Buying food in Egypt is an adventure. Except for a few scattered supermarkets that cater to foreigners, most of the food is sold in stalls along the street. You go to the "gazar" for meat; to the "khodaree" for vegetables, and to the "forn" for bread. These places tend to be picturesque, so we've accumulated several shots along these lines.

Take, for example, meat. Looking through the thumbnail images on the computer, I see a surprising number of pictures concerning this subject. Here's one of your typical meat market. Not quite like Kroger, but at least it's near the produce aisle.

And here's the product on the way to the store. We missed an even better shot last week. There were two guys lying on top of the dressed beef (maybe to keep it from flying off - I don't know). Believe it or not, the cows in this picture aren't dead yet (at least, not quite). Retailers in the West talk all the time about "JIT" - that stands for "Just In Time" delivery. Over here, that means get it there just in time before it spoils.

And here's the fish market.

While we're on the subject of food, here's a shot of the produce "souq" - the street where you buy fruits and vegetables. It's good stuff - fresh from the farm, and usually much tastier than what we have back the the U.S.

And then there's the bread. Maybe in the future we'll devote a whole posting to the subject of bread. The Arabic word for "bread" is the same as the Arabic word for "life." It's the main dish, and you see it everywhere in a 100 different forms.

They get creative with it. The picture below is from a "fateer" bakery. Fateer is flat bread rolled up with sugar and butter or a variety of other ingredients. Sounds plain and boring, but that means you haven't tried it!

So long for now.