When the cat's away...

Sam's in Yerevan this weekend, so I'm stuck cooking for myself. I'm an abysmal cook, but not a bad baker, so I did what anyone in my situation would do. I made myself a sponge cake with strawberry whipped cream frosting for breakfast.

Brunch

For weeks now, Sam has been extolling the virtues of American-Style Brunch to our friend Karine. This weekend, we finally brought those conversations to fruition with a homemade brunch with Karine, her family, and the Sisian-area PCVs. Sam was our head chef, and with a little bit of help from the rest of us, he created a masterpiece: scrambled eggs with spinach and mushrooms, fried potato pancakes, made-from-scratch breakfast sausage, and the piece de resistance, fresh-from-the-oven homemade biscuits. It was a really fun morning, and I think that the food was much appreciated by all.

Honey comb

Okay, I know that I've discussed the amazing substance that is Armenian honey on this blog before now, but I need to introduce you to something even more amazing: Armenian honeycomb honey.

Seriously, this stuff has changed my life. I played around with the idea of keeping bees in the past, but I think there's no way that I won't have at least one or two hives in my future now. 

Because Sometimes You Gotta Splurge

We found actual lettuce for sale at the greengrocer shop today. Actual Lettuce!! It was ridiculously expensive, but what can I say? Sometimes you just need to treat yourself. So today we indulged in a fresh salad for lunch with bell peppers, carrots and toasted cashews dressed in Sam's homemade thai peanut dressing. It was amazing.

Birthday Dinner

My mom, who's convinced that cake only comes from a box and can't possibly be made from staple ingredients like flour and sugar, sent Sam and I two boxed cake mixes for our birthdays this year (I'm just teasing you, mom- the cake mixes were awesome, as you're about to see). 

As it turns out, this was especially serendipitous, since our site mate Kate's birthday is smack dab in between mine and Sam's. So, with the help of our friend Karine (who you heard so much about during our plumbing crisis last Thanksgiving), we threw Kate a birthday party. Since Kate's a proud Texan, Sam made pulled pork and two varieties of homemade barbecue sauce for the meal, Karine and her family hosted the event, and I made up the red velvet cake mix that my mom had sent. 

All in all, it was a super fun night, and I think that Kate enjoyed herself. :)

Solstice Cinnamon Buns

One of our fellow PCVs has a family tradition of eating cinnamon buns on the winter solstice. She organized a group expedition to the Cinnabon store in Yerevan for today. Unfortunately, Sam and I aren't in Yerevan, so we couldn't take part in that particular group activity, but we thought that solstice cinnamon buns sounded like a great idea, so we decided to make our own. Between the kitchen being freezing cold and the high altitude, it was a little tricky to get the dough to rise properly, but we managed it in the end... Unfortunately, I don't have any finished photos for you, because once they were baked, we were too ravenous to stop and take pictures- instead we just wolfed them down and subsequently fell into a food coma. 

Meat Shop

While we do have a brick-and-mortar butcher shop in Sisian, it's much more common for people to purchase their meat from what, for lack of a better term, I'll call a street-vendor:

The basic formula is to get a recently slaughtered animal, a sheet, a tree stump, and a hatchet. Find a likely spot on the side of the road, and set up shop. Meat is sold on a by-size basis rather than any particular cut of meat, and the business is open for as long as the meat lasts, or until the guy selling it decides to close up shop. Then, whatever's left over, gets bundled up and tossed into the trunk of the guy's car, and he drives away. It's an interesting process to watch.

Garden Tomatoes For Breakfast

So, here's something I never expected to see: fresh garden tomatoes for breakfast in December. That's right- the tomatoes in the pictures below were grown in our garden over the summer, and have not been dried, frozen, canned, or preserved in any other way, except to have been kept in a cool, dry location.

The variety is called "Grappoli D'Inverno", or 'Grapes of Winter', and was developed for it's keeping properties. I know- it's suuuper wrong to transport live seeds across international borders, but I'm so glad I did. This is one of the best investments of time, money and energy I've made in my personal life here.

I had gotten them planted later than I would have liked, and then neglected the plants for the rest of the summer. But when it came time to clean the garden up in September (back before we had nights dropping below zero...) we found all these tomato plants with just ripening (pale yellow to orange in color) fruits. We cut the entire plants at the base and brought the entire lot into the house. 

I had intended to jar or pickle them- but never got around to it. Instead, we just left the tomatoes- plants and all- in our unheated front hallway. Over the past several months, a few times a week, we pick a few of the slowly ripening cherry tomatoes from the long dried out vines and toss them in our morning omelettes. It's amazing to me that we can eat tomatoes from the garden- without any preservation efforts- almost 4 entire months after they were picked. 

World Food/World Peace Thanksgiving Edition 2016 (Part 2)

Thanksgiving morning saw us up bright and early, and the electricity had even come back some time over night. Our water situation, however, remained unresolved. We decided that the est thing we could do now was to call for professional help- the only problem being that we didn't know any plumbers here, and it's not as if there's some sort of Sisian-Yellow-Pages you can use to look one up, either. In Armenia the only way for you to get a plumber out to your house is to know someone who plumbs, and, of course, as outsiders here, we don't know anyone.

We waited until around 10 o'clock in the morning for it to be a socially acceptable time to call a family's telephone. Then we called our Armenian tutor, Karine. The thing you should know about Karine is that she's awesome. She helps us out with so much, we ere confident that she would know what to do about our situation- and she did not disappoint. Immediately, she offered to have her son run over to our house with jugs of water. Once we assured her that we had plenty of bottled water and that nothing that drastic was necessary, she told us she would make some calls and find us a plumber.

While we waited for Karine to call us back with word on the plumber, the Great Waterless Food Prep project continued. We care carefully used as few dishes and cooking implements as possible, rinsing utensils off only when strictly necessary, using as little of our store-bought water supply as possible. It was much easier for me than it was for Sam. All my dishes were vegetable based, and had complementary flavors. Who cares is there's a small piece of apple baked into the pumpkin bread or if some extra pumpkin pie spice finds its way into the apple crisp?

Sam, on the other hand, had ot make both chicken stock and sweet Italian sausage from scratch for the stuffing (talk about food poisoning risk...) and then hat to shop up both onion and garlic for the glazed carrots. And you really don't want those strong allium flavors- to say nothing of the potential bacterial contaminants- to get on your other food or dishes. At one point, Sam was mixing sausage meat with one hand, adding spices to the meat with the other, and then using his 'clean' hand to scrape the sticking meat off the 'dirty' hand, with a spoon before rinsing the 'dirty' hand briefly in clean water and doing a final sterilization with some alcogel (hand sanitizer gel) that we thankfully had left over from our sketchy school bathroom days back in Shahumyan.

Karine called us back about two hours later with an update. The plumber she knew and would normally have called was in Yerevan, and thus unavailable. She had spent some time on the phone with various friends, family members, and neighbors trying to find a second plumber who might be in town. Eventually, she got a name, but the referring party didn't know the potential plumber's phone number. They did, however, know the neighborhood where this potential plumber lived- and this is where the story gets super hayavari (translation: traditionally or stereotypically Armenian)

Karine collected this information and called her brother, Karen. (This naming pattern is analogous to the English Robert and Roberta.) She had Karen drive over to the plumber's neighborhood, and just ask random people on the street if they knew this guy's phone number, until he got an affirmative answer and the number. Having accomplished this, Karen called the plumber and explained our situation to him. The plumber said that he'd be happy to help, but that he was working on a job in the next town over, and since he didn't have a car, he had no way of getting to our house that day. Apparently, the solution to this problem was that Karen would drive to the next town over, pick up the plumber (who was still in the middle of the job that he was working on when Karen had called), and drive him over to our house. At least, that's what happened.

After a few minutes of poking around, the plumber informed us that a few 3/4" thick pipes which were completely exposed, uninsulated, and fixed to the exterior wall of our house (and which I had- up until now- assumed were gas pipes because if they were water pipes they'd clearly freeze...) were, in fact, our water pipes, and were indeed frozen solid. He suggested that the best thing to do would be to tear them all out and replace them with new pipes rather than trying to thaw them. He estimated this would cost about 3,000 dram in materials, plus labor. (The total cost at the end of the day was about 7,000 dram, or about $15 US, making this the cheapest plumber visit Sam and I will ever have in our entire lives).

"Does that plan sound good?" he asked us.

"Yeah-" we replied, "what else would we do?"

"Well," the plumber gestured to our uninsulated frozen water pipes, "You can call your landlord and tell him that he's to blame for this, that this is terrible, and that he needs to pay to have it fixed..."

Feeling vindicated, we smiled. "You're right, we agree, by we're not telling our landlord anything." we said.

So Karen drove the plumber back to his job in the neighboring town, he finished up there, and then used that money to buy the pipes for our house. Karen stayed with him all afternoon, and drove him and the new pipes back to our place at around half-past three. By 4 o'clock, we had running water again.

It just so happened that the first batch of apple crisp was just finishing up in the oven at the same time the plumber finished up his work on our house. I boxed up a few servings for both Karen and the plumber and just before they left explained to that that this day was an important holiday in America, one in which we celebrate all the things we're thankful for- and eat lots of food. I thanked both men,  telling them how grateful we were for their help, and I explained that the food I was giving them was traditional American food for this holiday. They seemed to follow along with my broken and stumbling Armenian, and I felt like I had done well with my impromptu Thanksgiving explanation. The men left together in Karen's car with smiles and waves.

Unfortunately, the work was far from over for us. The next several hours passed in a blur as we frantically worked to finish all that there was left to do. Having running water was a godsend, since at that point in the day we had used and made dirty just about every dish and implement in the house. Somehow, we got it all done, and by 7 o'clock all of the food was ready to eat, packed safe and warm in a hamper. Our friend Davit came and helped Sam carry the hamper down the hill to the Basen. There, we met Kate and her host family, Arus, Tyler, Meline, and their parents, Karine (who was definitely our hero for the day) and her sons, as well as our Sisian host family members Hasmik, Sona, and Basentsi.

Other friends from around Sisian drifted in and outover the course of the evening and the American food was a near universal success (Kate's hostmom refused to try most of it because when it comes to trying new food, some Armenians have the tolerance of a 7-year-old picky eater). Karine even asked me for the recipe to the pumpkin bread- which is a real compliment around these parts.

The dinner itself was filled with toasts. It seems like everyone made at least one speech. For myself, I toasted our friends in Sisian, without whom we could not be happy, healthy and whole members of the community. And for a moment I was able to forget the challenges I've been struggling with here, as my heart filled with gratitude for these people who have made room in their lives for the weird and socially awkward Americans. It was the perfect way to truly celebrate Thanksgiving.

At the end of the evening, we were driven home by Vagho- the young man who works as the Basen- with full stomachs and sleepy (read: 'slightly tipsy') heads. We spent the next day recovering and washing almost all the dishes in our house, before we got to repeat the experience again with the PCVs in the area.

It has been a mentally and physically exhausting week, but I think this will always remain one of the best Thanksgivings I've ever had...

World Food/World Peace: Thanksgiving Edition 2016 (Part 1)

Over the past 48 hours Sam and I have 1) frozen our pipes, and subsequently 2) melted our pipes, 3) cooked a significant portion of a Thanksgiving meal for 25 people without any running water, and 4) had one of the most amazingly awesome Thanksgiving's ever. Here's the story- it's a long ride, so buckle up.

The story starts yesterday morning. It was the day before Thanksgiving, and we were planning to throw another World Food/World Peace event the next evening, for which we had to cook a sizeable amount of food, and our water wasn't working. It's not that uncommon for out water to get turned off- in the summer we don't have water for at least part of the day 4 or 5 days a week. So, when we woke up that morning and non of our taps were working, I wasn't particularly surprised or concerned- the water usually comes back on in a few hours. I was frustrated, though, when by 2 o'clock that afternoon the water still hadn't turned back on. We had to start prepping food for dinner the next night, and that would be really hard to do without running water to wash dirty dishes or hands. So, as we were still waterless, we postponed the kitchen-based prepwork and decided to head out on a grocery shopping trip that we had planned to make the next morning...

We had been signed up for a grand total of 4 dishes between the two of us. Kate, our site-mate and the main instigator of the mean that was to come the following evening, was going to cook two more. Originally, Kate had wanted the three of us to prepare the entire meal, but thankfully we had talked her into splitting the cost of booking an event space in the Basen Hotel, and having them serve the bulk of the food in the form of traditional Armenian Khorovats (usually translated: barbeque)- which is the meal that Armenians eat at every holiday and special occasion. This left us three responsible for preparing a few key American side dishes and desserts.

Kate was making corn pudding and a cake shaped like a turkey (we decided that providing an actual turkey- or 5 because the turkeys here are sized more like large chickens than US turkeys- would be a little bit pricey). Sam was making two varieties of stuffing (one with vegetables, one with sweet Italian sausage) and honey glazed carrots. For my part, I was supplying pumpkin bread and apple crisp. All together, this had the makings of a good Thanksgiving meal, but it was going to be a lot of work, and that would be compounded if they didn't turn out water back on soon...

We finished our errands around 4 o'clock, and we were hiking back up the high hill to our house- lugging with us four 6L jugs of water. We had a 5 gallon bucket filled for emergency toilet flushing water back home, but we didn't want to cook with water that had been sitting in an open bucket in the bathroom for a week. As we approached our house, I saw one of our neighbors walking along the street.

"Excuse me-" I said, "Is you water working?"

Our neighbor gave me a quizzical look. "Yes," she replied, "is your water not working?"

"No, we haven't had water all day." I said.

"Ahh," our neighbor nodded knowingly, "Your pipes are frozen. You have to leave your water running overnight so they don't freeze."

"Well, fuck" I said. Not really.  But I thought it real hard. Instead we thanked our neighbor and dragged our now precious bottled water inside the house to think up a game plan.

The problem was this: we didn't actually know where our water pipes entered our house. We knew where the shut-off valve and usage meter were located (out by the street, about 60 feet from the house ,in a 2 foot deep pit covered by a metal lid), and we knew where our taps in the house were- but the path between points A and B was a complete mystery to us. So, even if we had a plan to heat up the points that were frozen, we had no idea where to find them. In the rapidly gathering dusk, we set this issue aside for a moment and decided to focus on the problem of heat transfer. 

The method we settled on- which I think was rather clever of us- was to take our 5 gallons of emergency toilet flush water, boil it in our tea kettle, and fill all the empty soda bottles that I had saved out of a compulsive hoarding habit I seem to have developed in this resource poor environment. Once this was accomplished, we took these make-shift hot water bottles and packed them around the water pipe at the shut-off valve by the street, since that was the only place where we knew to find out pipes. Then we went back inside the house to wait. 

It was at this time, around 5 in the evening, that I finally got started prepping the 30-odd cups of shopped apples that I'd need for 25 servings of apple crisp. I'll admit that I took great pleasure from the fact that all the apples I used for this meal came from the apple trees in our garden, and that Sam and I had picked them ourselves about a month prior. I was also pleased that- except for a small dish in which to rinse my sticky fingers, the peeling and chopping of apples required no water. 

After about 30 minutes of waiting, we still had no running water, and it was getting close to full dark. Convinced that this shut-off valve hadn't been the problem, Sam strapped on a headlamp and headed out into the night to search for the point at which our water pipes might enter our house. After poking around for 15 or 20 minutes, he still hadn't found the entry point, but he did find a segment of pipe that was close to the house and had only been covered by a few inches of sandy soil. Figuring that this seemed like a point at which the pipe could have froze, Sam decided to build a fire on top of the pipe segment to thaw the ice inside it.

We let the fire burn for about 45 minutes, watching our open faucets with bated breath. It was straight up night now, and getting colder every minute. After almost an hour of fire time, we still didn't have any running water, and we still had a crap-ton of Thanksgiving prep work to do. Disheartened, Sam decided to let the fire die down. Once it was down to embers, the began to kick sand over them and spread them apart to put the fire out for good. It was at this point, as he was kicking the sand surrounding the pipe, that a geyser of water shot up from beneath his foot, soaking everything in the immediate vicinity, including Sam. 

Apparently, the pipe was made from PVC (or similar), and while the heat from the fire hadn't succeeded in melting whatever ice was blocking our water supply, it had succeeded in melting a small hole through the pipe wall. As I ran back to the street to turn the water supply to our house off at the valve there, and Sam went inside to change into some dry clothes, we reflected on this new development.  On the plus side, the melted segment of the pipe was very close to our house, and given the pressure with which the geyser shot forth from the hole, the frozen segment of pipe was almost certainly 'down-stream' of the melted point. This narrowed our search for the frozen pipe segment considerably. On the other hand, our pipes were still frozen, and now we had a hole in one of them as well. 

Given, this- and the fact that it was cold, dark, and now wet outside, we decided to give up on the "thaw our pipes" project for the evening and focus on Thanksgiving food prep sans water. However, as luck would have it, about 30 minutes into that project the electricity cut out, leaving us in the dark, with no running water, and a boat load of cooking yet to be done. Finally defeated, we took the hint the universe was sending to us, and climbed into bed that night with full confidence that things would be better in the morning, if only because it wouldn't be pitch black in our living room by then.

Jaring and Apple Muffins

A few weeks ago, we used some of our garden apple trees to make apple pie filling. The hardest part of the process was figuring out how to use the soviet-style canning equipment that they have here.

Turns out that the way you sterilize jars is to place them upside down over a pan of boiling water and letting the steam vent into the jar. We couldn't replicate the process exactly the same way that our friends from town showed us at their house, but we did figure it out eventually:

And today we busted open a jar and made some cinnamon apple muffins. It was an awesome breakfast to celebrate being back home at last.

Dried Fruit

We have a pear tree in our yard that has been dropping copious amounts of pear all over the place. Hazel seems to enjoy chewing on them, but in an attempt to find a more productive way to use this fruit, we're attempting to make some Armenian Chir. I built the drying racks myself out of empty pringles cans and some stuff we found at the hardware store (total cost: 200 dram, plus pringles). I think it's going to work pretty well- but I guess we won't know until we come back from MST. 

This is why you should dog sit for us.

Back when Hazel was first delivered to us, there was a week long period when we had to be away from site, and no one could look after Hazel. Our awesome site mate Sasha took on the role and once a day made the long trudge from her apartment up the hill to our house to make sure our little puppy didn't starve to death. Sasha was the backup of the backup of the backup of the backup, and seriously if she hadn't been able to do this, Hazel would have died. So, we owe her. (Plus, we like hanging out with her anyway)

So, when the rest of the avocados that Sam brought back from his last trip to Yerevan ripened, we invited Sasha over for some Breakfast Burritos. Sam's an awesome cook, and so this, my friends, is why you should dog sit for us:

My Husband Loves Me

Sam had to go to Yerevan a few days ago, and I stayed behind with the dogs. When this happens, we make it a habit to call each other each evening to catch up on the day and say goodnight. On this particular trip, one of these conversations turned to the subject of Things Molly Was Missing, a list that started with "Sam" and ranged all the way from "Not Being Viewed as a Source of Income by Almost Everyone You Meet" to "Socially Acceptable Daytime Drinking at Brunch". Somewhere in there, I also mentioned avocados- the White Whale of produce here in Armenia.

A  day and a half later, Sam's home, and with him he's brought 4 avocados. So we make guacamole. It's delicious. Sometimes you just have to treat yourself (or your  significant other) to a really indulgent meal to get over that culture shock-y feeling that comes with living abroad.

Armenian Honey

A quick an easy way to get into the good graces of any tatik (grandmother) you meet here is to extol the virtues of any traditional Armenian good or service- but in particular the Armenian food. Lavash? Best bread in the world. Dolma? Food of the Gods. Horovats? To die for. But please believe me when I say that I'm not trying to curry anyone's favor when I say that Armenian honey is perhaps one of the most delicious substances to ever bless this Earth. Maybe it's this mountain thyme that all the bees are feasting on, I don't know. Whatever it is, it's raised the bar on honey for me. I'm never going to be able to be content with those squeezy-bears from the supermarket again.

World Food/World Peace - Day 2

Day 2 of our August "World Food/World Peace" event with Lisa was a study in the typical Armenian Khorovats party! It was an amazing day, tons of fun, and plenty tiring! It was also a day of gender divisions. The men are in charge of meat and fire. And the women... everything else.

Armenian Khorovats is also a very simple style of food. It relies on quality ingredients, good flavorful wood fire coals, and a bit of salt.

First things that goes on the coals are the veggies. Fresh summer tomatoes are in the picture, but we also had bell peppers and eggplant. No marinade, no spices. Just fresh veggies.

Next the ladies prep the veggies by removing the charred skins. Everything is still hot, so we're all burning our fingers a bit!

While the ladies finish prepping the veggies, salads, setting the table, etc, the pork goes on the grill. Martin insisted he and Molly pose like he's teaching her how to barbecue :)

Meat! It's bone-in loin chops and some nearby cuts. Before going over the coals, it's prepped simply with "the good salt" (sea salt). 

The traditional Armenian table is always set with bread, cheese, and a plate of greens (usually scallions, cilantro, parsley, and red basil). Bottles of water, soda, wine, vodka, or brandy are also common. In the summer, you always get the "summer salad" (bottom right), which is raw tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, with a little oil, salt, cilantro and/or basil, and sometimes raw onion. 

Besides meat, the only cooked dish is the roasted veggies. The mushy insides of eggplant, pepper and tomato are mixed together with a little bit of raw chopped onion and some cilantro.

The meat is done!

We had a really fun time preparing the meal with Martin and his family. Everything was delicious. And it was amazing to see Lisa teach English and Armenian songs to the kids - her energy and attitude are inspiring! All together, a very successful second day of "World Food/World Peace".

I think I did something right?

So, fun story:

Today, I was riding back from Yerevan on our local marshutney. I thought I had the crappiest luck in the world, because instead of one of the normal seats, the driver assigned me to site on a small chair (like the type they have in the schools here) that he had just put in the aisle space of the marshutney. Needless to say, it was uncomfortable, unstable, and most definitely unsafe.

But, when we were a few miles outside of Yerevan, we pulled over at one of those random pick-up points that make no sense to me, and out of no where this little old woman appears and climbs into our marshutney. I assumed that the folks on the bench seat in front would skooch over to make room for her, but instead, the driver magically produces a small foot stool (from God-knows-where..) and puts it in the aisle next to my chair- except that all 4 legs of the stool don't fit in the aisle, one of them is hanging precariously over the foot-well next to the door. The old woman had to cling to the back of the seat in front of her in order to stay upright as we traversed the bumpy road south for the next hour or so. Every time we hit a bump or made one of the many hairpin turns on the mountain switch backs, I looked at this old woman gamely keeping herself more or less in her designated area by hanging onto the headrest in front of her for dear life, and reminded myself that I didn't have it so bad. At least all 4 legs of my chair were on the floor of the marshutney.

Finally, we stop for a bathroom break (really, a smoke break for all the dudes in the vehicle), and I see my chance to do something about this situation. I try to offer to change seats with this old woman. My chair may not be comfy or safe, but least it has a back to it, and doesn't try to tip over every time we go around a turn in the road. The old woman grins at me and shakes her head, indicating I should sit in my assigned seat as we board the marshutney again. But then a few of the guys notice what's going on, and decide to help me out: the make the old woman and me sit in their seats, while they take the chair and stool for themselves. I really appreciated this gesture, and I was really glad that old woman wasn't going to have to cling to the seat-back in front of her for the rest of the long trip home. 

Then, something really surreal happened. As the marshutney started up again, every single person on that van quietly reached into their bags, pulled out an apricot or two, and passed them up to me. Three minutes later, I was sitting on the marshutney, with a pile of apricots on my lap. The old woman next to me patted me arm and grinned at me again. I think I may have finally done something right...