Dill, That Under-used Herb

Once of the peculiarities a traveller faces, no matter where where ends up is that of the food in any particular foreign culture.  Kazakhstan is no different.  There's one ingredient that achieves degrees of ubiquity previously unknown to me in any cuisine.  And I come fro the land where a cheeseburger and fries make a healthy meal as long as one eats the pickle.

I speak, as I'm sure you're guessing, of meat.  Meat is everywhere.  It crops up in the most innocuous-seeming of dishes, and the idea of purposely making a main dish of only vegetables that tastes good is quite a foreign concept.  As I mention in my previous posts The Trip of a Lifetime; Planes, Trains, and... pt.1; A First Impression Once Made; To My Anglo-Saxon Hips; and Cavemen, I am a vegan.  I don't eat meat, not even milk or eggs.

When I first arrived in Astana I was put up in a dorm room (also discussed at length in Luxury and Necessity), which did not have its own kitchen.  There was one shared kitchen for each floor, and of course I had only one set of borrowed cutlery and place setting, and no kitchen utensils with which to make anything.  Also, due to the, well I'll call it thorough nature of labor law, human resources and accounting procedure, and banking—let's call them rules—that stipulate that before a foreign worker can get paid she must wade through a sea of paperwork (at least a third of which is duplicates, or just pieces of pater with official stamps and raised seals on them), and further undergo a waiting period determined, I believe, by a complicated calculation involving the length of one's stay in this country multiplied by the degree to which one is in danger of starving if some sort of salary is not soon paid to the now all-but-helpless employee...

What I'm saying is I had nothing to cook with and no money to buy anything with which to cook.  It's common practice, I gather, for foreign employees to work pro bono, as they say, for the first month, while sufficient personal data, DNA, and guarantees of transfer of one's first-born child are gathered to open a bank account here.  I survived with a small amount of money borrowed from a colleague.  Most of my meals were eaten in the university cafeteria.

Which brings me back to the original conundrum.  Meat.

And when it wasn't meat: milk.  Either or both appeared in nearly everything served in the cafeteria.  Rice, dressed salads, and fruit became the staples of my once diverse and protein-rich diet.  And what should appear in nearly every salad and side dish in the kitchen (and for that matter restaurant in the city)?  Ah yes, now we come to the crux of the matter.  Dill.  That (as I used to think) under-used herb. So green.  So innocent.  So pervasive.  I tried a Korean-style salad with rice noodles.  Dill.  I tried a salad with cucumber and tomato.  Dill.  I tried a salad with carrots and cabbage.  Dill.  I tried a salad that had what appeared to be seaweed.  Dill.  In Italian restaurants the pasta dishes (generally the only things I ordered since they were most likely to be, or be adaptable to be, vegan) were topped with dill.  I could even swear—though at this point I may have just been paranoid—that the french fries at the burger places and the vegetable stir-fry at the Chinese restaurants had dill in or on them.

At first I was fascinated.  Perhaps they know something here from which I could learn.  Variety is the spice of life, I told myself.  I decided to embrace the ubiquity of this aromatic little weed.  It's so cheap and so very available, that I looked through my cookbooks and found every recipe I'd ever tried and liked, every recipe I'd passed up because dill was so hard to find back home, and began to cook with dill.  (This is, of course, after I moved from the dorm room into an apartment.)

A few months went by.  I brought lunch to work most days, but still occasionally bought a salad to round it out.  The dill was still everywhere, in everything.

It's been a while since I've cooked with dill.  Or consciously chosen a dish anywhere that I thought might have dill on it.  This little-used, little-known spice, once so spell-binding, had begun to haunt me. Dill pickles, once my favorite part of a sandwich or burger (vegan, of course), no longer had such warm memories.  Worry not, dill, for while I may pass over you at the supermarket or bazaar, you'll live always in my memories.  And in my teeth.  And, of course, in my nightmares.

Cavemen

October 5, four months to the day after my departure from my dear homeland, we got our first “sticking” snow.  True, it didn’t stay around all day, but it stayed on the ground long enough for me to photograph it, and I daresay we’ll get more of these in the days to come.  My first thought was that I needed take a picture, and tell everyone from home about it.  Being from one of the major snow-belts in New York State, it’s a matter of pride where I’m from who gets the first snow, how heavy it is, how long it lasts.  We like to speculate on how many minor accidents we’ll see on the newly snowy roads, liken those poor souls to “southern drivers” who don’t know what to do the minute there’s any white stuff on the ground. 

My second thought was that I needed to get online and gloat about the fact that it was my day off, so that while I could enjoy the wonderful view of the first snow from my window, I didn’t need to go out in it.  That really is the best kind of snow there is.

Snow is an interesting topic round these parts.  We either get a lot in Astana, or a little.  It all depends who you talk to.  People from Almaty, from Shymkent down south, will tell you we get a lot of snow.  Too much snow.  And it’s so cold.  Weather is often on the minds of people in this part of the world.  As I suppose it should be.  In summer it’s blinding heat and inescapable sun.  The sun barely goes down in time to rise again in the morning.  The people, especially children, seeming to have some innate consciousness of the fleeting nature of their unnaturally hot summer, and the impending lockdown of winter, seem never to sleep. 

That gloating feeling is somewhat lessened of late.  These days, deep into December, in the full and icy grasp of winter on goes outside at one’s own risk, and no at all if one can help it (or one is at all smart).  And the snow that we (and by we I mean I) were all so excited about at the beginning is valued for its utility in providing effective footing on top of the sheet of ice that seems to have grown over all horizontal surfaces.

For the first time in my life I’ve finally experienced that scientific phenomenon that happens only when it gets cold enough (and before you ask I haven’t checked to see if my spit will freeze before it hits the ground)—when the temperature is the same in both Fahrenheit and Celsius (it happens somewhere around 40.  -40).  I would like to agree with all those people out there who say that after about -30 it all feels the same—really, really cold—but I’m too busy trying to thaw my toes out to really start making comparisons here.

Which brings me to what I really wanted to talk about—cavemen.  You see them everywhere.  Walking down the streets, on the bus, getting into cabs, in the supermarkets and malls—everywhere, cavemen.  You can recognize them by their outerwear.  Before I came to Astana I’d thought that practice of wearing the skins of other animals was a fetish reserved to only the most self-absorbed of the ridiculously wealthy (and to certain great-grandmothers who still insist upon wearing that old musty, shedding hide because it’s fashionable).  Hadn’t companies like the North Face, Columbia, and Under Armour brought us all into a new, modern age of synthetic outerwear that eliminated the need to ask, “does this pelt make me look fat?”

I suppose those fur-wearers do have a point.  While I, the good vegan, have to start ten minutes ahead of any time I actually want to leave the house in order to have sufficient time to layer enough clothing to keep me marginally warm during the time I’m forced to be outside, women here continue to wear the same knee-length skirts and high-heeled boots (ok, the tights underneath are a bit of a nod to the coldness of the situation), throwing nothing more than a fur coat over what appears to me to be the same clothes they wore all summer (during which I alternately considered purchasing a kid-sized pool for my living room and actually hiring someone to fan me everywhere I went).  I suppose I’m not being entirely truthful in painting my picture of these fur-clad women—they also generally seem to wear some sort of small furry animal on their heads.

To each his own, I suppose, but for now I’ll be sure to ask before petting anyone’s “faux” fur hat, and pick my place carefully when standing on the bus for fear of rousing the angry ghosts of 1,000 slain chinchillas.  

To My Anglo-Saxon Hips

Oh, hello there.  Listen, I know we haven’t always gotten along.   You’ve seen me through some pretty tough times though and, well, I just want you to know:  I’ve always appreciated it.  I haven’t always treated you right, and you’ve let me know.  Loudly.  Clearly.  We’ve had our differences, but we always make it up in the end. 

But can we talk about something serious for a minute?    I feel like there’s so much between us, sometimes; so much we just don’t talk about.  And it hurts me.  And it hurts you.  We’re less productive when we don’t communicate.  We don’t get out and go places.  Things don’t progress as naturally as they should.  So, let’s talk.

We feel, well, downright out of place here sometimes, don’t we?  Can’t compete with the local selection.  When we walk around town, do you feel like people stare?  Is it something we did, or is it just who we are?  We have blond hair—that stands out, for sure—but is it something more?  We walk differently, move differently; it’s as if we displace matter in a way wholly foreign and not understood round here. 

I mean honestly, I feel like the titanic over here.  They float up, and don’t have to worry about the lurking icebergs.  Something’s got to let all those women wear their ridiculous heels through construction sites and on ice without ending up with broken bones.  Are they made of balsa?  Bamboo?  (Does bamboo float?)  What’s that?  Ahh, yes you’re right.  Sailing metaphors probably aren’t much good round here.  Can we talk about trees?  The mighty oak and its deep roots and all that?  I suppose you’re right.  No, no, no, they have trees, just not the big ones. 

I’ve noticed, though, you have gotten thinner since we arrived.  Trying to blend in, eh?  No, sorry, it was just a joke.   A bad joke.  No, I don’t think you need to lose weight; I think you’re perfect just the way you are.  Steady on.  We’ll see this one through too.  You know, when I look at those shoes in store windows, I don’t mean it.  I would never do that to you.  Women here might be able to traipse around in four-inch heels all day, but I just couldn’t put you through that.  We weren’t made for it.  Yes, I miss the hills too.  Can’t run up and down hills in heels, that’s for sure.  Ok, maybe in San Francisco they do.  But we’re not from San Francisco, and we don’t wear heels anyway. 

By the way, are you feeling better now that winter’s here?  The heat does take its toll.  I don’t know about theirs, but this mortal coil is not cut out for arid climes.  I mean, I love sun as much as the next person, but I want sun that smiles at me.  Their summer sun, it frowns, as if it were trying to bore straight through us.  Perhaps if we stay long enough this flesh really will melt.  Yes, yes, I know we only decided to stay here a year.  And yes, I know winter’s supposed to be bad here too, but we’ll get through.  It’s what we were made for, after all.  Yes, all right, next time we’ll pick a temperate climate. 

I know, I know.  We need to look out for the food too.  Yes it is hard to be a vegan here.  Now don’t look at me like that.  We all hurt, when we don’t eat right.  It’s not just you.  Oh, please, don’t bring back the guilt again.  Look, it was a long time ago, and we were young, and, and idealistic maybe… What, are you saying you’d trade it in?  Give up everything we’ve done since, and because of then?  What happened in Newport was, well, unfortunate.  I hurt just as much as you do.  Born to be sailors, we were, but maybe it’s something you have to work up to.  Maybe when we’re rich and famous, then we can buy our own boat and sail round the world.  Yes, yes, far away from landlocked countries. 

Well, I’m glad we had this talk.  Yes, we’ll do yoga more often.  And lay off the sugar.  I’m sure the teeth would appreciate that too.  Yes, they know we’re just overcompensating for other things we can’t have when we do that.  I suppose it doesn’t make them feel any better, though.  Yes, ok, we'll floss more too.  Good night then.  Good talk.