30 Day Challenge #1- Food Tracking

For the month of January (or rather, the first 30 days of it) I decided to track all of the food I ate.  I used the app myfitnesspal and entered everything that went into my body.  I used the default settings on the app, which figured out that I should have an average of 1750 calories a day in order to lose weight.  I didn't specifically set out to reach that goal, just to track, but I think that the act of tracking definitely had an effect on my calorie intake overall. I successfully tracked everything for 30 days and actually didn't even find it to be that hard with the app. The app has lots of foods, including many restaurant menus, preloaded and has the ability to scan bar codes for just about anything that has a barcode.  The hardest things to track were homemade items that I didn't cook myself or restaurant items when the app didn't have the menu, but for the most part, I think that I was able to make best guesses in those cases. I also tracked my water intake, weight, and exercise, just because the app does that too and why not. It turns out, that I lost 5 lbs in these 30 days. I don't necessarily attribute that all to the food tracking (it is January and we just came off a particularly heavy holiday season), but I don't think it hurt. I think that I ate less overall than I would have normally just because I was more aware of it. Up next- 30 min daily workouts!  

Chinese food

In the first two weeks I was in china I didn't have very much in the way of "authentic" Chinese food. It's hard when you are traveling alone to find good places and because Chinese food tends to be family style, when you are without a family to eat with, fast food is sometimes just an easier option. As a solo traveler, I found China to be a lot like Italy- you know there is good food everywhere if you just had a local to show you where it is!

Luckily, on his last leg of my trip with the DCIS students, I am staying with a host family (an English teacher) and have been taken out to eat many times. Also, the food that my host has cooked at home has been wonderful. Even the school lunches have been better than the Chinese food I found on my own.

Besides fast food, the chinese take on "western food" is sort of funny. My first host (I had to move because her father got sick and she needed to take care ofhim) was extremely worried about what I would eat. She bought a hilariously huge loaf of mediocre plain white bread- I was too polite to tell her that I didn't really like it. Even my second host, who has been to America and understands me a little bit better worried ceaselessly about what I was eating (especially for breakfast). Twice this week we were taken by the school principal to what he described as a "western style restaurant ". It turned out to be a sort of buffet with waiters roaming around
with various types of meat skewered on large swords. I think I would rather eat traditional Chinese food (although eating jello with chopsticks was fun). I love how the Chinese family style works. Depending on how many people you have, you order a ton of dishes (usually a few more than there are people) plus rice and soup and it goes on a rotating platter in the center and everyone grabs things as they go by. I love this because with a big enough group you are always
guaranteed to have a few things you like. I think, maybe because you tend to grab things just a few bites at a time, you tend to eat less this way (at least I think I do), but you also never leave the table feeling hungry. My favorite thing so far has been "hot pot"- basically there is a pot of hot soup that is set on a hot plate on or in the table. You order different meats, vegetables and noodles and then put them into the hot pot to cook. Then everyone reaches in with their chopsticks and grabs what they want (or what they can). All of this family style eating has really improved my chopstick skills. I was not too bad before as we used to practice with our Chinese take out lunches at school, but now I can even eat rice noodles with chopsticks, which is no easy task.

Would you like rice with that?

According to Filipinos, a meal without rice is not a meal at all. Even at KFC and McDonalds (which are as common here as in Kentucky I'd wager) you can get rice instead of fries or cole slaw. In Cebu i experienced the ingenious invention of "hanging rice" they put the uncooked rice into a pouch made of woven palm leaves, dip it in water to cook and voila! Personal sized portable rice packet!

This abundance of rice is something I've been experiencing my whole life at FACC (Filipino thanksgiving- turkey. . . with rice). Anyway, since I left Denver in August I think (it's hard to know for sure without access to a scale on a regular basis) that I had lost a few pounds. When I travel, I actually tend to eat a lot less and walk a lot more. The walking a lot is easy to explain, when you are traveling (at least the way I travel) all you tend to do is walk. I arrive in a new place and I walk around to get a feel, walk to where ever I'm staying (when I can) and a lot of my favorite travel activities involve walking (long hikes in the mountains- basically walking all day). But why don't I eat as much? For one thing, thinking about food all the time is exhausting when you are traveling- you need to constantly be finding new places, eating takes a lot of time and when I'm alone sometimes I just don't bother.

But in the Philippines with my parents things are different. First, I'm with my parents and it's not good for them to skip meals. Second, we have been staying with friends of theirs- in Davao, with their Peace Corps family and in Bohol and Cebu with family of friends from Denver. They don't let me skip meals- good Filipino cooking doesn't let me eat light . . . lots of rice with every meal. Thanks to my wonderful hosts in the RP any pounds lost have all come back! Talk about lost and found . . .

Italian food

When I got back to Albania, Jan, my Peace Corps mom, asked me what the best food moment of my trip was. This really got me thinking about the food that I had in Italy and actually how disappointed I was. Here's the problem: while I know that there is truly incredible food in Italy, I just didn't get much of it because it was way out of my price range. As we've already established, everything was really expensive. First, unlike on other trips, I was unable to conference crash, couch surf or be a groupie on the tour bus, so we had to pay every night for a hostel. I am really proud of myself for my hostel finds, actually. They were all clean and well managed and none of them tripled in price for the holidays. But staying in the hostels meant that about half my daily budget went to that and that we had to eat out almost every meal (the hostel in Florence had a restaurant downstairs that we ate at once and the place in Venice served breakfast of a roll and juice/coffee). I found that there were basically two categories of food available to us that we could afford: sandwich/pizza/street food and mediocre sit-down fare. Of the two types, I actually enjoyed the fast food more in general- the sandwiches were made with really good fresh ingredients and the pizzas were really good (the cheese makes all the difference!). What I was most disappointed with was the standard sit down places. We went to several places in which a plate of pasta cost an average of 7-12 Euros ($11-18) and was no better (and sometimes worse) than what I could make at home. I worked in an Italian chain restaurant for 3 years in which the prices were pretty comparable - I didn't think I would ever say this, but the food at the MacShack was much better. Our biggest disappointment was in Venice on New Years Eve. We went to Murano Island to look at the glass there and by 4:00 were starving. It seemed that most of the places were closing down, so we ducked into the first place we saw that was open. The staff was anxious to get out and were not happy to have last minute customers and so hovered over us as we ate. On top of that, the food was terrible! I don't think I have ever paid more for a plate of bad spaghetti. I won't say that I love the food in Albania most of the time, but at least it's cheap!

I don't want to make it sound like we never ate well. I found several surprise moments of goodness, like falafel in the Jewish Quarter of Rome, Suppli (Roman rice balls sold for 1 Euro), wonderful salad at a cafe in Venice and the food highlight of the trip: wine tasting held at the hostel in Florence.

Since we only had a few days in Florence and knew we wouldn't have time to go into the wine country, when we saw that the hostel was having a wine tasting we decided to go for it. Both Connie and I were really glad that we did as it was one of the best parts of the trip. One of the hostel staff (who is in culinary school) and a wine maker from the nearby Chianti region were our hosts. We tasted 5 wines (all excellent) and paired with simple fresh foods like cheese, meat, bread, honey and olive oil. We learned how to smell the wine and taste it slowly, about the wine making process and the differences between the different varieties. It was great.

Like I said, I know that good food is available in Italy, but unfortunately most of the affordable places in touristy areas are overpriced and awful. I need to go back to Italy when I have the money to really enjoy the food there.

Diten e Falenderemeve

There are a few words in Albanian that I love to say like lulestrudhe (stawberry), infaktekisht (in fact) and diten e falenderemeve (Thanksgiving Day). I love saying it. Diten e Falenderemeve.

Anyway, Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday whether in America or Albania . . . I love that the point of it is taking time to think about the good things in our lives and reflect on the year. Plus there's the food. The people that work at the US Embassy here have made it a gracious tradition to invite Peace Corps Volunteers to their homes for Thanksgiving dinner. This year I was invited by Mark and Mary, a wonderful couple that works for the military at the Embassy. They live in a big house in Tirana with their dog and cat. Three of us came down on Wednesday night and helped with pie and other food- we made a pretty impressive three layer jello, pumpkin bread (with fresh pumpkin) and lots of goodies. The best thing about staying with expats is that they have a whole bunch of American food. When embassy employees come over from America, they get to bring with them an incredible amount of food. Their allowed amount of consumables (things like food, but also cleaning supplies and laundry detergent) for one year is more than the combined total of all the luggage that all 37 people in my group brought initially to Albania (we get 100lbs. of luggage each . . .), so yeah, it's a crap load of food. They also get to shop at the military commissary in Italy for all those "fresh" kinds of food, like cheddar cheese . . . so in addition to the normal Thanksgiving type things we also got to sample things like queso dip, dill pickles, Dr. Pepper, etc. There were six of us for dinner, plus a few other people from the embassy. I literally ate until I couldn't anymore. And then I ate some more. And then I had dessert. The other great thing about Mark and Mary's house is that they have the Armed Forces TV, so we were able to watch the Macy's parade and the football games. We also went to the "Ridge" (the American Ambassador's housing compound that is basically a small American suburban neighborhood in the middle of Tirana made up of modular houses . . . almost feels a bit Stepfordish . . .) to play touch football with the Marines and Embassy staff. In PC vs. Marines, the Marines kind of killed us . . . but I think I would have been a bit worried if they didn't :).














All in all it was a very American Thanksgiving, which is exactly what I wanted.

Byrek

Byrek-

This dish, similar to spanikopita, can be made with cheese, spinach, beans, tomatoes and onions, eggs or meat. Basically any sort of savory filling can be added. You can buy store bought phyllo dough, or make your own simple dough from scratch (of course all of the Albanians make it from scratch!)

Basic Phyllo Dough Recipe (dough-brum):

2 1/2 cups bread flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup warm water
1 egg, beaten
1/4 teaspoon white vinegar

Sift flour and salt and make a well.
Mix remaining ingredients and pour in well. Work into dough. Knead 10 minutes. Cover with a damp towel. Set aside 20 minutes.


Split the dough into 14 roughly equal sized balls. Roll out slowly (slowly-ngadalë) one by one on a board covered with starch or flour (starch-niseshte) until very thin. The way my host does this is by using a very thin wooden dowel. As she rolls out the dough, she rolls the dough onto the dowel in order to transfer the dough to the pan. This part takes a lot of practice, don’t worry if the dough tears a bit, just patch it back together and keep layering! Layer (peta- layer of dough) the first 7 in a large round shallow pan, putting a layer of melted butter or oil in between each layer. After 7 layers, put in the filling and then continue to layer the remaining dough. Pour the remaining oil or butter onto the top (you can also pour milk on top). Cut into pieces before placing in the oven. Cook at 200 degrees C (about 400 F) for 45 min. or until golden brown.

Të bëfte mirë! (Bon Appetite!)

(thank you to Burbuqe for showing me this process and allowing me to take her picture and also to Courtney and Mrs. Çepa for additional information!)

Can you pick up my friends?

I can’t believe that I have been here a week. Like is often the case when you are in a new situation or a high-stress-do-a-lot-of-stuff-at-once situation, days seem to stretch to weeks and weeks seem to feel like months. I feel like I have learned so much in just a little over a week. It is amazing how much you can pick up with language classes 5 hours a day. After class, I go home and engage in a kind of charades, talk, look-up words game with my host mom. She is very good at speaking slowly, talking with her hands and repeating words for me.

The food so far has been good. My host has been trying to feed me way too much. I basically have toast in the morning (with peach or fig jam) and then have had various things for dinner. We go out for lunch and are lucky to have a few different options in the town. They have fast food which is basically like a gyro and pizza and pasta. I am pretty lucky in that I have had salad almost every day. They eat meat basically every day, but (I think) I told her that I don’t eat pork. Even though this is a “Muslim” country, there seems to be a lot of pork products around. My host is Orthodox and she went to church last week. There is both a mosque and a church in my town. You can here the call to prayer every day, although I have never seen anyone go into the mosque. Most people that you talk to will say, “I am Muslim, but I don’t practice.” I have only seen about 5 covered women.

Today we went to our second “hub” day in Elbasan. On hub days, the whole group (all 37 of us) come from the 8 satellite sites to the PC training office. Today the COD (Community and Organizational Development)- get used to acronyms, the Peace Corps has a lot of them- group met with the mayor of Elbasan. In the afternoon, the whole group had a training on PC approach to development and then talked about group dynamics. During the group dynamics part the trainer asked if anyone had ever heard of a particular theory of group formation. Since we talked extensively about that theory at BBfP last summer, I raised my hand and said that I had. She asked if I would come up and explain it to the group. With the help of a powerpoint, I basically gave the presentation on the theory! Good thing I feel pretty comfortable teaching material that I’ve only seen once (thank you substitute teaching). My other big accomplishment for the day was to actually get our whole group into the town. We have two volunteers that are living outside of town. They live right off of the road and decided that if it was possible it would be nice if the furgon (minibuses that act as most of the public transport between towns) could pick them up near their house instead of walking all the way in to town (about a 20 min walk). So this morning when we got on the furgon, I told the driver that we had two friends that were on the way and it would be great if he would pick them up. After a little bit of miming (and discovering that I have no sense of direction and was pointing in the wrong direction) he understood and kept two seats open. When we got close to their house, I pointed and said “there, there” and he stopped. Total success! It’s really the little things that count.

Albanian language for the day:

“Ne kami dy shok në rruga.” We have two friends on the road/way

P.S. I am having a little bit of troube getting the computer at the internet cafe to let me upload pictures. I will have a few pics as soon as I can figure this out. . .