Feast!

It would be an insult to my heritage if I did not immediately write about the culinary condition of our new home. After all, our people live to eat. I will say this: at the outset, it looked pretty bleak. But be joyful, good readers, because the story has a happy ending. First I'll deal with the cost of food:

It's true that it is easier to eat junk than real food if you don't know where to look here. For example, we couldn't get over the fact that deep fried bologna biscuits were 99 cents each at Burger King, while a single red pepper was $3 at any of our local supermarkets. I was actually quite worried about being able to afford nutritious, healthy food. So, being well trained by my father, I first did what he would do in a situation like this: I got a Costco membership. That was a relief because their meat prices are more like what I was used to in Toronto, and you could by a clubpack of six red peppers imported all the way from Ontario! How exotic! Also, Tilapia is well priced here which is great, because we want to add more fish to our diet.

Next, I'd like to tell you about item availability. I came here prepared for the fact that there would not be as much variety as what we were used to in Toronto. This is just common sense; you can't expect a southern 230 000 person city to have the variety of the 5.5 million person city we just left. But I am consistently surprised by what I can and can't find. For example, it boggles my mind that in this land of deep fried bologna biscuits and deep fried ice cream (I'm not making that up), the only kind of yogurt you can buy is low-fat, or fat-free. I'm definitely pro eating healthy, but come on! When it comes to yogurt, I say: go fat or go home. How did I cope? I bought a gallon of whole milk and a litre of whipping cream. Yes, that's right--whipping cream. It wasn't enough for me to just use whole milk...I had to add the fat of the whipping cream just for spite. I used a ratio of 4 parts milk to 1 part cream to make my own yogurt using our crockpot. It was a bit runny, so I strained it through a cheesecloth. The result:

 Mmmmmm. Better than ice cream. I especially like it with the Valley honey that Father Max gave us! Here, though, you see it pictured with a locally grown peach which we bought from a farmers market.

And this may be my favourite section of this post. The farmers markets here are a Godsend. People in this community know how expensive food can be and are always offering helpful advice to us on coping with that. The best piece of advice we got (from several people) was to buy our produce at the farmers markets. There are so many of them here, and they are wonderful! Good quality, good prices, and lots of variety. Here was my favourite pick from our first visit:

White bidingan! Of course I stuffed them. They weren't quite like the mahshi bidingan we've had in Egypt...tougher skins. But it was fun anyway. Speaking of mahshi, my mom keeps torturing me with stories of grapeleaves pouring in from the church yard and from Mary's yard. You would think that, nestled in the forest as we are, we'd be swimming in grape leaves. It's all ivy here. I'm tempted to stuff the ivy....although I recall a story of my mom attempting to use maple leaves, and she says that was disastrous. I'll let all y'all know:
a) if I actually getting around to doing this and
b) if such an experiment results in an edible end product.
Until next time!