A food post- in honor of Couscous Friday

So my mom (real mom, not host mom) recently asked me what the food was like, here, and as long as I don’t have to think about it once being alive, everything is absolutely delicious. My host mom is a really good cook, and even though I am more opposed than ever to eating meat, I don’t always feel terrible about not being a vegetarian when her dishes are so letheeth (tasty). There are a few things here, though, that I just am not into, the biggest of them being snails. I don’t know if you have ever smelled snail soup, but it is nasty in a way that makes you want to vomit it up before it even gets near your mouth and the Moroccans absolutely love it. It’s a huge delicacy and you’ll find street carts with crowds of people around drinking this poop colored soup and then picking the snail bodies out of their shells with little sticks. I did try it, because I have made an arrangement with myself that I will try anything once, and the soup part was not as bad as it smells, it’s kind of just really salty flavored water. Eating a snail, however, seems to me like what eating a big booger would be like. Not a fan, especially when you can see their little antennae, and especially after my host sister carries them around the room the day before like a pet. The other things I don’t like so much are leben- which as far as I can tell is sour milk and kefta- this weird seasoned ground beef that comes in rare cooked meatball form.
The best foods here are everything else my host mom makes, the oranges and anything made with fruit, and the delicious delicious honey custard. The honey here is to die for, it is straight from the comb, as is the jam straight from the fruit. I guess it comes as no surprise that when you don’t have a fridge, everything has to be fresh- go figure. I plan on getting a Moroccan cookbook before I leave so I can attempt to re-create some things back home. They have approximately one million ways to cook bread like substance here, and I figure none of them can be too hard. It would be better if I could just bring my host mom back with me though, she is really an amazing cook. She always tells me to just call up Obama and ask for her Visa. I reply with, oh I already spoke with him, he said it’s no problem (we are so clever with our jokes). Her favorite group of people to joke that I am friends with are; President Obama, Hilary Clinton, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, and Margaret Thatcher. How old Margie got into this mix I will never know.