Move over Campbell...

Written November 12, 2008

I made soup! Yes, that's right, I made soup from scratch. No more Campbell's for me America, I've got skill. I know it wasn't technically one of the things on the list that I was supposed to take from Kazakhstan, but learning to cook from scratch is really quite impressive if I might say so myself. Now, OK the truth of the story is a little less dazzling and probably not quite as impressive, but I've got to say, I'm still quite proud of myself.

My host "family" here just consists of one woman, a pediatrician and widow (with no children) named Aliya. She works from 9-6 every day besides Sunday (as is common in Kazakhstan) and so therefore, has left me on my own for the past 4-5 days for all meals except dinner.

She is very concerned about two things:

- whether or not I am warm enough
- whether or not I have eaten enough

It's actually kind of ridiculous, because she asks me these questions approximately every 5 minutes. I know I don't know a lot of Russian, but when the woman asks me if I'm cold, and I respond with accurate Russian that "No, I'm not cold, it's very warm here", I can't quite figure out why she then repeats the same question less than a minute later, and continuously until she leaves the house. She also just constantly tells me to "eat! eat! eat!".

So, I was scolded yesterday evening because when she came home and took stock of the ingredients of the fridge she noticed that the dinner from the previous night remained untouched. Now, had I known that what was actually sandwiched between the two small plates on the bottom shelf was our cabbage and meat concoction from the night before, I (maybe surprisingly, but this IS Kazakhstan) would happily have licked the plate clean, but when I opened the fridge and saw among a few other random ingredients, the slightly moldy block of cheese and a giant stick of what can only be equated to bologna, I assumed I was out of luck in the food department.

I resorted to making the Kazakh version of Peanut Butter and Jelly. I sliced up some bread, spread the homemade jam (still not sure what fruit it is) on one half and used the remainder of my Skippy on the other half. It was really quite tasty. Throw in the Ghirardelli chocolate square I took from the stash I gave to my host mom, and really I had a very filling lunch.

Anyways, my host mom saw the still untouched leftovers and assumed I hadn't eaten. I tried everything in my Russian language repertoire to explain that I had, in fact, eaten a sandwich (yes I know the word) and some bread, but when she saw the untouched sausage (aka bologna log) and cheese - the only acceptable sandwich fixings here - I guess she thought I was lying. She told me that I did not eat and she was very concerned. She started making dinner, which ended up being sliced bologna log and scrambled eggs in a skillet, and I thought that she had forgiven me for supposedly not eating. We sat down to dinner together and I served up a small portion of now fried bologna log and scrambled eggs. When I managed to finish my plate, she told me to eat more because I had not eaten all day. I politely refused, throwing in my impressive Kazakh language skills insisting that I was "toydum (full)" but thank you.

Well new host mom wasn't OK with that, so she picked up the skillet herself and dumped the remainder of our dinner on my plate and simply told me to "coushee (eat)". Well, normally I would have slid the mess around on my plate for awhile and taken a few extra bites, but having only been here for a couple of days, and afraid of what else I might have to eat if I displeased this new family member of mine, I managed to swallow every last bite of that bologna log on my plate. She smiled with pleasure when I finished.

Side note: to be fair, the bologna log basically just tastes like hot dog. But, no one likes hot dogs THAT much.

I guess now my host mom doesn't trust me to feed myself because when I woke up this morning there was a saucepan on the stove and a plate of various vegetables on the counter. She walked me over to the counter and explained that I was to make soup for lunch, and pointed at the saucepan which had two chunks of meat simmering in water. Before leaving the house (a mere 10 minutes later) she managed to tell me approximately 15 times that I was to eat soup for lunch. I panicked a little because I've never made soup from scratch before, but she had given me all of the ingredients and even started the pot boiling so really, I just had to cut it all up and throw it together right? Well that's pretty much what I did. And guess what? I ate soup for lunch. And this is no time for modesty... it was REALLY tasty. Some kind of meat broth (you just don't really even want to ask - but chances are it was sheep or cow, probably sheep), some rice, tomato, red pepper (which I cut the moldy parts off of, leaving me with less than half of the pepper), carrot, potato and onion.

I was so proud I took pictures. :o) Look at me Ma, I can make soup!

She hasn't come home from work yet tonight, but I'm hoping I got myself off of the hook for the PB&J the other day. I don't think I can eat another 5 slices of bologna log...