Food of UB

UlaanBaatar is a cosmopolitan city. There is distinctly Mongolian food such as horse milk and dried yogurt, and there is Korean food, and lots of fruit imported from China.  Roasted pine nuts are highly prized and abound in the stalls that appear in clumps on the sidewalks.

In the Noble Hotel, where I stayed, breakfast was included in the price.  Most mornings, a bit after 8 AM, a knock would echo.  I would scurry to the door in my underwear and carefully receive the small carton of long-shelf-life milk and a small pastry.  A few times the carton was missing the little bent straw needed to pierce the aluminum foil seal on top.  On those occasions it took a bit more ingenuity to get to the beverage.   

Occasionally I would have to go summon breakfast.  They would never just give it to me, merely signal that I should go back to my room and shortly thereafter came the knocking at my door.

One morning, I guess they were out of milk and pastry, and I got this:

I had bought one of these in the grocery store and had it for lunch a day or two prior.  It is a spicy mushroom Ramen noodle dish.   

The room had a wonderful water dispenser that produced not only good potable cold water, but hot water as well.  With this hot water, I could make noodles, but more importantly I could make a wonderful cup of instant coffee complete with sugar and cream.  It was so good I brought some home.

I ate several times in the MIU cafeteria.  Kim-chi and rice were the common elements in most meals.  They served some good soups, with beef and lots of good vegetables.  Hot tea, including barley tea was the usual drink, but I noticed that pure hot water is a common drink here also.  I tried it, of course, and again I wonder why is it not more popular here in the USA?

When we were touring Terelj, the guide told me that if you give a Mongolian meat, they are happy with that alone.  Mongolians seem to like to eat fat, yet I saw very few fat Mongolians.  Most of them were closer to my size than to typical American sizes.

I had some great apples in UB, along with a very tasty Asian pear that a faculty member gave me.  I ate in my hotel room, on the side of the road in Terelj, in the MIU cafeteria, and in the Horton’s home, but I never entered a restaurant in UB.

I tried eating most everything that was set before me.  I was told that horse meat was the cheapest and most common there, but that pork was uncommon.  They told me that camel was also eaten, and I would have liked a taste of that.   I asked about eating yak, and was told it wasn’t common, but judging by the number of yaks I saw in Terelj, I’ll bet someone is eating them!

As a Christian, I feel pretty certain that G^d knows more about nutrition than anyone else.  In Leviticus G^d lays out some very simple dietary rules to eat by.   The Jews then took these simple rules and made them so complex you had to consult a priest before ordering in a restaurant.   

AND, we are the same way.  We take G^ds guidelines and add our two-cents, and pretty soon we are burdening others with a long list of rules.  Then we get turned off by the man-made rules, and throw out the baby (G^d’s Law) along with the rules.  But that’s another story…

Jesus reminds us that it's not what goes into us that matters most.  Instead, “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean.’” (Matt 15:16-20)

L^rd cleanse us all and start on the inside!