Food for Rinat and Food for Us

Hi all- So our big outing today (Sunday- I'm posting late) was to buy baby food for when our little one comes home next week. We bought a lot. You'll notice there is formula (instructions in Russian of course), chamomile and fennel tea (in case his belly bothers him when we give him totally different food than he is used to), some little biter biscuits (which he has never had but we think he'll enjoy- and do you notice the name? BabyCakes. Cute, huh?), and lots of jars of stuff. They even have cereal in jars so we don't have to figure out how to mix it when we can't read the instructions. Hopefully it'll tide us over until we get home to the states.

I have also been meaning to tell you a little about what we have been eating for the last month or so. They loooove meat here, especially lamb since they grow well here on the steppe. One of the other translators tells us they eat so much meat because they need the protein to get through the long winters. My theory is that they have long winters when veggies and fruits don't grow so therefore they don't eat them. And one of the others was telling us that they asked their translator what she ate for a snack and her response was "I am Kazakh. I like meat." We can't wait to get home and go to Whole Foods and buy out the entire produce section. Some of the food here is really good but there is very little variety- or maybe it's just that I don't know how to read the menu and just keep ordering the same thing. Here are some highlights:

Soup: Goulash (beef and veggies), Borsh (veggies), Kazakh (little meatballs and noodles in chicken broth), Lagman (beef/lamb and onions/redpeppers with homemade noodles in broth)

Main: Shashlyk (kebabs- chicken, lamb, beef, ground beef, fish), Plov (rice with meat and other stuff like carrots, raisins, chickpeas), Manty (big steamed meat dumplings), Pelmeni (small meat ravioli), Vareniki (small potato ravioli with sour cream or butter on top), Beliashi (big fried pastries with ground meat), Chicken puff pastry things, Fried Lagman

Bread: Baursakis/Kazakh Bread (small fried doughball like donut holes without the sugar), Khleb/Russian bread (regular white bread), small rounds breads with different things in the middle, brown German bread

Snack for beer: pistacios, dried out salty tring cheese, Pringles, croutons (yes, like we put on salad), chunks of meat and sausage (imagine that)

And that about covers it. *For those who are on their way to Astana, the best place in the entire city to get dinner is the bakery in the basement of the Astana Grocery. They have all kinds of prepared foods like manty and plov and they have pastries galore like the beliashi thing (which looks like a semicircle as big as half a plate and gets all crunchy like a big wonton when you heat it up in the oven) and the chicken pastries (little triangles of puff pastry). And it has a ton of cakes and eclairs and breads. It's fantastic. And there is one guy there who speaks English and always says either "Mazeltov!" or "Bon Apetit!" when we check out. He's funny and always talks us into buying something that we haven't tried yet and it's always good. He'll probably hear you speaking English and come talk to you so he can practice. And now I'm hungry. And I miss my little pumpkin. Today, I took over the computer and looked at every single photo we've taken so far since we don't get to visit him on Sundays. He's so cute! -m