The Little Sailor in Najma

This is a story of good advertising and good luck. In a recent Peninsula magazine was a full page ad for a new restaurant, the Little Sailor. It looked clean, and interesting, so we decided to seek it out for a seafood dinner.

We are so glad we did. The Little Sailor is located on a not-that-easy to reach street – either you are coming from Airport Road on C-Ring and you turn right, I think at the third right turn from the light, or you go down Najma, from C-ring, turning right at the small roundabout just past the Commercial Bank on your right, go to the end of the road, turn right, go a short distance to the end of that road, turn left and then turn left again on the next street and you will see the Little Sailor on your left.

It’s small, but they are doing a steady and continuous business. At one point, every table was taken, people coming in and placing to-go orders. They don’t have a printed menu yet, which always makes me nervous, but we plunged in, hoping we had enough to cover the bill.

We started with the seafood soup, which was delicious – it tasted like good health as soon as we started eating, and was full of fish chunks. It is hearty and filling. They have two versions, a cream version and a clear version. We went with the clear version; we loved it.

I chose Fish and Chips for my entree, and AdventureMan chose grilled shrimp. We had more than enough, the portions were generous:

The batter on the fish was light and airy, like tempura batter. It allowed the flavor of the fish to shine!

As he was talking with the manager, AM learned that The Little Sailor is associated with the same company as Al Maharah, in the Suq al Waqif hotel. No wonder everything tastes so fresh and so delicious!

When our bill came, we got a happy surprise:

QR 104 comes to around $29. for this feast of fresh seafood.

Glorious View in Qatar

Yesterday I was invited to an all-gals party, and normally, I don’t accept any outside invitations on Friday, which is AdventureMan’s only day off the entire week, but this date was special, and I went, and I had a wonderful afternoon, full of laughs and good friendships.

When I walked in, I had a moment’s nostalgia for Kuwait, and my endless view from my mustard colored tower – this woman had the Qatar equivalent – the view that goes forever.

The windows were open, the breezes were blowing, the laughter was infectious and the food was delicious – what is not to love?

Only six years ago, when I first came to Qatar (almost seven years now) the building from which I took these photos didn’t exist. Looking north, only a few low buildings, the Intercon and the Ritz Carleton existed – and now, it’s almost like another Corniche in the making out at The Pearl. The speed with which this has happened is breathtaking.

He turns a desert into pools of water

One of today’s readings in The Lectionary are these verses from a much longer reading, Psalm 107. When I read these lines, I can’t help thinking how this very dull and flat land, Qatar, this little thumb sticking up into the Gulf, has greened, how the oil and gas have served to green this land, to change its face, and how much money is flowing out from this country to many other countries of the world.

All those of us from far away countries who labor here are benefitting from these springs of wealth, sending money home.

33He turns rivers into a desert,
springs of water into thirsty ground,
34a fruitful land into a salty waste,
because of the wickedness of its inhabitants.
35He turns a desert into pools of water,
a parched land into springs of water.
36And there he lets the hungry live,
and they establish a town to live in;
37they sow fields, and plant vineyards,
and get a fruitful yield.
38By his blessing they multiply greatly,
and he does not let their cattle decrease.

39When they are diminished and brought low
through oppression, trouble, and sorrow,
40he pours contempt on princes
and makes them wander in trackless wastes;
41but he raises up the needy out of distress,
and makes their families like flocks.
42The upright see it and are glad;
and all wickedness stops its mouth.
43Let those who are wise give heed to these things,
and consider the steadfast love of the Lord.

For my Christian readers, Muslims also use the Psalms as holy readings –

“The Qur’an (Surah An-Nisa 4:163) states “and to David We gave the Psalms”. Therefore, Islam confirms the Psalms as being inspired of God.”

Did you know that?

Who Knew? Pumpkin Shortage, Pumpkin Pie

“Have you heard about the great pumpkin shortage?” asked my friend Grammy. I think I snorted. I thought she was kidding.

No. No, she was not kidding. Today I found this on AOL News where you can read the whole story by clicking on the blue type.

Pumpkin Shortage Means No Pie for Thanksgiving
Posted Nov 18th 2009 2:30PM by Susan Wagner

Planning on serving pumpkin pie next week for Thanksgiving? You might want to find a back up — maybe pecan pie, or some spicy gingerbread. What’s wrong with pumpkin pie? Nothing — except that there aren’t any pumpkins available this year.

Rainy conditions in the midwest this fall have washed out the pumpkin crop, leaving retailers at a loss for canned pie filling. This week, the LA Times reported that Nestlé, which controls 85% of the pumpkin crop for canning, was all out of pumpkins. The company issued a surprise apology, saying that the rain had destroyed the remains of an already-small crop. Nestlé plans to stop shipping canned pumpkin after Thanksgiving, and the company says that once this season’s supply is gone, there won’t be any more pumpkins available for canning until August 2010.

Don’t lose hope!

For one thing, here in Qatar, there doesn’t appear to be any shortage of pumpkin – or, well, squash. It tastes like pumpkin, but looks more like old fashioned pumpkins, not like the generic vanilla USA sugar pumpkin.

My beautiful French friend’s nose got that pinched French look when she heard about pumpkin pies made with canned pumpkin.

“Why would you do that?” she asked in genuine bewilderment. “All you have to do is to cook the pumpkin pieces until they are soft, then use them as you would canned pumpkin, except that it’s fresh, and has no added chemicals.”

HER pumpkin pie was out of this world, made with fresh pumpkins and her special spice mix:

2 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tablespoon ground ginger ( or1 tablespoon of grated fresh ginger)
1 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon mace (or ground nutmeg)
1 pinch anis seeds ground
1 cup dark brown sugar

Ground all the pieces together than add the sugar, keep it in a closed lid jar.

Her filling : 2 pounds fresh pumpkin flesh, steamed, mashed and cooled down, 1 cup of packed brown sugar, 3 eggs, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, half a cup of the spice mix.

Her pie was amazing. I would bake at 350F/180C for about an hour; it makes a big pie.

Corn Chowder

This used to be a recipe sent to me by Allrecipes.com, but I changed so much of it they probably wouldn’t recognize it. AdventureMan and I loved it! It’s great for winter days when the nights are getting longer, and the temperatures are dropping into the 80’s. Brrrrrrrrrr!

Corn Chowder

Ingredients
• 1/2 cup diced bacon
• 4 medium potatoes, chopped into small cubes, maybe 1/2 – 3/4 inches
• 1 medium onion, chopped finely
• 2 cups water
• 3 cups frozen corn
• 1 teaspoon salt
• coarsely ground black pepper
• 2 cups light cream

1. Slice bacon across the top, so that you have lots of little bacon pieces, fry until cooked through. Save the grease (there is only like a tablespoon).

2. Mix potatoes and onion into the pot with the crumbled bacon and reserved drippings. Cook and stir 5 minutes. Pour in the water, and stir in corn. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and cover pot. Simmer 20 minutes, stirring frequently, until potatoes are tender.

(You can prepare earlier in the day to this point, then add cream and heat just before serving)

3. Warm cream in a small saucepan until it bubbles. Remove from heat before it boils, and mix into the chowder just before serving.

FYI: How Long is a Generation?

So I get on a track and I can’t get off, like a little hamster running on the wheel. I got to thinking about generations, and how long ago is 10 generations and so I had to ask Google the question: How long is a generation? Don’t you love Google? They always have an answer.

Now I know something new. Now I will share it with you. This comes from Ancestry.com

Research Cornerstones: How Long Is a Generation? Science Provides an Answer
How Long Is a Generation?
By Donn Devine, CG, CGI

We often reckon the passage of time by generations, but just how long is a generation?

As a matter of common knowledge, we know that a generation averages about 25 years—from the birth of a parent to the birth of a child—although it varies case by case. We also generally accept that the length of a generation was closer to 20 years in earlier times when humans mated younger and life expectancies were shorter.

In genealogy, the length of a generation is used principally as a check on the credibility of evidence—too long a span between parent and child, especially in a maternal line, has been reason to go back and take a more careful look at whether the evidence found reflects reality or whether a generation has been omitted or data for two different individuals has been attributed to the same person. For that purpose, the 20- and 25-year averages have worked quite acceptably; birth dates too far out of line with the average are properly suspect.

But now, researchers are finding that facts differ from what we’ve always assumed—generations may actually be longer than estimates previously indicated.

Several recent studies show that male-line generations, from father to son, are longer on average than female-line generations, from mother to daughter. They show, too, that both are longer than the 25-year interval that conventional wisdom has assigned a generation. The male generation is at least a third longer; the female generation is about one-sixth longer.

As early as 1973, archaeologist Kenneth Weiss questioned the accepted 20- and 25-year generational intervals, finding from an analysis of prehistoric burial sites that 27 years was a more appropriate interval but recognizing that his conclusion could have been affected if community members who died away from the village were buried elsewhere.

Why Age Matters
In a more-recent study regarding generation length, sociologist Nancy Howell calculated average generational intervals among present-day members of the !Kung, contemporary hunter-gatherer people of Botswana and Namibia whose lifestyle is relatively similar to that of our pre-agricultural ancestors. The average age of mothers at the birth of their first child was 20 years and at the last birth 31, giving a mean of 25.5 years per female generation—considerably above the 20 years often attributed to primitive cultures. Fathers were six to 13 years older than mothers, giving a male generational interval of 31 to 38 years.

A separate study, conducted by population geneticists Marc Tremblay and Hélène Vézina, was based on 100 ascending Quebec genealogies. Researchers found a generational interval, based on the years between parents’ and children’s marriages, to average 31.7 years, and they determined that male generations averaged 35.0 years while female generations averaged 28.7 years.

Biological anthropologist Agnar Helgason and colleagues used the Icelandic deCODE genetics database to arrive at a female line interval of 28.12 years for the most recent generations and 28.72 years for the whole lineage length. Male line lineages showed a similar difference—31.13 years for the recent generations and 31.93 years overall. For a more mathematically appealing average, Helagason and fellow researchers recommended estimating female generational line intervals at 30 years and male generational intervals at 35 years, based on the Quebec and Iceland studies.

Calculating Ideas
What does this mean to the genealogist? When assigning dates to anthropologically common ancestors 50 or more generations in the past, using the “accepted” 20 or 25 years as a conversion factor can produce substantial underestimates of the time interval.

For my own purposes, however, given the imprecision of the various results and my own need for an estimate that lends itself to easy calculation, I decided that three generations per century (33 years each) for male lines and 3.5 generations per century (29 years each) for female lines, might work better when I needed to convert generations into years.

To check the accuracy of my values, I decided to compare the generational intervals from all-male or all-female ranges in my own family lines for the years 1700 to 2000. I was pleasantly surprised to see how closely the intervals agreed with the estimates I was using. For a total of 21 male-line generations among five lines, the average interval was close to 34 years per generation. For 19 female-line generations from four lines, the average was an exact 29 years per generation.

In genealogy, conclusions about relationships are subject to change whenever better evidence is discovered. Similarly, it’s the nature of the physical and biological sciences that current understandings are subject to change as more data becomes available and that data’s interpretation becomes more certain. So, for now, when genealogists want to convert generations to years and create probable date ranges, using an evidence-based generational interval—like Helagason’s 30 and 35 years or one that you’ve developed based on your own family history research—may be the best solution.

Donn Devine, CGSM, CGISM, a genealogical consultant from Wilmington, Delaware, is an attorney for the city and archivist of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington. He is a former National Genealogical Society board member, currently chairs its Standards Committee, is a trustee of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, and is the administrator for Devine and Baldwin DNA surname projects.

Brass Band Concert Tomorrow, Suq Al Waqif

Thanks, Grammy! If you have ever had an interest in exploring the Souqs, now is the time. The weather is perfect, nights are breezy and warm but not hot, there are a zillion good restaurants to choose from, AND tomorrow night is a very cool concert:

Only Ten Generations

We were talking about marriage prospects, and I mentioned one young man.

She hesitated, then told me “we don’t marry with this family.”

“Why not?” I asked her. “He’s handsome, and kind, and I am told that they are the richest family in Qatar.”

“They are Iranian,” she said shortly.

“Iranian?” I asked. “They are Qatteri! They have been here more than ten generations!”

She grinned at me.

“It’s not enough,” she said. “They are still Iranian.”

Breakfast in the Souks

“I need a hundred camel spoons,” my friend said, and since we all sort of think on the same track, no one looked at me like I was crazy when I said “let’s all meet for breakfast, shop when the souks open and leave.”

In fact, they didn’t look at me like I was crazy for two reasons. One was that we really sort of think alike, and meeting for breakfast is just the kind of thing we don’t do often, but it is a good time to grab some time together in lives that get very busy later in the day.

The second reason is that we are all introverts, and three of us were doing most of this arranging by e-mail. We’re not really phone chatters, although every now and then we will dial, but it tends to be the exception rather than the rule.

The weather is perfect. You would be amazed how lovely and peaceful the souks are early in the morning. There are customers in the restaurants, but it is a very laid back time of the day.

For a significant sum – I can’t remember how much, but I think I remember like 80 QR – you can park in VIP parking. Me, I was there an hour, and paid QR4 (just a little over a dollar) I just wanted you to see the difference from plain old everyday common folk parking and the VIP parking (above.) (Those signs in front of the stores straight ahead say VIP Parking, and at night they are roped off with red velvet ropes)

We find a shady table and order breakfast, across the street guys are into their early morning hubbly bubbly, there are people sweeping up to be sure everything is Disney-tidy, and it really is. As we are sipping at our coffee, the mounted police come by. Their horses are gorgeous, with high bushy tails and beautiful dressings in Qatar’s blood red and white colors.

What I like even better is the police-riders. They are handsomely dressed, and they ride like cowboys – look at that posture, the way real horsemen ride, with that cowboy slump and the weight firm in the saddle. The horses aren’t big horses, but they have beautiful bones. I wonder where they stable these horses in the souqs?

On to find the Yemeni Honey Man, relocated from Karabaa / Electricity Street. The police help us find him, hidden back next to a metal kitchen crafter, and we see he has other old customers who have also found him. His new shop is shiny and clean, with great shelves for displaying his beautiful baskets from the Asir.

“Big troubles” he says, and I know he is right, many people are being evacuated from that area while the Saudis and Yemenis have problems near the border. One of his customers communicates to us with gestures that in our new baskets, we must pack our jewelry in the bottom, then our abayas, and then food, oud or honey on top, so people won’t know where we are hiding our jewelry.

My Kuwaiti friend told me that in his memory, before oil, people kept all their clothes in baskets like this, folded neatly. They didn’t have a lot of clothes, he told me, and then there were other baskets specially woven to hold food stuffs, and to keep the insects off the food. Those baskets are not the same as these sturdy baskets, the more local Kuwait and Qatteri baskets are woven from palm fronds, I believe, and you can still find them in the more traditional stores at the Souq al Waqef, behind where the Bedouin women sell foods on Thursday night and sometimes on Fridays.

Mom’s Fruit Cake in Qatar

Life has gotten busy, and somehow November is here and I haven’t made my fruitcakes. I need to fix that! For those of you who think fruitcakes are a joke – my Mom’s fruitcake has a secret ingredient – chocolate. Even people who don’t like fruitcake love this fruitcake.

I am in Qatar – I have brandy. I have rum. No, I don’t drink hard liquor, but oh, they do make my fruitcakes tastier. Today, I will soak the raisins in brandy overnight, so they will be ready to go tomorrow!

I am reprinting this recipe for those of you who would like to give fruitcake a try.

Mom’s Fruit Cake

This is the original recipe. I remember cutting the dates and prunes with scissors when I was little; now you can buy dates and prunes without pits and chop them in the food processor – a piece of cake!

1 cup boiling water
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup lard or butter
1 T. cinnamon
1 t. cloves
3 Tablespoons chocolate powder
1/4 cup jelly
1 cup seeded raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup candied citron
1/2 cup cut prunes
1/2 cup cut dates

Put all in a pan on stove and bring to a boil. Boil for three minutes. Let cool. Add:

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
Flavor with lemon

Bake at 350° in loaf pans for one hour. Makes 2 normal bread loaf sized cakes.

My variations: I put in about three times the fruit, the difference primarily in the candied citron – I prefer using whole candied cherries, because they are so pretty when the loafs are cut. This recipe doubles, or quadruples with no problems.

Pans: Mom used to line all the pans with brown paper and grease the paper. I grease the pans, then dust with more of the chocolate powder. Use a good quality chocolate, not cocoa. When the cakes come out of the oven, let them cool for ten minutes, loosen them with a knife, then they will shake out easily. Let continue to cool until they are totally cool, then wrap in plastic wrap, with several layers, then foil, then seal in a sealable plastic bag. Let them age a couple months in a corner of your refrigerator. I make mine around Halloween, and serve the first one at Thanksgiving.

I never make these the same any two years in a row.

You know how raisins get all dried out and taste yucky in fruitcakes? The night before you intend to make the fruitcakes, take all the raisins you intend to use (depending on how many fruitcakes you intend to make) and put them in a glass container. Pour brandy over them, to cover. Microwave just to the boiling point. Let stand in the microwave overnight.

The next day, you can drain that brandy and use it in a stew or something, and in the meanwhile, you now have plump, juicy raisins to use in your fruitcake, and just a hint of brandy flavor. Yummmm!