Azerbaijan

Today we celebrated our 11th country, Azerbaijan! 

Ok, two notes... First, every time we get another ten counties done, we vote on the best 'collection' of postcards. The boys have four slots for their display, so once we get to four countries, they decided if they want to keep the four they have, or change one out for the new one, and so on, until we get to ten. Then, we all  rank the collections, by secret ballot of course (and they have to put theirs last). Then we tally them up and have a 1st place, 2nd place, and 3rd place, and they get money for their jars accordingly. So, today, before we got to our 11th country,  we voted. It was very close, but Calib got the first place prize, Peyton got second, and Hayden got third. 

Second, the boys all said it was also Ellie's day, since her nickname around here is Azerbaijan. If you're wondering why, all the pets end up with weird nicknames, that have evolved from other weird names. Example: Ellie is Ellie Belly, who then became Oooze-a-Booze, who then became Azzer-Bazzer, who then became Azerbaijan. Simple! 

Ok, anyway, back to Azerbaijan, the country. This place kind of rocks, and some of us even agreed it's the country we've done that we'd most like to visit. Some house keeping before I get to the fun stuff. They speak Azerbaijani in Azerbaijan, and 98% of the population is Muslim. However, only about 21% practice the religion, or say it's important, making Azerbaijan the least religious Muslim-majority country. The capital is Baku, and they've only been a country since 1991.

Yes, I know. Facts. Yawn. Ok, but here's whats exciting about Azerbaijian: they have speedy, elegant, good tempered horses (Karabakh horse, who sadly is endangered), burning mountains, and mud volcanoes! Plus, they're supposedly the location of the Garden of Eden and have a carpet museum! A museum for the world's largest collection of Azerbaijani rugs, and the building itself is even shaped like a rug! The burning mountain is more a hilltop, but it has it's very own natural eternal flame that has been burning for centuries and shows no signs of ever going out, thanks to the natural gas below the surface. Stinky gas is also responsible for the mud volcanoes. Azerbaijan is home to more than 400 mud volcanoes (which is more than half of all mud-volcanoes on earth). 

The boys made their postcards, Calib's Azerbaijani rug is pretty impressive, Peyton focused on the Flaming Towers in Baku (the tallest buildings in Baku which have LED screens all over them), and Hayden made sure to get a little bit of everything in there. 

For dinner we had Plov. You can make Plov like a million different ways, but it usually has a meat or a dried fruit in them. I can't find the recipe we used (you'd think I'd have a better system for keeping tack of them), but they're all pretty much the same thing with slight variations. 

There's lots of fruits and veggies in Azerbaijan, too, because they have fertile land, and a whole slew of climate zones. We had grapes and strawberries, and Choban Salatasi (it's a Turkish salad, but Azerbaijan pulls from it's neighbors in the cuisine department). Azerbaijani's have Chorek (bread), but as we discussed, we're not not bakers. The closest you can buy here is Challah bread, so we went with that. 

For dessert, we had Azerbaijani apple pie, which is basically like throwing all the ingredients of an apple pie in a dish and cooking it. But it works! 

Azerbaijan earns four spoons up. 

Shockingly enough, I'm the only one who didn't approve. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't all that exciting. Lots of fruits and veggies, which I like. But, the Plov lacked flavor for me. (I probably would have been happy with the dried fruit one, but as we have discovered, Calib flips out over raisins in his food). Everyone else really enjoyed it. Calib and Asa both had more salad and Plov (and Calib had like 3 pieces of bread), Peyton asked for seconds on the Plov and Apple Pie, and Hayden asked for more Apple Pie, after shockingly finishing his entire plate. 

We colored in Azerbaijan, right next to Armenia. It's our first two colored in neighbors! 

Next Up: We're going out of order with Canada!