Life After the End of the Fiscal Year

Once the end of fiscal year madness ended, we suddenly found ourselves with more time on our hands (or more correctly, I did). On Friday evening we went with a couple of friends to see the performance of a local dance troupe.

Local cultural performances are often hit or miss, but this one was actually really good. There was a mix of traditional music and dance with modern music in dance - even one number where girls in traditional dances flanked a young man for a rousing rendition of Michael Jackson's 'Michael'. Thoroughly entertained, but somewhat hungry, we all went out for Indian food afterwards.

Speaking of Indian food, I am often struck by the similarities between Central Asian culture and Indian culture, especially in music and dance. I guess it shouldn't be all that surprising given the fact that the very influential Samanid dynasty (as well as several other empires) stretched all the way from Central Asia to northern India. But still, it's intriguing to see how the influence has carried through the centuries.

On Saturday, we planned to continue our anniversary celebrations as they were so rudely curtailed by work issues. But first, we went to see the meat man. USAID sponsored an American butcher to come to Tajikistan and teach local butchers Western practices for butchering meat. Of course, the products were up for sale and there was high demand for cuts like porterhouse, rib-eye, and t-bone, which are unheard-of here. We had placed an advance order, but when we got there we were informed that our cuts wouldn't be ready for another hour. Rather than lose more time, we just purchased a couple of flank steaks, which should still be much better than the norm. On a previous trip to buy meat, Stephanie also received instruction on how to age the meat at home, which the butcher said was more important to the tenderness of the meat than the way it was cut.

When we got home, we made some Russian-style blini, and proceeded to eat them with sour cream, chives, and black caviar that my parents bought us as a gift when they were here. It was delicious. For dinner, we had surf and turf, comprised of shrimp that we found at the supermarket, and steak, which Stephanie had aged for a week. There really was a noticeable improvement in the edibility of the meat. We finished everything off with a fresh batch of whoopie pies. Stephanie found the recipe for both the chocolate cookies and the cream filling. Again... delicious!

On Sunday, we decided to attempt a hike all on our own. We climbed the hills across the street from the embassy to see what we could see. It was a much tougher hike than we expected, but we were rewarded with some really nice views.

It's a place we'd like to revisit in winter and spring to take in the views of the mountains with more snow. The weather was also much hotter than we expected for this time of year, so we were pretty worn out when we got home. Luckily, we had some more whoopie pies to revive us.

And although our garden has, for the most part, gone past it's prime, the morning glories are still providing something nice to look at.

One not-so-nice aspect of our weekend was discovering that the peanuts we ate on our hike had been full of weevils. We had some friends over for dinner on Monday and were putting out snacks when we noticed that the peanut bin had lots of flies. Stephanie was pretty put off, but I figured it was just more protein. (Needless to say, we now keep all of our peanuts in the fridge).

That's pretty much it for now, but the weekend approaches and there are sure to be more stories on the way.