My first humseen, winter vegetables, and the bread man on Canal Street

I cannot believe it is the month of March and today was the first day that I could tell that the seasons are changing. We are experiencing the first humseen, or dust storm, of the season. I have been dreading the humseens because I thought they were windy and wild with sand and dirt clogging your mouth and nose but it's just a yellowish cloud over the city. No grit in my mouth, didn't need to breathe through my scarf. March and April are the months for these storms. If I experience anything more exciting then I will be sure to share.

It was a dingy, overcast day. Dave is silly and said it feels like armageddon. I am used to the sun shining and am surprised at how much I miss it when it's gone for even a day.

With the passing of winter also comes the end of winter vegetables as vegetables are not grown here out of season. For me this means the loss of spinach, chard, and kale, my three favorite vegetables. The tomatoes are perfect right now and taste like the tomatoes of my childhood.


I don't know if you can tell but this is wilty, sad spinach. I buy 5-10 packages at a time when available, spend an hour (or more!) cleaning it, then stuffing it into ziploc bags for the freezer. I am still freaky about amoebas and clean my own vegetables just to make sure I kill everything. Then I spray my beloved diluted bleach spray everywhere to make sure I kill everything that might have come off the vegetables!

Forget jewelry! Here are my prized possessions: SWISS CHARD and SPINACH! Almost out of kale, which was woody and tasted strangely of fish. I will never ever EVER take triple-washed spinach, baby kale, and swiss chard from HEB for granted again! I told Dave it is GOLD and he is forbidden to use more than one package at a time. When he comes in the door in the evening and I am cleaning and drying vegetables I tell him that I'm earning my keep.

I love this sculpture! It celebrates the local bread sellers who use bicycles to carry and sell the local bread called balady bread. The statue is also on one of our favorite streets called Canal street, where we fell in love with a house with the orange door that didn't work out. This beautiful street gets its name from an actual water-filled canal that ran through this area more than 50 years ago. I was told that families would go to the canal on weekends for picnics and boating and fishing. I would LOVE to have a photo or drawing of the Canal during that time! Maadi is a very leafy suburb and Canal street with its broad expanse and beautiful tall trees is like the center of Maadi's beauty. Maadi is a very busy place now; we hear all the time how quiet it used to be and how much it has changed. How there used to be so few cars, which is really hard to imagine because it is packed with cars, taxis, scooters, even a Dodge Ram! That thing is HUGE on these streets! I bet he doesn't yield to anyone. Even the crazy taxi drivers.



The balady bread man. They really do ride around the city with a screen holding bread.

Canal Street. The photographer is standing in the middle of what once was a canal.

Things are moving quickly now and we are so excited. We are moving into our villa on Saturday and really begin settling in. Dave cannot wait to start gardening and we have a lot of yard to take care of. We are going to Prague and Vienna in April and then our daughter Sydney is coming for 10 days in May. I am trying to talk Ben into coming before his summer internship...I would be the happiest mom on the planet!