Aijvar the Magnificent!

Hello friends! We have now started our second week in Negotino and our language class and all is well.Thought I'd catch you up on what our weekend looked like!

I must admit that both Saturday and Sunday we slept in a bit...a rare treat and much needed. But our days were busy and fun..lots of homework, some room cleaning, Allan made ruchek on Saturday for the family, which simply means he made lunch....and while it was delicious it was not received all that enthusiastically, because he is a man and and a man does not not not belong in a kitchen even to bring in a dirty dish! Since Allan thinks this is a fine thing I'm thinking it may be hard to break him of this bad idea!

The highlight of our days were the two na gostis we enjoyed. And what, you may ask, is a na gosti? In simple American terms it's a social gathering, and an extremely important part of Macedonian culture. This is a people who want to feed you and give you gallons of coffee....one tiny cup at a time! Our first na gosti was at the home of one of the volunteers in our group and involved lots of drink, chips, bread and aijvar. Our second na gosti was spontaneous..We were walking with our host mom and went by a friend's home...and once again were treated to drink, chips, bread and aijvar....

Which brings us to the star of today's blog..aijvar!!  Take like a zillion red peppers....roast them over a wood fire in your driveway area, peel, put them in a huge cast iron kettle, add a little salt and a little oil, maybe an eggplant and voila, stir over the wood fire for an hour and a half, pop into used mayonnaise jars and enjoy until the next year! Everybody makes this stuff and you have no idea how amazing entire neighborhoods smell as you walk around. This is an extended family event and one that will be sorely missed by us when we are no longer here in Macedonia. And you eat aijvar several times each day...breakfast (poyadok), lunch (ruchek) and dinner (vechera), and if there's any hungry time in between its your go to snack!

All hail Aijvar the Magnificent! Love hearing from you all and priatno!