Since i always draw a blank when i try to write this like a journal, a 'web log' if you will, i will just cover a few basic things that people probably wonder about Armenia.
Before i came, Armenian food was described to me by various sources as a mix of Greek, Persian and Russian foods. This may be true to an extent, but it sounds vastly more exciting than the reality. The big traditional meals are dolma (rice and almost invariably beef, wrapped in cabbage or grape leaves and boiled), khorovats (barbecued meat on a shish) and the accompanying boiled bony parts called khashlama, khash (cow leg stew), and spas (yogurt soup with rice or wheat berries and mint). I often enjoy dolma and always enjoy spas (though i am in the minority on the latter point).
A typical breakfast might be fried eggs, fried eggs with beans, or boiled hotdogs, usually with lavash (flatbread that accompanies every meal in most homes), a pungent cheese, a large slab of butter and a fruit jam or muraba (jam with whole pieces of fruit). Everything is on the salty side (or over it), and the amount of butter or oil used to fry things is at least one order of magnitude greater than what i personally use. The murabas and jams are an unbelievable addition to the table, and to my life in general. These range from the traditional blackberry and raspberry, apricot, and cherry, to things i never dreamed of before, like rose petal and young walnut muraba. The rose petal is my favorite. I like to pretend i'm Nero when i'm eating it. The young walnut is made by cutting the green rind from the walnut fruit and boiling it for a long time, presumably until all the iodine is fixed, and the fruits look like black jewels. Then they are boiled in a sugar solution and canned. The result is a pure, black fruit with the texture of an apple, and inside is a sweet, creamy, walnut-flavored liquid as rich as liquour.
A lunch or dinner will often be soup, either vegetable, chicken or balls of rice and beef, heavy on dill. Hot peppers are often used, and can be unexpectedly very hot. They have a flavour similar to Hungarian wax peppers. There are also a lot of grains, particularly buckwheat, which i could eat almost exclusively. The table will almost always include a salted and oiled salad of tomatoes and cucumbers when in season. I haven't been through a winter yet, but i hear it basically comes down to potatoes, and lots of them (if you're lucky). So far, my all-time favorite is what is called, 'khaviar,' which means, 'caviar,' but is actually roasted and pulverized eggplant, tomato, pepper, onion and garlic. It's like babaganouj and tomato sauce combined. I could eat a liter of it at a time.
Fast food is kababs or schwarma, and comes in lamb, chicken or beef. They also do perashkas (pieroshkis) filled with potato and dill, for which i opt when i feel like making a bad health decision.
