Day Four in Marrakech

Since we were on vacation, Ryan and I had leisurely mornings in Marrakech. I would still get up early, but we would take our time getting ready and having breakfast before going on an adventure. Ryan made us a breakfast of scrambled eggs, cream cheese, and a parantha-style bread called msemen.

Around noon, we left to go shopping before our cooking lesson.  I wanted to buy from the Marrakech artisans and craftspeople as much as possible. Therefore, we stayed in the northern part of the Souks where you could see shopkeepers making their wares.

Our first stop was to buy some babouches, flat leather slippers. We stopped at a shop owned by a friendly man named Mustafa. Looking past the entrance, we could see his dad Hassan in the back of the shop making sandals! I bought a pair of soft brown lambskin babouches for my dad, a pair for my brother, and a pair of orange-brown leather ballet flats for myself (with an embossed camel on the toe!). Overall, I tried on a LOT of shoes. Since I have larger than average feet, it is sometimes difficult to find nice shoes in Canada, but they didn’t even make my size in these shoe souks!

After my purchases, we kept wandering. As we were walking through the souks, a shopkeeper grabbed Ryan steered him into his shop. Before we knew it, the shopkeeper had put a black and white striped djelleba on him. I then found two cotton-linen blend ghutrahs that I wanted to sew into a top for myself. I wanted the traditional Saudi red and white, but the shopkeeper said he had diabetes and had trouble seeing the colours of the scarves. We eventually found the two ghutrahs, but now that I’m home, I don’t know if I can bear to cut into them!

Wandering through the souks may be sensory overload for some, but I love the busyness of it all. And the shops are so beautiful!

Leather, having been dyed, is now drying outside on the pavement.

Following our foray in to the garment souks, another shopkeeper took us through the lamp and brass souks to see the Teinturiers, the wool dyers. There were giant skeins of single-ply yarn being hoisted into giant dye pots. After being dyed, the workers then hung the wool on the rooftops to dry. A shopkeeper showed us his scarves and dyes, including turmeric, indigo, and regal purple. He said they were these natural dyes, but the powdered dyes looked suspiciously like the artificial acid dyes. No matter, since the colours were beautiful.

After draping us in scarves (and tying a scarf around Ryan’s head like a Tuareg), the shopkeeper let us get to shopping. We bought a deep rich indigo-dyed scarf for our sister-in-law. The shopkeeper told us it was made from a blend of cotton and ‘cactus-silk.’ I’m not exactly sure what cactus silk is, but the resulting scarf has a lustrous shine and gorgeous drape to it.

Next up, we made our way past the Jardin Secret, and then to the Al Kawtar Co-op. The co-op employs disabled women and sells their work, including sewing and embroidery.

Afterwards, we visited another Herboriste (again, wearing labcoats). Here, we drank mint tea and bought lots of spices (including more ras el hanout, tagine spice, couscous spice, and meat spice). We also bought argan oil, argan oil face cream, herbal teas, sandalwood, and that dark, rich honey. Laden with our goodies, we headed back to our AirBnB where Mohamed and Naima gave us a Moroccan cooking lesson. We made chicken tagine with lemon and olives as a main, and several vegetable side dishes. These consisted of a salad, stuffed eggplant, spiced cauliflower, and cooked zucchini. To top it all off, we ate banana sauteed in butter, sugar, and cinnamon for dessert. Recipes to come soon!

We were able to cook all the dishes in this tiny kitchen using this four burner stove!

And the meal was delicious.