Pure Vegetarian

Recently a friend was leaving Azerbaijan for good, heading back to New York after a year of doing important work here, and we threw him a little going away party. As one of his parting gifts we gave him a traditional Azerbaijani hat, which I am modeling in this photo.

I am still finding myself a little challenged in the food department, particularly when going out with Azerbaijani friends - as one may imagine, almost ALL food revolves around meat here. One Sunday night I was at an Azeri restaurant and we ordered grilled vegetables for me (while meat was aplenty for my friends) and I semi-happily ate my grilled pepper, and had some yummy grilled eggplant skin but left most of the rest of the eggplant on my plate. I gave the other half of the eggplant to one of my friends who kindly pointed out (nearly too late for me!) that the grilled eggplant had been STUFFED WITH SHEEP FAT THE SAME COLOR AS THE INSIDE OF THE EGGPLANT! Needless to say I was more than a little queasy at the thought of what I had accidentally consumed that night.

But this has been a fun week. The excitement over the World Cup games is enormous, and pubs are packed with internationals for games starting at 8 pm and then second games air at midnight - it is easy to get into the spirit of this major worldwide event, despite the U.S.'s tragic loss to Ghana.