As American as...

We are off to a good start for 2011 already. I made my best apple pie EVER here at KAUST last night for a dinner party.

I am limited as to what I can cook since I sent just the emergency mess kit in the air shipment. One of the things that was included was the pie pan. Since we had a family of 5 over last night for spaghetti, salad and garlic bread (kids 13, 11 and 7) I thought I would make a pie for dessert.

Best apple pie ever!

I had to measure the butter with my new digital scale. The French butter we get here is in metric units, and although there are line indications on the packaging, they are not tablespoons. Good thing I got that scale! I also don't have anything but 2 sizes of liquid measuring cups and one set of measuring spoons. I thought pie crust would be forgiving enough though, and it was.

There are fountains everywhere at KAUST

Now that we have killed the food processor with the 220 power, I had to make the crust the old fashioned way, cutting in the butter with the 2-knife technique, then degrading down to the fingers-mixing method at the end. I was careful not to overwork it, and popped the just-pressing together crust dough right into the fridge to chill before rolling it out with my glass juice bottle (rolling pin still coming in the sea shipment). It seemed really flaky going into the pan, so I felt like it would probably come out really well, but I was really surprised that it turned out to be the very best pie I ever made. I'm so glad I went ahead with the attempt even with diminished kitchen equipment. It turned out to have been a really great result. I'm hoping for a lot more experiences like this, and not just in the kitchen.

Back to ingredients though, there are a number of things I have not yet been able to find. The most irksome hard-to-find item is Siracha chili sauce, and so far I have also not been able to find sesame oil. I did pick up some vanilla powder at Danube, the high-end grocery in Jeddah. It seems like practically all baked goods have vanilla, and I was wondering what I was going to do without it!

My trusty Novara 8-speed

Good thing I have been really active here, so I can burn off a little pie. Without a car, I have to ride my bike almost everywhere. The Novara 8-speed commuter-style bike we bought at REI has been perfect for getting around. It has fenders to protect me from water on the street, front and rear lights that charge when I pedal and two panier baskets. These can fold up or can easily come off the bike too. I have loaded up groceries, water, gym equipment and towels, and I'm sure it will carry lots of other things. The bike is such a pleasant way to get around.

Luckily we are only about 3 blocks from the grocery store, so I can ride there quickly or walk. The other day I heard the call for prayer time and I thought they were going to shut down the store, so I hurried in to buy the bottles of water and the bottles of full fat and low fat milk I went in for. Grabbing what I thought was milk, I got a high and a low fat version (for coffee and for cereal) and beat it out the door. The next morning when I opened the milk and examined the labels more carefully, I found that instead of milk I had bought laban. It won't work for coffee, but I'm actually really excited to have discovered this product. It's kind of a thinned-down version of yogurt, so it's perfect on cereal. It's kind of tangy, it's available in low fat and I've been buying it since that first mistake. Who knew I'd love laban so much?

Heinz products hail proudly from Pittsburgh

We had to get rid of so many condiments when we left Salt Lake. I hope my condiment-recipient friends are enjoying ketchup on their hamburgers right now and siracha on their steaks, hamburgers, hot dogs, spaghetti, pizza... you know it's great on everything, just like it says on the bottle. Anyway, I have been re-buying all sorts of condiments and on one of them, Heinz 57 Sauce, I just happened to notice the label has kind of a funny thing about it. See if you can figure out what's going on in this photo.