More Milk

Last month (or maybe it was even in October-- I'll have to check), I made a post about the outrageous percentages of milk in Mongolia and about how 2% milk is touted as diet milk.  Well, here are the pictures that prove it.  I can'timagine pouring 3.5 % milk on my Cheerios in the morning... ugh!

Bakeries...

in foreign countries kill me!  I mean, they all have these BEAUTIFUL cakes, and you would expect them to taste every bit as good as they look, but somehow, they never fail to disappoint.  And no, I'm really not as picky as I know I sound.  It's like bakeries in Asia don't seem to think that sugar is an important inredient in a cake.  So thy don't put any in.  And maybe they also think that butter isn't too important.  So cakes are lackin in that.  And the result i a cake that is dry and not tasty.  Disappointment.  But they sure are pretty to look at.

The Grab n Go

I've never actually eaten here, but it seems intriguing.  It seems like pretty much everything on the menu is meat, though, and I'm afraid of getting really low quality meat from places like this.  I should try it, though-- it just may surprise me.

Pizza Broadway

God, I've been in Asia for far too long.  I am now the type of person who takes photos of her food in restaurants.  A few weeks ago, I had the week off from my full-time job, so I decided to treat myself and go to a restaurant.  I'm not embarrassed to go to a restaurant alone.  This is Pizza Broadway on Peace Avenue.  I was surprised... it was pretty good!  I had the mango-something drink (it was the drink with mango and ice cream in it) and the BBQ chicken pizza, which was not at all like what BBQ chicken pizza is in Canada, but which was tasty, nonetheless.

The Butchers #2

If you read my post which immediately precedes this one, you would know about my childhood and my stance on meat-packing and butchers.  You would remember that I don't find it inhumane to slaughter animals (even though I do hardly eat any meat at all these days, but that has nothing to do with a moral dilemma), and that I kind of find it fascninating to stand amidst the butcher shops in a foreign country, even if I can't find the words to explain to them how I'm different from the standard gawping whitey tourist.

Some people might say that they think a cart full of innards and heads is gross, repulsive, revolting, sick.  But me, I find it fascinating.  Like I said in the last post, if it were a cart piled with human heads or kitten heads or puppy heads, I would be outraged and sickened and wouldn't be able to look, but these, these animals, they were bred right from the beginning for this purpose.  They never had any other purpose in life than a trip to the slaughterhouse so someone could have some sustenance.  And of course, as always, this trolley (anything butcher-related, really) fascinates me.  We used to always cut the tongues out of the animals we slaughtered.  Some people liked to use them as fishing bait, and some old-timers liked to boil and slice them to make sandwiches.  But as you can see, here in Mongolia, they do not cut the tongues out of the heads.  Maybe this has something to do with the fact that Mongolians like to boil an animal's head whole, and then cut chunks of meat off of it.  I'm just speculating, but maybe, in that case, just maybe the tongue might be a special treat.

ETA: Just yesterday, I was walking around downtown Ulaanbaatar, and I saw three street dogs stop in turn to sniff at something on the sidewalk.  I got a little closer to see what this something was, and it was none other than an animal skull which had been boiled and picked clean!  Only in Ulaanbaatar can you find animal skulls laying around on the sidewalk and nobody looks twice because they don't see anything abnormal about that.

The Butchers

Growing up, my family owned a small meat-packing plant.  We did it all in our meat-packing plant: slaughtering, processing, and selling retail and wholesale meat.  Since we didn't have much money, we couldn't afford babysitters, which meant that my brothers and I got to spend almost all of our spare time at the meat packing plant.  My personal favourite part of the meat-packing plant was the kill floor.  If my parents were ever uncertain of where I was, they would know to go look for me at the kill floor, and sure enough, ever time, they would find me, mouth agape, as our employees slaughtered beef after beef after beef.  You would think that this kind of upbringing would have scarred me for life, turned me off of eating meat, or turned me into some kind of sadistic human being, but none of that is true.  It just developed in me an understanding of where meat comes from, that if you want to enjoy the bacon at Sunday brunch, someone has to slaughter Piglet.  I also actually really like meat (although I rarely eat it these days).  When I was young, I knew from the moment the animal arrived at our meat packing plant until the moment it touched our dinner table exactly who had handled it and how it had been handled.  I had no guilty conscious, because I knew we didn't needlessly torture animals (we just did what we needed to do so all of our customers could enjoy their delicious ribeyes), and I had no worries about the health of the animals which were now our dinner, as my dad knew a lot about meat, and if he felt that it was not a good quality, he would either let that specific customer know that he thought that the cow they had brought in would not yield quality beef or (in one exceptional circumstance) did his best to have the meat condemned when he found that a 4H calf which had probably been sick at 4H time had likely been doctored to not appear sick, but he knew as soon as he saw the meat that there was a problem.  Of course, the vet wouldn't hear of condemning this calf.  All I could think was "Thank God that's not going to end up on our table, then" because, for however much I respect the expertise of a doctor or vet, when it comes to all things meat, my dad's word really is gospel.  And as far as growing up watching cows being slaughtered, no it did not turn me into a sadistic human being.  Yes, when I was a child, I thought, "How cool-- all the other kids also enjoy 'Lamb Chops Play Along'!"; I just didn't realise that they were watching TV, and I was watching something totally different.  And truth be told, if I saw a beheaded cat or puppy, I would be outraged, whereas the carcass of a cow, sheep, pig, buffalo, etc doesn't even move me at all.

I've got to admit, I feel like a terrible daughter, that when I reached a certain age, I refused to work at our meat packing plant.  Kids called me "meat bitch".  That was uncool.  But even so, now, when I am in foreign countries and I see foreign butchers, I have to stop and linger and watch for a bit.  I seldom take pictures because one thing that is universal for butchers is that they don't seem to like having their pictures taken.  I can understand.  If, when we had our meat-packing plant, a crowd of Japanese tourists had burst in and started snapping pictures of me as I worked with my bloody apron and bloody hands, I would have been so upset.  So yeah, I know where butchers are coming from when they tell me to put my camera away, and I rarely have the linguistic skills to explain to them that this is what my family used to do for a living as well.  Once, in Jordan, I was able to explain it to a butcher whose photo I had just taken (I had been taking an Arabic class), and his demeanor towards me immediately changed.  Suddenly, I was just like him, and not just an overprivileged white tourists.  I guess that is a butcher's biggest problem with having their photo taken.  Not only do they not enjoy being captured on film smeared with blood, but they also take pride in their work and they don't want it belittled.  They know that if you are taking their photo, it's likely not so you can show your family and friends back home what skill and care they put into their job.  They know that your reasons for taking their photos are the same types of reasons that someone will exclaim, "This food is so gross! You have to try some!"

It saddens me a bit that I can't explain to foreign butchers that, for me, my interest in their work is very different from that of the typical tourist.  When I pass by a foreign butcher, I'm filled with nostalgia as memories from my childhood come flooding back to me.  Yes, even though the meat on offer in butcher shops in foreign countries is often very different from what we processed in Canada (in Mongolia, it's anything from beef, sheep, and goat to horse, camel, and yak), it's the slabs of meat and tubs of discarded bones and bloody aprons that remind me the most of my childhood, and it makes me sad to have (probably) disappointed my parents so much when I decided I didn't want to work in our meat-packing plant and it also makes me miss my family immensely.

Does a Body Good?

Lately, I've been craving all kinds of things I can't find in weird foreign countries: Twizzlers, SuperNibs, Doritos (actually, Doritos are usually available in foreign countries, but apparently not in Mongolia), A&W Teen Burgers, Dairy Queen Cheeseburgers and Blizzards, McDonalds Big Macs, mmmmmmm...

But yeah, this is just my mind being extremely cruel to, well, to itself because my mind knows that it can't have those things in Mongolia, yet those are the foods that my mind chooses to crave.  So today, I told my mind that it was stupid and that it should start craving things that I can either find or cook here in Mongolia.  I told my mind, we have butter, flour, and pasta at home.  All we need is some milk and we can make fettucine alfredo (except for, as it turns out, I can't find fettucine noodles, but that's okay, cause I'll just use spaghetti noodles instead).  Then, I decided that it would probably taste really good if we bought some mushrooms and fried them together with some diced onion and added the mushroom/onion mixture to the cream sauce. Mmmmm, now here's a craving I can satisfy.

So, I went to the grocery store to buy some milk.  I have to tell you about milk in Mongolia.  It's got a very high fat percentage.  The first time I bought milk here, I was so focussed on the picture of the cows on the carton (because I was afraid that I would otherwise select yak milk, which, apparently, is a possibility) that I didn't notice that the percentage on the carton said 2.5%.  WTF?  It was like pouring cream over my breakfast cereal.  Waaaaaay too rich for my tastebuds.  So, the next time I was in the dairy section, I took a look to see what I could see, and lo and behold, the milk comes in four different percentages: 3.5%, 3.2%, 2.5%, and 2%, 2% being the lowest it goes.  And what's more, the 2% milk is touted as the diet milk here.  It's got a picture of a slim woman and it says something about it being good for your health/diet.  Oh, and also, as you can see on the bottom corner of the carton, apparently 2% milk is a new concept here in Mongolia.  I bet if a Mongolian ever came to Canada, our skim milk would taste like water to them!

This Little Piggy

This little piggy went to the market and was never seen or heard from again.  If you have any information regarding his whereabouts, please notify the police or call the TIPS Hotline, as his family are all very worried, at home, and eagerly awaiting their roast beef.

Korean in Cyrillic

When I was teaching business students in Korea, I found from listening to them that Koreans really like Mongolia.  This was confirmed when I decided to move to Mongolia and told a few of my Korean friends about my plans.  When I arrived in Mongolia, I found that Mongolians seem to love Korea as much as Koreans love Mongolia.  This was confirmed to me when my high school students spent twenty minutes listing all the K-pop they love and when I noticed the superabundance of Korean restaurants in downtown Ulaanbaatar.

Restaurants

This restaurant is close-ish to where I live, and it always reminds me of Valentine's Day.  I'd like to go in and see what the food is like, but I haven't, yet, because I don't know enough about Mongolian food to order something tasty (I know-- the only way to figure out what's tasty is to try it all), I can't read cyrrillic very well yet, so I'll look like an idiot when I try to order, and I'm trying to be very frugal at the moment, which means cooking at home instead of eating at restaurants, even if the restaurant is ridiculously cheap, as I suspect this one is.  Oh well, I think I'm pretty decent cook, and I really like my own cooking!

But seriously, I do have to try this restaurant.  I noticed yesterday an incredibly similar restaurant in a different part of Ulaanbaatar, so now I'm wondering if this isn't a chain.  Also, on the other restaurant, I noticed a word in cyrillic that looked like "russky", which makes me wonder if these restaurants don't serve Russian food... mmmm, perohy!