Who’s a Fuul? – 15 March 2007

This morning we arranged for Maha (the girl on our team) to pick up from fuul and tamaya for breakfast for the team.

Fuul is basically pureed refried beans with other random things in it (like onions and olives, or tomato etc). It’s served as a paste in a pita pocket. It’s a traditional breakfast food in Egypt. Tamaya is basically like felafels. The tamaya breakfast sandwich is a massive tamaya (about the size of the palm of my hand) with a splodge of tahini on it, all in a pita pocket.

Lots of Egyptian, especially people like construction workers etc eat fuul or tamaya sandwiches for breakfast everyday. Most of the people on our team would not eat it on a work day, but only because there isn’t a fuul shop/stall near our work. The place Maha got ours from they cost £1 each, but she said that was from a special shop. Most of the locals who eat it on the way to work would get it from a stall and they’d get 3 or 4 sandwiches for £1. The boys each ate at least 2 sandwiches and Maha said most labourers would eat 3 or 4 for breakfast everyday as it keeps you full for ages (Chris and I didn’t eat lunch today and we were still full when we got home from work!)

We decided to arrange this breakfast partly so Chris and I could try fuul and partly to celebrate the work the team has done so far. They’ve busted their butts to get the English version of the course completed, and now we’re in a little lull. We have had so much trouble with the translation that we’re ahead on everything else. We’re just crossing our fingers that the Arabic course comes back next week and is good enough quality.

We also wanted to warn the team that when we get the Arabic version back it’s going to be full on again… even had to warn them that they might have to work one of their ten thousand public holidays. I know Australia has a reputation as the land of the long weekend, but in the 6 months we’ve been here there must have been 10 public holidays all ready! Admittedly the first and second sets of fours days off were for Ramadan (the Eid celebrations are held at the end of Ramadan and again two months later). But now just in April there are 3 public holidays! We asked Yasser (the director) if the team could work on a public holiday and he said yes, they can work 24/7 if we need them to - we said we hoped it wouldn’t get that bad!

So the fuul was interesting… Chris and I each ate one sandwich and it kept us full for ages. It was ok flavour wise but I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to buy another one or to set up a fuul shop in Oz when I get home.