Most evening when we sit down for tea at 8 or 8:30pm, Kanat will tell me some sort of story. Sometimes it is about how things work in Kyrgyzstan, sometimes it is about his life, sometimes stories of working with geologist (these usually involve much alcohol). Last night he told me about the people living in Osh (city in southern Kyrgyzstan) from his perspective. The story started as Gulnara filled a dish with walnuts. Kanat said the name for them translated as “Greek Peanuts”. These walnuts are subtly different than those I am used to and have a little earthier taste I actually prefer. Kanat said if you visit Osh, you buy walnuts and raisins because they are much cheaper and usually better there. He told me of his first trip to Osh, how on one of the first days he and a friend went to the large market there. A man was selling walnuts and Kanat decided to buy some. The man asked him if he wanted walnuts for himself or walnuts for guests? Kanat didn't understand him and asked what the difference was. With a smile and a knife the man picked up a walnut and said “This is a walnut for you” and carefully inserted the knife in the edge of the walnut, twisted, and the walnut popped open, beautifully halved. He than handed the knife and another walnut to Kanat and said “This is a walnut for guests”. Kanat tried to open the walnut, the the knife wouldn't enter and the nut remained whole. The man laughed and said they would look very pretty and hospitable in a bowl and no one would ever use them up.
On that same trip Kanat met a man and after some talk the man said they should have tea together. That night Kanat was waiting for the man to call for tea. His friend tried to get him to go out for dinner, but Kanat said no, I am going to tea. His friend shook his head and went out without him. He waited one, two, three hours and the man never called for tea. In Northern Kyrgyzstan this would have been a major insult, but when Kanat's friend returned and asked if he had ever gotten tea he told him that in the South it is more of a polite thing to say and is not considered an actual invitation to tea. From what I understood Kanat then explained that the people in the south use sarcasm and the people in the north do not and find communicating with people from the south a challenge as a result. This seems to lead to a slight amount of cultural animosity as he explained one of his daughters had dated a man from Osh and he had warmed her people from there do not always mean what they say but he wouldn't tell her who she could or couldn't see. The man turned out to be a cad and thus fuels the stereotype.
I mostly eat meals with my host family, but I do get some chances to cook here. Over the weekend I stayed with two other Fulbrighters for Kyle's birthday and we had some lovely adventures in cooking with Kyrgyz ingredients.
Happy Birthday Kyle! Great little cakes and I even found birthday candles!
As they are both Russian speakers I used them to help me figure out what bakers yeast looks like here. I made garlic baguettes and we baked apples Gulnara had given me to take to my friends. As I mentioned previously, Apples are from Kazakhstan, but Rebecca (one of the Fulbrighters) told me a little more of the story. The name Almaty, one of the southern Kazakhstan cities barely over the Kyrgyz border, mean “apple father” and is reputed to be the exact place of origin. Kanat told me to never buy the beautiful perfect looking apples here as they are all from China and likely GMOs (interestingly the Kyrgyz seem to have great fear and distrust of GMOs despite the clear advantages some GMOs could provide for this country). A saying here roughly gets translated to me as “apples with worms are best because the worms know what a good apple is”. The apples Gulnara gave me were from her mother and were from somewhere on the north shore of Issyk-Kul. They were very tasty, although Kyle (having grown up in a rather urban environment) was a little horrified by the bugs in the middle of some of the apples! We cut them in half, cored them, and cooked them with wonderful Kyrgyz honey, cinnamon, and thick slices of a local creamy white cheese on top.