December 30, 2008 by Karin.

On the drive to our hosts in the Mongol Els, our guide asked us if we wanted to eat sheep or goat for our barbeque dinner.

“Goat!”

I suspected no one actively wanted to eat goat but after days of mutton, we were ready for a second option.

“Can we eat a baby?” Juno asked. (On the construction site, he had been running after baby goats for fun, catching them by their baby horns and threatening to eat them.)

Our guide finished conversing with the hosts on her cell phone and said, “no, we never eat the babies.” It’s probably considered wasteful to cut short a lifetime of wool supply.

By the time we arrived at our host’s cosy ger, our dinner was already in preparation. In this picture, you can see pieces of goat chopped up atop a cupboard.

For the barbeque, our host filled a big pot with heated stones, goat meat, carrots, and potatoes. The pot was covered with a lid held down by a random piece of metal. Then it cooked over the campfire for about forty five minutes.

We all ate together in the main ger: the Habitat group, guides, drivers, and the host family. The Mongolians passed around a bowl of the fermented mare’s milk but understood travelers enough to not bother offering us a sip. They also passed around toothpicks but I was sad to not receive one of those because it really is an essential utensil when dining on tough goat meat.

The best part of the dinner was the singing. We asked if they had a Happy Birthday song (in honor of Wei’s birthday) and they said no, but they would sing a song in honor of his mother without whom, there would be no birthday for Wei. Then they sang a song about fathers for the same reason. (I’d read that most of Mongolian music is about nature so it’s pretty hard to find a song not in honor of mother earth, father sky, or indirectly, their offspring’s birthdays…) We sang them “que sera sera” led by Carol and a TGIFriday style birthday song taught to us by Cassandra.

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September 23, 2008 by Karin.

 Juno was unimpressed.

“Oh my god! I’ve had this before!” At the diner on a dusty road between Ulan Bator and Kharkhorin, I stared down at my plate of mutton stir-fry. The first time I had this dish with the family in Terelj, I was sure they put french fries in it to appease our Western palates. But there it was again: mutton stir-fried with peppers, carrots, and crinkly french fries in an orangy brown sauce.

Not to say it wasn’t good but that dish showed up again the next day for lunch at the nice restaurant/bar/karaoke joint in Kharkhorin. Then, by coincidence, for dinner at the hotel restaurant (with mash potatoes instead of crinkly fries). And returned the following day in our lunch boxes (without the fries) at the work site. We were sure the mutton was following us and we dreamt of ways to outrun it. ”How about ramen? I saw some at the supermarket. Ahh…if only we could make our own ramen.”

Though sampling the local cuisine is my favorite part of traveling, even I admitted having pizza fantasies. (Which in itself was a pretty exotic phenomenon.) Or a nice plate of spaghetti. Out there in the middle of Mongolia, it would so refreshing…such a novelty.

Juno had a little talk with the chef at our hotel restaurant and the next evening, we sat down to long-awaited plates of pasta. Ahh, the taste of home…except for ground mutton in the bolognese sauce which provided just the right amount of Mongolian exoticism.

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August 13, 2008 by Karin.

My first time sampling Mongolian cuisine was in a pastel tiled joint in the covered part of the Black Market. Gordon and I had steamed mutton dumplings and stewed mutton topped with a mysterious glossy white chunk. He had warned me about this, the highly regarded fatty sheep tail.

As a guest in many a Mongolian household, he was regularly honored with extra fat on his plate as a way of saying, “You’re our guest. Have this fat and be warm and healthy.”

Someone else had told me that vegetables are still a relatively new phenomenon in Mongolia and regarded with suspicion as a less healthy alternative to meat and dairy.We also ordered a bowl of the popular “suutei tsai,” the milk tea with salt. (a.k.a. salted milk that you keep sipping in hopes of locating a hint of tea).

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July 30, 2008 by Karin.

On my first day, I hung out with Gordon, an American from the flight. He had spent four years in Mongolia (in the countryside) and is back this time to teach English in Ulan Bator. At the Black Market (a fun name for a totally legal market that sells everything), he gave me a crash course in Mongolia culture.

 I tried airag, fermented mares milk (also referred to as “Mongolia’s champagne” or “horse vodka”) sold in old water bottles. The guy let me try some out of the giant barrel of white liquid with black bits (???) floating on top. ”Try not to let a dead flies get into your mouth” Gordon warned. At first, the salty, powerful taste was a shock but it did have nice fizz. Unlike champagne though, airag is meant to be tossed back, followed by a manly thump on the chest.

essential components of nomadic life: ger furniture and satellite dish

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