Gypsy Kitchens: Baking with Gertie

"Gertie is responsible for bringing lasagna to Dungarvan," Pat told us proudly, but she's really famous for her scones.  In a local pub, we were told we just had to try them.  "You're staying at Kilcannon House? You have to have Gertie's scones."  Pat and Gertie Ormond had a cafe in town for years, one which churned out hundreds of scones and breads per day along with full breakfasts and lunches.  That sort of thing can get exhausting and, unfortunately, none of their three children had an interest in carrying on the family business.  So, now, it's the guests at their in-house B&B, Kilcannon, who get the honor of enjoying Gertie's cooking.  And, in our case, a cookery class with the master herself.

Baking with Gertie wasn't as much instructional as it was experiential and recipes were certainly not the focal point of the session.  In fact, the first lesson we learned was that there doesn't need to be anxiety about the exactness of baking or bread making.  There's always this feeling that 'baking' is more precise, scientific, mathematical than 'cooking,' and that a close focus and carefulness are key.  Gertie's school of thought was much different.  Sure, she knew all the measurements by heart, but questions about if a spoonful should be 'heaping' or 'leveled' or a 'handful' was the right size were always shrugged off with a "that's perfect!"  If we get our hands in there, she stressed, we'll feel that it's right.  Her process was one based on physical memory and an interaction with the ingredients.

Really, we were moving too quickly to take full head of every step of the process(es).  You see,  in about an hour and a half, we made two types of scones and two types of soda bread simultaneously.  One of us worked on one while the other was given a task for the other and all the while, Gertie moved between us taking our hands to help or taking over altogether.  It was more Show than Tell, more Feel than Measure.  She wasn't trying to teach us how to make scones or soda bread, but really how to bake.  Like pushing someone on a bike and then letting go, she was gave us the feeling of doing it, of hitting the sweet spot and trusted that we'll be able to get back there on our own.

This isn't to say that there was anything absent-minded or lackadaisical about baking with Gertie.  There was a process and a science, just one that had less to do with measurements and more to do with the chemistry of it all.  There was never a direction without an explanation, which is a hallmark of good teaching.  You've gotta understand to remember.  She stressed never letting your dough sit too long after adding baking soda, because of the chemical reactions.  Also, adding too much baking soda to white soda bread will make its color brown, because it burns.  A left hand was submerged in the dry mix before buttermilk was added with the right, that way we could feel our way to the perfect amount of liquid.  Something that was of the utmost important was air, "letting lots of air in."  The white flour was sifted three times to get as much air in as possible. 

Ingredients were combined with a soft touch for more air.  Instead of breaking the tabs of butter up inside the dry mixture or folding the raisins or cheese in, we were told to put both hands down deep into the bowl and bring the mixture up and out, letting it all sift through our fingertips.  It was a motion akin to tossing spaghetti, intermingling ingredients instead of mushing them together.   Another trick of the trade was to be careful about adding too much flour.  "That's what makes scones too hard."   This meant minimal handling of the dough once it was plopped down on a floured surface.  Messing with the dough too much also hardens it

Gertie's methods ensured that the scones wouldn't be hard and the soda bread wouldn't be dense.  What's funny is that we always thought hard and dense were words that were supposed to be associated with scones and soda bread.  It was a little like going to France after a lifetime of eating croissants and having someone tell you that they shouldn't be moist or doughy.  Because it's only the real deal croissants that are crusty and flaky.  The ones you don't come across all that often. At the end of our whirlwind baking session, we had a dozen cheese scones, a dozen raisin ones, a loaf of white soda bread and a load of brown.  Every morsel was fluffy, airy, pillowy.

Pat came in just as we were setting ourselves down beside the heaps of warm baked goods and afrench press of coffee.  "Did a little cooking?" he asked, bemused.  "She does this every morning," he said rolling his eyes and slacking his jaw, an expression of bystander fatigue and marvel.  And, indeed, as we said our goodbye the next morning, with a dozen or so scones and a loaf of bread still left over, Gertie went into the cupboard and got her handy 3 gallon container of cream flour.  "The kids are coming over for lunch, so I've got to get started!"

Tricks of the Trade

Sift your white flour three times for airiness
Once the baking soda is added, don't let sit too long
If you're white soda bread isn't perfectly white, there was too much soda in it
Never add egg-wash to the sides of your scone or pastry, it will weigh it down from fluffing up
Or just skip the egg wash altogether. "I wouldn't crack an egg for it.  It's only worth it if you have some egg left over or if you really want to impress someone. " - Gertie
Cut the X into the top of a round loaf with a scissor.  A knife will tear the dough.

Gertie's Top Five Baking Tips (which could also be general advice for life)

Lots of air
Don't mess with it too much
If you feel it, you'll know
Gotta get your hands dirty
Show it who's boss/Handle it gently (whichever is applicable. choose wisely)

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Skolt's Honor

It's not that often that you're hostess catches, guts and cooks your dinner over an open flame, but that's just what happened at our homestay in Sevettijärvi.  Natalia, who did most of this with her handful of a 10 month old daughter balanced on her hip, was tickled with the catch.  "I didn't actually expect to get a fish!" she laughed, struggling to remove her hook from the beautiful lake trout's mouth.  Ice-fishing is second nature to her, but this was her very first big non-icy catch.  "I have to show my sisters!"  she giggled shooting off a picture text on her phone.  Her older sister, who is a member of Sámi parliament and the preeminent Skolt Sámi rock musician ceded the title of "family rock star" for the day.  Her younger sister asked her to save the skin.  "She wants it for her handicrafts - to make a purse, probably," Natalia explained.  "Skolt Sámi use every part of the fish."

Skolt Sámi are the indigenous people of the area at which Finland, Norway and Russia meet.  There are around 1250 ethnic Skolts in the world today.  About 700 live in Finland and 315 of them reside right here in Sevettijärvi, a village just south of the northernmost border between Norway and Finland.  We stayed on Natalia's family reindeer farm in Sevettijärvi for two nights and couldn't have been given better insight into Skolt Sámi culture.  Natalia's knack for storytelling was keen, her laughter infectious.  She told us about meeting her husband at Sevetin Baari, the local bar.  "I was the only single girl for 100 kilometers!"  And about being the only female in her elementary school class, "I've seen it all."  She spoke of her grandfather, a reindeer herder, who was famous for tea that could wake the dead, and her grandmother, who was tiny but fierce.

"Skolt Sámi are short, but she was the shortest," Natalia said of her grandmother who stood only one meter tall, but commandeered big dogs and reindeer like a general.  "If she wasn't good with humans, she was excellent with animals."  Grandma had seven children, one of which was birthed during a routine reindeer feeding in the dead of winter.  Out in the snowy woods, Domna tied her skirt together at the bottom and skied home.  Stricken with dementia at the end of her nearly 100 year long life (by the family's best guess), grandma began to show some vulnerability.  "Take me home," she'd plead, referring to Petsamo on what is referred to locally as "the lost arm" of Finland.
51 Skolt Sámi families were forced to resettle here after their home was signed over to Russia at the end of the 1940s.  She'd pull her grandmother around on a sled attached to the back of a snowmobile.  Up and over and down and back they'd loop to her house, which Domna no longer recognized.  "Here you are! Home!"  Natalia would cheerfully announce and grandma would thank her for returning her to the lost arm. 

Sevettijärvi has only been accessible by car since 1970.  Before then, Skolts got around by snowmobile, reindeer, skis and boat.  "Mostly, we just stayed here," a teacher at the local school told us with humorous bluntness.  The new road brought ease of access and it also brought Toini, Natalia's mother, who met and married a Skolt Sámi man and had two daughters and one on the way when he died of cancer.   Not Sámi herself, she still chose to remain in Sevettijärvi, raising her daughters with a deep sense of their Sámi identity and eventually becoming principle of the local Skolt school.  For income, she turned her home into a campsite and travelers inn with the help of the local women's community.  "The cabin you're sleeping in was built by five grandmothers," Natalia laughed, but also said with pride.  Sámi women are strong - and (honorary Skolt) Toini, and the women she's raised are some of the strongest.

While we were there, a new barbecue house was being delivered.  Our freshly caught dinner was prepared in the older, bigger one, an octagonal log building with a fire pit with chimney at the center.  Groups come here throughout the high season, from April until September.  Snowmobilers that make too much noise, hikers that routinely get lost, bachelor parties that trash the place.  Tourism is a tricky thing and it's an ongoing struggle to gauge how much is worth it or not.  The Skolt Sámi depend a lot on tourism.  Aside from reindeer herding, it is their livelihood.  But this is also a people who are very in tune with nature, who want to continue to strike the right balance with their animals and their environment.  More than anything, the people here want to make sure their culture and traditions don't die out.

Of course, this has the most to do with future generations.  We were invited to visit the local school and meet the students, numbering only 9 at the moment.  When Natalia was in school, there were 100.  There is a gap in school aged children right now.  The district covers such a long area that two children actually live 100 kilometers apart from one another.  "Must make birthday parties difficult," Merlin quipped.  We were sung a traditional Skolt song and then Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star in Skolt Sámi, Swedish and Finnish.  When we left, we were presented a Skolt Sámi language text book, signed by all the children.  It is the first book of its kind, published only two years ago and worked on by one of the teachers at the school.  Until 1977, Finnish law forbade the teaching of Sámi language in school.

Across from the school is The Church of St. Tryphon of Pechenga and its cemetery, which the teachers implored as to go visit.  "There is a very special moss."  The Orthodox cemetery is the only spot in Sevettijärvi that has always been fenced off.  So, the beautiful white moss has been protected from nibbling reindeer for decades.  It has been growing and flourishing.  Skolt Sámi is an endangered language.  Only around 400 of the 1250 ethnic Skolts in the world can speak Skolt Sámi, most of whom live in Sevettijärvi.  So, what happens here is important.  This is the spot where it can grow and flourish.  Natalia hopes that there will be a generational shift, a renewed appreciation in language as part of Skolt tradition.

For her part, Natalia is working on a children's book in the language.  One doesn't currently exist for her daughter or that age range.  It is about a bird who overhears her parents talking every night about flying back home to a home that is lost.  "And all the bird can think is this is our home."
Our dinner trout, with flesh as pink as salmon, was caught in an undisclosed location.  There is an unspoken Skolt Sámi law that if you have a building on a lake, that body of water is 'yours.'  But, still, you don't want everyone knowing that your lake is stocked with big, beautiful trout.  "It is a well kept secret," Natalia told us. 

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The Painted Farms of Hälsingland

The man with the sword, to the left to the door, is the Guardian.  A quote above him states that he was there to protect anyone that entered, but also reserved the right to kick you out of it you got too drunk.  In the panel closest to the fireplace, the Fiddler laments his role as maître d'.  He is there to wrangle people, entertain, keep order.  He is harassed by a rowdy bunch whose job it is to make his job difficult, hiding in barns, boozing it up.  On the opposite wall, Sophia promises her unending love in a wedding ceremony and a man with a horse spins a tale about a buzzy political topic of the day, To Eat or Not to Eat horse meat.  This is the festivities room at Ol-Anders farm, one of the decorated Hälsingegården (farmsteads of Hälsingland).  These painted rooms are one part of what make the Hälsingegården unique to Sweden and the world. 

 In the 19th century, a boom occurred in Hälsingland.  It was a perfect storm of events for the region with a farming tradition dating back to the year 200.  Things that the farmers of Hälsingland had done for centuries suddenly became big business.  This is flax country and flax makes linen.  So, when a British man with know-how and his team of women who could spin with both hands simultaneously came into town, Hälsingland became Sweden's linen capital.  (The only linen mill still in Scandinavia exists here, today).  Then, when cotton began to usurp linen, in the mid 1800s, fortune struck again.
Agricultural reform gave farmers large swaths of forest they had little-to-no interest in.  But just about at the same time, industrialization started, railways were built and selling off land and felling rights became a goldmine.  Add to all of this a doubling of the population (thanks to peace and the smallpox vaccine) and the lack of a noble class and the farmers of  Hälsingland soared. "Cash in their pocket," Gun-Marie Swessar explained to us at Ol-Anders, something incredibly new for a population of people traded goods amongst themselves.  This is what they chose to do with it.

"That which... in Hälsingland, immediately arouses an outsider's attention are the magnificent and imposing buildings."  Elementary School Textbook, 1878.  Not much has changed since then.  As we drove to Alfta, where we'd booked a farmstay with the Hisved family, we kept noticing these enormous barns and houses.  Estates, really, grand in stature, but with an overwhelming sense of functionality.  Some people call the Hälsingegården, Hälsingland farmsteads, 'log castles,' and their layouts are pretty fortress-like.  Above, you can see the traditional form.  A fourth building used to be right where we're standing, completing the square.  The winter house is at the top, facing south for optimum sunshine.  The cow stables are to its left and the festivities and summer house is to its right.
This farm, Ol-Anders, was originally down in Alfta's town center.  However, after a 1793 fire destroyed almost all the buildings, the Anderssons and other families, moved their farms up onto hills, out of close proximity to neighbors.  For extra protection, they set them up like mini fortresses.  After the blaze, came the boom and what started as one story - two windowed buildings expanded upward and outward.  

Then came the decorative touches.  In parts of the region that were connected more closely to city, via trade routes or proximity, elaborate doors, detailed woodwork and pastels were the design of choice.  That's what the urban folk were doing, after all.  In places like Alfta and Långhed, porches were the style.  It's impossible not to notice them, some baroque, some rococo, some faux Greek temple.  "It took about 25 - 50 years for the fashions of the mainland [Europe] to get to this part of Sweden," Gun-Marie said, laughing.  Whether with a porch or not, the entrance to the home was considered the true sign of status.  Amazingly, though, even when the authorities actually began to complain that they were building on too large a scale and 'being too extravagant with wood,' the farmers of Hälsingland were never trying to outdo one another.  It was more like they were all deciding upon a local folk art, using most of the same builders and artists.

The painters mainly came from Dalarna, south of Hälsingland.  They would come on foot, with no job opportunities in their own neck of the woods, knowing that there was some wealth to go around up north.  Offering to paint for a few nights room and board, the artists began to adorn the festivities rooms.  Then, one room after another became canvases.  As the buildings grew, there was more wallspace to adorn.  With international styles beginning to come into vogue, farmers asked their painters to create the look and feel of expensive materials that would never be available to them.  Paint was used to create the illusion of oak and mahogany, Italian marble and French silk.  Always practical, the most intricate art was left for the rooms used only now and then.  More durable wall treatments, like stenciling and splatter painting, were used in entrance halls, sleeping rooms.  Because the fanciest murals were done in rooms that got use maybe a few times per generation and were not exposed to smoke or grease, they were able to remain intact.

Before we met with Gun-Marie at Ol-Anders, we didn't quite know how we'd be able to get a look at some of the famous interiors.  "Perhaps I can call my friend," Kersti Hisved told us when we asked about it.  We stayed with her and her husband, Ivor, in the hamlet of Långhed.  "Or, you can just come upstairs and look at ours!"  Ivor remembers touching the wall paintings as a child.  The paint used to come off on his fingers, he recalled.  Amazingly, with windows all around, it shows no signs of fading.  They've turned the festivities room into a kitchen, removing the wall panels temporarily to add insulation and having a restorer add a protective sealant before beginning any construction work.  "He told me to clean the walls with bread," said Kersti, "that's how they do all the old churches.  Lots of bread."  She dabbed at the wood with an imaginary chunk of baguette.
"In the 50s and 60s, everyone wanted everything new."  All across Hälsingland, some design elements became casualties of modernity.  But the festivities rooms, with their lack of insulation, were often the last things to get touched.  "She did not have the money to renovate this whole, big house," Ivor said of his grandmother.

Although the buildings on Kersti and Ivor's farm date back to 1845, they have only been in the Hisved family for four generations.  Some Hälsingegården have been in the same family for 400 years.  A strict code of inheritance governed the land here, where there was no aristocracy to clamor for real estate.  Father to son and if you had a daughter, it was customary to marry her off to a close neighbor.  Ironically, though, right after all these big houses were built in the mid 1800s, 10 - 30% of the people in this area emigrated to America.  They were following Erik Jansson, a preacher whose love of book burning got him run out of town and whom they promptly shot in Bishop Hill, Illinois after discovering that - prophet or not - he was an egomaniacal control freak.  Anyway, lots of houses were left empty.

While driving along in Edsbyn, we spotted Panesgården, a Halsingegården-turned-garden shop.  A warm welcome was given by Rosemarie and Rolf, who'd bought the building under a year ago.  Rosemarie had a flower shop in town, but fell in love with the historic farm, which wasn't being put to any use.  The ceiling had been newly touched up, the old faded painting could still be seen.  As we gawked at it, Rosemarie came up beside us.  "Want to see the upstairs?" she asked almost mischievously.  The impossibly narrow spiral staircase was unroped for us.  "You do this at your risk," she said before telling us to duck.  "I'm not allowed to let customers up here."

Upstairs, we emerged into a huge, bright room with some of the prettiest painting we'd seen.  She would like to turn the space into a cafe, if she can figure out the dangerous staircase situation.  Of the 1,000 Hälsingland farms, around 50 of them can be visited.  Many have been turned into B&Bs.  I think it was most fun to have just stumbled upon some.
What I love most about these farmers' mansions is the clear idea you get of what was truly valued by the people who built them.  Even as the farms grew almost ludicrously large, entire families would still sleep in a single room.  Why heat more than one?  They remained self-sufficient, continuing to spin, weave, slaughter, build, brew, bake... and all those big buildings gave them space to do it.  On most grand estates, the space is filled with stuff.  Here, they were filled with tools.  On most, fashion trumps function, wallpaper and furnishings are switched out for newer styles.  On these walls, art was made to last. 

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The Most Untrammeled Doorstep

We walked the last hour or so up to Rekë e Allagës.  The taxi driver had gotten fed up with the rough roads and a little lost - on foot, we followed a stream and a dirt track upwards, hoping that it was the way.  When we came up out of the pine forest, we asked at the first house - "Mustafa and Fetija?"
"Po, po," the man said, meaning yes, and sent us off with young children as guides.
When we stay at homestays, we always hope that it will be something like this - an idyllic setting, a unique culture, a world apart.  This is Kosovo at its most untouched.

We stayed on a dairy farm in Rekë e Allagës, a steep hamlet in the remote Rugova Valley.  Every morning, our hosts would pour their fresh milk into a pantry's worth of different pails and pans - some for kos (yogurt), some for djath (cheese) and some for mazė, (clotted cream).  Fetija, our hostess, cooked whole milk in low pans on the woodstove, letting the liquid slowly evaporate.  The mazė arrived on the table a chunky, shining mess of curds, very soft, to be used with everything.

Mustafa (second from right) had grown up on that very spot.  His uncle (far right) and father had been raised in a centuries-old stone house there, but the building was destroyed by a Serbian bomb.  "Boom" the uncle said, flattening his hands* out over the table and shaking his head.  "Nothing."
Fetija is also from the Rugova, but a different part - she talked quickly to us in Albanian, nodding to see if we understood, not caring that we didn't.  They talked about how cold it is in the winter, about snowshoes and several meters of snow.  Now, the family leaves between November and March, staying with Mustafa's parents in Peja.  The Rugova is beautiful in July, too hard in January.
*The uncle does have two hands, it's just that the picture is deceiving.

Mustafa had a rare energy and an amazing amount of hospitality.  He loved to talk with us, with hand gestures, some German, laughs and whistles.  In the Rugova, the people speak with lots of emphatic noises, a kind of separate language at the end of a sentence.  They make a swooshing sound to mean a long distance, or a semi-growl to express that something was incorrect.  At first, we thought that it was just part of the language barrier - but Mustafa and his friends used the signals in conversation amongst themselves, and Fetija would end her quick phrases to her husband the same way.

We spent a whole day hiking, making a long circuit around one wing of the valley, passing from meadow to forest to open fields.  We returned on the front edge of a thunderstorm, and found that Fetija had been busy all afternoon with something special.
If there were only one dish that Kosovar people claimed as their own, it would be flija.  We'll talk about it as a dish in more detail later, but the process seems like a separate, unique thing.
Flija is cooked from above, using heavy, metal covers that are heated up over wood coals.  Fetija spent almost five hours by the outdoor fire, laboring over the dish.  To be over-reductive, I'll describe flija as an integrated stack of dozens of crepes, cooked one layer at a time with butter and milk solids in-between.  It's exhausting and delicious. One can't find the true delicacy in stores or bakeries because it takes too long - the process is really one of waiting and burning wood.  Mustafa, Rebecca and I sat with her for the last hour, drinking beer and listening to the cows low in the barn.

Hiking here is an adventure of waterfalls and grazing cows, springs and - right now - millions of butterflies.  From his kitchen, Mustafa would point in one direction for Albania, to Valbona, and in another direction for Montengro.  In fact, he said that you could walk to the border with Montenegro - just three hours up the hill.  It's at places like this that one can remember how intricate the world of Europe is, where one alpine hillside can have its own traditions and people.   We heard of tours that passed through, walking from Albania to Montenegro to Kosovo, passing over peaks and sleeping in villages - we thought about what an adventure each new valley must seem, a new culture.
Some say that the Rugova Valley is the heartland of Kosovo, where all things uniquely Kosovar come from - but, really, Kosovo has just adopted the most evocative imagery from Rugova.  To call these people Kosovar is to call texans "North American."  It may be true, but it doesn't say much about the whole or the part.

And to say that we feasted isn't doing the food - or the portions - justice.  It's funny, but we hadn't found much "traditional" Kosovar food before we came here.  That partly has to do with Kosovo's taste for the international and the cuisines that have swept in from the wider world.  But it's also partly because "Kosovar" food is difficult to make, with recipes born in the mountains and given little thought in the lowlands.
Here is our supper the first night: a salad of sauerkraut, tomatoes and cucumbers; fresh bread; big tranches of homemade cheese; speca memaz, basically a pepper and cream soup; cups of fresh, cheesy yogurt; and leqenik, a dense, buttery cornbread.  All of the dairy - in four different forms - had come from the family cows.  It's heavy food, good for cool nights at elevation.

Staying in the Rugova, looking out at dark mountains and wild forest, one feels very far away from the KFOR-troop jeeps and supermarkets lower down.  There are no cafes or clothing boutiques, hardly any cars.  Men go to work with cow-twitches and chainsaws.  Mustafa told us that he doesn't want a car - he patted his legs and grinned, "very good," he said.
The truth is, it's not that far to Peja, one of Kosovo's largest cities.  The trip (when you can get a taxi to go all the way) only lasts about forty-five minutes.  The entry to the Rugova is just outside of Peja, though, and as soon as the canyon walls surround the road, one begins to feel far away.  The drive becomes twistier and rougher as it goes, with waterfalls and craggy spires alongside.  Turning up into the woods and towards Rekë e Allagës, all direction and distance is jumbled.  When a traveler emerges into the high meadows, there is nothing left of what they found below.

Under their porch, Mustafa and Fetija keep wooden barrels of cheese, wrapped in gauzy cloth and kept cool in the dark.  Mustafa talked proudly of the Italians that would come to buy cheese and mazė, of the traditions that he was part of.  He had lived for a few years in Switzerland, he has a brother in the Bronx, he knows about the outside world - but he also loves his home, and we could see the happiness he had there, in the hot and verdant days of early July.  On our first evening, we sat outside on the balcony and listened to his children play in the neighbors field - a gaggle of village kids rolled a tire down through the wildflowers over and over, shrieking and running.
When we try our hardest to reach into the ether of the unknown - try to make it to the furthest point, the most untrammeled doorstep - we always hope it will be something like this.  On our last night in Rekë e Allagës, we sat out on the balcony again with cups of turkish tea and the smoke of our hosts' cigarettes.  A full moon rose above the Prokletija Alps and we sat wondering where we were and how we had found our way there - it felt too distant to be real.

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Macedonian Home Cooking

We came for the food.  In 2003, a Swiss organization called Pronatura chose Brajčino as the first eco-village in Macedonia, aiding it to create a tourism industry that could help preserve the village's natural beauty and rural lifestyle.  The help included trail markers, information panels, updates to homes that wanted to offer "western quality" accommodation.  The people of Brajčino, three old women to be precise, took it upon themselves to create a small sub-industry.  They developed set menus and prices and began to offer tourists home-cooked Macedonian meals.  Almost a decade later, this has become one of the main tourist draws.  "A lot of Italians go there," someone had remarked in Ohrid.  "I don't know why."  We knew exactly why.  Brajčino has become an unlikely foodie destination.

Upon arrival, we were sadly informed that one old women no longer does it, one had rented out her house for the season and the third had a broken leg.  (When an ancient, whiskered woman lifted her black hemline and tapped her cane against a bandaged, swollen knee later that day, we deduced that she must have been apologetic women #3).  "But you can eat in my home one night and in the restaurant the other," our host Divna said.  It felt like a let-down, but when we saw the wooden table on Divna's front lawn set for a welcome snack, we couldn't imagine a more perfect place to eat.  It ceased to matter what exactly that food experience would be.  Divna's chickens ran around, the bigger of her two roosters was on a fornicatory rampage.

Over the next two days, two breakfasts and two dinners, we experienced truly divine locavore eating.  The potatoes were bright yellow, the egg yolks were flame orange, both so packed with vitamins and nutrients that the color and flavor were exploding with vibrancy.  Homemade sheep cheeses differed in textures and flavors, crushed walnuts replaced roasted peanuts when the mood struck, trout from the river (which was stocked from nearby Lake Prespa) replaced the normally offered beef.  "There used to be eight cows, now there are only four.  Young people don't like raising them," our host had told us.  Though, I'm sure veal would have popped up had I not requested meatless dining.

There was, actually, a little meat in Merlin's first dinner.  We were each given a clay pot with four small stuffed red peppers.  My polneti piperki overflowed with spiced rice and his had some ground beef mixed in.  Macedonian food is almost always verrrry slowly-cooked in clay dishes, which is why restaurant equivalents just don't cut it in most cases.  Rice plays a large role in the cuisine, both because of Turkish influences and the fact that they grow a lot of rice.  In the peppers, and mixed into our vegetable soup starter, the grains were flavorful and toothsome - with the appearance of brown rice, but the taste of black, wild rice.

At our dinner in the restaurant, which had been opened just for us and felt just as cozy as any home, we received a crash course in Macedonian cuisine.  Everything we'd jotted down as something to look out for on our travels, appeared before us: tavče gravče (butter beans slow cooked in an earthenware dish - considered the national dish), Macedonian pie (a savory pastry of leeks, spinach and herbs), ajvar and pindzur (a quintessentially Macedonian red pepper paste and its fresher, less cooked down salsa-like sibling).  Ajvar is something we've been trying wherever and whenever we can.  Every cook has their way of doing it.  It is made in enormous batches during Autumn, cooked for hours and hours in jars and eaten at every meal throughout the year.  "I make too much ajvar!" the restaurant chef, Milka, said laughing.  Her annual batch is made from 100 kilos of red pepper, from her own garden and those of other village women.

Ajvar is one of those things that Macedonians insist you must try homemade.  These sort of declarations are usually frustrating, like "try to get yourself invited to a wedding!"  On it.  It's one of the reasons places like Brajčino and homestays in general are so special.  You actually can eat a homecooked meal in a foreign country, you just have to explore your options.  Here's some ajvar served as part of one of Divna's excellent breakfasts.  Alongside is a dry, cornbread with specks of salty sheep's cheese scattered within in like chocolate chips and a sprinkling of sesame seeds on top.  Before eating, we poured kefir over the cake and dabbed on some blueberry jam as directed.

Yogurt was not the only homemade drink on the menu.  We drank white wine, liker and rakija all made by Divna and her husband.  Rakija is your usual privately distilled liquor, clear, strong.  Liker, as far as we can tell, is the girlier version.  Infused with fruit and with added sugar, it is a more pleasant sip.  Adult juice.  These two spirits are usually served with pride and a personal touch.  Some have mint leaves inside or are yellower in color, from extra wheat added during fermentation.  Divna's rakija was particularly strong and her liker, plum.

We felt at home at Divna's, but there was something freeing about having our experience in Milka's restaurant.  Homestays are now a big part of our traveling experience, we try to set one up in each country if we can.  Still, we worry about crossing the line between paying guests and house invaders.  No one has ever made us feel this way, especially not Divna, but it feels much less intrusive taking up someone's time with questions when you aren't also pulling them away from their own dinner, family and/or favorite television show.  Milka's restaurant was decked out in full traditional kitsch, but her low, neat ponytail, athletic shoes and zip-up vest over a v-neck t-shirt harkened back to her 18 years in Sweden.  Like almost everyone else who grew up in Brajčino, she left during young adulthood.  It was wonderful to talk to her about life before and life now, about her recipes, the sources of her ingredients and her family.

In the morning, we'd hear Divna setting up the breakfast table, beneath the grape arbor.  The vines had recently been pruned, so a drop of sap would drip onto our scalps or into our cups of coffee now and then.  The old women of the town would come and visit her as she ate and would, later, recognize us in town.  One, who rose no higher than Merlin's bellybutton and who we'd seen weeding a large garden the day before, spoke rapidly to us as we waited for the minibus.  Afterward, we decided that she must have been trying to figure out if we were the great grandchildren of one of her friends who'd moved to America.  Milka's daughters are in Sweden and Australia now.  The Aussie one has two boys and is pregnant again.  Milka is hoping for a girl.  That way, she explained, she can pass down all of her secret recipes.

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Up in the Albanian Highlands

We'd been warned there would be snow. When we arrived in Valbonë, we thought for sure that the ground was covered in it. White spread out before us. But as the furgon drove over to the door of our homestay, its tires created a sound more akin to a crescendoing bag of Jiffy Pop than the squeak and crunch of snow. These white stones cover a good deal of Valbonë valley, brought down from the mountains by the river after which it is all named.  In 48 hours, these river stones would find themselves in a familiar place, back beneath the rush of water.  Two days of heavy downpour carved a labyrinth of puddles and streams so large you'd think they were always there.
In fact, we woke up to find that our homestay had earned a protective moat overnight.  It had taken us 11 hours to reach Valbonë, via three furgons and one amazing ferry, and now a rain-river threatened to keep us from exploring it.  The only choice was to throw the biggest stones we could find into some shallow sections in an attempt to create a footbridge.  After too many kerplunked under the surface of the deepening water, we figured we were stuck.  But our host mother came to our rescue with a pair of galoshes. Embarrassingly, I wound up sending one of the boots down the river in a failed attempt to throw them back across to her, and she jumped in to catch it. Our feet were kept dry, but she was now drenched up to the calves. I reddened, she laughed. In Valbonë, leaving your house to find that a body of water now stands in the way of leaving your property is simply comedic.  
These are the mountains of Albania, where isolation is a part of life. Merlin and I joke that nearing two full years of travel, we aren't satisfied unless we've been to the most remote part of each country. In Georgia, that took us to Mestia. In Azerbaijan, extraordinary Xinaliq. Albania's north is full of villages that fit the bill and Valbonë, along with Theth, have become destinations for travelers who like going off(off-off) the beaten track. Summertime brings hikers from around the world and daytrippers from neighboring Kosovo. Teenagers who live in the nearby hub of Bajram Curri most of the year to attend high school - commuting every day isn't really an option - come home. They work as waiters and hiking guides for their family's business - half the houses become "hotel familiars" with restaurants and rooms for rent.
We weren't the first visitors of the year for our host family, but it is still well before their on season.  They are hoping to complete a new floor on their house, with wraparound balcony, before the tourist crowd begins to stream in.  Full all last summer, they are in need of new rooms.  Valbonë in the summer must be a far cry from the sleepy, rain-soaked place we found. Where, for two full hours of walking along the main road, we didn't see a single car.  This has been the poorest and most isolated region in Albania throughout most of its history and while tourism is beginning to help things a little, life remains mostly the same.  There weren't any cars parked alongside houses and for a month every winter, people are still completely confined to their houses because of the snow. Valbonë is a recognized National Park, which keeps it blissfully free from the litter that plagues most of Albania.  It really feels more like a protected stretch of nature than a cohesive village, with no discernible center, minimarket, post, etc.  The big, pink schoolhouse stands alone, aside from a trio of leftover bunkers half submerged into a hill. In a lot of ways, the Bajram Curri-Valbonë furgon acts as the nucleus of the town. Twice a day, the van makes its way across town. Down to Bajram Curri at 7am, back up at 3pm sharp. In the hours between, the driver runs the village's errands, armed with shopping lists and a handful of things that need to be returned or repaired. We were delivered to our host family along with a quarter chicken and tomatoes.
When we could rouse ourselves from the warm comfort of our room, we explored Valbonë under borrowed umbrellas. Unable to take full advantage of the hiking trails, we simply walked. The newly built museum and tourist center is currently empty and we weren't exactly sure what we would stumble across. As wet as it was, most people stayed in. It was just us and the constant sound of rushing water- from the heavy grey clouds above, from the waterfalls that ran down the mountains on all sides, from the impossibly blue Valbona river at our feet. Just when we thought the bell-wearing mare who leaped past and this salamander that sauntered by would be the only life we'd see, a siren call of chimney smoke brought us into a "hotel familiar/restaurant/bar." Inside, a pair of young men were waiting out the rain with a game of cards and a table of eight were enjoying a marathon lunch. Salads, yogurt with spicy pepper mixed in, fried potatoes, soup and a casserole of macaroni and lamb. When there was a lull in the delivery of courses, they passed around a traditional çifteli and each took a turn plucking at and strumming its strings.
Of course, we also had a family to come home to. And the warmth of the fires they built for us. The matriarch, whose galosh I'd sent a'floating, could light a fire with such ease that I swear she was telekinetic. The patriarch installed this wood stove right in our room, making it look downright tiny as he carried it in. He was a statuesque man with a low, smoker's voice that rattled and boomed. His broad, handsome face was sectioned off in three equal parts like an unfolded letter by one long, thick eyebrow and a long, thick mustache. He reminded me of the heroes' busts set up all around Tirana.

In front of the house sat these picturesque remains of the house he grew up in. With its doorway framing the gorgeous Dinaric Alps it seemed to smile over the ever-growing new home like the portrait of an ancestor hung above a mantle. In the barn next to it, we were shown the goats, who tumbled out of their holding pen, climbing on top of each other to exit like it was the L train at rush hour. Usually, they were up on the steep hill behind their house with the young son of the household. He and his mom screamed conversations we couldn't understand, in parent-child tones that sounded all too familiar. Some things are the same the world over.

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