Eid al Adha ( عيد الأضحى) is a Muslim holiday that happens one month after Ramadan (رمضان‎). I have found various public sources, like Wikipedia and cultural education books, to be an interesting source of information about holidays, but I've also found they tend to differ from how people actually celebrate a holiday. I had the fortune to spend time in Morocco during two Eid al Adha celebrations as well as being able to talk about the holiday with Moroccans and foreigners living in Morocco.

There is a store in Paris that is all about Teddy bears. L'Ours du Marais is full of all things teddy. Teddy bears from all over the world, many are unique or hand made. There are plates, figurines, clothes, and more. If you like bears, and especially if you love bears, you have to stop here at least once.

I was shopping at Ikea the other day and I saw the first sign of a hideous invasion. In France, the country world famous for sexy lingerie; in Paris, the city world famous for sex, I saw a tentacle monster! In Public!

This has to be the first stage of a covert invasion. I mean, if you've seen or heard about anime you know what anything with tentacles will do to young girls, especially when lingerie is involved. This thing is designed to hold women's lingerie until it can dry, at which point it will probably grab the young women when they go to innocently collect their dry panties.

This is the first entry in response to a topic request from a good friend. You can send in your own topic requests from the Write to Me! page.

Butter is very important in American cuisine. It is used for everything from greasing pans to an ingredient in dishes. Butter is so important it's even entered the lexicon in phrases like "bread and butter" and "butter me up". It's versatile and tastes good.

• butter is good for greasing pans
• butter tastes good
• butter is used in most cream sauces
• butter by itself is a good topping for various breads

 It also turns out butter is not the same everywhere and it doesn't have the same importance in every country. The butter I found in Morocco seemed to have a higher fat content than the butter in America. The higher fat content wasn't noticeable when doing pan frying or baking cakes, but it was a problem when making things like cookies. To some extent, adding more flour to a recipe helped with this, but there's only so much flour you can add. Cooking food on baking paper also helped a little, but many foods still came out greasy.

In Morocco, they use oil more than butter. This isn't to say that they don't use butter or it's hard to find; it's not difficult to find at all, almost every little store sells it. Oil is superior to butter for many things:

• oil doesn't need to be refrigerated like butter
• oil tastes better on salads than butter
• oil is better than butter for frying
• oil doesn't change the taste of food as much as butter
• oil is cheaper than butter

In Morocco, the word 'butter' isn't only used in reference to butter, it's also used for margarine. This isn't a sign that Moroccans are stupid, at least no more than Americans. After all, many Americans refer to margarine and butter spreads as 'butter'. When you stop and consider that margarine is used for the same purposes as butter, has a similar or identical flavor, and is more readily available because it does not need refrigeration, then it's understandable why they're given the same name.

While I was living in Morocco, I found two different ways to get butter.

The way most Americans are familiar with is buying it at the store. Whereas in America butter usually comes wrapped in wax paper and packaged inside a paper carton, it comes wrapped just in foil if you buy it in the large grocery stores in Morocco. Butter in America is usually cut into neat little blocks with markings on the wax paper for every tablespoon. The butter in Morocco sometimes is in neat little blocks, but sometimes it comes as roughly block shaped. There are usually markings under the edge of the foil for every 25 grams.

Butter can also be bought in  another form in Morocco. The hanut (rhymes with hoot), the small neighborhood stores, don't sell butter in block shape. They have a large block or contain of butter that can easily way in the tens of kilograms or more. You tell them how many grams of butter you want. The shopkeep will then cut off the amount of butter you want, wrap it in butcher paper, and give it to you. Needless to say, there are no convenient markings telling you how much is a tablespoon or 25 grams.

This topic is in response to a request made by a good friend. You, too, can be a good friend if you send $9.95 to...I mean, if you go to the Write to Me! page and send me a topic request.