It's Ajvar Season, Baby

I woke up this morning craving Jolly Ranchers. And I don't even particularly like Jolly Ranchers. I had to settle for some iced tea though because that was the closest thing I had to it sitting around in my room. Believe it or not, it was pretty satisfying.

I don't know what Jolly Ranchers have to do with anything else that I'm gonna write about, but they have somehow managed to find their way into the first two paragraphs. Unbelievable. This paragraph was supposed to be all about the cute new kittens that Boni had, but the Jolly Ranchers are completely taking over. Which makes me wonder, how would a cat react to eating a Jolly Rancher? This thought of course led me to YouTube where I watched three very real videos. From these videos I have come to the conclusion that cats love Jolly Ranchers.

Boni's kittens have now been pushed down to paragraph three, but I promise they will not be neglected any longer. The tale begins on Friday night. I was sitting in the living room with my backpack on the floor by my feet. Boni seemed to be very exploratory that night. There had been a documentary about 15th century explorers on The History Channel earlier so I thought that is what had gotten her in the mood, but that wasn't the case. Eventually Boni was drawn to the backpack and climbed inside. I couldn't stop laughing at how ridiculous she looked but my host dad got her out of there pretty quick because he was pretty sure that she was looking for a place to give birth. And whad'ya know? The next morning I woke up to the news that Boni had five kittens. It looks like that sly cat got his paws on her after all.

The tired mama with her 2 remaining babies

I know this is a bad picture, but just look at how small that thing is

And here's that picture I promised you last time of my cat and I cuddling. I bet you thought I forgot about that, huh? And I bet you forgot about that too, didn't you?

I'm sure that at this point, the Macedonian word of the blog is very predictable, so I bet you could guess what it is. And, no, it's not gonna be Jolly Rancher, but just in case you're interested, Google Translate says it's весела ранчо (vesela rancho). The actual words (yep, there's more than one) are:

мачка (machka) - cat

&

маченце (machentse) - kitten

Use those words wisely.

Let me tell you a li'l' bit about this ajvar (i-var - a sweet pepper spread) stuff that's mentioned in the title. This stuff is like crack only it's legal. Every year around this time people start gathering as many peppers as they can from their gardens, the local пазар (pazar - outdoor market), or they even resort to stealing peppers from their dear friends and neighbors (see, I told you it was like crack). After they finagle as many peppers as they can, all of the women within earshot are assembled and they get to work.

The first thing that needs to be done is having all of the bugs and dirt washed off of the peppers because, well, nobody wants to eat that shtuff (ooh, I almost said a bad word). Now comes the time where you get to play with fire or an oven if you're spoiled. The peppers need to be roasted so that the skin can be peeled off (much like the tradition of flaying among the ancient Assyrians and Aztecs or pretty much everybody during the Middle Ages. I assume this is much less painless for the peppers though). After being roasted, the peppers are put in a pot to steam for a while to make the peeling easier. Along with the flaying, the peppers are also deseeded (I'm not even gonna go there). This is supposedly the hardest and most tiring part of the whole process because it takes a certain level of finesse. Maybe if I can manage to crash one of these ajvar making parties one day I'll be able to find out what all of the fuss is about.

The next part sounds pretty awesome. You get to beat the shnot (caught myself again) out of the peppers to grind them up. You probably shouldn't go all Floyd Mayweather on them though (by the way, congrats on the win yesterday...47-0). After they are nice and, um, ground, the next phase is to move the peppers to a pot on some sort of stove type location depending on what's available so that the peppers can cook for about the length of a soccer match. I know what you're thinking. That it sounds like just the perfect length, right? The only issue is that this pepper mash needs to be stirred the whole time it's on there cooking so that nothing sticks to the pan. So don't scurry off to the couch and pop open a beer just yet.

Once the pepper mix starts to separate, you're ready to move on to the next step which is adding the oil. You continue stirring until the oil and the peppers become one. Oil is a pretty common ingredient here. The oil of choice is sunflower oil. Other types are available but pricier, and why hurt your wallet when you can hurt health?

From this point, you can call it good and throw the ajvar into jars so that you can enjoy it throughout the winter (if you can resist eating it at every meal). Or if you'd like, you can throw in other ingredients like salt, vinegar, garlic, parsley, Oreos, etc. (OK, so maybe nobody has ever put Oreos in their ajvar (I think that's mostly because they just aren't available here), but I think it's gonna catch on. Just give the people some time to get used to the idea).

The next step is eating the ajvar of course. It's mainly eaten as a spread on bread with some cheese (think feta). It makes a great breakfast or midnight snack.

On a disappointing note, the English word that my host mom knows is...drum roll please...ajvar. Nah, I'm just playin'. That wouldn't be cool of me to withhold you all from a real English word. But as far as I know ajvar is the same in Macedonian and English so if you want to get technical then you could put that on the list. And I bet most of you didn't know that word until now. This lady doesn't even speak English and she knows words that you don't. Embarrassing. The actual English word that my host mom knows is:

joking

Now I never thought it was important to learn this word in Macedonian and I'm still not sure that it is because I just assume everyone knows that everything I say is a joke. I'm probably serious about 3% of the time, and that is almost exclusively when I'm talking to animals. And let's face it, nobody is gonna take a person serious if they catch them having a heated debate about Kantian ethics with their livestock. Especially since the animal probably doesn't even understand English. So I figure even if I wanted to be, I wouldn't be taken seriously the rest of the time.

This on the other hand is not a joke. It is something that should be regarded and looked into with the utmost seriousness. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure my entire family is conspiring to make me learn Macedonian. They are always using words that I don't know. Now I know that happens to all the volunteers here, but this is a little bit different. Let me explain. In this scheme run by the whole family (including the grandma who lives in the house next door), they start using a word that I don't know all of the time, and this will go on for a week or two and then it kinda just drops out of use. I'm convinced that once they figure out that I know the new word, they have a family meeting and choose a new word to pound into my brain. Last week the word was напорно (naporno - difficult), but it seems now as if they're moving on to веднаш (vednash - immediately). I'll keep you updated on how this plays out.

I think at this point I've written enough for one post. That was until I just found out this exciting piece of information. My host mom is making donuts! OK, now I'm done.

Stay classy world.