This year we invited friends over to our place for New Year’s. Andrew and I made some food and our friends made food, too! One was a dish from Uzbekistan called “plov” with rice and beef and the other one was “samsa”, which are actually all across Central Asia but are made differently in each country and our friend made it lean more towards the Uzbek kind as well with lamb and lots of onions. Samsa is hand made flour pasta “pockets” with the previous mentioned ingredients inside, baked in the oven. I made marinated chicken wrapped bacon as well as chocolate no bake cookies (My Dad calls them “the poor man’s cookie” but they are SOOO tasty!) Andrew made delicious fish from our greenhouse. The reason why I explained at length about our food is that is one of the MAIN POINTS of New Year’s here! Now, New Year’s here is basically the equivalent of our Christmas in the United States. They do gifts here as well, but on New Year’s Eve, not New Year’s morning (like we would on Christmas morning). Like I mentioned last year, there is a famous salad we ate (we didn’t have that this year) that basically translates as “dressed herring under a fur coat” lol. I might try my hand at making it next year, we will see. 🤔 As far as other food at New Year’s, I’m pretty sure if you make ANY popular Central Asian dish, it will work haha! So one thing I learned new this year is the main TV channel (It’s always “1” no matter what city you are in, easy enough!) always plays two specific old movies in Russian that are from the Soviet time. Everyone just “has them on” throughout the evening lol. And I guess after so many years you start the memorize them, hah! I did my best and delivered a little two sentence toast in Russian, and it worked. Traditionally, the host gives a speech for any special occasion and New Year’s is no different. I mentioned fireworks last year but did I mention how ridiculously LOUD and crazy they are? I really really wish from our apartment we could have seen them across the city this year, but alas, it was foggy bleh! We still had fun and heard them even if we didn’t see them. Avinelle enjoyed them very much, except when someone lit one off in our complex and it shot towards the bottom part of OUR building- sca-ry!!! Most of us adults stayed up all night and played one of our favorite games- Settlers of Catan and thankfully (since Avi stayed up until like 3AM 😂) the kids all slept in fairly well. We were all still eating the yummy food for breakfast even. What a joy to spend this most famous holiday with our friends yet again! ❤️
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