Everything I’m eating Vol. 1

It’s been a while since I wrote about food. (That’s not even remotely true, but go with me here.) I got a lot of love after the Snacks on Snacks on Snacks blog during training, so I want to periodically share the snacks, the baked goods, the new foods and everything I’m eating. Enjoy!

My PST family served this for dinner on my first night and my last day. It’s not as weird as you think. It grew on me. #Integration

Peace Corps life lessons: friends that share care package snacks are the best kind of friends.

At one of our trainings during PST, they had cake after lunch. My table eyed every piece of cake as it came out, so we noticed that our pieces didn’t have the chocolate topper. We asked our server and that saint of a man brought us out a plate of the chocolate balls that were on the other pieces. He gets it.

These are like whoppers. Yum.

It may not have been legal for me to drive after this. It actually tasted like rum, which I wasn’t into. (Also, Peace Corps Volunteers aren’t allowed to drive, so it’s never legal. See what I did there?)

I probably mentioned this, but during training, we made an ice cream cake for our friend Gwen. We tried to recreate the cake her mom makes her every year. Even if it wasn’t close, you can’t really go wrong with ice cream.

Shoutout to burek and all it’s flaky, cheesy, deliciousness. This one had spinach! It’s thebomb.com with drinkable yogurt. (That’s a big thing here.)

Spoiler alert: not American cookies. (This is what they call chocolate chip cookies.)

These croissants come in chocolate, vanilla and a variety of fruit flavors. This was breakfast at one of our training sessions.

My friend Abby told me about these cookies at least a month ago. She said they were the perfect balance of cookie and chocolate. She is an avid snacker, like me, so finding them in the store was like finding the holy grail. (And she was right. They’re a perfect bite.)

Tolumba! I think I’ve shared this before, but it’s worth sharing again. It’s a sort of fried dough, drenched in sugar syrup. The outside is a little crispy and the inside is like a pillow of happiness.

These are dried chickpeas, that have a sugary, candy coating. It’s a great sweet/savory balance. My tutor got them at the market and they’re on my shopping list for this week.

Two of my closest friends, geographically and fo realz, are Iris and Rachel. We all made tacos at my house for my host family recently and Iris brought some extra cookie dough, because she’s the best.

For taco night, Rachel made chocolate lava cake. We melted the chocolate over the wood stove and they were perfect.

Hot chocolate in Macedonia doesn’t mean the beverage. It means a warm glass of chocolate pudding. This one is from a coffee shop in Skopje, and it had cookies and caramel. It was perfect.

This is one of the chocolates my visitors brought from their travels. These chocolates from Austria have Mozart on the wrapper. And they were delish.

Sandwiches here aren’t like the hoagies I know from home or something you’d see from Subway. There is one option for cheese, maybe two or three sliced meat options and the most important option: would you like fries on top of that? (I go vegetarian on my sandwiches, but always say yes to fries.)

These sort of look like and taste like croutons, but with funky flavors. The barbecue was alright, but I’ll probably pass on these next time.

Macedonia really takes bakeries seriously, which I appreciate. We got together with some of the volunteers in our region and this was part of the first stop. The one on the left tasted like a snickers.

My new favorite fruit! I’d never had persimmons before Macedonia. I now love them. (They call them Japanese apples here.)

The Macedonian word for peanut is pronounced, “keeky-reeky.” And caramel and chocolate? C’mon now.

I love banana, but this was not delicious. Oh well. Took one for the team.

Hey, I know this one!

I don’t fully understand why, but new babies are celebrated with these doughnut-ish pastries. There have been three new babies/grandbabies so far at my school and each time, a coworker comes in laden down with these. I embrace the culture of celebrating with food.

I think I’ve been buying peanut flavored chocolates because I miss Reese’s Pieces. The Peanut Tasty bar scratched the itch.

Another volunteer said I had to try these, because the first time they had them they ended up embarrassingly licking the wrapper. They’re like brownies dipped in chocolate, kind of awesome, and totally worth licking the wrapper.

Have I shared this photo yet? This was dinner one night. This was the finished product. I stared at it for a while, but my host mom gave me no directions about how to eat it. It was kind of scary, but I lived to tell about it.

I’ve heard of mars bars before, but I’d never actually seen or eaten one. So thanks for crossing that off the bucket list Macedonia. (Chocolate, caramel…duh. It was great.)

I just want to take a moment of silence for these cookies. Thanks. Two volunteers stayed at my home and one brought a care package treasure: this cookie mix. We’ve baked a lot over here, and we’ve had solid success, but Betty Crocker just knows what’s up.

I’ve told you about Stobi Flipz before. (They look like cheetos, but have a peanut buttery taste.) I saw this package and thought these might be special Stobi Flipz, but it turns out, it was just a holiday bag. Oh well.

This was one of the traditional dishes my host mom made for a name day celebration. It’s grated potatoes, pickles, carrots and cheese, topped with some sort of sour cream/mayonnaise. It sounded weird, but it was really tasty.

This was also served at the name day celebration. I passed, but it was too interesting to not snap a photo.

It’s no big deal, but I helped my host mom make this. Pronounced keeflee, it’s a rolled up, layered, buttery roll. They are labor intensive, but worth it to eat five in a row, fresh out of the oven.

When someone has a birthday here, the tradition is that they give gifts. Whenever a student has a birthday or name day, they bring in something to give to their class, and most importantly, their teachers. That made this solid milk chocolate bar even sweeter.

A lot of restaurants have pizza on the menu, which is great. They often use ketchup either as the sauce or sauce base. I always order the vegetarian pie, but this was the first one I’ve seen with frozen mixed veggies sprinkled on the top. (It was just as weird as you think it was.)