What's a supra? It's a feast where the host is expected to serve at least 3 times the amount of food and wine that the guests would possibly able to eat, and the guests are expected to eat at least twice as much as one would on Thanksgiving.
At a supra, there is a tamada, who is the toastmaster. Why do you need one? Because in Georgia, you're not supposed to take a drink until you've toasted something. And that goes for every drink, not just the first one. That means, over the course of quite a few glasses of wine, you've toasted quite a few things. You've toasted parents, siblings, children, God, the church, Georgia, the deceased, specific people at the table, peace, and then you can go ahead and get creative. Your wine glass never gets empty, because someone is constantly going around and topping off all the glasses. Which means you also have no idea how much you drank.
Some typical foods that are usually at a supra include slices of eggplant folded over and stuffed with a walnut paste, onions and pomegranate seeds, khachapuri, some kind of potato salad, bread and cheese of course, tomatoes, different meats, etc. Most of the time you get all these dishes at one supra, and probably more. The hostess is busy refilling all the plates of food as soon as they start to run low (hostess, notice, for anything regarding kitchen duty is not a man's job in Georgia). Everyone else is busy eating, toasting, drinking and smoking.
Supras happen on birthdays, weddings, funerals, during harvest time, etc. Basically any occasion that calls for merry-making. Last night, we had my cousin's birthday supra. For me, this was one of the most interesting ones I've partaken in, because it was a stark contrast to an 18th birthday party in the U.S. Here's why. His mother, (my mom helped too) was expected to prepare food for roughly 30 people. This was a 2 day process. And remember the thing I said about being expected to prepare way more food than your guests could possibly eat? When you have 30 guests, that's a lot. The guest list was my cousin's entire 12th grade class, plus me and my family, plus family from the other side, plus 2 of the teachers, plus the school principal. Yep, the school principal, at your birthday party. Imagine that. Now imagine drinking with said principal at your birthday party. That's exactly what happened. The 12th graders had their own table in one room with the birthday boy, and the rest of us were in the other room at our own table. The 12th graders polished off quite a few pitchers of wine. As did we. Then the principal went over to their table to make a few toasts to them and have a few toasts made to her. The best part of the night was the dancing. They put on some traditional Georgian music and a few of them did some traditional dancing. I got a video of it, which I will upload to some social media site at some point in time when I have internet that is actually fast. It was pretty cool. After endless amounts of food (you thought an hour into it, it was over, but then they bring out the dolma for the first time), it was time for cake and coffee. They brought out plates of cake and chocolate, and I had a piece, noting that it was not the birthday cake, but different types of cake. I figure that this was because the birthday cake was not big enough to feed 30 people, and it would be saved for him and his classmates. Wrong. This was just the pre-cursor-to-the-cake cake. Then they put candles in the birthday cake, blew them out, and cut the cake to serve everyone who had already eaten cake more cake. At around midnight the teachers and principal started heading home. That's when I headed home too. Of course I couldn't walk the 200 yards by myself. I had to be escorted because otherwise I run the risk of being attacked by a rabid dog, according to my host mother, who for some reason thinks I'm 7. This is the same woman who wouldn't let me shower after the previous supra, because I'd drank wine, and according to her "wine trink, shkapi NO! [makes X with arms]" Translation: You can't take a shower after you've been drinking. Why? I question I've asked myself a lot since then. Here's what I've come up with. Because you might slip and crack your head open and bleed to death. Because you might fall asleep under the faucet and drown. Because you might think the shampoo is a bottle of wine, drink it all and poison yourself. Because showering while drunk is another of the many mysterious ways in which you can catch a cold that don't involve actual germs.
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