The Perfect Hommus Recipe!

From Drop Box

Hommus bi Tahini (with tahini)

This has become a very familiar product in most grocery stores, but it’s so easy and cheap to make…and you can add your own ‘personal’ touch.

Keep in mind the “bi Tahini” in Arabic means “with Tahini” and “Hommus” really means the beans.

Basic recipe:
1 can of chick peas, drained
Juice of 1 plump lemon
1 plump crushed garlic clove
splash of olive oil
2 TBSPs of Tahini
water
salt (and pepper) to taste

Put lemon juice, olive oil, garlic in the bottom of a processor, or blender, then add chick peas and tahini. Blend slowly, and add water til it reaches a ‘dippable’ consistency. Hommus will thicken as it stands, so if you don’t plan to eat it right away make it a little ‘looser’.

Now here’s where you’play’.

If you were to taste hommus in different countries of the Middle East, each one would have a slightly different flavor.. Here YOU get to add your favorite things.
• You can add things like fresh mint, parsley, cilantro, scallions, ground black pepper, hot pepper flakes, curry, roasted chipotle pepper, sundried tomatoes…you name it!

• You can also control the ‘texture’ by the amount of blending.

It should be spread in a shallow colorful dish, and drizzled with olive oil.
Then, create an inviting presentation: I like to ring it with sliced cucumber, sprinkle with pepper or sumac and top with a sprig of mint.

As they say in Arabic, Sahhtain” or “to your health… twice”

Echoes Of The Mayans…On The Mexican Riviera!

http://www.youtube.com/travelvideo

Faces I loved in the Arab Middle East

Deep into the heart of the Jordanian desert, along the caravan routes. Nearby, the Desert Castles with their falcons and weathered gate keepers. A blond friend from almost another world. Yet…deep kinship developed

From Drop Box

Ah, Butros. Gardner by day…dashing Egyptian by day too!

From Drop Box

From the roads in Syria, past the Okra fields, past history. Past time itself it seemed some time

From Drop Box

images: Wendie Hansen
www.travelvideopostcard.com

When the Flight of Birds Dipped Their Wings

Chevrons sky high
Winged flight of birds in falling light
South heading
Away from me
Not personal. Maybe they’ll return to where I was
That night they dipped their wings good by
All except one who stands by my side
Keeping company

From Drop Box

Gleann Fiaa: One of Ireland’s Sweetest B and B’s

Its so very easy to feel at home at Gleann Fiaa country inn tucked in a glade on the outskirts of Killarny, Ireland
Settle into any cozy corner, sip a good coffee and enjoy some rough, fresh, bread.

Questions about where to go and what to see? Gleann Fia Host, Conor is a trove of information

Stretch your legs by a stream on a woodland path,and meet some curious neighbors.

Or take a short skip into town, Killarney,
Killarney is one of Irelands favorite tourist spots, and its alive with pubs and cafés and a colorful spirit.

Return to the warmth of Gleann Fia and awake to a hearty breakfast,
a bit of wit
and Hostess, Bridget,
who can put a smile on any face
and guarantee, a wish to return,
or , as they say in Gaelic..

Deerfield, Massachusetts: Leave it to the Native Americans

We think it’s great that many of the colonial settlers in historic Deerfield, MA, who were taken captive by “attacking” Native American tribes opted not to return to the ways of the “white man.”

Perhaps the women and men were more emancipated under tribal rule than colonial law!

But we’re ahead of ourselves here.

So, It wasn’t always this tranquil… this mile long stretch of tree lines shaded streets and bucolic countryside.

Life in Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1671 was all about working the land and cooking on open hearth fires using the best produce this fertile valley produced…

But these historic houses have many stories to tell, especially the one about the 1704 raid during by French and Indian allies.

From HIstoric Deerfield

Lives were lost. Settlers were taken captive… and many never returned preferring perhaps the freer life of the native tribes.

And it’s tempting to wonder whether the Native Americans were justified in the war to reclaim this land.

The old Memorial Hall Museum tells the story best.

From HIstoric Deerfield

The Deerfield Inn anchors the historic town, its white pillars and bright flowers …small town icons.

From HIstoric Deerfield

Butterflies drift in a nearby Butterfly farm.

And stately Deerfield Academy welcomes the sons and daughters of the rich and famous.

Come to Deerfield, Massachusetts, find out what’s cooking on the open hearth of history

Images: Wendie Hansen

Help, I Need to Leave my Cruise!

So, you’re hundreds of miles at sea and you receive the dreaded news that a family member or dear friend has passed away or has taken seriously ill. It should be easy you think to arrange transfer from the ship to the shore, and from there catch the next flight home.

Not so fast

Passengers are taken off a ship that’s at sea only in medical emergencies, and that means unless you, the passenger are in critical condition. In most other cases, it really is a matter of determining where the next port of call is and from there, the crucial flight home

Travel insurance with trip interruption coverage can be invaluable here, but in all cases, work with the cruise ships guest services representative who will arrange flights from the next port.

And remember, if something affects your cruise experience negatively like a broken toilet or other cabin related problems your first call should be to the cabin steward, and then the purser.

You may well be entitled to compensation

The Sweetest Days Fade the Fastest

From Drop Box

(images by Wendie Hansen)

In summer’s veil of green and plants adrip
with morning dew
When random scented breezes like mischievous children
Play in trees
Rousing lazy
Leaves
Then suddenly stop making all the silence stiller.
It’s then my heart aches for the sweet days,
The ones that fade the first
When standing with a whole summer’s friends to play with
Was all the world to know

From Drop Box

When days were measured by the crack of a bat
And frosty glasses of lurid colored drinks
And now and again stolen glances
At the local girls,
Eyes raised in vague assessment of tom boy legs and budding breasts.
And then the call to dinner late in the cat like dusk
And then to sleep like no other sleep since.
Those days were truly sweet
And just as certain to be the first to fade.

An “All Inclusive” That Works Regardless of Trip Advisor: Wyndham Sugar Bay

An “All Inclusive” That Works Regardless of Trip Advisor: Wyndham Sugar Bay, St. Thomas

We were alerted to some recent negative reviews about this property posted in Trip Advisor

From Kaleel ftp etc

We queried the company responsible for the property’s public relations and asked her to press the management for details. She reassured us that there was a glitch in reservations and service during the holiday season. Unhappy guests were compensated well, and the problems were resolved.

We resolved to see for ourselves!

All-inclusives are very difficult to run successfully.
Big “All-inclusives” are even more difficult to run successfully.

When food and drink and all kinds of activities are free and unlimited, guests tend to become hedonistic…loud and sometime just plain boorish.
And when an all-inclusive is a big property, then the problems are exponentially bigger, because the staff can’t keep up with the food and beverage pressure, normal maintenance, and guest demands without sacrificing the personal attention all vacationers want and hope for.

And paid for.

Fortunately, the Wyndham Sugar Bay in St. Thomas (US Virgin Islands) has none of those problems, and is a very successful, all-inclusive-optional, Caribbean destination!

First, the property is blessed with an amazing location: the views of the neighboring islands (St. John, and the British Virgin Islands) are spectacular. The islands form a wonderful necklace of green, laid out against the eye-popping, blue surrounding Caribbean waters .

From Kaleel ftp etc

Then somehow the “bigness” of the Wyndham is really nicely scaled to human proportions so the place feels more intimate, accessible than one would expect at first glance.

The resort hugs a verdant hillside on the north-east corner of St. Thomas and was once a Holiday Inn. But the 290 standard sized rooms blend rather unobtrusively into the design of the place, and since no other hotels crowd in on either side the feeling of tropical Caribbean “get away” is assured…very different from, say, Aruba, which is a more arid island.

There is a welcomed sense of privacy even at 75% occupancy, which was the case during our recent visit.

The Sugar Bay has an intimate beach, quite family safe , and terrific for beginner snorkelers (free for guests) Note: the three tiered pool, activities, and beach area are at the base of a mighty stair case. Great exercise, if you’re up for it, if not, a regular shuttle delivers you to and from the main lobby.

But I think the big plus at this Wyndham is the helpfulness of the staff. I saw at least two touching incidents of staff thoughtfulness that more or less sold me on the place.

Not all resorts, especially All-inclusives, have a staff that can weather the demands of its guests while cheerfully providing good service.

In one instance an elderly gentleman was having trouble getting out of the pool. No one noticed, and before I could get up to help, a passing staff member was by his side, helping him out.
In another instance a staffer just stopped in his tracks to pick up a random piece of paper.

From Kaleel ftp etc

No big deal?

But, yes, it is. It suggests that care in small things extends to bigger things

Wisely, management has decided to turn down the sound volume.
Sure, it’s nice to have music to enliven the atmospheres, but surround-sound can get to be too much (for me), so thankfully the Wyndham has little of the intrusive, pseudo-Caribbean noise that resorts its size tend to think is necessary to keep the guests occupied.

Guests and Families were an easy mix of cultures and generations; from the States, yes, but also from Argentina , Italy, Russia, and other countries.
They were well behaved and unselfconsciously ‘non-jet-set’, enjoying themselves either on the beach, snorkeling, or having breakfast or dinner in the dining room with the super views.

I love the many Iguanas that roam freely, and so apparently did the families, delighting in taking snaps and sometime squealing in surprise (or fake fear!) as one of the creatures waddled nearby.

The food?
Always a crucial part of any vacation, the food is good at the Wyndham.
Not great.
Dinner can be off the menu or buffet with a range of meat, fish and vegetables and, happily, lots of fresh fruit, attractively arranged.

Lunch is typically served in the restaurant by the pool and runs to salads and burgers.

Breakfast was more fun with an omelet station ( egg whites are available too), scrambled eggs, fresh juices, cereals, sausages, breakfast potatoes, good coffee, rolls, baked good, etc.

Preparing food for so many people has to be very difficult, though here too the service was always attentive and reassuring.

There is a Children’s Menu with the usual Mac and Cheese, Chicken Fingers and Burgers….but also salad and fruit cup.

The Wyndham is a short but winding distance from the port capital of Charlotte Amalie.
While the town retains some genuine Colonial/Caribbean touches and ambiance, Charlotte Amalie (named after the consort of thee Danish King, Christian, to whom the islands belonged) has too many jewelry shops and too much stuff to sell to the too may cruise ships that dock here.

From Kaleel ftp etc

Even though the island is only some twelve miles long you’ll appreciate that the Wyndham is far from that crowd, though a taxi ride in on non-cruise days in is certainly worth it.

Taxis. They are expensive, ranging from 5 t0 20 bucks a person, though I suspect if you’re up to it, a deal can be made when traveling with kids.
You can rent a car for maybe 60 bucks a day, but the driving is on the left hand side of the road, with the steering wheels on the right, and the sharp curves and bends don’t exactly inspire confidence.

The good news is that the hotel is very close to Red Hook ( $5.00 by taxi), where a short, cheap ferry ride takes one to St. John, where the Caribbean experience is just a bit easier, the colors a bit brighter and the island less commercialized.

As we said, The Wyndham got some bad Trip Advisor reviews a while back because of some rotten luck with staff shortages and holiday over-booking. I understand the frustration.

From Kaleel ftp etc

But I have to tell you, I saw none of the glitches that those guests experienced (and were well compensated for).

A week’s stay at Wyndham Sugar Bay is a great vacation. It is, as I say, an All inclusive that works and is beautifully located

Let us know if you go and how your experience was.

http://www.wyndham.com

On the Hummus Trail

From Drop Box

It sounds and reads better in Arabic than English. And I know there are far better, more richly textured poems in Arabic (and English by Arabs) than this one, but apropos of our subject, on the Hummus Trail, this bit of doggerel by some anonymous Arab poet:

“You can talk of your many vegetables from Morocco to Cathay,
And talk of all the tasty food the kitchen smells betray,
But if you’ve never tasted chickpeas, you’ve nothing else to say,
For this delicious legume rules supreme from Cairo to Bombay.”

And there you have it.
Or almost.

We are told that in 400 BC Plato and Socrates wrote about the benefits of Hummus in their diets.
Sometime in 1200 AD, Mediterranean countries listed Hummus as a staple, and in 1910, waves of immigrants brought Hummus to America.

By the way, its correct pronunciation is (Hhum-mus)

In 1981 some regional brands of Hummus appear in supermarkets,
but in 1993 Tribe of Two Sheiks Hummus, born in Boston with four
flavors, become a national favorite.

Let’s go back to the “regional brands and supermarkets’ event.

I remember as an Arab American kid – the oldest son of the oldest son in an Arab-American family of ten – walking with my father to local supermarkets in the Boston area.

There my father self-consciously tried to peddle Syrian Bread (khoobz Arabe – the term “Pita Bread” was unheard of) and Hummus to the supermarket honchos.

This was way before any market except the Syrian-Lebanese ones carried Syrian bread or Hummus on their shelves. This was the early 50’s.

They didn’t laugh at my dad, but they weren’t interested.

This was way before Dannon Yogurt came out with the first-ever yogurt, Prune-flavored, while we at home barely noticed the cheese cloth bags hanging from a door jamb, dripping into pans below.

Making yogurt (laban) at home was a fact of life.

The rest I guess they say is history, but it’s tempting to think about what would have happened if, say, the Star Market manager opted to carry our bread and Hummus

But if they politely turned my dad away with his samples of Syrian bread and Hummus, my schoolmates were much less polite.

They scoffed at my lunch sandwiches stuffed with Hummus, tomatoes and some lettuce.

In crueler moments, they laughed. A Hummus sandwich was plain weird next to all that baloney and whiter American cheese sticking to all that doughy white bread.

It was Wonder Bread I think, building strong bodies 12 ways. Or was it 8?
One more than one occasion when the Syrian bread was also stuffed with Kibee (ground, spiced Lamb) or Babaganouj, say, I ate my lunch in the Boy’s Room

Truth is, no one knows for sure where Hummus came from.

It’s has been around too long to know, but because it’s used so completely throughout the Arab world, we can assume it came from somewhere in the Middle East. And since that part of the world was, before the Ottoman Empire, called “Greater Syria,” we’d be right in assuming Hummus first came from the tribes or villages of that vast region now broken up into Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.

It’s important to clear up our references: Hummus is not the thick, silky food we associate with the word.

Hummus is actually the Arabic word for chickpea, called garbanzo in Spanish, ceci in Italian, gram in India. The chickpea is a type of bean whose official name is Cicer arietinum.

What we call Hummus is actually Hummus bi tahina. Or Hummus (chick peas) in (bi) Tahina (the sesame paste).

The chickpea was used as food by our hunter-gatherer ancestors tens of thousands of years ago and was cultivated around 7,000 years ago in the Middle East.

This is pretty much pre-history, so details are not clear. The Phoenicians are credited with bringing the chickpea to western Europe, but there is some dispute over that. Certainly by Roman times the bean had become entrenched in the Iberian diet. So there are lots of versions of hummus, “invented” in lots of places.

What maters is to enjoy the dish and, hey, try our recipe

One 16 oz can of chickpeas drained (or cook your own!)
Juice of one plump lemon
Plump clove of Garlic
2 Tablespoons of Tahini (more or less). Be sure it’s fresh
Splash of olive oil
Salt to taste at end
Coarse: Blend in food processor. Creamy: Use a blender
Gradually add water (little at a time until desired consistency. Easily scooped with bread without dropping off)
Then add your signature spice: Cumin, Sumac, All-spice, Pepper
Garnish with lemons, cucumbers, parsley
Drizzel with olive oil and add a few radishes for deeper color or pomegranate seeds

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