This bread is eaten in all the gulf states, it originates from Afghanistan and each city in Saudi has their own type of Tamise, the best I've eaten was in the Asir region where original Afghanistan's live and make it.

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If you would like a recipe for Kubsa, I'm happy to share, contact me.

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Food: Back in 1964, we could buy almost anything in the grocery stores including canned ham! All the mixes for 'drinks' were available, like tom collins,  but you couldn't find the most important ingredient for the drink. Around 1966 this was changed and a list of 'banned' food items came out, this includes anything containing pork or pork by products like gelatin.

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 Spices:  If you have a special spice that you use often, I suggest that you bring a supply with you until you can figure out where you might find it in Saudi. At present there is no ground nutmeg to be found, I heard that the kids were sniffing this..... true? who knows but glue is still openly sold!!!

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No matter what you put on the table, kids will prefer their burgers! Read my paper, 'Cooking the Arabic way'

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Because all pork and products of pork are banned in Islam someone came up with 'sliced breakfast beef'. It's just as nice tasting but most of the time is too thick and a bit tough. click the bacon picture for a larger picture

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If you are interested in Arabic cooking, try one of these links:

www.madleb.org/Links.htm

Food From The Arab World http://almashriq.hiof.no/general/600/640/641/khayat/contents.html
Middle Eastern Recipes www.ummah.org.uk/family/recipes.html
The Middle Eastern Cook Book http://member.home.net/stoma/

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Grocery shopping: There are many large grocery stores in each main city of the kingdom and you can find almost any food item you search for. There are varieties of fruit available that we have to ask about, some of the far eastern fruits are strange! Picture, an American football in size and shape, now imagine it very solid and hard, add 1 inch hard 'horns' all around it and this is a fruit that's available from the far East. We smelled one that had broken open and it was a very bad smell, I guess you have to acquire a taste for it.....
   Most of the worlds spices are available and now the larger stores carry sections of fat free and dietary foods. Frozen foods are big here as well, all varieties of vegetables, lunch meats, franks, burgers and fish can be found in the frozen section. Local companies now carry their own brands of lunch meats made locally that are good, all varieties of imported lunch meats can be found as well. We can now find many of the western vegetables grown locally now and much cheaper than the imported vegetables.
   Artichokes, broccoli and head lettuce are the newest locally grown vegetables.One newcomer told me that her friend told her that it takes about a month to 'learn' to grocery shop in Saudi. This is because certain stores have a better variety of a certain countries foodstuffs than others so you have to investigate each store to know what's available from where.
   Every ingredient for Italian, Mexican, Philippine, Chinese and American cooking can be found here and new comers to Saudi find that it is not much different than grocery shopping just like back home.

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