Commemorating, Celebrating, Cake-Decorating

These days, the Libyan community in the diaspora  is taking any opportunity to celebrate, and the recent announcement of Libya's new government on November 22nd was certainly a historic day to commemorate after nine months of war and four decades of dictatorship. So we gathered, we celebrated and, as it turns out through the unintended effect of the "great minds think alike" law, had a competition in nationalist cake-decorating. A band of red with strawberries, green with kiwi and black with blackberries - or liquorice!

Eid Feast

Eid Mubarak! We hope you all had a wonderful time, sharing the Eid feast with family and friends. Our tradition has always been to have a barbecue and a family gathering. Everyone knows that if the Little Eid (Eid ul Fitr) is all about dessert, in the Big Eid (Eid Adha), it's all about meat. 

Celebrating the Liberation of Libya

The National Transitional Council is about to announce the complete liberation of Libya 8 months after the first demonstrations and exactly 2 months after the capital was freed. Gaddafi's last stronghold and hometown of Sirte has been liberated, as Libyans celebrate the demise of the bizarre and brutal dictator who has ruled us for 42 years. His humiliating last scenes, reminiscent of deaths of Ceausescu and Mussolini, are a fitting end to a man who delighted in televising executions and left the corpses hanging in university campuses and public squares. In some ways building a state of institutions will be much more difficult than the battle against Gaddafi's brigades, but today is a day to honour the martyrs and wounded who sacrificed for a free Libya, it is a day to celebrate. 

Celebrations in Libya mean one thing: Asida, a quick dessert that is made for births and Eid and is traditionally cooked and eaten as soon as possible after receiving good news.

Asida is a cooked dough eaten with honey or date syrup and melted butter. We have a step by step recipe for asida showing how the dough is cooked in water. Asida is an Arabic word and the dish is also known in the Arab Peninsula,  but is in some ways a sweet version of the Amazigh Bazeen which is also a dough of wheat or barley flour cooked in water. 
As soon as the news was announced, we at the Libya Food Blog made this Asida to celebrate the liberation of our country.

Smiley face asida with a Libyan flag.

Ramadan

As you may know, we've been on hiatus for a while, since the beginning of the revolution in Libya.  We've been thinking about whether we should update the blog, given the situation back home. In some ways, it didn't seem right to continue as everyone in Libya is dealing with the loss and daily hardship of war. However, five months since the first protests in Benghazi, we have decided to return. We started this blog last Ramadan, and so much has changed since then that Ramadan will be very different this year, for all of us from across the region - but it will still be a month of fasting and of prayer, with families gathering and breaking their fast together around the iftar table.

We'd like to thank all the followers who have remained with us, despite the unexplained hiatus, and a special thank you to those of you who took the time to comment.

We hope you enjoy the coming recipes, and have a great Ramadan. 

Ramadan Mubarak!

Libya

For the past twelve days, everyone working on this blog has been riveted to the news, watching the events unfolding in Libya. We have family in Tobruk, Derna, Baida, Benghazi, Tripoli and Misurata, a reflection of the unity of Libya, and there can be no celebration for anyone until the whole of Libya is freed. The important point for us is to stress that this is not a civil war, this is a regime waging war against its own people, and Libya cannot be split, because as our family proves, the 6.5 million people in Libya are inextricably interlinked. However since today marks the tenth day since the official start of the revolution, and since a transitional governing body was announced yesterday, we thought it would be appropriate to put up the new flag of Libya, the pre-Gaddafi independence flag which has been hidden away for 42 years. We offer our condolences to everyone who has lost loved ones, may all the martyrs of Libya rest in peace.