eats along the 33rd parallel

<dd>We’ve been sampling Moroccan street food, usually our lunch fare after class.  No pics yet, but I’m working on it.  So far we’ve had b’sarra, which is a Fassi specialty (from Fes).  It’s a white bean soup with olive oil and garlic and served with fresh, hardy bread.  It’s about 6 Dh which is less than a dollar.  And includes wormwood tea - yes, the same stuff absinthe is made out of.  Addis is currently Aaron’s favorite: it’s a bowl of lentils with bread and tea and goes for 8 Dh ($1).  We’ve also tried their version of hummus, which is really just unmashed chickpeas that have been cooked with spices (served with bread and tea).  That’s also 8 Dh.  The other day I splurged and ordered tajine.  Tajines are ceramic conical dishes that you bake meat, couscous, whatever in.  At restaurants (even side cafes), they usually just use a big pot and ladle it into a tajine for serving.  Tajines are really single or double serving and used at home.  Anyway, I had chicken tajine which was chicken so moist and seasoned… with carrots and potatoes cooked in the chicken juices.  Mmmmm.  The first day we went, a large group of us ate so they brought out free sides like Moroccan salad, fried eggplant, and an eggplant tomato mash-up.  I really wish that they brought that to us all the time.  It makes them look good to have a table of foreigners sitting in front of their stall, so they keep plying you with treats to get you to stay.  And I don’t think we were charged for any of it other than the main dish, which usually comes out to a dollar.  I think the tajines are a whopping 13 Dh, but a nice change (especially because they have meat).  It’s always fun trying to talk to the people their in a mix of Fusha, Dareeja, French, and English.  I think I might put my old pocket Minolta in my purse so that I can more surreptitiously take photos rather than using my big new Nikon SLR.