Tonight, at a church celebration we had what was for me an almost indelible meal. Usually there are things I like or will eat even if there are some I can't. But tonight it was almost a pass up. There were whole raw salad vegetables consisting of spring onions, parsley and radishes (no dressing). Then boiled pieces of lamb, bread rolls, and some raw pickled veges (mostly cabbage).
I had a bread roll that I dipped in the boiled meat liquid, and a few tiny bits of pickle veg. Luckily I wasn't hungry so I had a legit excuse.
There's nothing like plain boiled meat to make me feel uneasy.
But I found out the reason why they eat it this way - because back in the days in Iraq it was hardly ever fresh:
In the mountains where they lived they would dry the meat for storage. Then all they had to do was whip it into the pot, add water, maybe some vegetables or even put it just with rice, or bulgur wheat - and ta da! Reconstituted.
It still makes me feel ick, but at least now I know why they do this. And the reason why when people ask me if their food is awesome and I can't say absolutely 'yes'.
I also heard more things - that they would store grains in whole cow skins, sewn up and tied at the feet. They left the neck open and this was where you could scoop grain from.
That someone would take the wheat to another village where they had a water mill to grind it. That the summers were busy gathering and drying everything for winter. That they would dry grapevine leaves to make dolma, strung up in a round and hung to dry in the shade.
It sounds kind of lovely in a way. Would I have liked that life? I don't know.
I find this very interesting-so much of life is eating- i have been thinking about that recently-but because we have grown up in this era of totally accessible and instant food that we don't have to think about how it got to our plate it is easy to forget.I was watching a doco on Maori channel last night about "daughters of the pacific"-and they had a scene of the mum showing her little boy a raw mussel-I don't like mussels at all but nor did my mum introduce it to me as a delicious choice when I was two......No wonder food is so emotionally and culturally laden.
ReplyDeleteYeah, interesting to hear that too.. I seem to be going through this thing where I'm wanting continuity or history or some kind of connection to origins and food is part of that. Am reading this book "The Delusion of Progress" and how we have become increasingly disconnected from nature. And the Assyrians are the opposite of that, particularly in their homeland. And the US is the opposite of that - seems like one thing e US excels in is junk food - the variety and how well they do it. Kind of like the US is the epitome of what is manufactured (and therefore removed form nature).
ReplyDeleteHow do you see the Assyrians are able to stay connected to nature?-how does that manifest?
ReplyDeleteWell I think through food. Historically the villagers had to be pretty much self sufficient because they lived in the mountains and didn't have cars or much technology. So they grew everything - rice, honey, sheep and cows milk for yoghurt, butter and cheese, wheat which they ground for flour in a water mill. Now they have cars, and it's no big deal to buy stuff, but they still milk their sheep and cows and make yoghurt and have bees and fruit trees.
ReplyDeleteI think... Though I could be wrong... That Saddam kind of kept the West out, and that meant it couldn't industrialize to the same extent. They don't have any chain restaurants - no McDonalds - they don't even have ATMs, or online banking. Hardly anyone has a bank account. It's not a capitalist system so they don't require the same amount of consumerism. It's only since 2003 that they've had Tv channels other than nationalistic Iraqi channels.
ReplyDeleteBut going back to the food thing, I was thinking of Ninos' mum who goes out to a hidden spot on the beach in Wgtn and bakes a kind of flatbread over a driftwood fire -.it dries crisp and it lasts for a month, she wraps it in a damp cloth so it becomes moist again to eat. And once a year she makes this cheese which she buries in the earth in an upside down preserving jar, that matures in 3 mths and then she digs it up again. So that kind of thing...
ReplyDeleteDoes that sound like a connection to the earth, or am I talking through a hole in my head? :)
ReplyDeleteOh yeah that does and totally ties in with what I have been thinking about the whole thing of eating lately and how if you can not grow/produce yr own food then you loss this major thing of being able to look after yrself and being in touch with the time it actually takes to grow and produce that food and the pace of nature etc
ReplyDeleteYeah you are right. I am hopeless about growing vegetables, and I have heaps of negative stuff about family and all that - mum preserving fruit. But the other day I helped the Assyrian lady make kubbe, kind of oyster shaped things with a wheat grain outer and savory inside, and it felt so nice doing it with her
ReplyDeleteI guess the Assyrians make it have a romance for me, and they often do things as a group, and it's tied to history.
ReplyDeleteThere is this girl I worked with who bought some land with her partner and are starting up organic farming in the Wairarapa, and she said I could stay there after I got back and work on it, kind of like a deal rent-wise. That appeals, so it's not me in charge.
ReplyDeleteSo it's like I like the concept but it's hard for me to put it into practice. Do you grow veges?
ReplyDelete