Cairo Petroleum Wives

Last week attended a gathering of the Cairo Petroleum Wives (CPW)-an organization that is dedicated to “promoting social, cultural, educational activities and furthering friendship among women.”

The name “Cairo Petroleum Wives” is attributed to the ladies who started the organization, some 30 years back, but they welcome all English – speaking women in their midst and no affiliation to the petroleum industry is required. I had the opportunity to attend their event-“Show and Tell”-an innovative format. The members had brought along with them food items that they had “discovered” in Cairo which could be used as substitutes for ingredients available “back home”. Or they simply “showed” stuff indigenous to Egypt and “told” us about how it could be adapted and used in our meals.

The President of CPW Dianne Crewse, a dynamic and friendly lady demonstrated how to make the milky, frothy lemon juice which is so popular in Egypt. It is extremely simple-quarter a “baladi” (country) lemon, put it in a liquidizer with 2 teaspoons of sugar, a glass of water and some ice cubes and run the liquidizer and voila! Your thirst quencher is ready. Dianne had also managed to persuade the head chef at the “Maadi House” to take us through some Egyptian spices and their uses. We ended the morning with a raffle draw, with some members winning “hard-to-get” favorite foods. Never mind about me-am never lucky at these kind of draws!

Apart from the regular informative gatherings, CPW also has a very active book club and hold your breath!-a bowling club too! The book club gets together regularly to discuss a book or watch a movie and even does some related field trips together. The bowling club has a “bowl” of a time and meets twice a month. There is much more happening –you too can be a part of all the fun-send your name and number to cpwives@yahoo.com and you can receive emails on their upcoming events.