Egypt - Food Oddities

Sahl Hasheesh - Sunset from The Entrance Piazza

I suddenly realised the other day that there are a few food oddities here that I haven’t mentioned before. This partly came to mind because I finally found the list I wrote for my Five Learnings blog and one of the items I’d forgotten was about food. So, there are three food things in total, and I’ll start with the one I originally forgot.

1. Crisps. In Switzerland it was always a bit of a joke that they have only two flavours of crisps. I can’t even remember what they were now, but it was something like Ready Salted and Barbecue. Those were the only options. It was a bit exaggerated, of course, because they do sell Pringles etc in Switzerland, but I believe the flavours were somewhat limited. You’d think with Egypt being a struggling country that having a variety of crisp flavours would not be among their priorities. However, the options they have are many and “interesting”. I don’t really eat crisps myself, but I keep a stock for social occasions. I currently have “Sour Cream and Greenery” (whatever that is!), “Lemon and Chilli” and the verging-on-ordinary “Tomato and Basil”.

2. Fruit Juices. When I first came here, I pictured myself making my own freshly squeezed orange juice every day. As it turns out, I’m too lazy. I’ve done it a few times, and it is cheaper than buying it in the supermarket, but either my juicer isn’t very good or I don’t have the right technique, but I feel I may almost as well squeeze them by hand. It’s quite a frustrating exercise. The fresh orange in the supermarket I’ve found to be a bit variable. Sometimes, it’s great, at other times it tastes a bit weird. In Switzerland I always bought fresh orange juice (and now I can’t drink concentrated orange – yuk!), but here I’ve turned to the long-life cartons of 100% juice. They are great. And, again, totally different from the usual in Switzerland or the UK (I’m thinking, orange, apple, grapefruit). In my fridge, I currently have guava with apple, mango with peach, and red grape. Nothing added. All 100% juice. They aren’t particularly exotic flavours over here. They are lovely!

3. Chocolates. I did wonder if I would ever see quality chocolate again one I’d moved over here, but I needn’t have worried. Most of the big brands are here (Lindt, Cadbury’s, Ritter Sport). There are also Egyptian brands which, of course, are a lot cheaper. There’s an Egyptian equivalent of Kit-Kat that’s half the price of the original Kit-Kat and really it’s not bad. If I fall on bad times, I could definitely live on it, but generally my tastebuds crave the familiar, so mostly I go with my “home” brand. I was surprised at how cheap even the European brands were over here. Initially I thought it must be because Egyptians wouldn’t be able to pay even the local UK price for a bar of chocolate other than as a lavish treat. In fact, I’ve been out of the UK so long now, that I’m always surprised at how expensive chocolate is in the UK. In my head, it should still be 25p a bar. Anyway, when I looked a bit more closely, I realised that that the imported chocolate bars were cheap because they come in much smaller sizes than in Europe. This is super as the increasingly larger portions in Europe really annoy me. Often, I just want to satisfy a chocolate craving; I don’t necessarily want to guzzle loads (but it’s hard to stop once you’ve started, as the marketing folk well know). So, my Cadbury’s bar is cheaper because it’s just 28g, my Flake is 18g, my Galaxy is a massive 40g. I think the chunky Kit Kat (48g) and the Maltesers (37g) could possibly be similar sizes to the UK (I’ll have to look when I’m next over, unless anyone wants to make a comment to the blog to let me know), but from memory most chocolate bars in Europe these days are around 100g each. The beauty of this is that if I have half a chocolate bar (half at lunch and half after my swim is my usual routine), I’m really having less than quarter of a traditional bar. No wonder I’ve been losing weight!