We Are Happy Family!
For me, family is very important. To maintain the nice relationship with family, communication is essential. Unfortunately, I and maybe most of us are so busy with working stuffs so we do not have many quality time with family. One easy way to maintain the togetherness and communication with family is spending the time for taking dinner together. It is not necessary to go to restaurant or cook luxurious dishes; just sitting down with simple foods can also be nice activity to talk about our progress of life or memorize past experiences to family. It can be so joyful though it looks very ordinary. "We are happy family!" is the expression that I feel when I eat together and take some talks; It fulls physically and fulls spiritually.
Uzbek Pilaf and Tradition of Family Gathering
[caption id="attachment_417" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Akmal, Gulnaz, Me, and Maksud. There of them are my Uzbek friends"]
There is tradition of Uzbek people that I like which is having the time together for having dinner together with family. It reminds me the tradition of my country, Indonesia as well. We like to eat together with big family. In Uzbekistan, though they can do it in whatever days, but they have special days as the option for family dinner. They have family day culture every Thursday night and Sunday night. They started the dinner by praying together for respecting their ancestors and for wishing to have goods things for their life now. Thus the sense of familyship there is still very strong. Young people's willingness to help parent appears in daily life as seen on how they happily help their parent to prepare the dinner.
During the dinner, they have special menu which is called as Pilaf. It is also named as the national food of Uzbekistan. Actually pilaf is also popular in other countries like in  Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, East Africa, and some Eastern Europe (my friends from Serbia said that it is also famous in Serbia). It has many variations to write the name of Pilaf like Palov, Plov, Polow, Pilav, or my Uzbek friend writes it as Palaw. Simply pilaf is the rice menu which is cooked in seasoned broth. However there are many ways to cook it with variation of ingredients as well.
At that night, I tried Pilaf in the version of my Uzbek friends: Gulnaz, Maksud, and Akmal. It is so delicious and makes me so full easily. In their version, they simply use rice, oil, onions, carrots and chicken meat. Commonly they use lamb. They told me for four people what they need are:
1. Chicken meat; 7500 grams
2. Rice; 900 grams
3. Oil; 300 grams
4. Carrots; 900 grams, sliced very thinly
5. Onions; 600 grams
