Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 03:53:14 -0800 (PST)
From: Ginny Dillon <ginnydillon11@yahoo.com>
Subject: Culinary Adventures
Hello everybody! Things are continuing to go wonderfully here in
fair Barda, a city which is becoming fairer as spring comes! The
grass is becoming green, the clear days are starting to outnumber the
cloudy, and the daffodils are blooming. Although I am told this
coming summer will be unbearably hot, I simply can’t regret the passing
of winter! One of the most important reasons, with spring and
summer come produce… finally fruits and vegetables will appear
again. I can’t wait for cucumbers and tomatoes, watermelon and
plums! Especially after this long winter of mutton and potato
soup, and worse! I don’t think I’ve ever denied the fact that I’m
not an adventurous eater, but there are some things I’ve tried and some
I don’t think anyone could blame me for not! For example, I have
eaten swallow. Those pleasant and numerous, small brown birds
were served to me one day before dinner with the encouraging words that
the meat is very sweet. Apparently, host brother Yasin had been
out with his sling shot and had managed to kill 5 swallows. I got
to eat 2. The meat really wasn’t that bad, but the whole bird
(bones included) couldn’t have weighed more then about 50 grams!
Another antic dote in the meat category… here in Azerbaijan people eat
every part of the animal. Not just the standard odd intestines,
stomach, liver, etc. which I ate once and have since denied. The
parts you would think most likely to be chucked out the back door to
the dogs, like say the hoofs and head of the sheep, are boiled all
night long to create a special winter breakfast soup called “Xash”
(pronounced kinda like ‘hash’ only through phlegm). The men eat
this soup while drinking vodka, mostly, it seems, as an excuse for
drinking vodka at 8:00 in the morning! A couple of weeks ago, on
a Wednesday night, my host mother served me this weird meat, mostly
gristle really, that I just couldn’t eat much of, so I went into the
other room to find some bread to fill my stomach and found a cow’s head
sitting on the floor. And that was what the family ate for the
rest of the week, until the following Monday. They kept the bones
and such boiling in a pot on the stove for days, serving out bits of
bone for lunch and dinner. (And the smell!) The family
thought it very odd that not only did I not eat head, but that it
really wasn’t a common dish in America.
Well, I guess that’s just a bit of “cross-cultural exchange” for
you! I hope all is well and keep in touch!
Love, Ginny