My Beef With Armenia

This is actually about beef, or rather meat in general, here in Armenia. This topic was triggered by an article I read by my favorite and only food journalist, Michael Pollan, with this article in the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/magazine/10dinner-t.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

He has a 36 hour cookout with friends and they buy a goat from a local butcher, and the whole event sounds pretty awesome. I so want to do this, if I had a bucket list this would be on it. But more on this later.

First off: There isn't really any beef to be had in Armenia. Or at least it's not recognizable as such, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly chicken, pork, and occasionally sheep or goat, or whatever I always screw up which is which.

So we have these other meats, here in Armenia. Sometimes the chicken is a legit drumstick and other times it's more like a chicken wing-sized drumstick.

Then you have Khorovats (don't pronounce the k, a guttural h sound, is what you want) which is basically just the word for barbecue. It's usually chicken, sometimes pork or sheep, and with potatoes on a skewer and cooked over a fire or in a tandoori oven. It's amazing and some of the best meals I have had in Armenia, and really anywhere.

But then you have the rest of the meat. It's pretty awful, and I try to steer clear of it whenever I can. The hot dogs are the worst and I can't eat them at all. There's these hot dogs from a company in the Erie area (my hometown) and they're amazing so I can't really eat hot dogs anywhere else in the US and these are of even lower quality than the ones in the US. The salami tastes pretty much like salami in the US, but it's incredibly salty, and as everything I eat is incredibly salty I try to eat it sparingly.

One complaint (observation?) from other volunteers has been the lack of meat, or specifically protein in their diet here, so whenever they get meat they eat it, for the protein.

Now me, even in the States, I ate meat about once a week, usually preparing meatless meals or ordering meatless options at restaurants (it's cheaper) and usually only preparing meat on my own when I bought the more expensive free-farmed stuff (I know a lot of people say the label is meaningless, but I am going to have to trust the store Trader Joe's that they're buying from places that are local to California and are legitimate in their animal welfare).

Here I've also been eating meat once a week, or maybe small things a few times a week. I'm not sure what other volunteers have gone through, and my family, living in a city, has more meat options than those families in villages and towns, but the meat for me has been plenty. And like I said I don't touch a lot of it because I just can't stomach it.

And so now we have these Michael Pollan story, which I haven't even finished reading yet but it sounds like an amazing time. 36 hours with one fire and one goat, and some local produce and lots of eating. He had chefs and bakers there, a small group just having a 36 hour cookout with this outdoor oven with their own goat, using everything from it. Amazing and I want to do that.

Hopefully I'll be able to do this someday, I just need to befriend some chefs . . .