Our New Year's Бууз party!

Happy New Year from Mongolia!

We hope you all had a wonderful New Year's celebration.We know we are a few days late, but there is still much of the year left to celebrate what our Father is doing and will do in the days ahead. We thought we would share our New Year's Eve day with you all. In Mongolia, they like to celebrate just about every occasion with a beautifully decorated cake and lots of yummy food.

Here we are at Гэрлээ's (pronounced Ghair-thlay) house. She is one of our wonderful language teachers and she invited us over to her home to teach us how to make Бууз (bodes), a traditional Mongolian food.

This is quite the skill!
Гэрлээ was so sweet and used wheat flour for the first time just for us. And it turned out that her family liked them better than with the white flour! Matt said that she just might start a new Mongolian tradition! Inside we have beef, cabbage and onion finely chopped.

The different designs are just beautiful!


But it's not as easy as it looks!

Once the Бууз are all wrapped up, they are placed in a steaming tray and steamed for 20 minutes.

When they are done you need to fan them in order to cool the outside so they don't stick to your fingers.

Here they are! Hot, fresh, now! These were the best Бууз we've had in Mongolia. Usually they are made with mutton and a piece of fat that turns into liquid as it cooks...but we prefer the beef sans fat. :) Turned out her family liked them very much, too!

We had quite the feast for our New Year's celebration...potato salad, carrot salad, Бууз, popcorn (good ol' microwave Orville!) and cake...along with great friends and lots of laughs to finish off the old year and ring in the New Year.

 May your New Year's resolutions be met with a godly resolve to follow Him above all else in 2010!