I never knew I'd miss BBQ sauce this much

So I've been really wanting to cook an "American" meal for my host family.  At first I wanted to cook Mexican (it went well in NZ, which means it'll go well in Tunisia too, right?) but then realized that there aren't the appropriate spices here, which means that it will end up tasting more like a Lebanese dish and as yummy as that would be, it's not exactly American.. or well, Mexican.  My next thought was one of my favorite dishes- pesto pasta!  ..also not American, more Italian, but whatever it's my favorite thing so I'm sharing some of myself with them.  Much to my dismay fresh basil leaves were impossible to find.  Bummer.  So, I had to revert to my backup plan- hamburgers and fries.  Unfortunately, this dish is tres American.  

Toney (a student on my program who lives in the apartment/house downstairs with relatives) and I cooked hamburgers, fries (straight from potatoes), an American-style salad (yum!!), and Sarah-style ice cream for our host families.  It actually went well.  Yay!  Now, what I found the most interesting was first the bread situation and second the condiment condition.  Now, before I get into this I suppose I kind of need to give some background.  Tunisians eat bread with EVERYTHING.  It is actually included into their style of eating.  Instead of using a knife to push food onto your spoon you use a piece of bread.  At an average meal I would say 3 people could easily go through about a loaf of Italian style bread.  It's a whole other story if you are at a restaurant.  So, for the hamburgers I bought these rolls that I had to cut in half to create hamburger buns.  Since they only came in bags of 4 I bought 8 rolls for 9 hamburgers and figured we'd create a bun for the last one.  Now, as dinner was finishing up I realized that there were 3 hamburgers left and only one half of a bun.. hmm.. that doesn't quite add up...  Well, it does add up in Tunisia- bread is just always added.  Now I know for next time, double the amount of bread I think that I should need and that's what I actually need. 

 

Now for the condiments, I bought, 1- Ranch dressing for the salad(here it is always a mix of olive oil, lemon and salt/sugar for "dressing")  2- Ketchup, 3- Mustard and 4- BBQ sauce.  When I made my salad I demonstrated how the Ranch dressing should be used.  My cousin tried that, but then decided that it needed some harissa (spicy chili-esque sauce that goes with basically everything in Tunisia).  There we have it, Tunisian style salad dressing.. and honestly I don't think I'll have Ranch dressing without harissa as long as I'm in Tunisia; it tasted great.  However, for the fries, Ranch dressing (which was referred to as "mayonnaise") was heavily implemented- definitely a favorite (and BBQ sauce ran a close second).  The ketchup and mustard were used on burgers but not heavily.. instead, the Ranch dressing kind of took over (and without the harissa).  I never would have guessed.  

So all in all, the experience went wonderfully.  It was great to share some American food and it was really interesting for me to see how it could be adapted Tunisian-ly.  Benin barsha! (Very delicious)!