Cooking and Cleaning

Some of the things which readers have asked for are pictures of scenery, daily life, Azerbaijan people, and our work. This blog is about our daily life in our apartment. First, we are thankful for all your positive thoughts and prayers on our behalf which kept our spirits encouraged and helped in getting our apartment.
THE PICTURES: The French Press container on the window sill contains water fresh out of the tap. Needless to say water treatment is part of the blog. Linda is looking over her first load of laundry in the apartment. We are enjoying our first meal in our new home. The meal was typical American, Spaghetti, salad, cold tea and juice. When we looked outside our kitchen window on the overhang above the first floor apartment, we saw several pigeons and sparrows eating pieces of bread. I tried to get a picture of the pigeons, but they flew off when I moved the curtain to take the picture. NOTE: to our dear friend Nancy Erlich, I did speak to the pigeons and they are distant relatives of Walter from NY.
DAILY LIFE: It is amazing to me how quickly Linda has made the apartment become our home. The decorations and personal touches make it such an enjoyable environment. What 2 weeks ago was a crisis is now one of the high points of our experience so far in Azerbaijan.
The biggest challenge for us is the uncertainty of running water. We have water every other day, and today, Saturday, April 18, 2009 is a water day. We began having water a little after 7:00 a.m., and we will have the supply interrupted sometime during the day. One water day Linda was showering and the water just stopped, then resumed about 7 hours later at 9:00 p.m. We try to shower every water day, whenever the water is flowing, we try to get the task accomplished as soon as possible. Often the water stops in the morning and resumes in the early afternoon. We store water in containers for flushing and necessary washing for non-water days.
From the picture above you can see that the water is not purified out of the tap. We boil all our drinking and cooking water, then filter through a PC provided water filter. We store boiled and filtered water in plastic bottles, and refill those every water day. The boiling, filling, and storing water is a continuous process all day on water days. It is a satisfying feeling to get everything full, but then by the next afternoon we realize we will repeat the process every water day.
The water comes from the river Kur and a reservoir.
We never realized how quickly we could prepare a meal in our home in KC, but here every meal requires at least an hour of preparation and usually 2. Our first meal prepared in our home took about 2 hours. The salad is spinach, carrots, and tomatoes. The spinach replaces all our lettuce. Our Azerbaijan counterparts cannot understand eating raw spinach, but we do clean thoroughly. We have the luxury of Ranch Dressing due to packets send from the U.S. The best part of our meal was that we had cold drinks again. The Azerbaijani people believe that cold drinks are hard on the digestion and will give stomach aches. I can’t tell you what it means to have control of a refrigerator. The fridge is small and does not seal well. In the future I will include a picture.
Instant oatmeal is a great breakfast and eggs are plentiful and reasonable. The bread is not sliced and comes in round loaves of about a third of pound. We buy brown bread also, which is thickly sliced and a bit more expensive – 30 cents for about a half-pound loaf. There are no preservatives so you only buy what you can eat in a day or two.
An interesting sidelight to the common loaves of bread which are 20 cents a loaf is that they are not wrapped. They are usually hand boxed in boxes of 25 – 50 and put in the trunks of cars, uncovered, taken to markets, then left in the box or hand transferred to another smaller box, hand selected and put in a plastic sack. They are quite tasty if hot, but do not make good toast. Lots of hand transferring is the key phrase. Our idea of sanitary handling of food has had to be altered.
(For Easter we did have a canned home from the U.S., deviled eggs and mashed potatoes – a true feast.)
Most stoves are gas here. We have rarely seen any stove where more than 2 burners can be used at once. The gas pressure is so inconsistent and is inadequate for operating the gas ovens. So, most stoves that have an oven, the oven is used for storage, and a small electric oven is purchased. The electric ovens are much like large toaster ovens in the U.S. Some have thermostats, some are either off or on more like a toaster oven. Women who bake their own bread do so one loaf at a time, and cook several loaves during one session with the oven.
The laundering process is difficult work and born primarily by Linda. We do have an electric water heater, so on water days, Linda always does some laundry. From the water picture above you can see Linda works very hard scrubbing with brushes and hand washing. Solar clothes dryers are everywhere as long as the weather cooperates, that is the easiest aspect of laundry. Linda washes the clothes in a small plastic tub which she places inside our bathtub. She leans over the tub and does the washing. It is very hard on her knees and back. The Azerbaijan women work many hours on housework that would take far less time and effort in the U.S. There are washing machines in the homes of the upper middle class and above here. They are very expensive, and the capacity is very small. One of Linda’s counterparts has one of the nicest washing machines we’ve seen, and it’s capacity was about 1/3 that of an average washing machine in the U.S.
We have rugs and a decent broom. We also purchase for 1 manat a plastic tool much like a Hoagie Carpet Sweeper, but without the handle. It is about the size of a dustpan, and helps with the little things that fall on the rugs. The rugs are very old, but will give us warmth in the winter.
Dust is ever pervasive, and no matter how hard we try, it seems impossible to keep up with dusting.
Finally, we have not had any problem with flies or mosquitoes, YET. But, everyone tells us they are coming with the warm weather. We have seen the fly swatters going on sale in the Bazaar, so it must be getting close. The PC provides a mosquito net. Insect repellent is available, but if anyone has the Avon product "Hands So Soft". We know that is a great mosquito repellent as well as having a pleasant aroma. We are fighting a small battle with ants, but winning so far.
In Azerbaijan shoes are not worn inside the home. Dust is so bad that everyone has about 2 pairs of slippers or shoes. One pair is for work and on the street, one is a pair of slippers you wear only inside the home. There can also be a pair of sandals to be worn in the courtyards of homes and to the toilet if it is outdoors. If slippers are not provided inside the home, then just socks. No one wears the street shoes inside the home.
Actually life here is much like rural America in the early part of the 20th century. Many farm households worked just as hard at the everyday necessities as the people here.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the comments of the blog or email them to us. We leave out so many details of life here.