sincerity of the day

That was maybe the most efficient paper-grading day of all time, and is worthy of a nice break. I think I’m going to walk the 45 minutes down the Nile and across the bridge to Koshury El-Tahrir near the old AUC campus.

I used to eat their koshury twice a day when they were next to campus and maybe 6 minutes from my classic downtown flat on Sherif Street. Now it’s quite a haul, but I’m willing to go down there from time to time because: (a) Zamalek is not a very good koshury neighborhood; you need a heavy working class element for that; (b) the koshury at the new AUC campus, though a reasonable facsimile of the real thing, has soggy rather than al dente pasta, which sort of ruins it.

The picture below is pretty good, though I’m a “no dried onions” man myself. Otherwise, it’s:

*rice
*pasta
*chick peas
*lentils
*tomato sauce
*optional hot sauce and vinegar

I’m indifferent on the latter two ingredients. If the cook happens to dump them on my koshury, fine; if not, I don’t ask for it. But I can’t stand the taste or smell of the dried onions– “badoon bassal” (“without onion”) is practically my nickname at these places.

Koshury is tasty, filling, and cheap. Despite recent steep price increases in rice and pasta, which do harm the working class target market of the food, if you’re living on a semi-Western income here then it may as well be free. In the old days it was 40 American cents for a bowl, and now maybe 90 cents at a typical place. That’s for a bowl that satisfies your hunger for half a day.