Brainscrubber

…and I’ll be home to celebrate it!!

Yes…I’ll be there for the torrential winter rains of Oregon, the frigid cold, and the relentless last minute trips to the store for Christmas dinner.

If that sounds like a complaint…it ain’t.  I am really looking forward to being home and snuggling on the couch with my sweetie, a cup of hot tea, and the three critters who beg for food from morning until night as we watch It’s A Wonderful Life yet one more time…not to mention the Christmas Pizza.  Mmmmm!

I’ll be home for both Christmas and New Years Day.  I wish it was longer – but, you take what you can get when you can get it.

Especially if it involves a hug and a kiss beneath the mistletoe from my beautiful wife! 

The Saudis know coffee.  And, tea.

Qawa wa shay. Coffee and tea.

There’s Turkish coffee.  Arabian coffee.  American coffee.  There’s cappuccino…latte…and mocha.  There’s Starbucks, Dr. Cafe, and Coffee & Tea Pot.  Nothing Irish, though.

There’s black tea, red tea, and green tea.  Add some mint. Add some jasmine.  Add some ginger.  Serve it iced or hot.  Here or to go.

And sweet.  They take the sugar for granted – milk, not so much.  But sugar, yep.  “Black coffee, please.”  “Will that be with or without sugar, sir?”   If you don’t want it sweet, you’d better say so right up front, as plainly as you know how to say it.

Every restaurant serves espresso in some form or another.  Almost all of them serve Turkish coffee – a sludgy, sweet concoction boiled in a little pot until its the consistency of the motor oil drained from a Daytona 500 race car after the race.  I have to admit that I like it, and it is a really excellent finish to a Mediterranean/Arabic meal.   This is probably the only thing left by the Ottoman Empire the Arabs are happy to retain.

Cappuccino seems to be the favorite version of coffee, though, at least in the coffee shops and restaurants.  That’s an unscientific assessment.  But, just about everytime I am in a coffee shop, that seems to be the drink all the Saudis, and other Arabs, are drinking.  This is different from when you go to their homes, where they offer the awful concoction of cardamon, coffee, and dishwater they call Arabic coffee.  But, I’ve groused about that stuff enough.

They also seem to drink a lot of espresso shots…making use of those little demitasse cups…like the ones we got for our wedding.  This is obviously a European habit they’ve picked up over the last century or so – proof positive that they have too damned much oil money – and the Europeans they visit when spending those oil dollars are more than willing to sell them little cups and tell them that’s the real way to drink coffee.

Tea is consumed in little cups, two.  Where Americans drink tea in mugs the size of Wyoming, the Arabs sip from pretty little crystal cups about the size of a triple-sized shot glass.  They really are pretty cups, and the tea really does look nice in them.  If that’s part of the experience, then I can see how the tea might taste nicer.  One of the most popular things they do with tea here is to put fresh mint leaves in the tea as it steeps.  I have to say that it does taste better than what comes in those mint-flavored black tea bags.

The people of Arabia do love their recreational beverages, including coffee and tea, and they have some of the most elaborate coffee and tea services…ornately reflecting the culture…in silver, copper, and gold (probably plated).  Some of the services are exceptionally beautiful.  When I leave here, that may be what I take back as my souvenir – since I’ve been told I can’t bring back a harem girl.