The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

Another week, another dish of the week for all of us feeling a bit mundane. We’re just entering the last ten days of the holy month, and things can get a bit slow as everyone is patiently waiting for the holidays. When work is flying at you, you know you have to execute at a fast and furious pace. Having breathing room in your schedule seems like a dream. But, when work slows down, you might find yourself drifting — unable to get excited about your tasks, moving more slowly than usual – just feeling generally uninterested.

This feeling of dullness can get a bit overwhelming, making it hard to achieve goals and tasks as you generally would like to. This brings us to the dish of this week, which is cows’ feet, aka kaware’. Even though eating cows’ feet isn’t something that sounds very pleasing, it is definitely good for our health. The main allure of cow feet is that they contain gelatin, which is converted to collagen in the body when consumed. Many cuisines feature variants of our famous kaware’, predominantly Asian, African, French, and Caribbean cuisine.

However, the downside of this local dish is how it’s made; kaware’ needs a long time to cook, at least 4-5 hours. This slow-cooked delicacy requires a lot of cleaning and proper seasoning to become palatable. Most people do not like it because it wasn’t cooked properly the first time they tried it, which can become a long-lasting disappointment. This teaches us an important lesson; If you spend 4-5 hours cooking something with a mundane attitude, you’re bound to get a result you’re not pleased with. 

Although we feel sluggish and tired when we’re bored, one theory suggests that the apparent slowing down of time is a kind of a signal our brain sends to itself to convey that the current situation is unfulfilling and we should do something else. So, perhaps instead of letting ourselves sink into a boring rut, we can always try to keep ourselves motivated and positive, so we can always reach pleasing results. That goes for work, relationships, personal goals – basically anything; if things become mundane, we need to focus on breaking the cycle and doing something different, then get back on our original track. There’s no need to waste so much time doing something without any interest that it turns out to be as bad as a flavourless dish of gooey kaware’, right?