Food

So, I mentioned recently that I have had difficulty "remembering" how to cook and my dad mentioned in conversation that it looks like I'm "wasting away" (he did acknowledge that he's probably just thinking of the pregnant version of Evelyn). Although I may not feel fully confident about cooking, we are definitely eating well! Chris says he has never seen me eat as much as I do now, which we attribute to a nursing-induced appetite. I have put together some pictures (with descriptions) of some of our yummy food.

The "dumplings" on this platter are manti. Half were made with a meat filling the other half with a savory pumpkin filling. It was honestly love at first bite! Amazingly enough Chris never had pumpkin manti when he previously lived in KZ because he thought it sounded gross, but he admitted he was quite mistaken. Our neighbors returned our platter to us (earlier that week we gave them the platter full of a tomato & cucumber salad). I don't know that our salad warranted such a wonderful array of foods, but we certainly won't complain! Oh, and the carrot salad was also really good.

Shortly after our arrival we discovered a new little company in the area. Most similar to Schwann's, the company delivers frozen foods except at very competitive rates. Our first order was to test their products out and we combined with our neighbors to give it a trial run at the minimum order amount (around $14). We have since ordered again and filled our freezer... =) What you see below is a pretty standard lunch. Cucumber and dill salad with potato-filled vereniki (my version of the phonetic spelling).

Sometime ago we stopped at a cafe where I had my first taste of plof (it is actually said and spelled "plov" though the "v" is often fudged into an "f"). It was wonderful!!!

Our neighbors, Aundrey & Anya brought this to us after Aundrey returned from their home (they live here but are from Tajikistan, where they have a home & garden). You are looking at Tajik plov (the Tajik's use a special spice called zira--commonly known in the U.S. as cumin. I think theirs may be a slightly different version of it, but let me just say "AMAZING!" I just don't have the words...), tomato salad, homegrown grapes and persimmon.

This was my first time having persimmon and it was really good, a very interesting fruit for sure!!!

A mouse attacked our bread! Oh wait, no it was just a hungry husband snacking on his way back from the errand of getting the bread. A fresh loaf usually costs the equivalent of fifty cents.
We picked up some fresh pumpkin since the soup turned out so well. You can buy pumpkin by the kilo which means the vendors either display it already cut or they will cut the pumpkin for you to give you as much as you need.

The pumpkin-curry soup. Yum!!!

As we prepared to move here we learned that Almaty was the around the 30th most expensive city in the world. It beat the D.C. area and L.A. but wasn't as expensive as NYC. Lucky us, right? What we learned pretty quickly is that bazaars and little stands are where it's at! Generally speaking, the little stands on the side of the road as well as the bazaars offer some amazing prices on fresh fruit and veggies.

You are looking at about 4 kilos of potatos, 1 kilo of peppers, and 1 1/2 kilos of carrots. This cost us the equivalent of $3. A kilo is a little more than 2 lbs.

Russian style stuffed peppers which I made for dinner on Sunday. Our neighbors shared some with us the first Sunday we were here and I have made them a few times since. I am still working on tweaking the recipe. Most people use rice as the main filler, but we have used greshka (buckwheat). I like to use buckwheat simply because it's in whole "grain" form (buckwheat isn't wheat, technically it's a berry).

We purchased some phyllo dough which I attempted to use with the apples from the picnic a week ago. It turned out pretty well.

We returned our neighbors plate with 3/4 of the apple tort/pie/thingamagig.

We purchased some frozen manti (definitely nowhere near as good as homemade) which cooks in this "double-boiler" of sorts. You can see in the second picture that there are metal plates with holes in them stacked inside the top pot which allow the manti to steam cook (for 45 minutes). The manti after it has been cooked...