My Not-So-Typical-By-American-Standards Saturday...

My Saturday was filled with things that I would have laughed at doing a few years ago…but actually, found pleasure (and great reward) in doing them today. There are a lot of things that I do on a daily basis here in Ukraine that surprise me by how much I actually like doing them. One of those things is washing dishes. (My parents are probably reading that sentence gawking at the fact that I like to do dishes now). My host family taught me that as soon as you were done with your dishes, you (hand) wash them. This was my teaching growing up as well…except the dishes went straight to the dishwasher after you rinsed the items first. Either that or I would leave them for my dad to make them “magically disappear” as we called it in the Frost household (in other words, Pops put them in the dishwasher for us). One of the reasons I have to wash my dishes here as soon as I’m done with them is because I simply don’t have enough of them to let them pile up in my {tiny, but cute} sink. I just purchased a coffee cup that is big enough to hold an actual cup’s worth of coffee (the 3 coffee mugs that came with my apartment are like espresso mugs…ie, tiny). That means that if I let it sit there overnight in my sink, I would have to wash it the next morning before I wanted my coffee or tea. It makes much more sense to do the dishes right away. Period. I basically have 3 of everything in my kitchen…spoons, forks, cups, plates, and bowls. I’m on the hunt for butter knives…because I’m tired of using my one sharp knife to spread butter. That and it’s pretty sharp. And I have to wash it about 5 times a day (spreading butter, cutting an apple, etc.). So, there’s one of my routines that I thoroughly enjoy.

What else did I do on my not-so-typical-by-American-standards Saturday? I did my first ever load of laundry by hand. And let me tell you, I can see why some great soul invented the washing machine. I started with sheets, which was probably not the smartest thing. But first, I had to rig my drying line up on my balcony. I’ve avoided doing this because there are a bajillion spider webs on my balcony and it kinda freaks me to think about clean clothes being out there with bugs. {FOR THE RECORD: I have done laundry since I’ve been in Ukraine. I simply was blessed to have a host family that had a washing machine and my counterpart here in K-grad has let me do laundry at her house as well. I promise, I don’t smell.} However, I have nowhere else to dry them and that is what the balcony is for here in Ukraine. Well, and in my case, that’s where my refrigerator is too. So, I rounded up a few nails from one of the extra bedrooms in my apartment that I don’t use, found a hammer, and got to work. Made me miss my tool bag that’s in my closet at my parent’s house. As it was, I only had enough plastic line for 2 lengths of the balcony, so I will have to purchase some more of that soon! Then, I got to work being a domesticated Peace Corps Volunteer. I washed a single flat sheet and two pillowcases and that was all that would fit on the line…and at that point, my back was aching from being hunched over the bathtub. I still feel like the sheet has soap in it by the way. But, I felt VERY accomplished having washed my laundry by hand.

To finish up my not-so-typical-by-American-standards Saturday, I decided I wanted to make something for dinner. From scratch. I’m by no means Julia Childs, and I wish that I had my mom’s cooking skills in the kitchen…but I’ve simply never been interested in it. I hope that changes over the next 2 years. {I can make a mean taco salad though…and fajitas as well.} Peace Corps gives you a little cookbook called “Babushkas kitchen” or something like that…that has traditional Ukrainian dishes and other dishes that PCVs have made during their two-year-stint here in Ukraine. As I flipped through it, I found homemade flour tortillas. Ding ding ding! I had been debating about making my host mom’s recipe for amalya (fried pancakes), but didn’t really want all of the grease that goes along with the most yummy thing ever. So, tortillas it was. I even felt ambitious as I went to the grocery store to see what their farsh (ground meat) looked like. But I decided I couldn’t cross that bridge tonight. Perhaps another day. I did find what looked like canned kidney beans, so I bought a can of those. {Sidenote: they don’t have green beans in a can here. They have corn, peas, pineapple, beans, olives, etc…but no green beans.} Then, I came home to start making them. I failed to realize two things: 1) I don’t have a mixing bowl. 2) I don’t have a rolling pin. That’s when you get crafty being a PCV. I have a skillet that I would need to brown the tortillas in and I have a small silver pan that was going to have to suffice for my mixing bowl. Now all I needed was a rolling pin. I tried rolling them by hand and squishing them out into a big circle…fail. I then found my can of glade room freshener and put it in one of my gallon size (clean) Ziploc bags. Worked like a charm. The first tortilla I put in the skillet burned. Had the fire on my electric hot plate up way too hot. It scorched my pan…which meant I had to wait for it to cool down and then scrub off the charred tortilla. {Another sidenote: I have yet to find a candle that smells good to leave burning. My kitchen smells like burned tortilla still as I sit and type this.} Round 2 of tortilla cooking went well…I got 4 or 5 tortillas pretty perfectly cooked. Then I noticed the cord of the electric hot plate looking weird. It has been taped and re-taped many times from what looks like someone getting the cord on the actual hot plate. I quickly unplugged it and sure enough…one of the two prongs looks melted. I had one tortilla left that I had to throw away because I wasn’t going to risk burning down my kitchen for a single tortilla. I’ve had my eye on a toaster oven (keep in mind I don’t have a stove or an oven) that has two hot burners on top of it…and I think I will be purchasing it soon.

I am feeling ambitious now that my laundry is done drying…and I think I may tackle the second sheet and maybe a few other shirts that need laundering. Oh, how my life has changed being a PCV…I spent my Saturday being a domesticated 50’s housewife. I wouldn’t change it for anything though J