Lily’s Blog, Dragon Absconded!
Baking Until I Drop

Our masjid hasn’t had many Iftars this Ramadan. Ramadan gatherings are much smaller than I remember growing up.

What is an Iftar? When a muslim fasts during the month of Ramadan, one abstains from food and drink from dawn to sunrise. Just before dawn, we eat a morning meal called Suhur (and Sehri is Urdu for the same I think) and at sunset we break our fast with a meal called Iftar (or Aftari). Traditionally, we break our fast with dates and water and then pray the sunset prayer (maghrib) and then eat dinner.

One of our neighbours sponsored an Iftar at our masjid last night and I decided I could take advantage of this food/picture-taking opportunity. Since I didn’t want to freak people out, I took along my little Canon S400.

You can probably see where this story is going…

Anywayz, around 10 minutes before it was time for people to break their fast, I surreptitiously set the white balance on my camera and took a practise shot or two. Then I started snapping pictures. And of course mother dearest says take pictures of so-and-so. I responded that I’m not taking pictures of people! Just the food.

Eventually, after I get the dates, watermelon (which is such a lovely fruit to take pictures of! it’s so red! and gorgeous but I don’t eat it) and pawpaw, I cave and start shooting all the sisters.

It’s time to break the fast and so I shut down the camera…
YEAH RIGHT!

The lens doesn’t retract all the way.

The dreaded E18 error! I quickly mourned the camera and mourned the pictures I wouldn’t get (DINNER!). I tried turning it on and off to no avail. I switched out batteries and memory cards, still no luck.

It was really hot (which struck a chord in my memory). I figured well, if it’s been 3.5 years and I never got this error I must count myself lucky. When it had the problems before and I finally got it back I knew that its end would come quickly.

So I put it back in my bag to deal with when I came home (copious online searching) and then went to pray maghrib.

Then of course, I was starving so I had dinner.

And seconds! (which I don’t usually have, even in Ramadan).

While other people were still eating or socializing I took out my camera and tried turning it off and on again and tada! the lens retracted! Woohooo! I guessed it cooled down.

Of course, this did have to happen *after* I ate and after everybody had eaten and so no more food for pictures…

Wait, did I say no more food?

Thankfully there was the food in the kitchen (the buffet tables were empty and the fresh salad was DONE!) so I figured oh well, you will get pictures of the basins of food! So I went happily to take pictures. The lady sitting next to me asked if I was doing this to torture Chennette and I said, yes and no…I told the sponsor it is also for Sister the Elder’s niece so that she can see we don’t only get curry for Iftar in Trinidad. Alhamdulillah (All praise is due to Allah or… THANK GOD!).

So here is the Iftar tag.

But thankfully for you, they were boxing up food for someone so I took a shot of the food in the box. It’s not super artistic but you get to see the food (stew chicken, fry rice, macaroni and potato salad; as I said before, the green salad was done…).

So, FOOD: