Cinnamon Rolls and Sheep's Butt

If these two things sound like they shouldn’t be in the same sentence, I agree. However, they composed the entirety of dinner tonight, so you’re reading about them now. I think you can guess who made what. (As if you needed a hint, the Kyrgyz palate does not usually appreciate cinnamon, to the extent that many people don’t even know the word for it in their own language.)

Every now and then I get tired of eating plain bread—just bread—for breakfast, lunch, and occasionally dinner. So naturally, I make more bread—or rather, sweet breads, pies, or cinnamon rolls in this case—usually for lack of other available ingredients. Yesterday, I decided I would have a “hands on” tutorial session for my most motivated student, my 9th-grade neighbor and host cousin, Caliah. Thus, the making of cinnamon rolls (and an English lesson on cooking verbs and ingredients). And here I must brag: to say the rolls were delicious is an understatement; they were divine. I ate three immediately, and for obvious reasons to be presently explained, I did not regret the gluttony.

While Caliah, my host brother, and I were enjoying the fruits of our lesson, my host mother was preparing dinner, a mystery soup that boiled away on the hot plate. She was also rolling out dough for homemade noodles, and I hoped we might be enjoying the oily, but edible, noodle-potato-carrot soup we’d had in the past. Unfortunately, I was greatly mistaken. What had been boiling away for hours was a sheep’s butt, only the butt—no meat, no vegetables, just a solid chunk of fat slightly larger than a brick.

So stuffed and satisfied from my baking binge, I sat down to dinner with my host family to find before me a sheep’s butt and a plate of the noodles and potatoes, both coated in the fatty broth. I am usually very courteous about trying whatever food I find before me, but with the lingering sweetness of cinnamon sugar still on my tongue, the thought of consuming cubic inch slices of lard was, well…I have never been happier to give the excuse “I’m full,” and really mean it.

And did I mention that my host father’s mother moved in with us the evening? She speaks Russian and very little Kyrgyz, but regardless of language, couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t try such a delicacy. Then again, she wouldn’t touch my exotic cinnamon rolls, so I must conclude: when it come to fats and calories, to each their own.