Last night we were treated to a traditional Saudi Arabian meal. Zulfa and her husband Redwan are here in Boulder while he finishes his degree in Chemical Engineering at CU. Zulfa was required to do volunteer work for her school back in Saudi Arabia. She did that work at the cake shop. Last week was her last day and we celebrated with this meal.

I am going to have to ask her to write down everything we had as I can't remember the names of the dishes.

The dinner started with Saudi Arabian Coffee, which looked like tea and tasted of cardamom. The coffee was accompanied by dates. They don't put sugar in their coffee, so the dates are for sweetness. Then we had these amazing little candies (of course I didn't get pictures of any of this). Jake must have had 6 of them. And dinner finished with a traditional Syrian cake. Again, I can't remember the name, but we are gong the get the recipe. It was amazing.

August had a great time being spoiled by Zulfa. She adores him, I think that is the real reason we were invited over. Zulfa would hand August over to her husband to go tend to dinner and he was not quite as comfortable with babies!

Zulfa told us that if a married couple is not pregnant in the 10 months after their marriage the mothers will start asking them what is wrong. Zulfa and Redwan's marriage is an arranged marriage and she first saw him on Skype (he was here studying and she was home in Saudi Arabia). It is fascinating to hear about their traditions. She showed me her wedding pictures, but Jake was not allowed to see because she did not have her head scarf on in the photos. Actually the men and women have their own weddings. They do not have a ceremony where they are together before friends and family.So in the photos that I saw she was wearing a beautiful western style wedding dress. Jake couldn't even see a picture of their cake since she was in it without her head scarf.

 There are 2 engagements. The second one is where they sign the contract to be husband and wife, but they cannot live together until after the wedding and that be as long as 6 months after the second engagement.

While Zulfa was at the cake shop she was not able to bake or handle any cakes that had alcohol in them. Nor was she allowed to handle vanilla. Everyday was a new learning experience for us. We are going to have them over to our house for a traditional New Orleans feast. I just have to remember that they can't have pork...

We stayed well past August's bedtime and he did not get up until 10 this morning.

Jake did a great job of putting him to sleep while we finished dinner.



Tonight Jake is being interviewed on a local radio show, I think we will listen to that and skip the Oscars.