How many calories...?

GAWD Kasey! You made me hungry just reading your post! Hehehe. Love you! Well you know, you'll know better and do better once you come back, InshaAllah

Ohhhhh!!!! UAE was LETHAL to me and I mean LETHAL! I was doing great losing the baby weight and BAM! Off to UAE for 4.5 months and I went up 23 Lbs!!! I mean I was addicted to the cocktails...I loved the avocado mango one...the food well as you all know is amazing...I love those fatayers...with the cheese and the falafal inside...and certain shawarmas...and the mixed grills and hummus and OMG I could go on...the desserts are just soemthing else! Ohh YUMMY! I had the cocktails with whip cream and cashews and honey and all that! I would order those to my house all the time from Seashell! Ohh man I miss it! I loved Krispy Kreme donuts aahhhhh that place killed me! So scared to go back!

Oh man, I had to look up basboussa. Yikes! One of my husband's Sudanese connections insists on making it for me - and I can't NOT eat it.

Oh! This is a great thread :)

My DH buys what is called "Laham bi ajeen" from the Lebanese bakeries. They are about the size of a dinner plate. I have a recipe for it and entered it into SP's recipe database and it came out to 543 calories!!!
recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detai
l.
asp?recipe=1403363

So I am wondering what size are those manakish?

Good and dangerous!! You should have seen me in the summer when I first discovered the little devils!! Couldn't get enough of them!! I've learned since then!!

ooh! Well check this out - I went down to my local friendly lebanese bakery just now - they are my friends after all this time! Anyway, the guy let me weight the raw dough and the akawi cheese on an average portion - there was 145 grams of cheese, and the raw dough was 135g. I couldnt find the dough on spark - except for pizza dough - I think it is a good bit thicker than pitta bread - so I put in one serving ( no idea how much in one serving - hate when they do that! ) and the cheese - the answer? 150 calories ! Ta daaaa!

Those arabian sweets are called baklava and are in sparks people I think - I saw them being made before - each layer of pastry is brushed with honey and I think butter - so you can just imagine the damage but oh. so. good! :)

That's probably about right, but it would depend on the portion. Figuring out the calorie count for a lot of these foods we find here is difficult. You pretty well have to break it down to the ingredients, find something comparable to compare to and guess quantities. For instance the lebanese bread would be similar to pita bread and the akwai cheese might be about the same as cheddar. (most cheeses are very similar in calories)

Very interesting topic !!! So how many calories do you think are in lamb kebabs, and those absolutely irresistable Arabian sweets?? Gees I love those little devils!!!

Hi everyone!
I thought we could have a thread on food stuff and recipes relevant to the UAE! My favourite snack is a cheese bread ( manakish) from the lebanese bakery with akwai cheese - I looked it up once and read that it was around 200 cals .... does this sound right to you? Anyone have any idea?