I find that food is a
driving force for PCV’s. What does my family serve, can I cook for myself (For
me, I’m missing my daily breakfast of oatmeal and I plan to get it back!!) and
this restaurant in this region has …. (fill in the blank… French fries, great
chicken, steak, real ice cream, cold drinks… something that reminds me of home)
My host mom is a good
cook. What she makes, she makes well. Breakfast and lunch usually consist of
bread or possibly lavash (which is like a big tortilla) chai … always chai with
every meal (a good black tea) and for me, some kind of a protein. (could be a
hard-boiled egg, a hot dog….) Dinner is usually something different. Maybe ash,
(which is a white rice with a bit of a yellow sauce on it… not curry, but
tasty, with some grilled onions) rice
and lentils, pasta (sometimes homemade) with potatoes, sometimes stuffed with
potatoes, piroshky (bread stuffed with potatoes and fried) every once in a
while chicken and every once in a rare while, pork. You get the idea. Lots of
rice, pasta and potatoes with occasional meat for a treat. And always bread and
chai served with every meal. A side note about bread. Bread is almost sacred
here. You don’t waste it. This goes back to the days when Azerbaijan was part
of the Soviet Republic. (which was only
20 years ago) Things were so bad that often all they had to eat here was bread.
So, bread is the number one staple now. If you don’t want it, or it is stale,
you don’t throw it away. You feed it to chickens or put it in a bag and hang it
on the side of a dumpster so that someone will take it to feed it to animals.
Never, ever throw away bread!!! In Azerbaijan, they eat to live (in my opinion)
Food is necessary to go on. And yes, they enjoy food but it’s not the way it is
in America
In America, in my
opinion, we live to eat. Sure, sometimes we grab something just to eat and get
through the day, but we also have many, many choices. As an Azeri who lived in
America put it: “when I go out to dinner, I had so many choices. I could go to
Italian, Chinese, American, Thai…. Whatever I wanted.” This is true. With a
little time and a little money, I can get most any kind of food I want in
America. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to have hopefully
healthy variety in our diets. What I am saying is that living in Azerbaijan now
has helped me to appreciate it more. I appreciate that fact that Azerbaijani’s
never forget the hard times (and for some, there are still hard times) by never
throwing away their bread. The recent holiday we celebrated here includes the
tradition for those who, to share meat and food with their neighbors who
cannot. The long memory and generosity
here makes me appreciate Azerbaijan culture and helps me to appreciate all that
Americans have… all of our choices. So yes, at times unfortunately sometimes I
live to eat… which is ok sometimes. But I hope that I also remember more often
those who are hungry, share my bounty with them and remember that my helping my
neighbor who is hungry is most important.
My host mother at the beginning of preparing a great dinner
Meat sellers at the bazar. Most meat, fruits and vegetables are bought in places like this or outside on the street
This was a few weeks ago. Now that winter is approaching there is still a pretty good selection, but not as great
Cow's legs. Yum!!
Fresh greens
Dinner
Toyuk!!! Chicken
No comments:
Post a Comment