Week in Review: Week 11

It's the next to last Week in Review from Belgium! Here goes:

• Here's the count: 13 straight days of headaches, 8 full days of migraines. I've officially turned into a vampire. I'm ready to get off the migraine-train. 
• The painkillers are leaving me relatively "filter"-free. It almost seems appropriate for this time of the semester. 
• Speaking of...I FINISHED ALL MY COURSEWORK. I'll bring back my evaluation and then walk myself across the stage at graduation. Man, this has been a long time coming. 
• I think I've gotten dumber, not smarter, but I won't be opposed to you all calling me Master Brewer. 
• I've enjoyed helping take care of Phoebe this week, but it also makes me miss my little girls in Texas. I can't wait to see Madeline and Emma and see how much they have changed over the last 3 months!
• English classes have also been wrapped up. I have to put the finishing touches on the exams for levels one and two and then give them tomorrow evening. They will come for their grades and certificates on Wednesday. Tuesday we are having a potluck/Thanksgiving celebration in my conversation class. It should be interesting to see what kind of food my students turn up with. 
• With just 2 weeks left I officially gave myself permission to think about Mexican food and Dr. Pepper. 
• This last Tuesday was the Fête du Mouton, which is one of the biggest holidays in Islam. Families get together to sacrifice and eat a sheep in honor of God providing a sheep to sacrifice instead of Abraham's son (Isaac for Christians, Ishmael for Muslims). Part of the holiday includes sharing the meat with friends and the poor. Our neighbors said they would send over their son with some of the lamb, which turned out to be an entire raw leg of lamb. 
• I rode back to Brussels from the neurologist Wednesday with a family from the church who had gone to the hospital to visit Phoebe. The husband is Egyptian, the wife is Syrian. They have two adorable little hellians. He exhibited the best steering wheel drumming I have ever seen. (He drums at the church and was a professional back in Egypt.) They ended up taking me home with them for a while and fed me mashi (sp?)--little stuffed grape leaves. Very, very tasty. Also, I realized after almost 3 months that the husband speaks English! Who knew...
• I cannot say enough for the Flemish Belgian healthcare system. Everyone was ridiculously nice, almost everyone spoke English, and they all went out of their way to be helpful--the neurologist even game me his personal email should I need more information or help filing on my US insurance.  
• The amount I paid to go to the ER, have a CT scan, an appointment with the neurologist and an EEG with no outside insurance? 108.22 euro. Let's all say it together--government healthcare is not the end of the world. 

And, that's all. It has been a long week, but when I look back, most of what I remember is just cooking, cleaning and sitting in a dark room as much as possible. Maybe I'll remember some of the more interesting tidbits later!

Moussaka Bi Zeit

So while the last week has not been full of triumphal moments, I did have a strong showing in at least one area. As I attempted to get in touch with my Southern roots and cook up some casseroles, I decided to branch out a bit. Janee has a good Lebanese/Syrian cookbook and I found a recipe for Moussaka that I wanted to try. (As an aside, Lebanese and Syrian food is almost exactly the same. Hary says that even if the people are Syrian, they market the food as Lebanese because Lebanese food is more well known.)

Lebanese Moussaka is not the same as its Greek incarnation--there's no cheese or potatoes. Hary does tell me that there are different kinds of Moussaka. Moussaka Bi Zeit, or Moussaka with oil, is what I made and it is a vegetarian variety. Making it is pretty straight forward: you peel, slice and fry a few eggplants, add a layer of chickpeas, then top it with a mixture of sautéed onions, garlic and tomatoes which have been simmered together. To finish it off you top it with a layer of sliced up tomatoes, and then bake it. It can be eaten cold, but we ate it hot with rice.

I hadn't realize that Hary was coming back to the house the day I made it, but he was really excited when I told him what I had made. I was a bit worried for him to try it because it was my first go at moussaka, and I hadn't even tried it myself, but I am happy to say he liked it. Now honestly this isn't saying much because I have been around long enough to know that Hary will eat just about anything. Yet as the days went by and he kept eating it, meal after meal, I started to believe him. And the highest praise of all? He said it tasted just like an Arab woman made it.

Triumph indeed.