I have heard of a few things in my time, but never that Lebanese ladies like to use home made sticky, sweet, hot caramel to remove the fine hairs on their upper lips, legs, and other more unmentionable places.
Makes a lot of sense, in reality. After all, it's just sugar and water and so practical to pop a little caramel to the side for a tasty treat in the middle of all that painful follicle extraction!
There is so much that we don't know about other cultures, even today when we take so much pride in being global citizens and worldly wise.
Noelle is from the Lebanon and she's very proud of her Arabic heritage, despite the fact that she has spent far more of her life here in California, than she did growing up in the Middle East. Yet, the Lebanese culture is still deeply ingrained, and so for her birthday this year, Noelle decided to induce a bunch of her closest girlfriends into the social civility and delicious flavors of a Saturday night in the Lebanon.
Not that we had to travel any further than her pretty little P'Town front room, for our hostess had cooked up a Middle Eastern storm to make any old Lebanese lady proud! A trip into Santa Rosa to Traverso's famous deli unearthed some amazing Lebanese wines and a bottle of Ouzo to accompany Noelle's signature dessert dish of home made, melt in the mouth Baklava. Falafel, Tabouhle, pita, baba ghanouj, hummus, green beans in tomato sauce, olives, lamb and onions....
Grand finale of this festive evening was a screening of Caramel, the lovely, laugh-out-loud Lebanese movie making a hit in the West this year. After witnessing the aforementioned waxing scene opening, I was as wide-eyed as the party guests beside me. Not a single inch of familiar ground to an American audience and I'm ashamed to say that as I had to duck out in order to track down galavanting offspring, all I really know about the Lebanon is Noelle's incomparable cooking!
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