Mmmmm….food….

This week I thought I would give you guys an idea of what I typically eat (or am offered to eat) over here in the mighty AZ. Breakfasts are typically bread, butter, maybe cheese and possibly a couple of fresh eggs from our chickens (over hard typically-but sometimes a kind of scrambled version). With Nene, I get eggs about 2 or 3 times a week, and the other mornings are left-overs from the night before. There aren’t really “lunch meals” and “dinner meals”. Everything is very seasonal here as to what you eat. They have bread with every meal (and most people eat at least half a loaf with each meal) and typically a salad plate which has cucumbers, tomatoes (although not in the winter-now we get radishes instead), and some greens (like green onions or basil or something that they just eat raw). In the winter potatoes, cabbage, and soup are the staples. They also pickle a lot of stuff, so that is big in the winter as well-some of the pickles are really good and some are just waaaay over done on the saltiness. They do french fries or mashed potatoes, noodles/pasta, and then possibly some sort of meat. “Cutlet”, which is kinda like mini-hamburger patties (ground up cow meat, bread, onions, and possibly some mystery herbs) is really popular if you have average income. Rice is huge here. They cook everything with a TON of butter, so it all tastes good. They give you the crunchy rice that burned with the butter on the bottom of the pan-that’s the best part. They serve sweet raisins or date type things on their rice, which I love-the raisins are really good. Where I live “Lavangi” is the popular dish-it is basically a rotisserie chicken that has mini-stuffing inside of it-finely chopped nuts and herbs, then you eat it over rice-it’s freaking delicious. “Dolma” is another staple-they take green peppers, tomatoes, or eggplant, hollow them out, then I think they broil it with a kind of meat sauce in the center. It is greasy as heck and they spoon the grease on top of what they serve you, so it is really good. People use the bread to soak up all of the grease that is left in the skillet or plate at the end of the meal-no grease goes to waste! The soups are pretty non-descript-plain broth soup, bean soup, sometimes you’ll get random parts of a chicken in there, and they usually have some potatoes in there as well. One soup has big rice/meat balls in it that is pretty good. Since I live on the coast, fish is really big here-it is really expensive though. It is decent, but obviously still has the bones in it Non-boned fish is a huge plus of American fish dishes. Picking bones out of re-heated fish at 8 am that you ate the night before is not fun at all. They do kabobs here as well with goat or lamb meat, tomatoes, peppers, onions etc., but it is expensive, so that is rare to eat/is mostly for special occasions. They only have one fast food/street vendor type meal, which is a “donar”. It is basically a pita type sandwich with mayo, kinda ketchup sauce, tomato and cucumber slices, and meat shaved off a huge hunk. They are pretty good and cost about 50 cents typically, so they are good for on the go.

Azeris drink hot tea 24/7, so that is the stock drink of choice for every meal. They will put a sugar cube or piece of chocolate in their mouth while they drink it. Another option is putting a type of jam in their tea. I’m not a huge fan, but I get offered it all day every day, so I’ve gotten good at putting in a sugar cube and chugging my tea quickly to get it over. It is scalding hot when served, so you pour out half of your little glass into your saucer, it cools quickly so you drink that first and then move on to your tiny cup, OR you pour it back from the saucer to the cup and drink it all together. I drink out of the saucer myself-why give myself another chance to spill if I don’t have to being my logic. One fun snack I was just shown while drinking tea is a Snickers. But they buy a big Snickers bar and then cut it up into little pieces for everyone at the table to share. It’s pretty funny. We’ve been having fresh cow milk for breakfast recently, which is good after you add a little bit of sugar to it. They also have “Compote”, which is homemade Kool-aide-think tons of sugar, some water, and lots of ground up fruits in a refreshing drink.

The Azeris take a lot of pride in their national dishes, and most things I’ve eaten are really good. There just isn’t a lot of variety-another huge bonus of living in America. When I move out on my own in a couple of months, I’m going to be eating a ton of rice and pasta I think. I’m going to try to get Nene to teach me how to cook a few things over the next two months, so we will see how that goes.

In other news, last week I began working on my first grant application, so I’m kinda nervous about that. I’m trying to get a $500 grant from Disney for a youth project in my community-kids from two middle schools and the people from my office are going to clean up a home for disabled kids, pave a part of their land with asphalt for a mini basketball court, mow some of the grass by a river in behind their building for a soccer field and get them spots equipment from another organization. Right now they have a dirt/rock/trash area they have to play in, so I’m hoping I can get the local kids go help out the disabled kids and go over there for play days and stuff. I visited the disabled home and when I was leaving one little girl (probably 4-5 years old) said “bye, bye”, it was really cute. That was the only English any of the kids knew, and you could tell she had to work up the nerve to say it. I’ll find out in a month if I’m going to get the grant, so we will see….

I know a few people from Chicago read this, so congrats to all of the Bears Fans out there….we are going to try to find a place in Baku to go watch the Super Bowl if at all possible…

Last order of business: if you have 3 free minutes, will you do my friend Tye a favor and click on this link ( http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=198072796627 ) and take his super short survey for his PA school project. It’s really short and Tye would appreciate your help.