The butchers...

I have a hard time with the butchers, I admit, because I generally don’t really like dealing with meat (ex-vegetarian who makes the Ambassador do all the meat-cutting and cooking bits of the evening meal), and there it is, in your face. This, of course, is why I'm not posting pictures. Just imagine large dead animals hanging in windows (sometimes with neck and head still attached to prove its freshness...).

According to our Arabic teacher, there are no words for cuts of meat – you have to ask for meat without bone if you want a steak-type thing, or you can ask for mince. Or of course you can point at the fresh carcass hanging from the ceiling to show which bit of the animal you want. Generally, expats have found that the English words ‘fillet’ and ‘chicken breast’ are understood. I tend to cheat and visit the butcher attached the big expat-favoured supermarket once a month or so, where everything is just a little bit further away and already cut up and laid out under glass and plastic.

There’s an Australian lamb butcher locally in Janzour. You can tell it’s Australian lamb because its logo is a map of Australia with a lamb in it. It’s all frozen stuff, not great, but one of the few places that does hamburger patties that don’t shrink to nothing.

Beef is cheaper than camel here – which I found out when I was earnestly warned that the camel was expensive, but with no warning about the price of beef – because beef is seen as an inferior meat, I was told. Which is a nice environmentally-friendly way of treating local vs imported meat, really.