My Life in Azerbaijan - Staying Healthy

February 19, 2010
The Azerbaijan family daily diets include lot of breads, potatoes, cheeses, animal fats and butter. After each meal, the Azeri enjoys drinking tea (çay) with lot of “Sweets”. The typical sweet is nothing but the sugar cubes. Instead of putting the sugar cubes inside their tea, they put the cubes in their mouths and eat them like candies. If the family is weatlhy, the sugar cubes are replaced by chocolates.

The Azeri loves sweet and fat. I was shocked the first time when I saw how my host mother cook rice. She first fried the union with çox çox çoxlu (lots) of butter, (approx. 3 sticks of butter) then she added either fatty meats or pumpkin with rice. To finish the dish, she put in another 2 sticks of butter. After she added water inside the pot, I could literally see a thick layer of fat floating on top of the rice. When the rice was cooked, it was not floppy and dried like our “Chinese Rice” but so greasy, oily and mushy that they looked like porridge. I nearly threw up the first time I ate that rice. The smell and the taste of the butter made me hate eating rice for a long time.

As for vegetables, in Azerbaijan there seems to be only cabbage, carrot, green union and baby spinach in the winter. Cabbage is cheap, very cheap so each Azeri family will pickle the cabbage and eat them whole year round. Occasionally in the bazaar, if I am lucky, I can find some tiny and rotten broccoli or cauliflower, the kind that I would never buy in the States, and they are very expensive. My host family never bought any fresh fruits and vegetables from the market. Instead, my host father would purchase boxes and boxes of rotten ones from the venders for a cheap price. My host mother and sisters would then sort out the most rotten pieces to feed the chickens and the rest, we ate. I once saw my host sister cut out 90% of an apple and handed the remaining tiny piece to me. I ate it but I could still taste the rotten aroma for what was left from an apple.

For me, an edible apple should be juicy and crunchy, not saggy, mushy and dried. After that day, I bought my own fruits and avoided eating more those rotten fruits. As for vegetables, I insist on cooking my own carrot and cabbages with a spoonful of corn oil adding nothing but just a little salt and pepper. My host family laughed at my “tasteless” American cooking. I let them. I want to stay healthy and not gain a pound when I return to the States after two years. (According to Peace Corps, average female PCVs gain weight after two years service! and I already saw some of them showing it)

I still take my long walk after work and when I arrive home, I climb stairs and do some yoga. The weather is getting warmer each day, and I am looking forward to taking a even longer walk by the Caspian Sea in the summer.