Medjool dates stuffedwith caramelized almonds!
Well, if you guessed that most of this list would be about food, then bravo -- you sure know me well. My dad always calls dates "nature's candy." And quite rightly, holy hell are they sweet! Easy to forget that they're fruit.
Riyadh has a date shop that's set up like a fancy chocolate shop; in fact, it looked quite similar to the inside of a Godiva store. They sell chocolates too, but the focal point is clearly glass-front cases filled with piles of varying kinds of dates (who knew there were some many different kinds?), including the elusive and fist-sized medjool dates, which I've hunted for in Washington, DC, for the purpose of my bacon-wrapped manchego-stuffed dates recipe. I haven't been able to find them here, but there they must be common there, because they even served them as a pre-dinner snack on my flights to and from the kingdom. They're so unreasonably huge, I had to eat them like plums.
Along with plain date varieties, the shop also sells the dates stuffed with various fillings such as pecans, caramelized almonds, and marzipan. We bought a small box of caramelized almond-stuffed medjool dates, and despite being so sweet I can't have more than one per day without them hurting my teeth, they are absolutely incredible.
Nature's candy, indeed! 
2 comments:
you had me at "date"
I went to a big date stand in Indio, CA. They said there were date palms there that don't exist in the Middle East any more. The palms were imported almost 100 years ago.
'Wuh
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