‘Bebia Butter’ business begins!

I feel the need to clarify. Listen people, I graduated from university, I’ve been in a kitchen before; I know that there is no actual butter in peanut butter. But forgive a girl. I literally translated peanut butter in English to ‘peanut butter’ in Russian. It’s only natural a few things would get lost in translation that resulted in me eating a spoonful of chunky, sweet butter yesterday. Worse things could have occurred.  But, I am happy to report that my quest for peanut butter is over!

This afternoon, Deda and I created the most delectable peanut butter ever to be tasted. All it took to create such heaven was a can of peanuts, a few spoonful s of honey (fresh from the beehive, mind you) and a tablespoon of sunflower seed oil. Seriously, this peanut butter tastes so good that my Deda thinks we should sell it all over Samtredia. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat Skippy again. (That is a lie. I will continue to eat Skippy in America but yearn for my homemade Georgian PB).

Deda and I hard at work grinding peanuts!

Yum!

We put our fresh, homemade PB into our empty jars of store-bought PB from Tbilisi.

 I've already decided to use the face of Tara’s bebia (host grandma) on the jar because she is the most adorable old woman in this whole town. Plus I think her ten-tooth smile would really sell. I’ll even call it ‘Bebia Butter’. I mean, hello, that’s guaranteed to be a hit.

In all honesty, it’s been so amazing that Tara has joined our group of three Americans in Samtredia. Her family is beyond lovable and it’s so nice to have another familiar face in town. (For those of you who aren’t my parents, Tara was my college roommate for three years and just came to Georgia a week ago with the TLG program). After knowing me for just twenty minutes Tara’s host family promised to take me to Turkey and to go hiking all over Georgia. Talk about hospitality.

I can’t say I’m really surprised though, hospitality seems to be a trait that all Georgians share. This evening I went over the apartment of my co-teacher Nona for what I thought was going to be just coffee and cake. My own naïveté is beginning to surprise me. Coffee and cake became coffee, half a cake, a pint of beer, and shots of homemade vodka. My line of the night was “ar minda!” (I don’t want!”) and I ruthlessly had to put my hand over my glass to make sure Nona’s husband did not pour me more to drink. 

In fact, when I praised Nona’s adorable one-year-old baby Luka (who likes to pretend he’s a horse and get kisses from his stuffed animal puppy Uf-Uf), her husband said that I could borrow him if I wanted. Excuse me? So not only will Georgians give you the shirt off their back, they’ll even lend you the child from their womb. 

My life is officially complete. I now have homemade peanut butter and my own personal horse-impersonating baby. I seriously love this country more and more every day.