Author Archives: muncheri@usc.edu

Wedding Pilaf

Nationality: Armenian
Age: 77
Performance Date: 04/02/18

The recipe calls for:

Butter

Slivered Almonds

Raisins

Pitted Dates

Long Rice

It’s a fancier kind of pilaf that’s used for weddings, celebrating momentous things like that. It’s just fancier. Instead of rice and noodles, you top it with raisins and dates and various nuts. Sometimes you have it at weddings and sometimes you have it on other special occasions and its really just fancier than regular rice.

  1. Is it difficult to make?

I’ve never made it myself however I know how to, it’s fairly simple. I’ve made rice pilaf before, it’s essentially rice pilaf with a topping of cooked raisins and almonds and such. It’s quite good?

  1. What other occasions do people eat this?

It depends. It’s a kind of celebration dish… not something you make every day. Sometimes at Thanksgiving we eat it. I don’t know it’s a special occasion food.

The Golden Fish

Nationality: Armenian
Age: 83
Performance Date: 04/02/18

Once there lived a man, he was the king of Egypt.   He was going blind and getting more ill by the day. One day a foreigner, traveller came. He was a doctor and asked to look at the king. After so, he said “I can fix it but I need a fish… a gold fish, golden fish. I will make a juice from the fishes blood to cure the king.” So the prince, the kings son, set out on a journey to find the golden fish. He had 100 days before the foreign doctor would leave and return to his homeland. On the last possible night, he still hadn’t found the fish but he said “I will cast a net one more time tomorrow morning, it’s too late but if I catch the fish, at least I can show my father I did my best.” So the man cast a net and he caught the fish. The man looked at the fish and felt bad for it… he didn’t want it to die, so he threw it back into the water. Now the story gets very different here.

So the prince went to the king and told him what had happened. The king threatened to kill his own son. But the queen, the prince’s mom, smuggled him on a ship in the night with gold in his pockets. She told him “Go and find a new life, but don’t hire a servant on monthly pay.” The prince didn’t understand but he did it because the queen was his mom. So he set out and found a beautiful place to settle. As soon as he had, servants came to ask him to hire them, but they all wanted monthly pay. The final man that came in for an interview was the only one who didn’t request monthly pay. So the prince hired him. The servant was the kindest nicest servant to the prince. One day the prince desired to marry the daughter of the new king. So the servant went to the king and asked him if that was possible. The prince had acquired much jewelry and gold and he was gonna give it to the king for his daughter. The king agreed to let the prince marry his daughter but told him, “My daughter has had many husbands but none live more than one night with her.” The servant told the prince and said, “Take a chance the luck will change,” so the prince agreed to marry the daughter.

On the night of the wedding they were in their wedding room. At some point in the night, a serpent came out of the mouth of the princess. The servant was quick however, and he killed the snake. So the curse had been broken and the two lived happily ever after. That isn’t the ending. The prince received a letter one day. His father, the king of Egypt had died, so he mother, the queen, requested his presence back in Egypt as the new king. So he left with his new wife, and his servant. A short while after they arrived the servant requested to go back home. The prince was very upset but said “I do not want to see you go, but I cannot stop you, you’ve saved my life, without you I would have been dead a while ago.” The servant looked the prince in the eye and said, “Without you, I would have been dead a while ago, for I am the Golden Fish.”

  1. When did you hear this story?

I read it not too long ago actually, but, I find that when you do the right thing, you get blessed with great gifts. So from the earliest days of my business I always did the right thing, and I’m pleased with the outcome today.

My Thoughts:

The moral behind this story is to do what’s right even when it doesn’t seem convenient. The prince saved the fishes life, and in turn, the golden fish, became the princes servant and repaid his debt to the prince.

Snails For Dinner

Nationality: Armenian
Age: 83

My mother used to make snails for dinner sometimes. But it wasn’t like fancy cruise ship style escargot. It was a homemade recipe. It was during World War II and all the snails would come out when it rained. My dad would go outside and pick up the snails. But you can’t eat all of them, some are poisonous and some just don’t taste good. But once he got them my mom would put them in boiling water. This would get them out of the shell and also they wouldn’t be as slimy afterwards. They would get hard kind of like shrimp. And once the snails come out of their shell she took them and spiced them with peppers and other spices. Then she would fry them and we would eat them… they weren’t bad. See the thing is during World War II, there wasn’t always meat. If we could eat meet once a week, it was a treat, so snails were a nice substitute.

  1. Where were you living at this time?

I was living in Jounieh, Lebanon, it’s not too far out from Beirut. During the war time we didn’t have much in terms of meat.

My Thoughts:

There is a connection between the idea that snails were used as food when meat wasn’t available and the fact that the idea of eating snails came from the French Revolution when the impoverished had no choice but to eat what they could find. The reason they need to be spiced so severly is because… it’s a snail…it can’t taste good, but it’s also interesting how the spices differed. In France, they used garlic to mask the taste whereas in this case, in Lebanon, peppers were used

The Old Man, The Young Man and the Donkey

Nationality: Armenian
Age: 83
Performance Date: 04/02/18

There is this guy, this man, you know, uhh, with his grandson and their donkey. So he’s going from one village to another village. The grandson is sitting on the donkey and the old man is walking next to it. There’s a bunch of people… they look at him and say, “Look at this young guy. He’s so heartless and so selfish; letting this poor old man walk while he’s sitting on the donkey.” The young kid gets very upset, gets off the donkey and makes the old man sit on the donkey… he walks next to it. So another group of people see them and said “Look at this mean old man, he lets this poor kid walk in the sun and he’s sitting on the donkey.” So the old man gets embarrassed and he gets off the donkey. Then what he does is ask the little kid to sit on the donkey and they end up both sitting on the donkey. Then there’s another group of people who see them and they say, “Look at these horrible people they’re torturing the poor donkey.” So they both get off and pass another group of people who say “Look at these stupid people, they might as well have the donkey ride on there.”

Sometimes you can never win no matter what you’re gonna do some people are gonna say you’re doing bad and some people will say what you’re doing it right. So do your best with what you’ve got and ignore other people.

My Thoughts:

I have always been told “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” This is a variation on that story I suppose, whereas listening to peoples words will only cause problems. Do what you think is best and don’t be distracted by others… the haters… if I may.

The Story of Aktamar

Nationality: Armenian
Age: 83
Performance Date: 04/02/18

Tamar is a woman’s name. And Aktamar means oh Tamar. Tamar was in love with this guy, and the girl’s father was against it. So the girl says… oh wait they live on Lake Van. It’s a big lake between Turkey and western Armenia. So he says he’s gonna elope with her. So he says “What I’m gonna do is I’m gonna have a candle lit up. And I’ll be waiting for you on the shore so pay attention to the candle.” So he jumps in the water and swims to shore… but it happens to be a windy day and the candle wears away. And the poor guy swims and swims and swims back and forth to relight the candle until he drowns. And as he’s drowning, he says “AKTAMAR, AKTAMAR, AKTAMAR” which means like “Oh Tamar” and now this island where the candle was supposed to be is called Aktamar Island.

  1. Where is Lake Van located exactly?

Lake Van is a big lake and it used to be an Armenian lake, but the Turks took it over and now it’s in Turkey.

  1. Was the lake lost to Turkey after the genocide?

It was taken before the genocide… it was under ottoman rule, and after the genocide, there was no part of it left in Armenia.

  1. Where did you first hear this story?

I don’t remember really, it’s a kind of Armenian folklore, and when someone loses his girlfriend basically the boys all cry out “Aktamar” basically saying, I tried very hard but I lost.

 

 

My Thoughts:

This reminds me of a variation of Romeo and Juliet. It’s a nice story about love however very sad how both of them end in tragedy. Also within the story of Midsummer Nights Dream, there’s another story that is very similar to this one.