I ate fried sheep butt fatt this weekend.

More to come….

Random notes from this weekend:

1. Friends is a funny funny show.  I’ve been watching the early seasons on DVD.  In the first season, there is this HILARIOUS bit between Joey and Chandler where Joey is trying to come up with a stage name and Chandler convinces him to use “JOSEPH STALIN”.  Matt Le Blanc is SUCH a great actor. 

2. It was so beautiful just last weekend, and this past weekend was ICKY.  Tempermental intercontinental climate.

3. I love learning the Uzbek language.  I don’t know why.  Maybe it’s because my Russian learning is very academic while my Uzbek learning is more casual, more… practical.  Also, Uzbek is easier.  Nema yangiliklar bor? (any news?) Telefon kirib turing? (Call me)  Also, some of the words just sound… FUN and easy to remember: For example:

Jon Depp = with pleasure (“yes, with pleasure, I will look at you, Johnny Depp”)

Yo’mon = bad (“yo, mon, that is NO good”)

4. Recipe for Georgian cheese/garlic/mayo spread (not Atlanta, Georgia but Tblisi, Georgia):

1/2 cup shredded cheese (anything but cheddar is okay)

2-3 large cloves of garlic, minced (depends on how much garlic you like)

1 – 1.5 tbsps of mayo

Salt & pepper as necessary

Spread on bread or crackers and eat.

5. I made profiteroles this weekend.  They were DELISH. They’re not so hard but look very impressive. 

a. Preheat the oven to 400. 
b. Then you melt 1 stick of butter with 1 cup of milk and 1 tsp of salt and 1 tsp of vanilla extract in a pan until it’s boiling. 
c. You take the pan off the heat and add 1 1/3 cups of flour and stir with a wooden spoon until it’s kind of a dry dough ball. 
d. Then you add 5 eggs, one at a time.   Drop dough on a cookie sheet with parchment paper (I didn’t have any, so I just oiled the cookie sheet a little) about1 1/2 tbsps of dough, 2 inches apart.  Brush tops with egg white.  Bake for 20 minutes or so.  They should be puffy and golden.  Leave on sheets to cool.
e. Cut the tops off and put vanilla ice cream inside.  Drizzle with melted chocolate. Stick in freezer for about 10 minutes before serving.

6. Tom and Grace Loyd are here from the States for a one week “investigative” trip; they’ll visit a Korean-American family down in Samarkand.  Tom and I went to college (GO BLUE!) together. It’s incredible to think how 12 years later, we see each other here.  They live in Philly with a bunch of other U of M’ers. 

Leisure in the land of the Uzbeks = watching movies and eating food.  The best leisure, then, is when you combine both!!!  I love food. Therefore, I love movies about food.  I watched this one last night - another excellent one.  German, so all the cinematography is simple. And I loved the inteiors of all the places in this movie.

Other movies about food:
Babette’s Feast (my favorite of all time)
Eat Drink Man Woman
Big Night
Soul Food (I LOVE me some mac-n-cheese!!!)
Like Water for Chocolate (the book was also great)