Adventures of a wannabe foodie in Tbilisi

I like my little apartment.  A lot.  I like being able to walk around in my underwear and to put my feet up on the table and to eat my dinner seating on the couch watching TV.  I like scratching where it itches and singing along with iTunes.  I even like cooking for myself.  OK, I REALLY like cooking for myself.  I have a few specialties that I can do well – breaded chicken breasts, for example, and I have had more than a few failures – I’m looking at you, bologna stir fry.  But as much as I like cooking for myself, I like food shopping that much more.  There’s something about looking at a collection of meats, fish, fruit and vegetables and thinking of what I can make from them.  I imagine it’s the same feeling an artist gets when he looks at his palette of oil paints.  (Now THERE’S the height of hubris – comparing my limited abilities at the stove with those of an artist at his canvas; but this is my blog so I can indulge myself a bit.)  And Tbilisi has more than its share of places to buy food.

There are, of course, the big three – Carrefour, Goodwill, and the Embassy Commissary.  The first two are comparable to a Super Walmart; they’re both a large big box type of store with a well-stocked grocery section.  Carrefour is French and most of the products are European; the Goodwill has goods mostly from Russia.  The Commissary is the go-to place for American foods that we can’t find anywhere else in country – peanut butter, Bisquick, and bologna, for instance.  And at the Commissary I can read the labels on the cans and jars. 

Originally, I thought I’d just look at the picture on the label, thinking that naturally a picture of the inside would be on the outside.  Until I hit the baby food aisle with hundreds of cans with pictures of babies on the outside.  So that logic petered out.  In Carrefour the labels are mostly in French or German.  I can usually make those out pretty well.  Occasionally I run into some Italian or even Polish, but by looking at the other cans in the aisle I generally get the idea.  In Goodwill, however, this is not a good strategy because most every label is in Russian or Georgian.  I remember once when Dan, as a child, got into the pantry and pulled all the labels of the cans.  After a week of beets for breakfast and condensed milk for dinner, I learned to lock the pantry door.  That’s what it’s like in Goodwill – I know there are some cans I want and some I don’t, but figuring out which is which is often just a game of chance.  I might as well flip a coin. 

That’s one of the frustrating things about the big box stores.  They have everything you’d want, but it’s hard to figure out where and even what it is sometimes.  And even if I figure out what’s in the can or jar, the preparation instructions are written in the same language as the label.  Now we’re off on another adventure.  I usually inspect the label for numbers.  6-8, for example, on a package of frozen ravioli probably means 6-8 minutes in water.  But does it really?  Is the ravioli already cooked?  If not, for how long should I cook it?  I assume it goes into boiling water.  Or does it?  Do I add it to already boiling water or dump it in cold water and bring it to a boil?  How long should it boil?  Obviously, my inexperience as a foodie is quite the hindrance.  I can make spaghetti and hard boiled eggs and breaded chicken breasts.  After that, well, it’s all a learning experience.  My fallback solution is to figure out what’s in the can or jar or frozen package and look it up on foodnetwork.com, the foodie’s Rosetta Stone.  From there I can usually figure out how to cook whatever it is I’ve picked up.  After some more research, usually, to decipher instructions like “braise” or “parboil” or “blanch.”  Whatever happened to “fry” or “boil” or “stick in a 350⁰ oven for 30 minutes?” 

Which leads to another problem – my oven.  It’s gas, which, I understand, is a good thing.  It has to be lit by a match and then the temperature set.  But the knob doesn’t have temperature markings.  Instead, it has a small flame and a large flame.  Nothing else.  I bought an oven thermometer, in Celsius, of course, which if nothing else has strengthened my mental math skills:  “Let’s see, 200 Celcius times 1.8 is, hmmm.  And then I add 32 or do I subtract 32?”  So much of my cooking is frying.  Fried pork chops, fried eggs, fried chicken, fried everything.  Except what is boiled:  oatmeal, eggs, spaghetti, and frozen ravioli.  As you can imagine, it does make for some gastronomical adventure if not courage to accept an invitation to eat at my place. 

So while I do shop at the big box stores, nothing compares to the adventure and joy of shopping on the economy, especially at this time of year.  The traditional Christmas and New Year meals here are turkey and suckling pig, so numerous stalls have popped up selling both live and dressed turkeys and pigs.

You simply pick the one you like and wait while it’s butchered and dressed or you can pick one all ready for the oven.  Same with the fish:  pick the one you like, tell the man how you want it, and boom!  It’s done.  Sort of like street theater, if you’re idea of street theater is Benihana’s. 

Or you can pick a nice pork roast or rack of ribs from the Pig Man.  He’s set up a nice little road side stand right outside the National Defense Academy where he peddles his pork.  (That almost sounded inappropriate – peddles his pork.)  Fortunately, the meat is now kept fresh by the natural refrigeration of the weather.  I’ve seen pork like this hanging all day in the summer heat; caveat emptor, I guess. 

 

 I like the marketplaces best of all.  The fruits and veggies are displayed beautifully, are dirt cheap, and are remarkably fresh.  I do wonder, however, how they’re getting fresh bananas and pineapples in Georgia. 

You can buy ANYTHING in these markets.  If you’re a big coffee drinker, you can buy coffee beans in bulk – 50 kilograms (110 lbs.) worth of bulk.  I’ve also bought spices here in bulk.  Too much bulk, actually.  Do you know how much spice those small containers in the grocery store contain?  One ounce, usually; that’s almost 30 grams.  The prices of the spices are listed per 100 grams.  So, it made sense to me to buy 100 grams each of my favorite spices – cinnamon, cardamom, oregano, tarragon, thyme, and paprika.  Do you know how much 100 grams of cinnamon really is??  It’s a large, large bag; that’s how much.  Anyone need to borrow any spices?  Come see me; I have quite a large supply.  And I wondered why the clerk looked at me so strangely when I said I wanted 100 grams of each.  She must have thought I was trying to corner the market.  At the very least I gave her something to talk about with the other spice merchants when I left.  Hell, I’m surprised she didn’t shut the stall and go home – I definitely helped make her quota that day.  Of course, I won’t be buying any more spices the whole time I’m here so maybe I’m not so dumb after all.

My all-time favorite places to shop, however, are the markets on the corners outside of my apartment building.  They usually have a large variety of fruits and vegetables and always seem happy to see me.  This is actually kind of surprising considering my usual purchase is something like two potatoes and an onion or a small bunch of carrots and one broccoli tree.  Or, if I’m really hungry, a small bag of beans (not magic beans, unfortunately; and by the way, beans are not a fruit, magical or otherwise), two apples, a small hand of bananas (yes, a bunch of bananas is called a “hand” of bananas.  I strive to educate as well as entertain.), and a cantaloupe.  I’ve learned not to pick things myself, though.  I picked up an onion the other day just to have the woman who runs the market actually slap my hand until I dropped the onion.  She then picked one she thought better and handed me that one.  So now I point at what I want and show her with my hands how many I want – either by showing her fingers or by holding my hands out like I’m talking about a fish I’d just caught:  hands close together for a small bunch of grapes or wide apart for a big bag of walnuts.  I’m sure she thinks I’m a few feathers short of a whole duck, so I think she feels sorry for me.  I’m sure she wonders how I’m actually cooking her produce without burning down the whole apartment building.  (“All foam, no beer,” I can hear her thinking as I walk away.)

She also thinks my foodie IQ is lower than the temperature.  She points to produce that I’ve never seen before and have no idea how to prepare or eat it.  Pomegranate, for example.  How the hell do you fix pomegranate?  And what do you do with all the seeds?  Does it get peeled or eaten like an apple?  She points out to me these items and laughs when I look puzzled.  (Maybe she doesn’t like me that much after all; I could just be her only source of amusement.  A walking circus, perhaps, albeit one a few clowns short.)  So we’ve both learned to stick with the basics – potatoes, green beans, onions, tomatoes, apples, bananas, and grapes.

Then it’s inside for staples.  These corner markets are like American convenience stores – just the basics.  My local market is very small with one aisle through the center.

 

Here’s where I buy milk, bread, eggs, and beer – the four food groups.  Just the other day, though, while walking down the center aisle (which is only wide enough for one person; when someone else wants something at the end of the aisle, she either has to wait for me to get out of her way, push me aside – the most likely course of action – or do an end run around the store’s walls.) I did a classic TV double take – they had Ripples potato chips!  Real, honest-to-God Ripples.  Not Russian knock offs, not soggy potato crisps (whatever the hell those are), not even locally made Pringles wannabes.  No, actual Ripples.  Fortunately, I’m still allowed in the store despite my doing the happy dance in the center aisle, holding the Ripples over my head like a trophy, emitting primal screams of victory and joy, and stripping the shelf of every single bag. 

Maybe that’s why I enjoy food shopping; it is, in itself, a type of adventure.  Finding what you’re looking for, or finding something you didn’t even know you were looking for, takes away some of the frustration of not being able to tool down to the local Acme and filling your cart with familiar items.  So that’s my New Year’s resolution:  trying to take each event, even one as mundane as food shopping, as an adventure.  Let the fun begin.

Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year!