Moroccan Misgivings

I was back in California for a few weeks during the winter holidays, which gave my West Coast baking group an opportunity to celebrate Misgivings - our version of Thanksgiving (kindly delayed until my participation was possible) where instead of being thankful, everyone talks about all the shit life puts them through, and we eat delicious, non-turkey-and-potatoes food. This year we went Moroccan.

My fellow made a nice eggplant thing we found on the internet (authentic!), and our first challenge was deciding which type of eggplants were appropriate for a Moroccan dish. The Berkeley Bowl has an entire eggplant section, so it was a difficult decision. And I don't remember which kind we ended up with, except that it was one of the skinnier ones, not the fat kind. And I doubt it mattered.

While he was doing that, I made a chunky cake, also from the internet.

Then this lovely lady came by and made homemade pita bread, which was so good that we ate the half-cooked test pita and the slightly burned test pita, and almost didn't have enough pita for dinner.

And another lovely lady grated carrots until both her hands hurt, for her fresh carrot salad; and still another lovely lady made a warm, chunky couscous salad; and we wrestled with the chicken-phyllo dough pie, coming to the conclusion that phyllo was not meant to be in unbroken pieces; and I didn't take very many pictures because I was peeling the phyllo sheets apart.

Bowser helped by imitating a kitchen island.

Finally everything - pita bread, coucous, chicken thing (covered in powdered sugar and cinnamon), eggplant, carrot salad, and cake - was done.

So we took out all our misgivings on the food.

And after dinner we were treated to this lovely little video, made by one of our dinner guests and featuring beautiful felted creatures made by the creator of the very same carrot salad that appears in this blog post.