Ploofle

I am determined to be, if not a domestic goddess, a rustic Montana militia survivalist-type. To that end, I have a variety of food-based projects I intend to accomplish:

Hard cider
Ok, so this isn’t an essential to life for everyone, but I miss it and there *are* apples out here. It’s hard to find recipes online that don’t refer you to buying some kit from America, though, and I *think* I might need to find some sort of special yeast to get it going – bread yeast, while available, won’t cut it.

Bread
Assuming my biscuits haven’t been re-cursed, I’d like to learn how to make proper bread – you know, the kind that rises and has holes inside from that. When I was staying with Suzie the breadmaking was getting there, but once I procure a small oven here I’ll be back in business with something to eat as well as occupy my mind when there’s nothing else to do.

Dried and canned things
It’s harvest time in Khovd and relatively many things are available. This won’t be the case several months from now so I better start storing up – even though I love getting my American dried fruits and all I don’t want to be always asking for stuff. I’m thinking at this point apples, nectarines, and tomatoes. According to a little manual I have eggplant is also viable. Canning things I’m not so excited about, mainly because I haven’t accumulated a store of glass jars through various purchases here. I need to check out the market some more to see what’s available, but there’s also the option of storing stuff on my balcony once it gets below freezing, especially meat and root veggies.

Brats
I have all the ingredients for a great bratfest – onions, beer, buns, mustard – except for the brats themselves. Conceptually sausages don’t seem difficult – meat, fat, spices, tada! – but I’m not sure how to negotiate the “can I buy those pig intestines off of you?” for casings and the fact that again, most instructions seem to think you own your own automated sausage stuffer and electric meat grinder. I think I need something called a…sausage stuffing horn? to do it by hand. This sounds like a more early winter activity anyway, as I have to refrigerate em somewhere (like my balcony).

Just about any of these could possibly make me sick, but I’m up for it for the greater good of, erm, culinary exploration. I continue to tread carefully on the internet here – I move slowly and carefully so as to not startle it and heaven forbid that I attempt to load more than one page at a time.

Tags: food, fun, internet, mongolia, projects

Greets to all out there. I am getting ready to go to Khovd on Tuesday. Well, technically I am “getting ready” as “getting ready” for me includes sitting in coffeeshops for as long as possible, similar to enduring very hot baths or saunas, and drinking coffee until I can barely stand still, as it will be tough goings in the realm of coffee after that inevitable Tuesday.

It is also very possible that my writing and generally consciousness is being affected by this coffee, as I am writing rather sillily already.

Yesterday I attended an appreciation dinner for a UNFPA staffmember who is moving on to other ventures, including most likely another campaign to become a parliamentarian. This is good stuffs as she is a lady with quite a presence and with great interest in health matters that will be welcome to the policies out here. We ate at the ridiculously named “Grand Khaan Irish Pub” – which also somehow manages to integrate a green cloverleaf into its logo with a rather fearsome Chinggis Khaan. I ordered what is one of the less expensive menu items to offset my special-event gin and tonic, namely, a Mongolian noodle dish called tsuivan. I felt like when my dish was set down that all sorts of Mongolian heads snapped to see what I was eating. It was kind of silly, as everyone else there got “special” food like fish and chips, steak, and other foreign food, while I got the opposite.

Today I went to the black market to pick up a few things for my new place. I was encouraged by other volunteers to get a decent pan and knife there as those can be hard to find elsewhere, so I milled around looking at those kinds of things for the better part of the morning. The day before I picked up some groceries for Khovd that were painfully expensive but should last a bit. For example, a shaker of off-brand parmesean cheese was 7500 tugriks – about $6 and the price of several decent meals here. A bottle of olive oil was more than that, but I figure I use it so much it’s all good.

Also through a conversation yesterday with Bonnie I have been the subject of my roommate Suzie’s photography skizills. I innocently mentioned to Suzie that Bonnie would like to see where I’ve been doing and now she is taken with the idea of taking pictures of me in random places. This has become “Charlene – Playground Scenes” as that is where we tended to stop. So eventually you may see pictures of me on concrete camels.

That’s about it here at the moment. I was impressed (read: envious) of another PCV’s beautiful blog-site, so I’m going to update a few things on here hopefully, including a better list of things I like so people don’t seem so confused and what-not. I also found out about a damn website called Goodreads that steals my thunder of a website idea, so I’m using it now to keep track of books I want to read and have already read and what-not.

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Now playing: Travis – Sing
via FoxyTunes

Tags: bonnie, coffee, fun, mongolia

This is the starting of the home stretch, the long haul, the nailbiting nights. In short, the end of host site-based training. Monday I have my language test, Wednesday is our community picnic, and Thursday morning at 8am we haul ass outta Dodge to go to a larger city with all trainees. There we find out our sites and continue to have administrative and technical sessions as well as orientation until the 19th or so in the capital.

Today, however, has been an interesting day. First off, it’s the first day post-antibiotics for my stomach woes (which are now entering Day 7). I woke up feeling better than I have in a long time – no gurgles, no cramps, nothing weird at all. It was odd, how free I felt, when not feeling ill. I suspect I’ll be a crabby chronic illness kind of person.

Secondly, today was our community project – we held a sports and games day/morning at the local school. I got to help out with the kid’s games and it was quite a refresher. We played things like duck duck goose, red rover, freeze tag, red light/green light, and my personal favorite, tug of war! With a close second of the Mongolian introduction to the carribbean (passion!) pasttime of limbo.

Tug of war was awesome because I got to shout things loudly in Mongolian, and when you did boy versus girl teams, the girls would all squeal as they began tugging. The highlight was the last round, when the rope snapped. It sounded something like this: “snap! thumpthumpthumpthumpthump” as 2 dozen kids, mostly under the age of 10, fell over in unison. I couldn’t stop laughing – it was great! I don’t think anyone else found it as funny as I did, though. But man…even now, imagining them all falling over…it makes me very amused.

Perhaps I shall eat (or drink, as they say here) yogurt tonight…

Next post will be post-site announcements, so stay tuned. I’ll also be posting new contact info as that’ll be happening too.

Tags: fun, funny, games, mongolia

Today, Bonnie and I went on an adventure. You should have to guess where, but I’m not sure it’s all that hard. Here are some pics of where we were (and bah resizing, I am tired and cannot be bothered):

I also had a cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper. It was…intermeresting. Also cooked lots – chili, spaghetti, chinese-style roast pork, and thai fried salty beef – for freezing and eating later. Still need to make the gingerbread, though…

Mail merge with Word and Thunderbird is a bitch, btw. Is there anything easier? >_<

Tags: atlanta, fun

Back from Durham, and with a bit of mixed feelings. I had a great time with Sharlene/Barb and Hilary/Marcus – great like-visiting-family-put-you-in-the-spare-room and make you homecooked food times…something I unexpectedly miss from when I was little, apparently. Great to see Ricardo and RR and old works people like Kevin and Hank and Dan…and good dim sum that I haven’t found in either Atlanta or Seattle, strangely.

At the same time, the whole trip rather reminded me of what made my time there so great – namely, the people. Bonnie and I thought about what we used to do, and it was mostly being with each other, seeing people, eating, or going to coffeeshops/BN. I loved it there, I think, cuz I was in a very happy living situation with my friends nearby too. That made everything better (especially the terrible driving there and the fact that everything’s closed on Sunday, it seems). And with NCLYN going down, there’s nothing there that I did that’s really left. This year’s the last year of people at the dorm I know…people are scattered and there are new buildings and construction oncampus as well as in Durham. Even Railroad has become a shop called the Maxxx or something (“A Frisky Business store”). Come on…Railroad was a Durham fixture!

Ah, well. It just has impressed upon me how much it’s about the people more than the place. Before we went up there, we thought, hmm, maybe we’ll live there again someday – we liked it. Afterwards, not so sure. We’ll see where people, including us, land.

But it’s still better than Atlanta

Tags: durham, food, fun, travel