A Recipe for Tsampa

Tsampa is a Tibetan dish, a mushy combination of roasted barley, yak butter, sugar, and flour. Mushed into a ball, it is a sort of gritty cookie dough, which is chewed for significant time before swallowed. We would like to thank the two young Langmusi boys who brought us on horseback to their two-room house, located in a small village with many horses and wild dogs, decorated with pictures of their Lama. Sorry boys, I did not know what Michael Jackson song you were singing. We can't forget to thank their 70 year old hearty grandmother, who did not speak a word of Chinese (the children were actually fluent and literate in both an eastern dialect of Tibetan, and Chinese) for providing and mixing the gewy, filling food.

Recipe for Tsampa

1. First get the a bowl, fill it with Tibetan tea, drink the tea. Refill with tea.
2. Mix in about 3 tablespoons of pure yak butter.
3. Add barley and flour, about a few tablespoons each. Then push you finger around the edge to begin mixing. If you do not know how to, allow the very dirty hands of the young boy to mix it, it will add to the flavor.
4. Add sugar, and mix more thoroughly till a paste.
5. When it is pasty enough, squeeze into a ball.
6. Eat and enjoy, but be forewarned, it is filling. Perhaps this is why they sit on the floor.