ARMENIAN FOOD: FACT, FICTION & FOLKLORE was recently selected for the Forbes.com Book Club! The club features the best business and general interest books for executives and world travelers. Thank you, Forbes!

Please visit our new blog at ARMENIAN FOOD, to read about topics like:

A Day of Oghormi at Nerkin Sasnashen – Honoring the Dead: how authors Irina Petrosian and David Underwood paid tribute to the victims of US Air Force Flight 60528, shot down over Armenia during the Cold War.

Apricots, Unhappy Marriages, and the Mafia: It's apricot season in Armenia, and Hayastan's favorite fruit gets some unwelcome attention from the Armenian mafia!

Half Full or Half Empty: Armenia's Silver Cups: A visit to the home of Armenian artist Mamikon Mkhitarian and his amazing artworks, drinking vessels cast in solid silver!

Sunflower Seeds - Eat! Spit! Be Happy!: David Underwood blogs about the Armenian love for semushka, sunflower seeds, the favorite munchie snack in Hayastan!

Green Peppers, Diarrhea, and My Vengeance: David Underwood tells about his gastromic trials and tribulations while living in Armenia, and how his Armenian friends tried to relieve his sufferings. But then, the table turns when he prepares a dinner of American chili for his Hye friends.

Stale Bread, Hard Éclairs, and Whispering Monik: Irina describes "The Strategy of Stale Bread" used by Armenian food shops in Yerevan to win and keep loyal customers.


"Food is the portal to Armenia's past and present-day culture."

IRINA PETROSIAN

ARMENIAN FOOD

Posted on Thursday 03 of August, 2006 [17:31:12 UTC]

We're moving our blog to
ArmenianFood.blogspot.com

Please come visit us there.

Recent blog postings include:

Number Twerve and the Flashtoon Team

Peeled Narinj Peaches, Lost Zeal, and Doctor Seuss

Gretaaaa ... Jan, Where Oh Where Can You Be?

Sexy Sarik and Khorovats Barbecue

Anush!

Irina

Posted on Tuesday 13 of June, 2006 [18:23:17 UTC]

The book is born. Sparkle to my eyes!

After almost 3 years of work, our book is published. Since no Armenian is nearby here in the hills of southern Indiana to give me a traditional akhkaluis (an expression literally meaning light or sparkle to your eyes, uttered on hearing good news), I am telling myself akhkaluis!

Hours of writing, rewriting, struggling with photographs, talking, waiting, asking, reasking, checking and rechecking. OK, enough of exaggerating our painstaking efforts ... after all that, my co-author husband and I can finally see the book listed on Amazon.com, and we can see the first few hits as readers start to buy it.

If books.google.com ever gets updated again, you'll be able to search select pages of the book. But don't hold your breath waiting for them. I'm told it may take months. SIGH! Our working preview at www.Lulu.com/Armenia includes the table of contents, our introduction, the tomatoes-and-cucumbers chapter, the tzhvzhik (liver-and-onions) chapter, strong-man-diet David of Sassoun feature (one of David's favorites, for some reason!), and, finally, the book's index.

The book is ARMENIAN FOOD: FACT, FICTION & FOLKLORE, ISBN 1411698659, and its about the culture and cuisine of Hayastan, as Armenians call their country. Our book tells the story of Armenian culture, its history, its folklore, its myths and legends, and, of course, its delicious food. If you're interested in Armenia or international cuisine, please check it out. No, it's not a cookbook, but, yes, it's got a few recipes in it. We reluctantly put those in because readers of the first edition, published in Armenia, kept asking us to do so. We had no intention of producing a cookbook because there are already so many good Armenian cookbooks in print. In fact, they're so numerous that we included a 2-page-long index listing of as many as we could identify.

So why are we doing a blog? Are we such blowhards that we can't stop writing about the subject? Well, maybe so. The path was so blissful that even the idea of reaching our destination is sacrilegious. Actually, we want to have a good forum for our readers, and blogs are great for that. Since the book just went on sale, we're hungry for feedback, good or bad, but hopefully not too flamingly bad. And, as happens in so many big projects that span years of effort, we've got lots of material that is interesting and entertaining, but just didn't make the cut when we wrote our book. Plus, it's a chance for us to tell the story about the making of ARMENIAN FOOD: FACT, FICTION & FOLKLORE, how we wrote it, where we went, and how we survived it all! It's kind of a free bonus for those who bought our book and, hopefully, an alluring device for those who are considering it. And even if you don't buy it, maybe you'll find our blog interesting and, hopefully, amusing. Laugh all you want. We don't mind. After writing this book, we can take anything in good stride.

We had many strange adventures, made some remarkable discoveries, and suffered a disappointment or two as we researched and wrote the book. And we met lots of wonderful people in Armenia, and quite a few colorful characters, too.

Our homebase while we were creating the book was Vanadzor, my original hometown, located in the northern, mountainous Lori province of Armenia. I had lived in Moscow for many years, and in Yerevan, Armenia's capital city, after that. Then I lived in the United States for awhile. So, going back to Vanadzor was a true homecoming for me. And during our almost-a-year in Armenia, we travelled all over the country collecting information for the book.

David, my husband and co-author, liked staying in Armenia, even though he sometimes yearned to hear spoken English now and then. He will also be posting to this blog. David is from the hilly woodlands of south-central Indiana, and even though he's travelled across most of the US, visiting Armenia and later living in Armenia was a profound experience for him. One of his life-long dreams was to visit and see the Soviet Union. He never suspected he would one day fulfill his curiosity, even though the USSR had ceased to exist by the time that he finally made his visits. David's also a skilled computer engineer, and my family was rather surprised when he set up a small computer network on our work table at home, dubbed "The Book Factory".

Ronnie, our then-three-year-old son, had been staying with my family for awhile before we arrived. There he was learning to speak Armenian, eating good, healthy Armenian food, and generally becoming a little Hayastantsi! He, too, helped us with the book project. More about that later.

Sarik Simonian comes to mind as one of the most colorful characters out of many that we met when we were working on our book. He was one of those Armenian men who does not have a formal education but, as Armenians say, "Everything comes out of his hands." He's extremely skillful, a great guy, and a terrific friend.

Sarik is a master of the grill, a champion of the barbecue, and we included some of his barbecue secrets and know-how in our book. We decided to celebrate with a big picnic, and enjoy some tasty Armenian khorovats barbecue.

You can read about our photo-and-khorovats session with Sarik in our next blog post. Don't miss "Sexy Sarik and Armenian Khorovats Barbecue".

Irina Petrosian



Irina at Armenia's Lake Sevan
- - -

Posted on Saturday 03 of June, 2006 [00:00:26 UTC]

The second edition of ARMENIAN FOOD: FACT, FICTION & FOLKLORE is now available on Lulu.com, and will soon be on sale at Amazon.com and other major booksellers. The first edition was published in the Republic of Armenia. Our new, expanded edition contains additional information, photos, cartoons, and, by popular demand, some select recipes of favorite Armenian dishes.

ArmeniaNow.com, the leading online news website in the Republic of Armenia, published this book review of the first edition.

http://www.armenianow.com/?action=viewArticle&AID=1120

Posted on Tuesday 23 of May, 2006 [14:56:31 UTC]