Today’s Adventure: Veggies in Moldova in Winter

A new adventure for me, living alone this winter, is in deciding what to cook. Summer was fun because I had unending access to fresh fruits and vegetables right from my host family’s garden, which allowed me to make fresh salads, tasty tomato sauces, and generally pretty healthy stuff, which was a nice break after 8 months of giant chunks of pig meal boiled in liquid fat with sour cream dumped all over the top.

But now, all the fresh veggies have disappeared. Moldovans eat canned goods all winter, along with potatoes and parsnips, which will keep in the basement for months. Most of what’s in the cans is tomatoes and parsley and onion mixes, along with pickled cucumbers and watermelons. I had a lot of this last summer, and I relished every time a can came up from the basement because (and I want to make this very clear) there are NO vitamins available in winter food in Moldova unless you are bringing food in from the city or eating things you canned.  A common experience for volunteers is for our hair to start falling out in small clumps in the middle of winter due to vitamin deficiency. Before my grandmother calls me freaking out, I do want to add that this does not have long term health effects after only two winters, so I’m not to concerned.

The larger issue for me is just WHAT to eat. I’ve been bringing canned fruit and things like that in from the city whenever I’m there. They do have hot house veggies available in supermarkets in the city, like tomatoes and broccoli, and I like to pick those up as well. But sometimes I don’t get in to the city for a few weeks, and when that happens, my challenge is trying to make something tasty using only food I can get in the village. Grilled cheese is a new favorite, along with pasta with sour cream on it, which is a Moldovan specialty and has really grown on me. But these don’t have any nutritional value since they’re just fat and carbs.

The other day I found some big round black dirt balls in the veggie section which I THOUGHT were red beets. Red beets are tasty and full of vitamins so I picked them up hoping to make some borscht (Russian beet stew). But when I got them home and was preparing them to be thrown into a pot of water with some carrots, potatoes, parsnips and onions, I discovered that they are (I think) white beets, which, after a quick check on the internet, I discovered also have no nutritional value. So basically I ate what I like to call “root soup.” With some pepper an Italian seasonings. I actually thought it was okay, but it is definitely not a burrito or eggplant parmesan.

So, it seems that, with the exception of occasional dried and canned fruit, I will likely be losing a little bit of hair this winter.  But I’m sure by the end of it I will be able to make a mean root soup.

 Noapte Buna!