Empty Garlic
You miss the garden, because you want a small fig from a random tree.
You don’t meet the beautiful woman.
You’re joking with an old croon.
It makes me want to cry how she detains you–
stinking mouthed, with a hundred talons,
putting her head over the roof edge to call down,
tasteless fig, fold over fold, empty as dry-rotten garlic…
No more advice.
Let yourself be silently drawn
by the stronger pull of what you really love.
— Rumi
Here are some photographs I snapped on my way to the supermarket this week in Beirut to stock up on food. I tend to go to the large supermarket downtown because of a delicious garlic sauce and particular goat cheese there which I can’t seem to find anywhere else. Since I eat large quantities of this spectacular goat cheese every day (in salads, omelets, you name it)–I knew I had to replenish my diminishing stock from the week before.
As you can see, there aren’t any sand dunes–or camels–downtown, contrary to widespread belief–and the supermarket has all of the organic food and macrobiotic choices a healthy shopper could ask for…
Where did all the toum go!?!
We usually have plenty of toum in the supermarket…
After picking up my beloved goat cheese in my cart, I wheeled my cart around to go fetch my weekly stash of Lebanese garlic sauce–which I eat almost every night with chicken. Only when I got to the shelf where it’s displayed–there was hardly any left.
Each week there are always large tubs of plain garlic sauce (toum) stacked one on top of the other–but this week, all that remained were tiny cups of mint and hot pepper garlic sauce. Thankfully, when the man behind the meat counter saw my look of surprise when surveying the shelf–emptied of garlic–he slipped me a cup of fresh garlic sauce from behind the counter. Garlic crisis averted–for now.
To try this delectable sauce yourself, check out one of the toum recipes available online.
But the question still remains–who took all the toum?
Perhaps I need to start hoarding some myself…
