Hey Good Lookin', What's Cooking?

My friend Paula calls the first month abroad “the starving period.” You are desperately trying to shop at the grocery stores looking for a tortilla chip substitute or an alternative to vanilla extract and coming up shorthanded.  Thus, you begin to cook a few items that you know you will have all the ingredients.  For me, this has been rice and stir-fry chicken.

Dushanbe has the most exquisite fresh foods market I have ever seen. Right now raspberries, strawberries, and melon are in season.  The fruit looks so fresh and amazing.  I want to buy it all, but I can never eat it fast enough! I have to buy fruits and vegetables by the kilo.  Some stalls at the market don’t want to sell just one kilo because they are used to higher quantities being purchased.  Sometimes, Justin and I will split a kilo of fruit because we know we can’t possibly eat it all before it goes bad.

There is much more to the market than just fruits and vegetables. You can buy nuts, chocolate, flour and meats.  HERE’S A WARNING-Don’t buy meat from the market. They don’t keep it refrigerated so it usually sits in the hot sun until someone buys it.  

A supermarket of sorts does exist here.  You can buy your meat, butter, milk, yogurt, Kracks (a pringles knock off) bread, juice etc.  I tend to buy my fruits and veggies from the market and everything else from the supermarket.

I am finally at the end of my starving period.  Thanks to pinterest and some amazing people I have meet here, I am finally able to make some other dinners here beside chicken and rice.  Last night, a friend made a Quiche, which I am determined to make on my own.

A traditional meal here in Dushanbe is called Plov. I can’t tell you all of the ingredients in it, but I have included a picture.  It consists of rice, garlic, and either beef or lamb.  The rice is cooked then mixed with oils and spices. The garlic is baked and the meat is cooked and then combined together. It's quite delicious, but quite oily. 

A table of fresh fruits!

Tajiks love their bread (nan).  It's very cheap and you can find it anywhere.  I have heard if you place the bread upside down that it is considered back luck.  If you want some Nan, go early in the day to the stores.  Most stores will sell out by the day's end.  If it's a holiday weekend, stock up!

Plov

Samosas

Fresh Fruit at the Zelone Bazar

Yummmm....Bread

Does this really need a caption?