Ramadan 1430

This year’s Ramadan is different here at our home in that we are going through it – so far, at least – without a kitchen. The renovation work is still on-going, so much for the contractor’s earlier promise that everything will be done by Ramadan. In fairness, however, the work being done has gone significantly beyond the simple bathroom renovation we started with, and everything is almost done now.

We rarely went to the Ramadan bazaar in the previous years. Breaking fast, iftar, was little different from our usual daily dinner. “We should eat less during the fasting month, not more,” my father used to say. Father would insist on breaking fast with dates, but otherwise mother would cook the usual dishes, and for drinks we would have hot tea. There were times when I wished that we’d have more, well, “special” food on the table like “everyone else” but by the time we finished eating I’d realize that had there were more food we wouldn’t be able to finish them all anyway. Besides, it’s hard to go for tarawih when you are so full.

This time around, however, we’ve been having takeout food from the Ramadan bazaar and various fast-food joints on a daily basis. I don’t think that I have missed hot home-cooked food more. Even when I was in Boston, I cooked my own food almost every day.