Hey Mom,
This week nothing really happened other than the elders' investigator Veli being baptized.
Don't know if you remember me telling you about the German family who was at church over the summer, but the grandma who is native to Macedonia came back this week and took all of the missionaries out to lunch. We went to a traditional Macedonian restaurant and spent what would be a pretty penny if we ate that much in America, but here I think only amounted to about $40 total. It was so nice of her. Since nothing exciting has happened lately maybe I'll tell you some more about Macedonian food.
So there's something called a Shopska salad which is just raw onion, cucumber and tomato cut up with a bunch of shredded feta cheese and several whole olives over it. Sometimes it comes with olive oil and salt. The first time I tried it I ate it because I hadn't known what I was ordering, but now I love it. Minus the olives. Gross.
Plain bread is served pretty much at every meal. I feel like rice is to Japan what simple white bread is to Macedonia. Some people eat a piece of bread from a bakery with plain white yogurt for breakfast.
Tavche gravche is a small casserole dish of beans cooked with cheese. It's pretty delicious. Elder Prince plans on finding out how to make it and when he does I want him to teach me and bring some of the beans back to America so I can make it for you.
Stuffed peppers are another traditional food. They are so, so good and usually stuffed with rice and ground meat. Not to be confused with the regular skinny green peppers that people roast and add to anything to give it spice. I have only ever seen them here, but maybe they exist in the states too and I'm just oblivious.
Once when we were over teaching the Asan family they gave us a drink called Ayran. She was telling us how healthy it is. It's basically thick, salty milk. Sister Schofield bribed Elder Barber with three scoops of ice cream to get him to drink hers for her when she was in the other room.
In the bakeries, burek is pretty popular. It's flaky bread with either cheese, meat, spinach or a combination in the middle.
As far as pastries go, they look pretty decadent but are usually mild in taste. The cake is dry and usually has some type of mousse or fruit filling to give it moisture. I like to get apple strudel or this filled doughnut-type bread when I eat at a bakery. They have pretty good tres leches cake here, but seem to think it's Italian when we all know it's from South America. Right? When we went to visit Suat in his sweets shop one day, he gave us something made from just eggs, milk and sugar. I ate it for both myself and Sister Schofield because she thought it was gross. It did taste like eggs. But then she also thinks I'm weird when I put syrup on my eggs in the morning.
You know what baclava is, right? Pastry dough with honey and nuts. Different varieties and flavors. There are shops all over, usually they sell baclava in little 25 denar pieces, so you can get however much you want. I love it.
Macedonians love their large hunks of well-seasoned, greasy meat.
Usually when you get a fast food burger here, they stuff the fries between the meat and the bun. The ketchup and mayonnaise here is weird.
There's doners, which are Turkish, and gyros, which are Greek, but they're essentially the same thing.
Pizza here is always flimsy crust and usually you have to squirt the tomato sauce on top. It's more common here to put eggs on pizza than in America.
There's a few different types of cheeses here that I've only experienced here.
Lamb, goat, cabbage, liver, and intestine are more common in Macedonia. Lamb is good if it's cooked right.
Pancakes are eaten for dessert.
Carbonated water. One of my first weeks here I made the comment, after choking some down in a member's home to be polite, that I would never, ever voluntarily drink it. It's not just fizzy but bitter and salty. Sometimes now I buy it of my own free will.
Food overall is more plain.
When you go into someone's house, they always offer you either something to eat or drink and it's rude not to take it.
People spend hours talking in restaurants or cafes, so the waiters never come over to ask if you need something. In cafes where only drinks are sold, they're overpriced because they figure you'll be spending a long time there using the table.
There's your Macedonian food culture lesson for today! Hope that covers all the bases. I'm gonna bear my testimony for you in Macedonian, not because you can read it or even pronounce it, but because it's pretty to look at.
Знам дека оваа црква е вистина и дека Џозеф Смит беше пророк. Бог е нашиот отец и ги слуша нашите молитви, и може да контактира со нас преку светите писма и светиот дух. Бог не сака. Во името на Исус Христос, амин.
I know that this church is true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet. God is our Father and hears our prayers, and can communicate to us through the holy scriptures and the Holy Ghost. God loves us. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Love,
Sister Riddle
