Ramadan mubarak
The Shaamir wedding has come and gone (and of course the pictures are on Facebook already), leaving us all with just enough time to turn our focus elsewhere: Ramadan. It has arrived. Quietly, this year, or possibly that was just me, since I’ve been caught up in the Shaamir extravaganza for the past couple of weeks.
On Sunday Alicia and I made jam, partly because I had oodles of fruit left over from the Shaamir festivities and partly because I think we are both just slightly nuts. Why make jam when you can buy jam? Because ours doesn’t have preservatives, or even pectin! Plus, on which supermarket shelf are you going to find blackberry plum jam where the plums are direct from Chile and the blackberries from a riverbank in Tennessee, hmm?
I meant to take pictures, but with all the boiling and taking care not to suddenly find ourselves covered in varying degrees of burns, the only photos I managed to snap were of Mars sitting in a box we thought was too small for him. (Silly humans that we are, we were wrong.) I’ll photograph Jamming: Round Two whenever it happens (because plum jam is yummy and I really do want to be Anne Shirley when I grow up) and document the recipe in case anyone else is also slightly nuts and wants to make their own, but…
On Sunday Alicia and I made jam, which ran a little longer than I expected and so I didn’t quite get to Al Farooq at 9:30 like I’d planned… and then I had to circle for a few minutes before I found a parking space in a section of the deck they’d meant to cordon off but didn’t quite get to. It was a larger-than-normal crowd for the first night of taraweeh, but I figured, hey, it’s a holiday weekend, people are taking advantage of not having to work tomorrow.
Al Farooq Masjid in midtown Atlanta. Photo courtesy of R. David Coolidge.
On Monday, it was worse. I was even later because the perverse part of me didn’t want to go, and it wasn’t until I got a text message from Randa asking if I’d left yet that I actually got in the car and drove down to midtown. I’ve never seen taraweeh is never so full on a weeknight except for when they are finishing the Quran. It was equally surprising and exhilarating because we are so blessed to have this beautiful shiny new masjid, Alhumdulillah, and to have it be FULL like it should be. What a wonderful way to start off the month of Ramadan.
Now if only those Al Farooq board members could do something about the complete and total lack of parking, that would be fabulous.
Ramadan mubarak, everyone. May we all strive to new heights this year, insha’Allah.
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Comments
Ramadan Kareem! I love homemade jam,it is definately better that the store bought, even the gourmet store kind.
Posted by: asqfish | September 3rd, 2008 22:02
Never made homemade jam but I’m sure its a better experience to eat.
Ramadan Mubarak!
Posted by: Aisha | September 5th, 2008 22:15
Actually, I tried the plum blackberry (the one we winged without a recipe) and I think we could have added more sugar as it’s kind of pruney. It’s basically become an ice cream topping and nothing more because it’s too sour to put on toast.
I tasted the strawberry and the blackberry as we were checking for sheeting, and Alicia tasted the plum (all of which we used real recipes for), and they seemed okay… but now I’m worried (and can’t check because once I unseal the jar, it has to be eaten relatively quickly because of the lack of preservatives).
Posted by: huda | September 6th, 2008 11:35