Green Around the Globe » Jordan

A Year’s Difference in Thanksgiving Meals

Keith — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 15:37:48 +0000

Being back home certainly has some advantages. One of the best is sharing holidays, like Thanksgiving, with family and friends. We were certainly quite thankful to spend Thanksgiving with them this year vs. being 6,000 miles away in the Jordanian desert. When we were in Petra, Jordan, on what to everyone else it was just another Thursday night, we found ourselves spending half the night struggling to find something that was not made from chickpeas to eat for dinner and end up settling for a chicken kebap sandwich, because we realized it was about as close to turkey as we were going to get.

Another lesson I have taken away from our trip is to appreciate the vast variety of food available to people in the developed world. Because I have always had nearly any cuisine imaginable close at hand, I did not appreciate what variety my palate craves until we had spent two months in the Middle East, eating a variation of some kind of chickpea spread, pita bread or kepab at nearly every meal. And while many of these dishes were delicious, I challenge any Westerner to eat the same 3-4 dishes for every meal, including breakfast, for two months and then on Thanksgiving not go a little crazy looking for something different and traditionally American.

Being home this year did not disappoint. We had quite the spread at two family gatherings in New York. The first was in New York City and the second was a short Metro North ride north to the town of Irvington. The picture to the left is just a glimpse of the traditional and variety packed gastronomic delights that awaited our first major holiday since our return home.

What strange stand-ins for traditional foods have you made while traveling abroad on American holidays? What lengths did you go to secure a suitable substitute? Let’s hear it in the comments.

5 Minutes through the Middle East

Keith — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 12:00:49 +0000

As Amy and I have wrapped up 2 months in the Middle East we put together a 5 minute slide show of some of our favorite pictures and added witty captions. We posted this to our Facebook Fan page more than a week ago, so if you are on Facebook be sure to become a fan so you get the latest updates. If you are not on Facebook be sure to sign up for email alerts or the RSS feed in the side bar to the right.

Enjoy the video and let us know what you think. We will try and do one of these every couple of months, especially if we get a good response to this one…

Pictures from Jordan

Keith — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:00:39 +0000

Just a quick Friday morning post for everyone before the weekend. In case you missed it we posted the Jordan album here. For your convenience I have inserted a sideshow below. The captions tell most of the story, but in summary we did LOTS of hiking in the desert, the scenery was beautiful and the nights were really cold, especially in the tent. Enjoy!