There are some dishes you expect to see on the dinner table during Ramadan across the Gulf, such as lentil soup, samboosas, aseeda, thareed and harees.
Harees may not look as appetising as it tastes, but there's a reason it's a staple of the Emirati iftar table – it's nourishing, easy to digest, filling and will keep you going through a long day of fasting.
It's eaten across the Gulf – with recipes varying slightly from country to country, household to household – and is cooked in a pot called a "mash pan", stirred with a wooden spoon called a masad masr.
It's predominantly made with wheat, chicken or lamb, spices, including cinnamon, water, and butter or ghee.
Wheat is cooked in slightly salted water for hours, then the meat is added and cooked again for at least four hours. Some people prefer to cook the meat and wheat together, with water and salt, and others serve it with a topping of chopped fried onions.
The dish is the focus of a weekly event at Al Ain Palace Museum that's taking place every Friday throughout the holy month.
Museum officials are inviting visitors to learn more about the dish – how it's made and the ingredients used – while also giving them the opportunity to take large plates and packages of the meal home to eat and distribute to neighbours, relatives and the less fortunate.
Every week, between 4pm and 5pm, people queue up at the museum, which was once the home of UAE Founding Father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who lived there with his family until the late 1960s, when he moved to Abu Dhabi.
Visitors come with their own plates to fill with harees or they take home neatly created packages with a container of the dish, plus a small tub of ghee.
Each package comes with information about the dish in a range of languages. The literature explains the significance of the dish, but also of wheat, the star ingredient, which in the past was cultivated by Al Ain residents in Al Ain Oasis and Al Marayegh in October, to be harvested in April.
"As harvest time came, the caller would call 'tomorrow is the summer harvest' at a certain field to all the neighbours and willing participants to come to help with the harvest," the leaflet says. "The workers would gather the wheat crops and place them on an open and level surface for threshing (separating the grains from their straw) either by being trampled by a train of oxen or beaten with flails, and as they carried on with the threshing, they would chant: 'summer is here fellows'."
After the harvest was completed, workers would be given some, while children were given 12 kilograms of grains to be placed in their kanduras.
Watch the video below to learn more about the event at Al Ain Palace Museum:
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
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- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
F1 2020 calendar
March 15 - Australia, Melbourne; March 22 - Bahrain, Sakhir; April 5 - Vietnam, Hanoi; April 19 - China, Shanghai; May 3 - Netherlands, Zandvoort; May 20 - Spain, Barcelona; May 24 - Monaco, Monaco; June 7 - Azerbaijan, Baku; June 14 - Canada, Montreal; June 28 - France, Le Castellet; July 5 - Austria, Spielberg; July 19 - Great Britain, Silverstone; August 2 - Hungary, Budapest; August 30 - Belgium, Spa; September 6 - Italy, Monza; September 20 - Singapore, Singapore; September 27 - Russia, Sochi; October 11 - Japan, Suzuka; October 25 - United States, Austin; November 1 - Mexico City, Mexico City; November 15 - Brazil, Sao Paulo; November 29 - Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi.
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Red flags
- Promises of high, fixed or 'guaranteed' returns.
- Unregulated structured products or complex investments often used to bypass traditional safeguards.
- Lack of clear information, vague language, no access to audited financials.
- Overseas companies targeting investors in other jurisdictions - this can make legal recovery difficult.
- Hard-selling tactics - creating urgency, offering 'exclusive' deals.
Courtesy: Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching
Zayed Sustainability Prize
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Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
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Key findings of Jenkins report
- Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al Banna, "accepted the political utility of violence"
- Views of key Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, have “consistently been understood” as permitting “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” and “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
- Muslim Brotherhood at all levels has repeatedly defended Hamas attacks against Israel, including the use of suicide bombers and the killing of civilians.
- Laying out the report in the House of Commons, David Cameron told MPs: "The main findings of the review support the conclusion that membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered as a possible indicator of extremism."
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Rating: 4/5
Nepotism is the name of the game
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Gulf rugby
Who’s won what so far in 2018/19
Western Clubs Champions League: Bahrain
Dubai Rugby Sevens: Dubai Hurricanes
West Asia Premiership: Bahrain
What’s left
UAE Conference
March 22, play-offs:
Dubai Hurricanes II v Al Ain Amblers, Jebel Ali Dragons II v Dubai Tigers
March 29, final
UAE Premiership
March 22, play-offs:
Dubai Exiles v Jebel Ali Dragons, Abu Dhabi Harlequins v Dubai Hurricanes
March 29, final
