Eid Mubarak!

[Aimless]

Happy Eid boys and girls whether you celebrate it or not, I hope your day was full of good food, good company and good cheer.

Because my countrymen refuse to commit to a date for celebrating Eid until like the day before I've spent the day in a town far from home where my mum celebrated (yesterday) by throwing a dinner party for friends and strangers, with obscene amounts of just the best food in the world, and my dad celebrated (today) in a no doubt less extreme but nevertheless appropriate fashion.

Being a degenerate atheist (or should that be "atheist degenerate"?) I have of course chosen to pig out on iberico washed down with a nice Italian red, but, as a nod to the ME, I had it with a bulgur-chickpea pilaf kind of thing that turned out really well.

Over the past few days, while I've been enjoying my vacation and finding more and more ways to incorporate chicken schmaltz in my cooking, others have obviously not been having a particularly great time. The increasing unrest in Bangladesh recently culminated in a disgusting terrorist attack in Dhaka. Although my family is safe, the future doesn't look all that pleasant for that country and there's no way in hell I'm setting foot there anytime soon. Similarly, the last ten days of Ramadan, considered the most solemn days of all, have seen a surge in atrocities committed by those diseased animals the world knows as ISIS. I'm told they're doing it to get bonus-points.

We're living in fucked-up times, but I figure we can still take a moment to celebrate some of the good things, such as family, friendship, community and hospitality.

Eid mubarak and fuck ISIS. peace

[Hazir]

Eid mubarak to you too. Too bad about Bangladesh, I don't know much about it, but it seems like one of those examples of government thinking they can control the crazies enough to use them against their opponents.

[Aimless]

I'd almost forgotten that it was time for round 2 of Eid but I remembered just in time, and to celebrate this joyous day my wife and I have dressed up in burkinis and hatred to make tortured lamb biryani with chickpeas, dried Bengal plums and my favourite variety of sharia rice (Chinigura, smuggled from the ethnic food shop of the old child-molesting goat-son in the subway station near my mum's place). We're trying to go easy on the boozing these days but I've found a non-alcoholic champagne that actually tastes good and though it's always sad to not celebrate with family this certainly isn't the worst meal I've cooked in the war against Western values

Now just counting down till the first terrorist attack of the day