Captain Duona Versus the Ceburekine

(This is part four of a five-part series.)

Thing We Will Miss #2: The Food

No, Lithuanian cuisine is not as renowned as, say, Italian cuisine or Japanese cuisine, and it’s easy to understand why. Yet there are still certain foods that you can only get here, foods that my digestive tract will remember with a vaguely confused nostalgia. I think it must be similar to the psychological state of falling in love with one’s kidnapper.

Item #7: Koldunai: chewy, palm-sized noodles folded around nuggets of gray mystery meat. I know that sounds horrible. In fact, maybe they are horrible. I’m not sure if I like these because they are actually palatable or because you can buy them frozen at the store and boil them up in less than 10 minutes.

Item #6: Saltibarsciai. Don’t let the chalky pink hue of Pepto Bismol fool you, or the fact that “saltibarsciai” translates to “cold beet soup”. Just close your eyes, plug your nose, and swallow.

Item #5: The Pomelo. These hefty, golden orbs are the patriarch of grapefruit. In fact, the grapefruit is Mr. Pomelo and Lil’ Ms. Orange’s famous baby. Imagine a grapefruit, double it in size, and extract all the extra juice. Also imagine that, when you split it open, its insides look just like the guts of that snow creature that Luke Skywalker slaughtered and slept inside at the beginning of “The Empire Strikes Back.” On second thought, leave that part out.

Item #4: Karstas Sokoladas, or “hot chocolate”, but without the extra liquid. Break up a dark chocolate bar, boil it down, and then drink it before it hardens. Now your esophagus has officially taken a figurative dip in Willy Wonka’s chocolate river. Hopefully you can still breathe.

Item #3: Chocolate Varske Surelis Bars. Lithuanians have discovered the inbred lovechild of ice cream and cream cheese, and it is as stupidly beautiful and delicious as you could ever hope it would be.

Item #2: Svyturys Baltas. This unfiltered Lithuanian brew, to our taste, leaves German wheat beers in the dust. Scott has even written meticulous letters to distribution companies in Michigan. Yes, that’s right, all you family members who have longed in vain for a letter from Scott. Maybe you should have been distributing Lithuanian beer instead. (To be fair, Scott was inquiring where we could get Svytyrus Baltas for the Lithuanian party we’re planning to throw after we get back.)

Item #1: Kepta Duona. Literally “fried bread”, these buttery rye sticks are sprinkled with garlic, then drowned in mayonnaise and cheese. They are also the inspiration for Scott’s alter ego, Lithuanian superhero Captain Duona.

Thing We Will Not Miss #2: The Food

I have already whined at great length about the food in Lithuania, so I need not wax eloquent here. I need not reiterate how my stomach convulses when I consider the heaps of boiled and fried potatoes I have reluctantly consumed, the lugubrious cement-colored slabs of what I hope is 100% meat, the virtual buckets of sour cream sauce, which is actually (Tada!) just sour cream. I need not ruminate over my failed attempts to recreate my mother’s recipes, nor do I need to restate just what has to happen psychologically in order to get to the point where you see “pig neck” on a menu and decide to order it because at least then you know which part of the little porker you will be hesitantly masticating upon.

No, I have already dwelled on such things enough. Instead, I will simply describe one Lithuanian entrée that I have heretofore tried my best to forget: the ceburekine.

Tell me: What comes to mind when you think of elephant ears? Cinnamon sugar? Fruit toppings? That luscious combination of soft and crispy textures that melds your mouth into a sweet and doughy bliss? Yes? Good for you. I’m glad that you have such positive associations. I, too, would like to think of elephant ears as you do, but, alas, I cannot. Not after my run-in with the ceburekine.

The ceburekine looks like an elephant ear. It is delightfully doughy, deep-fried, even ear-shaped. But this, my naïve friends, is where the similarities end. The ceburekine, for all I know, is actually the ear of an elephant. That is, it is stuffed with heavily-salted meaty gray rubber. And I ate one. In its entirety. Please don’t ask me why. It could have something to do with the fact that the ceburekine stand looked like a mini-circus tent. It could be that I have a deeply misleading belief that absolutely anything is delicious when lathered in batter and deep fried. Or it could be that I, in the early days of my Lithuanian experience, was determined, literally, to take everything in, and, what’s more, to do it with a blind, untasting, unquestioning glee.

Now, as Scott and I move into our final Saturday in Klaipeda, Lithuania, we can happily say that we drank our Lithuanian lives to the dregs, regardless of how much retching it took to get parts of that greasy gray potato milkshake all the way down.