A Good Laugh Over How Aramcons Used to Cook
- Lifestyles
- Special Interest
Author: Aramco ExPats Staff
Released 25 November 2006
Chef with 1953 Abqaiq Cookbook
Aramco Camera (A photographic survey of life and work with Aramco in Saudi Arabia)
Photograph by Saudi Aramco
Our series on the history of cooking in Aramco camps has prompted "fond" memories and a good laugh for our readers. Here's what you had to say about the challenges you faced:
Candi Faulk, Dhahran, 1978-82, writes:
When we arrived in Dhahran in 1978, I found no cartoned milk in the commissary. Much to my dislike, I made a batch of powdered milk and mixed it with a can of milk off the shelf. The kids and my husband didn't seem to mind it but I could barely bring myself to use it even on cereal. In 1979-80 we started receiving chilled milk from Switzerland and it was wonderful! In fact, the whipping cream we got was so thick I had to scrape it out of the carton. When I got spoiled to that, it was very hard to come back to our milk in the U.S. The whipping cream here leaves a lot to be desired.
Along with the milk problem, the meat tasted horrible to me and really stunk when I cooked it. When I would brown ground meat for something I opened the windows - if they weren't sealed to keep out the sand - to let out the smell. We finally started getting some decent beef. Being from Texas, we were used to the best beef.
Needless to say, cooking in SA was a challenge for me sometimes but we look back now and laugh about it. SA was a great experience for our family!
Katie Kennedy Dewey writes:
In 1946 I was too young to cook, so have no recipes to pass along. But I do have not so fond memories of attempting to drink Klim milk. Mother took pity on us kids and only tried it on our cereal - which floated the weevils pretty well.
Nancy Ackerman writes:
I made from scratch all of our bread (you could not buy it - only pita, baguettes and sweet cookies), our ice cream (ices really), catsup, vinegar, mayonnaise, peanut butter and more. With two children, making the bread and peanut butter was very necessary for their school lunches.
The flour was full of weevils and had to be triple sifted to get rid of most of the black critters, but the lingering odor was still there. I tried to use extra cinnamon and vanilla to mask the musky aftertaste that was a characteristic of baking cookies. Sometimes the nuts we bought were moldy, too. Proofing yeast was a given. Half the time the yeast we could buy, after trying shop after shop, was dead. Let's say that proceeding with a recipe included many cautionary steps.
We would buy crates of oranges at the market and take turns juicing it and filling jars to put in the freezer, as few juice products were available to buy. I remember breaking fast during Ramadan with our Saudi friends with fresh apricot juice they had made, astoundingly delicious! There was no fresh milk to be had in those days either. I would mix up powdered milk every evening and let it chill overnight so my kids could drink it down quickly in the morning.
I also remember that when that first 'supermarket', actually smaller than a little "7-11" but to us, wonderful indeed, opened, a fellow would make a morning swoop and buy up most of the good stuff. It really got my Irish up, because of course, supplies were not delivered daily, or even weekly, and we ladies couldn't drive ourselves to the store. On the other hand, when we found something wonderful in a market we would share the information, so we had a food network system going.
One of the fun things we did was having dinner parties, and seeing what we could come up with. I still use several recipes from those days, a spectacular shrimp dish and a crepe dessert. We were certainly creative. It's kind of fun to start remembering these culinary challenges, but the bottom line is that we did eat well as there were good vegetables and meats to be had.
We enjoyed your stories and hope that more of you will share your recollections with us at info@aramcoexpats.com. For your further enjoyment, we have also compiled a great number of Aramcon Recipes in our Lifestyles section, many which bring back a rush of fond memories and an occasional good laugh.