The Little Red Hen Moves To Egypt

 I have about ten people working for me on my farm, helping to care for the animals, working in the gardens and basically providing a lot of support for me. They've all worked for me for some time...like before the revolution.  After the revolution our busy schedules of school visits, equestrian tourism and so on pretty much died. A lot of stables around me unloaded their horse and cut staff right away, but I couldn't do that to families that I was supporting or to the  horses that I'd rescued. So we tightened belts and looked for ways to economise. One way was to turn the land between the horse paddocks and the garden into vegetable gardens for the use of all the staff and their families. The deal is that everyone chips in on the work and everyone benefits. So the other day after lunch I took a look at the beds and announced to the grooms and gardeners that everyone needed to put in some weeding time. Not all of them were thrilled so I told them a story, one I'd heard as a child,  The Little Red Hen.

My Arabic is functional, not perfect by any means, so the story was somewhat simplified for them. For anyone who doesn't know this story, it is a staple for North American children in their pre-school years. Briefly, a red hen is walking around one day when she finds some wheat on the road. She gathers up the grain and decides to use it to grow more wheat so that she can bake some bread. At various points in the process (planting, weeding, watering, harvesting, milling, and baking) she asks various animal friends (cow, donkey, duck, dog, cat, rooster) to assist her, but each one has a sort of excuse as to why they can't help her....until, of course, the bread was baked and everyone wanted some, but the little red hen tells them that since they were too busy to help, they must be too busy to eat.

The guys all listened politely to the end and then at the end, one of them began to laugh and said, "See? She fooled them!" Another slightly more socially adept groom suggested that it was something else. I laughed and said that yes, if they wanted to eat the bread (or in our case, the vegetables) they needed to be there for the work and announced that I was the red hen. All very simple, you'd think, but the young man who took the story as the hen taking advantage of and then laughing at her neighbours then spent hours trying to figure out who among them was the donkey, the cat, the duck and so on.


Sometimes stories don't travel all that well.






copyright 2012 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

A Problem For Everyone

There have been stories in the press here and abroad about the problems at the government bread bakeries due to flour shortages. We are definitely in the midst of a serious problem in Egypt with inflation, especially as it affects food. But we are not alone, as detailed by the writer of the Globe and Mail article I've linked to with the title. People are experiencing similar problems all over the world.

I don't go into the city that much, especially since there is almost nothing that can be done there that doesn't cost money, and with a farm to support, I really don't want to go about spending unnecessarily. Today I went into Maadi to pick up a replacement pair of glasses and to do my month's grocery shopping. Shopping every day the price increases sort of sneak up on you, but shopping once a month, they smack you in the face. I have to admit that I'm spoiled rotten by having the wonderful Mohamed...driver, accountant, supervisor of workers, right hand man....who does my day to day shopping. He has the advantage of living near one of the best fruit and vegetable markets in Cairo but we've been watching the price fluctuations in that realm with a jaundiced eye.

Going to the market once a month for the essentials puts a special light on pricing. I am a boring shopper. I buy the same basics month after month: some chicken breasts, corn meal for parrot bread, skim milk and skim milk yogurt, some oil, some rice, lentils, chick peas...simple stuff. It's only me in the house after all and I like my food real and freshly cooked, so I don't need too much.

I do this shopping in one of the largest supermarkets in Maadi. There are things that I like that I can find in a place like that, such as cherry preserves, that I like. Yeah, like I said, I'm a bit spoiled. Metro, the supermarket, has a cheese section, a meat section, a poultry section, a fish market, and a delicatessen...it's a normal supermarket. Last time I was there, I bought a tray of chicken breast for about 30 LE...that's for about 8 half breasts. Today the same tray was over 40 LE. My skim milk that was about 3.5 LE 6 months ago is now almost 5 LE a litre. A small jar of nice green pepper salsa, locally produced, was 3.5 LE last month and is 5 LE this month. Rice that was 2.5 LE is now almost 5 LE.

As I wandered around the aisles gazing in horror at the costs of living exploding before me, I noticed that there was almost no one else in the store. Ordinarily, I'd see families doing their shopping, mothers with toddlers in tow picking up cereal and pampers, all nationalities...but today there was an older gentleman moving about looking at more things than he was buying and a young woman picking up item after item only to put them down with a snort of disgust. The store, while not empty, was significantly less crowded than I'd ever seen it.

My staff have been telling me about the price increases over the past months, but it isn't the same thing as walking in and being assaulted by the price increases at every turn. We are living and working in a farming area where we can grow some of our food. How are people who are on very limited incomes in cities and have no way to provide for themselves going to manage?

In my reading about the price issues in the grain trade I've seen that there are some interesting issues involved in the shortages and high prices. One of the issues that one article was discussing was the abnormal trading and pricing patterns over the past few years since investment funds were allowed to trade commodities. This means in addition to stocks and bonds, these investment funds could speculate on commodities that are the bases of our food supply. As the widow of a grain trader, I have some understanding of the general workings of this field, and I really think that the trading of something as important as food should not be in the hands of speculators. I realise that everyone in the grain trade is also speculating to a certain extent, but at the end of the day they are trying to move the grain from Point A to Point B. Mutual funds aren't moving food from producers to consumers. I also have to question the wisdom of the current field of biofuels. If we are using food for people to power vehicles that many of the people needing food don't even have...what is the point? It's all very well to try to develop a renewable fuel source, but do we want to compete with our own cars and buses for our food supply? These aren't just Egyptian concerns and problems. They are affecting us all. Shortages in rice, corn, and wheat are causing price increases in staples and meats all over the world. A Canadian friend of mine confided that a loaf of bread in her area was about $2.50. Looks like we are all in this together.

copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Even Chickens Like To Eat Out

First of all, I want to wish everyone a belated Merry Christmas...or maybe it's an early one. We celebrate Christmas twice in Egypt, first on December 24/25 (Christmas Eve is often more celebrated by the Europeans) and second on January 7 with the Copts and Eastern/Greek Orthodox. Egyptians love a party and really have no problem with any excuse for one. This year the Eid el Adha, the Greater Feast that celebrates the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son in obedience to God's orders, will be starting on New Year's Eve so we have that as well. Crowded holiday season we are enjoying.
How did I spend my Christmas? First of all, my children are in the US this year so we aren't together. That is a bit sad, but life is like that. Airfares are expensive and school holidays are not so long. On Christmas Eve, I went to my friend Kati's home in Maadi for a Christmas Eve dinner as I've done for the past three or four years. Kati is a Finn raised in the Middle East who was married to a Lebanese businessman and has raised her three daughters in Egypt. The oldest who is the same age as my daughter is currently studying in the UK, her middle daughter couldn't make it home from San Diego where she is studying, and the youngest is still in school here. Kati's ex-husband and our friend Mona and her son Ali joined us all for dinner. Ali, is an irrepressible seven year old, who gave people a good excuse to buy toys to put under the tree and then had all of us playing with him. I'd been so busy out at the farm that I hadn't been into the city for almost a week and I gave a selection of farm produce: fresh lettuces, homemade pesto, and chicken and turkey eggs. A lovely evening. Then Boxing Day (December 26 for non Brits or Canucks) I found myself with an invitation to a Norwegian Christmas brunch with my neighbours. Norwegians eat an amazing selection of smoked and cured meats and fish for Christmas; moose salami, reindeer paté, various types of salmon, trout and herring. Eating out is such fun.

The poultry at the farm are becoming more and more entertaining. Every morning when I go to feed the parrots, ducks, turkeys, and chickens they all rush around to try out breakfast at every one else's house. The poultry eat the leftover birdbread and fruit/vegetable mix as well as their own corn and greens daily. The food in every flight cage is identical, so it must be the ambience that causes the moving around. The chickens live with the Cuban Amazons and sleep on a wooden curtain rod that serves as a long perch in the center of the cage, while the Amazons seem to prefer to perch in a corner near the top of the cage. It's quite funny to go out to the cages and see a long line of baladi hens on the long swing. I have about eight chickens, seven hens and one rooster. While a friend was visiting a while back we began naming them after explorers and got as far as Erik the Red for the rooster, Henry (for the Navigator for a beige hen who is always wandering out of her flight, Vasco, Pizarro, and a number of others. But they are pretty hard to keep track of. They give me about 5 small eggs daily.

The turkeys live with Ali the African Grey and Bamba the Bahamian Amazon. They also seem to prefer to sleep at altitude, having taken over a corner perch for the nights. Otherwise they patrol the ground looking for fallout from above. African Greys are interesting diners in that they will look through the bowl for the most delectable bits and toss anything in the way onto the ground. It didn't take the turkeys long to figure out that standing around under the parrot dishes was a very good idea. My housekeeper bought me the turkeys who are lovely bronze birds with low chortling vocalisations. They were supposed to be a male and a female and were originally called Uncle Tom and Aunt Jemimah, but as it happens they are both females and Uncle Tom is now called Oprah. They give big speckled eggs that are collected for eating since they aren't fertile. We are planning to have a male join us soon, but for now the eggs are delicious and I love the sounds of the turkeys. There are no plans to eat them. Instead , I'd prefer the eggs and to raise the young turkeys. Turkeys are surprisingly good flyers and I have to be careful to herd them gently back to their flight cage after breakfast so that they don't go airborne and frighten the other birds.

When I was considering ducks for the farm, I went online to learn something about ducks. According to the sources that I found, most domestic ducks are descended from two duck lines, either the mallards from Europe and North America or the Muscovy ducks from South America. Most of the ducks in the farming area are Muscovy or a mix of Muscovy and Mallard. I have one male, called Donald naturally, and then there are the girls, Daphne and Daisy. They have a plastic tub to play around in and they live in the flight cage with Fritzi the African Grey and his flock of budgies and the lovebirds. Donald is black and white with a small crest of feathers that rise up if he gets excited. There are two eggs in the nest box right now so hopefully we will have some ducklings soon. Again, these three will not be for dinner but for parenting. I get a kick out of the ducks because they are the least shy of all the birds and will eat out of my hand. Although the picture of the ducks shows a bare concrete floor, they all have chopped straw spread over the floors to give them some warmth in the winter winds and something to scratch around in.

The eggs that you get from properly fed poultry are absolutely wonderful. The shells are hard enough that you have to work to crack them and the yolks are a deep red orange. The larger eggs in the bowl are the turkey eggs, the large white egg at about one o'clock in the bowl is a commercial chicken egg and all the tiny eggs are my baladi chickens' work. My arugula and basil are adding the green touches.