Consumables in Tashkent are generally in short supply and people eat whatever is fresh and in season. Spinach is only available in spring and early summer, tomatoes are rare in cold winter months so I make great winter salads by grating radishes and carrots with a light vinaigrette dressing. Living in Uzbekistan is like going back in time to a place where foods are never frozen and chickens and other animals are freshly slaughtered and sold from hooks in open air bazaars.
For anyone knowing the joys of a summer harvest, Uzbekistan -- known as the ‘bread basket’ of the former Soviet Union -- harvests it all: the sweetest melons and grapes plus the very best mountain berries; the most luscious tomatoes, peaches, nectarines, persimmons and plums. The spring air in Tashkent is fresh and clean, drenched with the aroma of flowering fruit trees, herbs and hay eaten by barn animals who live in neighborhood barns. Our morning wake-up calls come from roosters but also from a donkey housed in a nearby shed.
Living here has raised my consciousness and awareness to different levels. People have to manage and survive with the supplies acquired through resourceful thinking. It comes automatically to them. I am learning. Many times primary items such as milk, sugar and protein are hard to come by. In my necessary inventiveness, I've learned how to prepare things like salsa, catsup and hummus from scratch. I discovered how to pickle small cucumbers, olives and onions. We've learned to incorporate dried fruits and nuts, lavishly available at the bazaars. I became creative with canned beans and canned spinach we had brought from the U.S.
For us, this is a new take on life. Convenience foods are non-existent here and sometimes the two big supermarkets run out of the few things they do carry and it may take weeks to get new supplies -usually from Turkey or Germany as both those countries' airlines have daily or weekly flights into Tashkent.
We are lucky that our embassy has a small commissary bringing some consumables twice a month. We can always get chocolate chips, canned soups and tuna fish and certainly canned tomatoes, and some paper products.
I have found that it's important to take a shopping bag in my purse because in my daily walks or drives I may see an item I may need in the future, and I know to buy it NOW as it may not be there tomorrow. It will NOT be there tomorrow.
We've learned to live in the present because we cannot pop over to Walmart or Safeway for readily available items, we have to rely on our own inventiveness to acquire food and other products whenever we can find them -the thing is we never know when that'll be!
Farmers however, stock bazaars with potatoes, cabbages and onions in the wintertime. Honey, cheeses and yogurts are brought in daily by sturdy farming Uzbek babushkas; all that is always available, although it's not pasteurized. We started by trying the offered samples and buying small amounts, if after a day or two we don't get sick, we'll keep coming back to the same seller again and again.
In a way, I love this simplicity of doing things. It certainly is a challenge!
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