Hello everyone. One of the main types of Moroccan food is Tajeen. Tajeen describes both the cooking style and the dish in which the food is cooked. Basically its a large clay plate with a tepee like lid. Usually there there is one type of meat and one or two vegetables. My family eats Tajeen at least 3 times a week.
Eating Tajeen (and most other Moroccan foods) is a skill that I did/do not possess. There are no utensils. Instead, we use bread. We're supposed to be able to tear off a chunk of bread and wrangle a nice proportionate amount of meat, sauce, and vegetable into a nice clean blob, and then put it into your mouth without getting your fingers dirty. Errant bread chunks in the Tajeen and considerable quantities of food departing en route to mouth have resulted in some people being given a plate and fork, or course not me. Speaking of bread, its served with every meal and I've eaten copious amounts of it over the last two weeks.
There is one more aspect of Moroccan food that really surprised me. SUGAR. Moroccans eat an insane amount of sugar. The main source is Moroccan mint tea. Ingredients- a few spoons of green tea, a wad of mint leaves, and about 2 fist sized shards (my family's sugar comes in chunks) of sugar. Its almost like drinking syrup and we do it about 4 times a day. Breakfast consists of bread and lots of dark honey. Even lunch and dinner dishes can be sweet. Our lunch yesterday was a bunch of sweet pasta covered in powdered sugar and cinnamon.
One more interesting note: At least in my family, not everyone gets a cup. There are usually 2 cups for 5 or six people and we just pass them around. Also, the drinking fountain at school is a tap and one bowl to drink out of for everyone. I've definitely have had to lower my germaphobe level.
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