TLG Blog 1

So I was accepted to write for the official TLG blog. I suppose even their internet is so bored that they are looking for more words to fill the insurmountable void. I figured I might as well do my part, and figured I'd throw them on here, although they are bound to not be as interesting because we have to follow prompts and the government of Georgia (supposedly) has a strong editorial hand. Enjoy

 

Tom Sheridan 23 September 2012

Georgia: Love, Live, and Chame

If you have not already heard, you will. It will be the main talking point for most of orientation training, and then will be proven over and over again when you arrive to your host family: Georgians are hospitable. Hospitable bordering on aggressive. The ‘freshman fifteen’ that everyone warns you about when you set off for college is a paltry physical undertaking to the amount of food that will be put before you at each meal, at every supra, and at random times in between feedings if your bebia finds you sitting and your hand or mouth is not occupied. Food is nearly as constant as oxygen, which is just as well, as most of the food offered by this country is delicious. “Chame” (EAT!) is one of the Georgian words that you will remember forever.

Georgia was not a land built for Dr. Atkins or the lactose intolerant, so prepare yourself for constant loaves of bread and endless amounts of cheese, much of which is made from the curds of fresh squeezed milk in the backyard. Fair warning, the cheese is often very salty. Highly addictive, but it can take some getting used to during your first few helpings. Much of the food offered to you, especially if you are placed in a village, is homemade, from the chickens and cows your host mom will slaughter, to the fruits and vegetables that are pulled right off the vine or out of a tree. Here is a small sampling of foods you will undoubtedly see in the beginning of your Georgian experience:

khatchapuri: On the surface, this sounds like a simple dish you could get anywhere in America: bread smothered with cheese and then baked. However, this is no late night Domino’s offering. There are three types; Adjaran, where the bread is formed into a boat with a pool of cheese sloshed into the middle, pulled together by an egg cracked on top. Simply rip the boat apart and dip, and the taste will distract you from the molten dairy product dripping all over your fingers and clothes. Magrule is a much more compact dish, the cheese baked in between two layers of bread, baked, and cut into slices like a pizza pie.

Kinkali: Another national dish of Georgia. This is a handmade dumpling formed into something resembling a giant, pasty Hershey’s Kiss, and then stuffed with a ball of ground beef and seasoning, and ounces of hot and delicious broth ready to bust through on your first bite. Typically, the plate of Kinkali comes with a pepper shaker to season to your personal liking, and I highly recommend going heavy.

Tsvadi: The Georgian version of baby back ribs, unfortunately minus the BBQ sauce. This dish comes in two offerings, pig and cow, and is served with slices of raw onion. The first time I had this dish was at some tiny roadside stand in the mountains leaving Tbilisi after orientation. The grill was a long, slim construction where logs were lit on fire on one end, and then the coals were scraped to the opposite side and skewers of meat (kabob-style) were laid across to sear.

The hardest thing for me to adjust to has been the coffee. There are two options for coffee, either Turkish or instant. The instant coffee is awful, not because the Georgian’s don’t make it as well as Americans, only because it is instant coffee, which shouldn’t even count, regardless of the country. The Turkish coffee is a bit like an espresso, hand ground coffee beans put into water and boiled, so that the last few sips of the chewy consistency of your mouth filling with spent grounds. The first cup is a bit weird, but you refine your technique for drinking it quite soon. If your family harvests hazelnuts in the beginning of the year, it adds quite the aromatic bump to your morning joe to take a nut, break it open, and toss it into the hand grinder with the coffee beans. The small shavings of hazelnut do not dissolve as nicely as the ground coffee, but steeped in the boiling water long enough will draw out enough scent and flavor that you might think you’re sitting in a café back home.

There are many more options for furthering your culinary experience as you continue to travel. If you take a trip to a big city, be sure to find a roadside stand where you can purchase shaurma, a gyro-style , pita pocket, handheld delicacy that is more than worth the 4 or 5 Lari that you will pay. Chile peppers are optional, but certainly complete the meal. There was one dish that my host parents ordered for me while in Kutaisi that was simply a 10x5x2 brick of solid, salty cheesed, baked in milk and covered in a pesto-ish thing. I don’t want to say that it is bad, but if a lump of cheese is the main entrée, you are bound to fill up quick as your blood slows to a faint trickle working its way through your arteries. For those who are truly adventurous, there is a pirate ship restaurant on the Black Sea in Batumi that will serve you cow brains. They were, in a word, squishy.