Finding halal restaurants

Finding halal restaurants

It's interesting about what you have to think if bonded to a Muslim.
I have no problems with all this at all and was buying halal meat in a really good shop here in Munich. For the home cooking I had no problems at all as I do lots of stuff with vegetable ingredients. For example sauces or soups where many use chicken stock or beef stock I always just used the vegetable stock. Gelatin if used from time to time can quickly be replaced by agar-agar, I quickly adapted to this and it's not totally new as I also have Muslim friends. Alcohol is rarely found in my flat and I don't remember to have used it ever for cooking. But what was new is to find a halal restaurant for kind of romantic candle light dinner or just a nice evening eating outside. I'm not talking about Turkish kebab which is found at every second corner, I mean a real restaurant with a menue containing starters, second courses if wanted, main dishes and desserts.
My fiancé is really easy when it comes to food and loves fish and seafood, which is ok in every restaurant, but from time to time a real piece of meat is nothing he would deny.
We agreed on eating out on my birthday and I started to search the web for halal restaurants.
Not as easy as I thought in a city which calls herself multicultural. I found a few and when checking the recommendations or websites most of them went off the list. One was left over which didn't sound too bad and we made a reservation.
Persian food, lots of grilled meat, a surrounding which was really lovely, the only thing was that every piece of meat had the taste of lamb, even the chicken. People who like lamb won't have a problem but guess who doesn't like lamb at all? Me!
What a dinner...I extra ordered chicken and minced meat which should have been beef but after I had the first spoon in my mouth I stumbled. The dishes were full and there was lots of rice but what do you think the rice tasted like? Again lamb! I never experienced something like this before. The big salad I had as starter and the freshly baked bread fortunately didn't left me starving but I was honestly disappointed. My fiancé order the biggest grilled meat dish they had and was fine, although he also told me that it was good but not something where he would jump up because it was the best ever he ate.
Nevertheless, until we find another one which is worth giving it a try we may go there again. I can order vegetarian food to be sure having no lamb anywhere.
If anyone knows good halal restaurants in Munich please let me know! I'm happy to try more.
Regards from Miss Faith

                                            

                                     

            

       

My Islamic wedding

My Islamic wedding

What is that? Hadn't I wrote just a few days ago that I'm so happy because I'm engaged? And now already a married wife, how quick is that?
It's true, I married my fiancé, shortly after our return from the family visits but not in the way that we are now legally bonded husband and wife, we married in the Islamic way which is not legal in Germany.
Why did we do it?
The story started when I met him as I knew from the very first beginning that he is a Muslim and not only by birth, he's living it. That doesn't mean that he's the super religious person as many think when hearing Muslim, but he's sticking to his religion and believes in it by heart.
To go directly against preoccupied people, no, I'm not married to an extremist, Al Kaida member or self suicide Muslim, I'm married to a faithful person and to the greatest husband ever for me. And another no, he's not putting pressure on me in any way, I am still free and still without religion.
I'm German and I know also persons around me who are Christians by heart and who believes in their religion just in a natural way, so nothing to even talk about but when it comes to Muslims you always have to justify and clarify and explain just because of the stupid extreme persons showing off something which has in my point of view nothing to do with religion. Sorry, I interrupted myself but that's something I wanted to add.
So we did it in the Islamic way as it was important for my fiancé. You can consider it like kind of blessing. Similar to what Christians do when they went to a church. Gods mercy through the prayer and advise from an imam.
Ok, it wasn't that easy to find an imam because I thought in first place we should choose a mosque with Arabic background but it was quickly proofed to be the wrong decision. I don't know how often we went there in total and to how many persons we spoke but the bottom line was that a twenty something young so called imam started a speech about why he cannot do the wedding. He went so far to almost calling me 'unpurified', I don't even want to write the words I heard unsaid about what he was thinking about me. My reaction was purely to say: honey, lets go, I don't need to listen to someone like him, judging me without even being able to look at me while talking. This "imam" was looking at the wall behind me while trying to convince me that I have to regret everything I did in my life. I do not regret anything! I had good times and bad times and precious memories and memories which are not sunny and happy but in the end all this made me the person I am today. The person my fiancé fell in love with. Just later a sentence came to my mind which would have fitted: let him who is without sin cast the first stone. And I don't even think that I have sins - I just lived, I never hurted anyone on purpose or lied about important things, I haven't killed or stolen my neighbors husband, and so on, I just lived my life for the last thirty-five years and tried to be a good person along the way.
This is not worth talking about because we drove off and my fiancé was as angry as me.
Soon afterwards we found a small mosque nearby where people were almost enthusiastic to find the imam for us. Two old men were almost running stairs up and down to locate him for us.
A bit worried from the first experience I was waiting and then he asked us to come into his rooms.
A white haired old man with, which gave me a good feeling, a kind and calm expression on his face. The two others joined us as during an Islamic wedding you need two witnesses. It turned out to be good as the imam was only talking arabic and Turkish, so the witnesses were also my translators.
The imam was explaining what he will do, what's the sense of agreeing on a wedding, that in their tradition a sum for the wife has to be written down and agreed on in case of the husband leaving the wife. What for sure is not a bad thing but what we - inshallah - will never need. He was so kind and asked me upfront if it would be OK for me to cover my hair for the celebration. I had a zebra scarf around my neck, maybe not the kind of cover he thought, and did it as even if I'm without a religion I have a deep respect before religious persons. Not only for the imam, also for priests, rabbis, whatever there is on the world, as long as they treat me with respect I respect them too. And he was respectful and even kind of funny as the wife has to agree three times that she's willing to take the man as her husband and he told me that I have to say "OK" three times. He said OK, OK, OK and I repeated it.
The first time I have ever heard that as an agreement for a wedding, I know the "Yes, I do" but OK was not on my mind before. He said the prayer together with my newlywed husband and the witnesses and afterwards the three old men were congratulating us and wishing us all the best and a happy future together. The witness gave us our wedding documents and they led us out of the mosque. There we were, newlyweds, on a snowy Sunday afternoon in the middle of Munich and what should I say, I'm so happy that we did it.
It's kind of weird as I never thought that it will change something for me but it is like the engagement day, when you don't expect anything you will discover in the end, that these steps are changing your life. I'm called wife now from my husband and even if the legal wedding is more important for me as I will take on his last name on that day I feel like his wife already and am talking about my husband. And it has shown me another thing in life, be open-minded, don't cut precious moments like this out of your life because you are pre-occupied. You never know how it would be unless you do it.
Keep the faith, it hasn't to be religious but it could, just the way you feel comfortable with is the right one.

And I had a "wedding" piece of cake afterwards ;-)