This is a story about a very delicious delicacy known to us Jordanian’s as “BOLOBEEF” ( to those who don’t know what I am talking about it’s canned corned beef), that’s how I grew up calling it although it had a completely different name on the can.
It’s like calling every tissue out there “Kleenex”, every glass cleaner “Easy” and every disinfectant “Dettol”. Which reminds me of a story when I was 11 or 12 years old, we were visiting my dad in LA for the first time and we needed disinfectant ,so my Mom takes us to a supermarket and after looking in all the isles we couldn’t find any, so my mom asks this stocker for help and she goes : “I need Dettol, do you have Dettol?” , and he was like” Mam , what is Dettol? ” So my mom start’s this elaborate description,” it is to clean with, it smells like a hospital, it’s brown”…..and on and on with the descriptions , it took her maybe 5 minutes and the guy would not get it, so finally Mom said “We clean bathrooms with it” and he said “Mam, I don’t know what you want but this Isle has all the cleaning products” and low and behold there was the equivalent of Detol but here in Canada they call it Pine sol….
Anyway, back to the Bolobeef, I think it’s a middle eastern thing that we eat Bolobeef , really, although I see it stocked on the shelves here, I’ve never seen anyone buy it but me !? I love this stuff, I remember them giving it to the cast of survivor once and they were like “ewwwwwwwww, but better than nothing”, I was like, you stupid, stupid fools, you don’t know what you are missing. Fry it in a pan with some “bhar” (All spice) and you got yourself something really yummy.or with Eggs and tomotaotes, wow, the quantity of one can is frightning, can feed a whole family!
Now, the fascinating thing, when I was reading a book called O’ Jerusalem , that talked about how we lost the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and described what happened and stuff like that (by the way it’s a great book you should read it) but that’s not the point , in the book it talked about how the British army left Palestine in May of 1948 and it left behind loads of the army provisions. And what was one of those provisions called? It was called “Bully Beef”, I almost fell down on the floor laughing and I was like, “Oh my God, it’s Bolobeef” , I always wondered how the name came about.
I think I called everybody I know that day and told them about it. I tell you , dear bolobeef lovers, that that was too funny…
