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VOLUME 5 ISSUE 1
A 21st Century Pilgrim in the Balkans
By Melissa Hearne, Mak 10,
Alright, so I consider myself a pretty resourceful woman. I mean, geez, I literally took apart
my refrigerator at 3 am one night when I accidentally dropped something into the space between the back of the fridge and the coolant
coiling (fearing a fire hazard, I just thought it
was worthy of some minor nocturnal do-ityourself home improvement). Oh, and before
you think I'm completely idiotic – I DID unplug it first (Goce, you can breathe a sigh of
relief). And by the way, if I do say so myself,
I managed like a champ – no trips to the emergency room, no cuts or bruises or hernias, and I
managed to put it back together and it still
works [um, well, at the moment anyway].
After that – I thought I could do anything! And
yet I have to say I have now been defeated by
something I never thought I would have to do
battle with. What could be so fearsome and
foul you wonder? Some of you might have
guessed – it's the pumpkin. Sure – it seems like
a perfectly innocuous vegetable. But let me tell
you – it's not. It may actually be the most
scary, evil vegetable on the planet. Now I suddenly understand why the world has a holiday
on October 31 whose primary purpose seems to
be the mass mutilation of squash - to scare the
other surviving pumpkins into submission and
not even think about rising up against the human population. But since Macedonia doesn't
celebrate Halloween, the pumpkins here have
not been so warned and they run amok, wreaking havoc everywhere. Oh yes, I'm sure you're
sitting there all smug with yourself thinking
"Silly girl. I'd never be defeated by squash, or
any other vegetable for that matter." But don't
act so smug yet.
It all started about two weeks before Thanksgiving. With the end of Halloween and the recent mass carnage of squash by Americans all
over CNN's pre-election coverage, it seemed
like it was about time to at least start thinking
about getting ready for Thanksgiving and then
Christmas. All of the PCVs started making
plans for the PCV thanksgiving dinner in Veles
and then smaller groups of PCVs have made
plans for Christmas dinners around the
country. But then as we started talking
about all the things from home that we each
wanted for Thanksgiving and Christmas –
and each of us wanted pumpkin pie, not surprisingly.
Canned pumpkin isn' t available here, but I
offered to work on figuring out a way to
make pumpkin pie from a real pumpkin. I
thought "Sure, it will take a little more work
than canned pumpkin, but how hard could it
be? The pilgrims did it, Martha Stewart does
it, and there are probably some people who
have been brainwashed by the some organic
food cult into thinking it’s more healthy and
that they do it of their own free will. So if
they can do it, I can do it!" Yeah, what's
that saying about famous last words? So I
searched the net, finding recipes and hitting
the motherload with a site called frugalliving.com (FYI – that site also espouses apple
cider vinegar as a substitute for deodorant.
Just in case you run out in the future.) to
find out how to roast a pumpkin down to
mush for a pumpkin pie. [And to find out
how to make a substitute for condensed milk
since every $&^% recipe I had for pumpkin
pie calls for that and Macedonia doesn't
have that either. I finally gave up and used
regular milk.]
Then it was off to the pazaar to find a locally grown pumpkin. Then I found out
pumpkins here are either white or dark
green – no orange pumpkins at all. So I buy
my Balkan green pumpkin from these guys
at the pazaar who offer to bring it to my
house in a week in time for the holiday. But
I figure – no I'll just take it with me today
and then have it for the weekend before
Thanksgiving when I'll have my whole Sunday to work on it. The guys even offer to
cut it for me – but since I'm not exactly sure
when I'll have time to roast it, I say no, I can
cut it myself. (In hindsight that was pretty
idiotic. An ax, or preferably a hand grenade, would have been helpful to open it.)