Bernadette Simpson's Blog, page 3
January 22, 2013
F is for Fettah, or Fattah, or Fatta
Mmmm…..fettah - one of my favorite Egyptian dishes. Fettah, in this sense, basically means “small bits of broken bread.” It is a popular dish in many Arab and Middle Eastern countries – Morocco, Yemen, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, and others – each with their own unique variation. Basically, it is meat, rice, bits of bread, all tossed with a broth or soup. Oh, and I like it with some yogurt on top! I had a craving for fettah the other night and my husband obliged. He is talented enough to cook without a recipe so check out Heba’s recipe for Egyptian Fettah with Lamb for instructions on cooking this delicious dish (and more artful photos)!
January 19, 2013
S is for Small Spiders
This small lynx spider was spotted on the leaves of the pepper plant growing in my desert garden. Spiders used to freak me out, but as I started to observe their interactions with the other plants and animals in my garden I began to be more fascinated than frightened by these eight-legged critters. Most of the species I encounter are small, less than 1 cm in length, and often only spotted when I am out enjoying my garden and slowly looking over all our plants, checking progress. It’s then that I’ll notice a flash of different color or a quick jumping movement that alerts me to our resident spiders. Besides lynx spiders, I’ve spotted different crab spiders, spitting spiders, and jumping spiders. What types of spiders do you notice in the nature around you?
January 18, 2013
Habiba - An American Teacher in South Sinai
Reblogged from artful journeys with ginda:
No book about MY Egypt would be complete without telling the story of how our daughter, Bernadette, came to be a teacher in the small Bedouin town of Assalah, Dahab in South Sinai. You could say that LOVE is to blame. During the years that we were living in Cairo as a family, Bernadette met the love of her life, and this is what drew her back to the country after receiving her teaching degree in the United States.
H is for Habiba! You can learn a bit more about the real life Habiba (as opposed to the one who lives in my story books) from this blog post from my mother.
January 13, 2013
K is for Kindle!
I’ve been doing a lot of e-publishing lately and I finally decided to format my book, An ABC Escapade through Egypt, for Kindle. The first print edition was published in 2008 and I was quite pleased with the response from readers, both in Egypt and internationally. To make the book easier for teachers around the globe to access, in 2010 I made the book available as a PDF, an electronic version that allowed me to maintain the graphic layout of the pages. And while fixed-layout books are possible and available for Kindle devices, I still feel that reading picture books on such small screens is not ideal. So for my Kindle edition, I let go of the picture book format and redesigned the text and images for free-flow reading on handheld devices. That was hard, as I was – and still am – quite attached to the original look and feel of the print book. But it is my hope that this new Kindle edition will appeal to older children, ages 8 – 12, who are reading independently on e-readers, and more so for reluctant or struggling readers who may not want to be seen carrying around a picture book.
An ABC Escapade through Egypt – Kindle Edition – $3.99
Happy Reading!
S is for Snow in South Sinai!
Elijah’s Basin
Jebel Safsafa
Safsafa Basins
Yes, it snows in Egypt! But only in the high mountain region around St. Katherine’s in south Sinai, which was blessed with several light snowfalls last week. Although the snow cover did not stay around long in the village, the surrounding mountaintops, include Mt. Sinai (Jebel Musa), were covered in patches of snow and ice. Above are a few photos taken on a hike through Wadi Arbaeen to the basins on Mount (Jebel) Safsafa. For more stunning images of the snow in St. Katherine’s, visit Discover Sinai’s Facebook page. You will be amazed!
December 30, 2012
B is for Babul Blue Butterfly
I boasted in my previous post about the variety of butterflies I have encountered here in Sinai recently. And then just the next day I spotted yet another one – an African babul blue, Azanus jesous - on a caper bush in a nearby wadi. The one pictured is a male and had the most gorgeous blue color on the upperside of his wings. Unfortunately, he was a little too fast for me to catch him with his wings open!
December 28, 2012
B is for Bountiful Butterflies!
Autumn is flight season for many butterflies in Egypt and I have been quite amazed at the variety of butterflies that I have spotted here in Sinai. Pictured above are:
Top Left: Colotis fausta, Large Salmon Arab
Top Right: Belenois aurota, Brown-veined White
Bottom Left: Lampides boeticus, Long-tailed Blue
Bottom Right: Pieris rapae, Small White
To learn more about these beautiful critters, check out Butterflies of Egypt: Atlas, Red Data Listing, & Conservation by Francis Gilbert and Samy Zalat. Prepared for the Nature Conservation Sector of the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA), this publication is available as a free PDF download.
November 25, 2012
3gga, 3gga, 3gga!
My new favorite snack – عجّة! Transliterating from Arabic gives us something like 3ig-ga or “agga”. There is no English equivalent to the Arabic letter ع and it is often written as the number 3. Hard to alliterate with that! So we are just having 3 cheers for 3gga. 
Basically, an Egyptian egg omelette, sometimes fried pan-sized and other times in small balls, like the ones pictured here, which I bought from a new local food stall here in Dahab. LE 2 ($0.33) worth of 3gga provides a yummy lunch for one person! You can also purchase 3gga sandwiches.
Looking for recipes? You’ll have to use Google Translate for this recipe and for this one.
October 3, 2012
B is for Books for Bedouin!
It’s October! My favorite month. The winner of the Goodreads Giveaway was chosen and I delivered several free Fizo books to some lucky Bedouin children in Sinai, as part of my One for One Giveaway Project*. This was most likely the first time the young lady pictured above has read anything in Arabic apart from her school books. She happily read aloud to me, her younger brother, and our neighborhood friends. Great practice for all involved and the children are eager to read more about Fizo!
*For every copy of An ABC Escapade through Egypt sold, I give away one Arabic-language children’s book.
August 13, 2012
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Members (in the US, Canada, or Egypt) of Goodreads.com can sign up for my latest giveaway! Help me kick off my One for One Giveaway Project ~ for every copy of An ABC Escapade through Egypt sold, I will give away one Arabic-language children’s book to a Bedouin child in Sinai, starting with this giveaway.
Goodreads Book Giveaway
An ABC Escapade through Egypt
by Bernadette Simpson
Giveaway ends October 01, 2012.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
