Reporter’s Notebook: How to cook squash – two delicious recipes from Kazakhstan

Squash is a vegetable and is sold at every supermarket. They are usually green and yellow colors looking like fatty comas. Some shoppers mistake the green squash for cucumbers.      I have not seen squash served too often at parties or restaurants in Oklahoma. I think it is because of the lack of good recipes….

Reporter’s Notebook: A manti restaurant brings The Silk Road ancient taste to visitors in Kazakhstan

The Silk Road was a trade route from Europe to Asia from 300 B.C. to the 16th century.  A part of The Silk Road went through Kazakhstan where my home was. During a summer 2021 trip to central Kazakhstan, my fellow travelers and I stopped at a manti restaurant situated in the corner of a…

Reporter’s Notebook: Russian Non-Alcoholic drinks will keep you cool in summer

In Kazakhstan and other republic of the former Soviet Union, there are popular non-alcoholic drinks, which can greatly satisfy someone’s thirst in the hot summer. These are kvas, lemonade, and kompot. A variety of kvases and lemonades are sold at every supermarket or small shop in the former USSR. They have sweet and sour tastes….

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: Traveling during the pandemic is complicated, or how to book a flight

(Editor’s Note: This is the second article in a series.) To find the best deal on a flight, someone should search multiple booking websites and compare the prices. For example, I was searching a round-trip flight from Tulsa, Okla., to Kazakhstan (the republic of the former Soviet Union) in July 2021. The cheapest price was…