One reason to love living in Tirana

Tonight we had some people over for dinner: Shelly, an American and new friend of mine here. She's only here for 5 months working with an Albanian NGO. And Arta & Genci, our language helper and her husband and two children. It was a wonderful evening. But I simply don't know how women do it here. They somehow manage to prepare these huge spreads for dinner and keep their homes spotless. Anyway, preparing dinner and dessert really takes me the better part of the afternoon and evening. Is that normal? I don't know. I was quite ambitious about this meal...well not so much with the main meal, but with the dessert. Green salad with homemade dressing, chicken-and-rice bake, and bread. Nothing fancy. But for dessert I made baklava - which is actually not that difficult, except when you don't know how to work your oven (which I don't sometimes). So, the baklava was ambitious for a few reasons: I still don't really know how to best work my oven AND I have only one other time worked with phyllo dough. But thanks to my lesson with Denice, it turned out great! And the Albanian family loved it which is what counts for me.

Making baklava:



Okay, now to one of the reasons that we love living here. Fresh produce is really cheap here - and it's not even summer time yet! Today I went to buy produce for the salad and snacks. I purchased two heads of leaf lettuce, two large tomatoes, one cucumber, about 15 medium carrots, one lemon, and four green bell peppers all for 475 Lek - about $4.75. Pretty good, huh? AND - you actually get much better quality here - no hormones, no nasty chemicals or wax...just good old fashioned dirt that you have to wash off with either a little bleach or antibacterial soup and water. The produce tastes sooooo much better than produce from Jewel-Osco or any other America grocery store. The carrots are sweet, not bitter, so we are eating them all the time.

Anyway, just some of the joys of living here!