Tbilisoba
tbilisi_face_painting,
originally uploaded by fonchik.
Tbilisi, Georgia is a gorgeous city which was celebrating itself today. Tbilisoba, the day of the city, is going on all weekend. Everyone was out on the streets, the weather was warm autumn perfection. Tomorrow they’ll be crushing grapes, or “crashing grapes” as the English version of the Tbilisi city website announces.
Spent the day walking, sitting and talking to old friends, snacking on salad, bread, khachapuri and of course red wine. Now off to dinner. Yum.
On Sharden, a pedestrian street in Old Town, the two main attractions were face-painting (the Georgian flag was the most popular) and taking pictures of living statues draped with artificial fruit. Real fruit - persimmons, pears, beautiful tiny grapes - is everywhere I go. Every few steps there is someone selling produce on the sidewalk or from a tiny storefront. The tomatoes in the salad were the deepest red imaginable. The whole city is one big farmers’ market.
In praise of the tomatillo
As part of our CSA share from Red Fire Farm, we got some tomatillos. The farm’s website had a recipe for salsa, which I finally got around to making on Sunday. It was GREAT.
I skipped the maple syrup, roasted the tomatillos, garlic and jalapenos in a skillet. Avoided the jalapeno seeds to keep the salsa on the mild side. All 3 girls loved it, we ate the entire batch in one sitting.
