just to finish the steaks in the oven.

As a result of the steak fiasco, we sat down to dinner well after 9 p.m. But dinner was delicious:

Monday night, we had decided to do a taco night with the team. Kathryn has a much larger space, so we planned to eat there. I went shopping while they were all at work. We had found all our usual ingredients in the "Filipino" aisle at our grocery store:

I found a similar aisle over at Waitrose (in the Dubai Mall). The aisle at Waitrose is a bit larger, but equally oddly marked. This is the organic and gluten free aisle:

I probably should have gone across the street for the variety. But the long walk back carrying enough to make dinner for five didn't appeal to me. In addition to the Tex-Mex stuff I found, I got avocados, lemons, limes, onions, green onions, shredded cheese, and tortilla chips.

Craig had to go to the business office to print out some things, so I met everyone downstairs. The four of us were happily cooking when Craig joined us. Someone asked him if he felt that he fit in now, having four "wives" cooking in his kitchen. But with the five of us working together, dinner took no time at all. Another taste of home:

For our final cooking experience of the week, I decided to make spaghetti. This is a favorite of mine that has quickly become a favorite meal of Craig's as well. I managed to take a picture of some of the ingredients this time:

The red and white bottle is salt. I've been using the salt and pepper shakers that came with the room service we ordered when we got in at 2 a.m. But when I went shopping for taco night, I gave in and bought salt. Everything looks very similar to its counterpart in the U.S., excepting the Arabic writing, of course. But most things are labeled in both Arabic and English. The challenge is finding things in the grocery store. Once you've found them, it's easy to read the label.

Looks just like at home. Of course, just like at home, I've been eating the leftovers for lunch while Craig's at work: