Mongolian Buuz and Bagels

I had a pretty busy weekend last weekend. Friday night I cooked Mongolian buuz. They actually turned out quite well! I made them with beef instead of mutton, because that is what I had. And I added some cabbage and carrots as well as onions. It took me FOREVER to make them. After chopping up the veggies and the meat (an awful experience, trust me) I had to make the dough and then shape the buuz and then steam them. Yanna! It is so much harder to cook here!


My first attempt at buuz, it almost looks like a Mongolian made them! Well, maybe a 10 year old Mongolian...

On Saturday I woke up early and climbed part of the way up Bulgan Mountain to take some pictures of Tsetserleg. It was a really pretty view. Part of the way up the mountain there is a big statue of Buddha, and there is construction going on around it. I'm not really sure what they are doing, but I think they are making a stairway all the way up to the statue and putting some tiles and stuff around it. I decided to climb a little further up. The mountain is mostly rock, and from the base it doesn't look like it would be very easy to climb, but there are enough little ravines from rain water that it's not too bad.

I had planned on making bagels and cream cheese on Saturday afternoon. I went to the market in the morning to get some things, and of course I could not find eggs anywhere! I went to the supermarket where I had seen them before, but they had none. So I walked all over town going into every Delguur that I saw asking if they had eggs. Of course none of them did. So I had resigned myself to no bagels, but stopped in the Delguur right in my apartment building on my way home, and they had eggs!! Amazing! But, of course, when I got back to my apartment the electricity was out. So I waited, and it never came back on. I finally did make bagels on Sunday morning. They turned out pretty well, though they are really labor intensive! And the recipe made like 20 bagels. I really just wanted one...
I also made something like cream cheese. It's more like milk curds with some salt and garlic, but you can spread it on a bagel and it tastes cheese-like! All in all, I would say it was a successful endeavor, but I won't be making bagels again until I have more people to eat them!
I went and visited Uunee, one of my coworkers on Sunday afternoon. My other two coworkers, Hongroo and Bayerhuu also went. Hongroo brought her 3 year old daughter, who is adorable. We basically sat around and ate and talked for 3 hours. Uunee kept bringing food out for the first 45 minutes or so. We had pickles, fried potatoes, fried hiam (a sausage-like meat that is very popular here), candy, suutae tse, blueberry juice that Uunee had made and also a glass noodle stirfry. It was waaay too much food! When it was time to go, we stopped in the Ger in Uunee's family's hashaa, where her Grandparents live. That was pretty cool, but of course I had to eat more. Her Grandma gave me some aruul and yogurt. The yogurt was DELICIOUS! The dairy products in Arkhangai really are the best.