I’m still here
Hey all,
I do exist…and fail at social networking. I don’t really have an excuse, so I won’t give you one! What I will give you is a couple of posts to make up for the weeks I’ve been remiss. Recently, I had to write a “Community Entry Toolkit” document and send it into PC telling them how I’ve spent my summer. Turns out it also happens to be blog fodder for you guys. Enjoy.
July
5 Help your family with summer tasks (harvesting, canning/preserving food, working in the garden/around the house, doing repairs, preparing for cold weather).
The primary summer task that I’ve been able to help with is preparing food for canning. I came home one day ready to plan for the English club I was co-teaching in July, and my host mom enlisted me to help clean cherries. We cleaned cherries from about 5:30pm until midnight! I learned how to pit cherries with a toothpick. It’s not as impressive as MacGyvering a tent or shopping mall with a toothpick, but I’ve learned a skill.
Another day I came home to find a pale of blueberries that needed cleaning. Not as time consuming as cherries, we picked the stems off of blueberries for only about 3 hours. Oddly, I’ve gained a slight aversion to large quantities of fruit appearing in our kitchen. Two days ago, I came home to a sizable pail of raspberries and began bracing myself for hours of picking through the juicy fruit. I was relieved to learn that raspberries don’t really have any pre-jam prep work.
One observation I have made about lengthy kitchen tasks is that women here enjoy them perhaps solely as a medium for socializing. Ideally, 2-3 ejes will come together to roll logman noodles or can endless jars of jam. Subsequently they pass the time in conversation. This is probably one reason I do not have the same affinity for cooking as these local ladies. My limited Kyrgyz leaves me miles behind in the conversation (especially if they switch to Russian on me)!
26 Cook American food and introduce your family to food culture in America using the local language.
I have only cooked twice for my family. The first time I made Ooey Gooey Bars (PC cookbook). For all of the sweets and sugary jam that my family eats, they didn’t seem to enjoy the chocolate-peanuty goodness that this recipe produced. While I was reminiscing about Christmas candies and truffles, my host mom was exclaiming how sweet the dessert was. Even my six-year-old, ice cream addicted host sister, only ate a piece or two.
The second time I cooked for my host mom was for her birthday. I somehow forgot that Kyrgyz birthdays are never small. About 10 relatives that I’ve never met before showed up, after I’d already agreed to cook for her. Thankfully, I chose something that I could easily make in the States. My American mom calls it goulash. The recipe is simple and involves a tomato sauce, browned hamburger, corn, and macaroni (one might call it a hot dish). Because I don’t cook often and my own sense of taste is rather bland, I am ALWAYS hesitant to prepare food for people. Unfortunately this mild sense of anxiety over cooking for a bunch of strangers revealed itself as defensiveness when one of my host relatives commented that, “This isn’t American food. This is Italian food!” Pretty sure no Italian would claim this dish and aware of my lack of culinary skill in general, I tried to calmly explain that America has many different types of food. And what food is really American anyways? When the eje repeated the comment again, I wanted to firmly point out that, “My mom is American! This is her food. I grew up eating this pasta stuff. Therefore by shear logic, this IS American food!!”
Moral: Food is an important cultural component. If some aspect of it is not as you had originally perceived, try it anyway. If you have sever reservations about its origin (geographical or physical), have some tact for the sake of those who are sharing a piece of home with you.
