Fairy Barf or Else

So one of the ideas left was to get a picture of what our bazaar is like. Every week (usually), we as a team take the wonderful waz to the bazaar in order to load up on food items for the week. Because Matt and I live on a public transit route, we sometimes make other trips for a few small items at other times also, but for the most part, our shopping gets done on one day. Hence calling that day of the week "Bazaar Day."

We can find all kinds of wares, though not always the same ones from week to week. There is an entire hardware section, but we didn't visit that section the week we were taking pictures for you. A good portion of the shopping is done outside, but there are 2 large indoor areas where vendors set up. We were very excited during this week of picture-taking to find tomatoes (didn't think we would see them up there until spring), which cost about $2/lb. We knew this was high compared to summer months or warmer places (the capital has them currently for about 75 cents/lb), but it was totally worth it. I enjoyed tomato sandwiches and we made plenty of salsa as well. (Salsa = happy Matt = happy Cindy)

This is where you can find several versions of several things. You can see some of the vegetables. There is also homemade butter and sour cream, bread, and non-perishables like margarine and grains.

Our spice lady friend is set up here. All of the spices are in Russian, so I've gotten fairly adept at recognizing pictures once they were explained. 

More indoor shopping.

The outdoor hustle-and-bustle of people. This is the typical crowd size. Pretty much all shopping is done in the morning and the bazaar shuts down starting at lunch time.

Seller from a nearby country selling sheepskin vests. And yes, Matt did buy one of them for our supervisor for Christmas.

Welcome to your home goods section...on the ground. This is where I found a cutting board and rolling pin (we're still looking for a better rolling pin, but this will do for now).

Seriously?!?! Could the options for dish soap get any better? I submit that they could not! (And for your language learning, barf means snow here. Yep, go ahead and have fun using that where you live.)

This day we also decided to try something new. Before we came, we were told that a meat grinding attachment for our KitchenAid would be really helpful. But since being here, we pretty much only heard that buying beef in our town was not something that was really done. Being the brave (okay, maybe unwise) people that we are, we decided to try the meat-buying thing so that chicken and hot dogs weren't the only meats we ate.

Welcome to a local butcher's shop. Matt kind of got some dirty looks for taking pictures here, so we didn't get any better ones. But look at that meat! He asked for a piece without bones and fat, and got a chunk that pretty well met that criteria.

At home we tried to figure out what to do next. Matt is cutting it up small and getting rid of the nastier-looking parts.

Nothing appealing about this

Nothing

Gross! It looks much better when it is pre-packaged. Yuck!

We set aside a few "steaks" for supper that night (since frozen green beans were a surprise at the bazaar that day). Matt's was palatable. Mine, well...

So after that experience, we may be doing it once a month tops. The flavor wasn't all that great, but it was nice to have a little change in the diet.