Limey's new travel and food critique

[limey]

Today's breakfast looked much like yesterday's so here's a picture of yesterday's. Millet porridge, bread (sadly not delicious black bread), cheese, sausage, a hard boiled egg and a dod of butter. There's a dod of butter in the porridge, too. No-one was eating the sausage so I didn't either!
For some reason we're not given knives (at any meal) so I used a fork to spread the butter on the bread.
Today's porridge was made of oatmeal.
Also they serve something they call coffee but I have no idea how to describe it. Sweet and milky with some other vaguely familiar flavour, not coffee nor chicory.

[limey]

Yesterday's dinner at the holiday camp was noodles and meat with peppers and tomatoes. You begin to see a theme here? With "crab salad" probably containing the ubiquitous evil crab sticks. However there was very little in evidence and I suspect it was mostly rice, boiled egg and cucumber from the previous day. And why not?

[limey]

Lunch yesterday was grilled trout fresh from the Whitewater River in Grigiryev Canyon (scene of my pic with the horse and the eagle). Local handmade bread, crunchy cucumber, juicy tomatoes and cold prefab crinkle cut chips. Black tea sweetened with homemade raspberry jam.

[xoxoxoBruce]

You'll have to get a Swiss Army Knife to cover all their eccentricities.
I wonder it they make a plastic version for air travel?

[limey]

I had one once. It was nicked from a suitcase at an airport somewhere in Russia long before 9.11. I seem to recall at the same time a jar of "Scotch bonnet" chillis was also opened and sampled, left to leak a little hot juice into the rest of the contents of my suitcase.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Ain't that the way. It's not what they take, it's the damage/mess the make taking it.

[limey]

I was driven back to Bishkek airport by a young man who had brought a couple of friends along for the ride (he has a right-hand drive car and they drive on the right, so he wanted someone to ride shotgun to help him with overtaking when coming fetch me).
We stopped for some local delicacies along the way.

Buying salt fish and smoked trout.

We stopped at a wayside eatery. They didn't mind that we'd brought some of our own food. They supplied us with fresh bread, boiled potatoes and tea.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Sure helps to speak the language.

[limey]

Plov. Linguistically and culinarily related, I feel sure, to pilau (the rice dish, not the dog of sainted memory!). Rice, beef, carrots, spices.

Manty. You've seen these before. I'm pretty sure they are on that Silk Road food route between dim sum and ravioli. Pasta parcels filled with chopped mest and onions.

Horse steak on noodles. This was DELICIOUS. A sort of chocolaty rich beef flavour, and so tender.
I also drank some kumiss (mare's milk. Usually described as fermented but my companions on the wee road trip assured me that what I drank wasn't fermented). This was surprisingly sour and salty.

[Sundae]

I would have all of that in a heartbeat.
Well, spred over about four days anyway...