Christmas Eggnog (Recipe)

Again, one amazing Christmas Recipe, here you go:

Ingredients:
(yields 4-5 cups)
- 350 ml cold milk
- 3 cold eggs
- 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
- 3 cloves
- some vanilla (I use 2 packs of vanilla with sugar)
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup cold whipping cream (substitute 1/2 cup of milk if you don't have whipping cream)
- 3/4 cup dark rum (you can use your favorite alcohol here)
- 1/2 tsp salt

Recipe:
- Separate the eggs, put the whites in a pan and the yolks in another
- Add the salt to the whites, and whisk them, you need continuous, hard, fast whisking for may be 3 minutes. The whites will start to foam, keep whisking until stiff peaks form (lift a litte of the foam with the whisk, it should form a peak, now rotate the whisk, if the peak doesn't lean to any side or move, that's your stiff peak).
- now, add the sugar to the yolks, and beat them till they get a softened butter appearance.
- add the rum to the yolks little by little while stirring.
- add the nutmeg, the cloves and the vanilla.
- add the milk again while stirring.
- now add the egg whites.
- and at last, add the whipping cream.
- stirr for 1 more minute.
- garnish with a little ground nutmeg

And it's ready :D, Enjoy

NOTE:
- after whisking the egg whites, the foam will start to diminish, so if you need to make the eggnog well before serving, then do everything except for whisking the eggwhites.. then 30-20 minutes before serving, whisk the whites and add them to the mixture and you're ready.
- If you are concerned about foodsafety, and/or don't like eating raw eggs, please don't use this recipe.

Christmas Turkey - Episode I - Brine (Recipe)

After this turkey was cooked, it turned out to be very well seasoned till the deepest meat inside. Here's how you go for this:

Ingredients:
- 1 cup table salt
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 lemon
- 1 orange
- 1 medium onion
- 3 cloves garlic
- 4 bay leaves (wara2 lawra)
- 1 tbsp dried thyme (za3tar)
- 1 tbsp ground black pepper
- 6 litres of cold water

Recipe:
- In a large bucket (more than 10 litres big), combine the salt and the dry ingredients with the water first, and stir well until the salt is completely dissolved.
- Now, juice the lemon and the orange on the water, and then cut the remaining into wedges, then add them to the water.
- Cut the onion into wedges and add all the remaining ingredients to the water.
- Stir well.
- Put your turkey inside, breast side down, and cover the bucket.
- Put the bucket in the fridge for 8 to 24 hours.

NOTE:
- Leaving the turkey for more than 24 hours will result in a little oversalted turkey, do that only if you like your food salty.
- Remember to wash your turkey well before putting it into the brine.
- Remember to wash your turkey well after removing it from the brine.

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Who are Copts??

Well, I just wanted to explain this. Mostly, I won't be using my own words.
Wikipedia says, quote "Copts are Egyptians whose ancestors embraced Christianity in the first century. The word "Coptic" was originally used in Classical Arabic to refer to Egyptians in general (see etymology section), but it has undergone semantic shift over the centuries to mean more specifically Egyptian Christian after the bulk of the Egyptian population converted to Islam." unqote. And thus, Copts (Egyptian Orthodox Christians) are indeed the only successors of the pharaohs whose roots are well established.

After the Arabic invasion of Egypt in the 7th century, again I quote from Wikipedia "The Arabs imposed a special tax, known as Jizya, on the Christians who acquired the status of dhimmis, and all native Egyptians were prohibited from joining the army. Egyptian converts to Islam in turn were relegated to the status of mawali. Heavy taxation was one of the reasons behind Egyptian organized resistance against the new occupying power, as well as the decline of the number of Christians in Egypt." unquote. Quote "The Arabs in the 7th century seldom used the term Egyptian, and used instead the term Copt to describe the people of Egypt. Thus, Egyptians became known as Copts, and the non-Chalcedonian Egyptian Church became known as the Coptic Church." unquote.

Coptic life kept deteriorating throughout the centuries until the rule of "Muhammad Ali" in the early 19th century, but that didn't last for long though.

Quote from Wikipedia "In 1952, Nasser led some army officers in a coup d'état against King Farouk, which overthrew the Kingdom of Egypt and established a republic. Nasser's mainstream policy was pan-Arab nationalism and socialism. The Copts were severely affected by Nasser's nationalization policies because, although they represented about 20% of the population, they were so economically prosperous as to have held more than 50% of the country's wealth. In addition, Nasser's pan-Arab policies undermined the Copts' strong attachment to and sense of identity about their Egyptian pre-Arab, and certainly non-Arab, identity. As a result, many Copts left their country for Australia, North America or Europe."

I think this little history concludes somehow, Who are Copts?

irssi, very nice and neat IRC client and TERMINAL BASED

Juggling

So, it was a hype, I decided to learn juggling, and it turned out to be quite a success. I juggle tennis balls for over 100 throws and catches, and I seem to juggle anything else that I can throw in the air. I juggled soccer balls for at least 15-20 throws and catches :D.

Am7aya fi forn afrangy -- A book by Christine Amir -- قمحاية في فرن أفرنجي

Unfortunately, I haven't got the chance to read the whole book, though i've read almost all the introduction. The book is in arabic. It talks about how and why a 21 yo girl chose to travel out of Egypt to study in Europe. Sorry to Egypt, but I really like the book.
Check the links below:

Book's Blog,
Book Signing Facebook Event

gstreamer0.10-good-plugins-ossv4

Little patch for the PKGBUILD of archlinux AUR package gstreamer0.10-good-plugins-ossv4 to upgrade it from version 10.10.8 to 0.10.15. Here is the patch.

This is one VERY GOOD Egyptian song

Web-Accelerators slow down the web !!!

Web-accelerators are a nuisance, they are counterproductive and they are a danger to some web servers and the infrastructure of the web itself. The more people use these products the slower the web will become and web surfers will perceive a need for more of these snake oil products.

Read the full article here.