OK, just a quick note about potatoes. I know, potatoes? What’s interesting about them, anyhow? Well, in the US, I was accustomed to my Idaho Russets – kind of all-purpose potatoes, you know? Here there are MANY more choices…. and they’re all different taste and textures. Pretty cool. But I noticed something odd.

You know how when you keep potatoes just a bit past their prime, they’ll begin sprouting??

Hmmm… my potatoes here didn’t exactly look that way – they sprouted some alien-looking ball-shaped pods of some sort!

Freakishly round, I didn’t quite know what they were, afraid it was some weird Middle-Eastern mold spore or something…. but nah…. it was just a sprout!

OK, crisis averted. I popped those puppies off, peeled, boiled, mashed and seasoned them and we ate them for supper… just another tiny view of my new Middle Eastern life, huh??