Ramadan 2017 - 'Tis the Season for Eating

On Thursday I received a flurry of invitations to various events, so many that I even had to turn a couple down due to conflicts in scheduling. Nothing happening all week and then BAM! a zillion things happening all at once.

First I went to a friend's house for iftar. He had a feast prepared for us.

After breaking the fast with dates served with labneh, the main meal was salad as well as beef, chicken, lamb, liver, saffron rice with vegetables, and an Egyptian dish of macaroni with lentils called Koshari. In the glasses were the ever present Vimto (I discussed it's popularity as a Ramadan drink last year) and Tang, another popular Ramadan drink. I found it a bit amusing to be served Tang in nice glasses at a dinner, in North America drinks like Tang would be served at more casual events like picnics.

This meal was for three people. Yes, three. When Qataris invite you to dinner they leave no chance that they will run out of food so there will always be too much for everyone to eat. Oh, there was dessert as well of course.


After that I had to head to the office ghabga buffet being held at the Kempinski hotel:

(photo courtesy of kempinski.com)

Yep, a full-on buffet. Surprisingly I didn't eat a lot. What I had was nice though.


Then it was off to another friend's majlis to while away some time before eating a sohour meal. I arrived at the majlis at 11:45pm, we staring eating at around 1:30am.

Salad, two rice dishes with meat, and a plate of chicken on rice. There were a lot more people there, maybe 15 of us, but there was still plenty of food left over. I wasn't hungry but I ate a plateful as this would be the last meal before the fast started at 3:15am.


And that was all in one night. A lot of events, a lot of food. No surprise that most people don't lose weight during Ramadan despite fasting all day.