Gnocchi

Tonight, under the instruction of my dear friend Dion, I, for the first time, made a sort of Gnocchi.

I've been led to believe that it's an Italian dish.

We made it as such: simmered down spinach, xacho (a sort of fresh cheese like cottage cheese) and flour. Normally it's made with potatoes, but we experimented. you mix all these together and then roll it out into about a dime size snake and then pinch off 1 inch pieces. have water boiling and drop them in, when they are ready, they'll float to the top. with this recipe, we had to boil them a bit longer, about an extra minute or two.

For a sauce, we made a fairly simple walnut blue cheese sauce. It was toasted walnuts, smashed. onions, sour cream and blue cheese.

Very tasty and simple, just time consuming to roll out the dough.

The Journey.

In the past few months i have not kept you all updated. sorry.

So, I went to Lithuania. I ate loads of wonderful food and quaffed a massive amount of tasty beers and liquors.

Some of which were: Cepelinai, which are large potato dumplings with meat inside and are shaped like, Zeppelins! Several variances of herring, one of the most interesting ones was herring marinated in onions and cinnamon. Also herring salad. Some tasty whole salmon, lots of potatoes, gretchka (buckwheat), and one of my new favorite sauces, which is bacon, onions and sour cream.

On the beer front: Utenos, the dark one of which is awesome. Svyturis, the pilsner and white varieties are definitely of note, and Shnekutis bar, which has a giant variety of wonderful beers from Lithuania.

Of the liquors, 999. this comes in a couple different flavors and all of them are superb. I was told the vodka is good too, but either I was already too foggy to remember drinking it or I just missed out.

After spending a couple of weeks there in Lithuania, my girlfriend Inga and I set out hitchhiking across eastern Europe in the dead of winter.

Shockingly, this wasn't a tenth as bad as I thought it would be. After we got past Warsaw, there wasn't much snow to speak of and it was actually almost warm in most places.

We had a fairly comfortable journey and made it back to Tbilisi in 15 days. And this was with spending 2 nights in Warsaw, 2 nights in Brno and 3 nights in Istanbul. Mostly, we got rides pretty quickly in most places, the worst places being at borders.

So, in a nutshell, thats what I did for christmas. everything since then has just been the normal Georgia crap. Teaching english, scraping by and eating and drinking as many good things as possible.

Until next time,

Andrew

christmas

I am going to Lithuania for christmas.
There are 2 reasons for me doing this,
1. most importantly, to see my girlfriend.
2. to eat.
I plan on eating as much wonderful food there as possible. It sounds like most of it is meat and potatoes and other starchy foods so this means i should be in heaven.
Lots of pork. Lots of caraway. Lots of rye bread. Lots of root vegetables. Hell yes!
The weird part of all this is though, We're hitchhiking back from Lithuania to Georgia.
This means, traveling through: Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey!
Which also means: EVEN MORE GREAT FOOD! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!
Anyways, I will leave you with this link.
http://ausis.gf.vu.lt/eka/food/fcont.html

Shuarma Stalls

Near where i live on marjanishvili, there are many shuarma stalls.
Many of them are pretty good, the one near the metro is decent, the one that looks like a diner is very good and there are a couple of others as weell.
But, the best one i have found thus far, has just opened about 50 meters past the populi on marjanishvili.
For 3 lari, you can get a super tasty, good sized shuarma.
The meat they use is really good, all the vegetables are fresh, the cilantro(coriander) mix they have is delicious, and the guys who run it are super friendly and cool.
If you're in the area and hankering for a shuarma, you should defiantly stop in there and get one!
I've only ever had the 3 lari offering but that have several different prices from 3 to 12 lari.


If anyone knows of other good places, let me know!

Living in Tbilisi

As of the past couple of weeks, i have been living in Tbilisi.
I got a job teaching english privately to several people here in the city a few weeks ago and it's proving to be very challenging and interesting.
sometimes it's fun. and i really like most of my students so far.

I am living on a very nice street near the center of the city with my friends Ian, Dion and Humfrey in a nice little apartment with a crazy cat, Tatebi.

So... yeah. thats about all. I'll write more later and go more into depth about certain things around the city and other happenings.

needing ideas

Hello everyone.
I need ideas for stuff to make (that takes into consideration that i live in a tiny town in georgia), i haven't been able to think of anything great lately. I have made some interesting turkish eggplant dishes and brownies but thats about as crazy as i have gotten.
I think i'm gonna try out making cornbread and chili soon as it's getting colder. we'll see how THAT turns out.

new restaurant

there is a new restaurant in signagi.
it's right near the restored part of the wall around the city. it has wonderful views and quite good food.
all the seating is in these cute little stick/wicker huts. i'm wondering how long they'll last though.
the khinkhali's were average but the mtsvadi was nice and the the fries were almost perfect.
the jonjoli and khachapuri were nice also.

i haven't cooked anything fun lately. too lazy/bored with ingredient choice.
i guess J and I made a bunch of chicken mtsvadi that was really good and some potatoes on the fire as well.
the electric and gas have both been super patchy lately so it's been difficult to plan ahead for anything.
merg.