Shopping Fun

Last weekend we took advantage of a bus to a nearby shopping mall, featuring a Carrefour.  For Americans, the best analogy would be a Super Target or Super Walmart.  This is the store that has departments for nearly anything you might want in your home, though each department has a pretty limited selection.  We picked up several things we'd been wanting to make daily life easier.

We were wowed by their spice and bulk foods section, which was the most attractively designed that either of us had ever seen.  And it was manned by very friendly young men who were more than helpful in suggesting what we might want and offering usage assistance on the mixed spices, like "Chicken Seasoning" (though it has a beautiful Arabic name I can't reproduce here).  Lots of fun.

 Then we made the delightful discovery that our favorite dessert from the other end of the continent, when we were in South Africa, was made here, too!  Same stuff, just a different box.  So we promptly bought a box and enjoyed triple-chocolate crunchy muesli for dessert that night.

Later that weekend our friends Bob and Susan took us to Road 9, a shopping district here in Ma'adi and the location of one of the two vendors of pork meat.  We took the opportunity to stock up on bacon, which was cut fresh from a side, much like deli meat in the states.  (Pork is shunned by Muslims, so stores selling it are scarce around here; only two in the whole city.)