Mystery Vegatable

Since last week, women have been selling a mysterious green leafy vegetable on the street corners. The vegetable looks like tulip leaves. Finally I decided to bite the bullet and ask what it was. Unfortunately - I can't remember the name in Russian except that is starts with "ch"\

Still, I followed her directions for the salad and it was pretty tasty - the leaves are bit spicy - almost like green onion.

Directions: 1 bunch of the "Ch" leaves. 3 Boiled Eggs, some mayonnaise. Chop, Dice, Mix, and serve. I also added a little salt and the lady said that parsley and onions could be added - but the leaves are spicy enough without adding onion.

Any guesses as to what this vegi is?
.

Beets

So several months ago, my sister wrote a blog entry on discovering the tastiness of beets. I had been about ready to do a post on the theme myself - but decided to defer it for a time.
The time has come!
Beets are incredibly yummy. I remember once mom making beets and it being awful - I still remember the brown colored water, the putrid odour, and the childhood indignity of having to eat this vile vegetable. I never gave beets any further consideration - until coming to Ukraine where the national food - is borsch - a tasty soup made with beets - but actually not many and so it tastes nothing like the them. However, the fact that the beet borsch didn't kill me encouraged me to order them at a restaurant in England last February - Beets au daphine - they were AMAZING and I have been searching for a recipe ever since, but to no avail.
But, I bit the bullet and decided to try the beets anyway.
Are they good beets?, I asked the babushka in the market.
Excellent she said shoving a few specimens towards me.
Great, I 'll take two.
As she bagged up my purchase and gave me my change I asked - By the way, what do I do with them?
She gave me a recipe for salad -

Boil the beets until soft, peel them, chop them up, add mayonnaise, salt, and a little bit of garlic. I made the salad at the next bible study group - and people liked it - even though my beets were a bit crunchy (in fact the Ukrainians didn't know they were beets!) I served it again the next week too - this time with properly boiled beets - and it was received even more enthusiastically.

While this salad was good - I found I just loved munching on the beets with nothing on them but salt! Her beets were really good - another purchase, this time from the supermarket - did not yield such yummy results and the beets had to be smothered in mayonnaise to make them yummy.

However, the best recipe so far (other than the beets au dauphine) is one I found on NPR

Roasted Beets with Blue Cheese Sauce and Spiced Walnuts
Serves 6
4 medium beets
1 pint heavy cream
6 ounces Maytag blue cheese
Spiced walnuts (see recipe below)
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
If beets have stalks, trim stalks 1/2 inch from beet. Wash beets gently under water, then wrap individually in aluminum foil.
Roast beets for 1-2 hours depending on sizes. A knife should slide easily into the beet, through foil, when done. Allow to cool to room temperature.
While beets are roasting, put cream in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower heat and add blue cheese. Stir constantly until cheese has been fully incorporated into the cream.
Pour the cheese mixture into a food processor and blend until smooth. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Allow to cool to room temperature.
Remove beets from foil, then remove beet skins using a paper towel. (Wear kitchen gloves to avoid staining your hands.)
Cut roasted beets into desired shapes.
Drizzle cheese sauce over beets, then top with chopped spiced walnuts.
Spiced Walnuts
1/4 cup walnuts, chopped
1/2 tablespoon butter
1/2 teaspoon cumin
Dash cayenne pepper
Dash sea salt
Black pepper to taste
Melt butter over medium heat in small saucepan. Add walnuts, then spices and toss for 30 seconds. Allow to cool to room temperature.

When did you Celebrate St. Patricks Day this year?

So Monday, I was happily minding my own business, wearing green and wishing other American students of Russian a Happy St Patrick's Day. I came home, opened my e-mail and saw that my husband had opened and read the e-card I had sent to him in advance - Being N. Irish - Though not Catholic - he still appreciates St. Patrick - though the American passion for the holiday and the rules about wearing green baffle him.
Did you like the card? I asked him.
Sure, he said, but its not St. Patrick's Day
Of course it is, I said, It's the 17th.
Its holy week
So?
St Patrick's day can't be during holy week.
What are you talking about? St. Patrick's Day is the 17th and today is the 17th.

It's times like this when the internet comes to the rescue - a quick Google and -poof- St. Patrick's day was the 15th!!! Apparently the Catholic church changes the day of the holiday when ever it interferes with Holy Week.

A survey of Americans in Kiev revealed that we had all missed the memo. Even the Christian School observed St Patrick's Day on the 17th and encouraged students to wear green.

So when did you celebrate?

Playing With Dirt

It must have been all the hours my I spent outside making mudpies and tracking ant colonies - but I really love being outside and digging in the dirt. Weeds, like split ends, are my nemesis, and I pursue them both with such concentration that I really can't understand HOW both they manage to continue their existence.

Anyway - back to dirt. On International Women's day - I trotted down to Nova Linia and bought 16 kilos of dirt. Beautiful black stuff - it says its Ukrainian. I bought a trowel as well, lugged my purchases home and set to work rolling newspaper planters. I started peppers, tomatoes, spinach and celery. Spinach because I would like to see if I could grow it year round on my balcony - Celery because its super expensive here and thought why not grow it.

Now, a week later, I think the first spinach sprout it pushing up through the dirt. Knowing that I have seeds growing on the balcony is exhilarating - all that potential sitting there and germinating.

A friend who was over last Friday did burst my bubble a little - she pointed out that on the 14th floor and on the balcony - my plants my not have access to the bees and bugs which are vital for their pollination. My wonderful potential tomatoes will do nothing more than bud. I've decided to worry about that hurdle when the tomatoes actually sprout and put out blooms. Maybe I could trundle them off to the park for a few hours every day, let them frolic with the birds and bees while I read or study Russian or something.

The next hurdle came when i decided that I should actually look up on the Internet HOW to grow celery. I figured it wouldn't be a problem - seeds - you plant them, water them, and they grow right?

Celery seeds are small. Much smaller than a mustard seed. And they grow up to look like trees. I wonder why Jesus didn't tell us to have faith like a celery seed. Surely the apparent effort needed to grow a stalk of celery requires some faith - especially to begin the undertaking on a balcony and then hope that weekend visits to the country side will produce crunchy stalks? Faith or stupidity - I began the adventure by strewing the seeds in a dirt filled egg carton and then "raking" them a bit more through the dirt.

Strike one.

This "more difficult to grow" vegetable should be planted as few as possible in each pot, and later thinned to ensure that only one seedling is in each pot. I doubt that by as few as possible they imagined my spreading out half the contents of a seed packet through 15 egg carton baskets.

Strike two.

After the seeds have been planted and thinned, they should be transplanted in rows 2 1/2 feet apart, leaving 1 ft between each seedling.
There goes my dream of two or three celery plants making a home in a large balcony planter. My whole balcony would need to be filled with dirt to accommodate these plants.

Strike three.

"Celery is a heavy feeder . It also requires lots of water. Make sure to provide plenty of water during the entire growing season, especially during hot, dry weather. If celery does not get enough water, the stalks will be dry, and small. Celery plants should be grown n full sun. and a rich a rich, garden soil." From http://www.gardenersnet.com/vegetable/celery.htm

If the celery is planted in full sun, it will definitely require watering every day. How i am to manage that while feasibly being able to go out to the village every few days is beyond me. Maybe I can find a Babushka who I can convince to water the celery. they will think I'm crazy - they don't really raise or eat it here - hence it's price but seriously if you need a square foot of land for each plant and with land prices being what they are here - I'm surprised its only up to $6 a stalk.

In addition to the watering - apparently I will need to be actively defending my poor stalks from slugs. I've decided not to worry about that either. There are lots of ducks and chickens about and IF my celery can survive all the other obstacles - I'm sure they will manage to evade the slugs.

Wattle and Daub PS

By the way, if any of YOU are interestest in doing a workshop on wattle and daub and Cob building - or already know how to build with Mud and Manuere - we would love for you to share your knowledge or even invite you to come and get your hands dirty with us in beginning to rebuild our hut this summer.

Why I Love the Balkans

Wild Bear sued for damages and found guilty for stealing honey- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7295559.stm Only in the Balkans . . . well and maybe some other places - several years ago I read an article about a man in Africa who was made to marry a goat (and care for her as his wife) that he had been found having intimate relations with.

Really, after you read this article it seems like it is more a case against the state seeing as they have to pay for damages - how would it work in the States? I think you would file a complaint against a pesky animal with fish and Game - and they would try to capture and relocate it, and if the relocation didn't work, they would put the animal down if it proved to be enough of a nuisance.

Dirt, Manure, Wattle and Daub

Well spring is close and I am getting the itch to work on our "hut" out in the country side. Unfortunately, the surveyor got sick on the day he was supposed to come look at the land - so we still don't have any final papers - but a girl can dream right?

The picture at right is NOT our cottage - but amazingly - it is also made out of mud and manure! You can find out more about this house here.

We want to redo the Hut - make it nice but also make it as traditional as possible - so I've been researching and have found that our house is most likely called a "wattle and Daub" house - as in make a wooden "wattle"- frame - and daub on that manure :-). Currently there seems to be a big building craze for Cob houses. These are also made out of dirt and manure but don't seem to have the wooden frame inside.

Interestingly, the Pacific Northwest, esp. Oregon, is full of people building these houses and holding workshops (now why didn't we know about this before we left America??) Anyway - I've been reading up on it all and looking at all the really beautiful houses and hopefully someday our little mud hut will transform into one of the funky masterpieces found at cobcottage.com

Spring Update

Greetings all!
It’s 5 pm and it’s still light out! Outside of our 14th floor window, the sky is blue, and grey clouds tinged with pink and whirr past. Today the fog has disappeared and we can see all the way to the mass of trees that marks the beginning of Park Partisanski Slava.
February was unusually warm; felt like spring. Not only did people go without coats, but a few girls even decided it was time to put on their short shorts. Granted they were wearing nylons – but 8-15 C is still too cold (and windy!) for me to think of such a thing.

In Ukrainian, the word for February is Lyuti. It means fierce, and even can have the connotation of Evil. I’m not learning Ukrainian, but this is what my teacher told me and in Croatian there was a similar sounding word and they used it to describe anything from extra spicy food and alcohol that gives you a real kick to a person who was angry (my teacher is always frustrated when I make comparisons with Croatian – the way she talks you would think the languages weren’t even related!). This year, February wasn’t Lyuti. In fact, the entire winter has been so mild that I never progressed beyond a single layer of sock in my unlined boots. They say, that if the winter is mild then Easter will be cold, they say that Women’s day, (March 8th) there will be snow, they say that summer will be rainy. Everyday street conversation about the weather invariably turns into a farmers Almanac of signs and symbols and saying from ones memory and the memory of ones grandparents. These are the most interesting memories. The times when villages were snowed in and the only thing that could be seen were the chimneys, the times when there wasn’t much money and so a meal might be brown bread with warm fat or oil. There never used to be winters like this they say.

I remember in first or second grade my teacher telling us that “March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb” Sometimes this was true, sometimes it wasn’t, but I’ve always loved the mystery of spring, the warmth and promise of summer, with still the mischievous bite of winter nipping at ears and nose. In Vukovar, spring was marked by the return of the storks, by the mud finally drying up or at least becoming manageable. Spring cleaning takes on new meaning in a place where mud is everywhere and clings to everything and even when you are careful, you find the backs of your pants spattered with the stuff after walking even a few steps.

Here spring is heralded by the selling of Snowdrops – but according to the commercials – we aren’t to buy them from the babushkas selling them at metro entrances – here the flower apparently grows in forests and is almost extinct.

Alister and I are doing great – He is teaching and doing some fill-in preaching and I am still plugging away at Russian. I’m doing two classes now, an advanced and an intermediate at the same time to try to pushing things forward a bit. Some days, (like today) the end of the advanced class make me want to cry, but fortunately it is followed by the intermediate class and though I definitely haven’t master the material – it is definitely does help to boost my ego.

I am posting more to my blog – http://www.alisterandsarah.blogspot.com/ at least trying to post once a week - but February had an excessive number of posts – trying to make for all the ones I missed I suppose. (Alister wants it duly noted that the views, postings, and misspellings on the blog are entirely my doing and do not represent him and that he can in no way be held responsible for anything appearing therein.)

That’s all the news for now.

Wishing you all the best and hope that Spring is warm and lovely!

-Sarah and Alister

Google Analysis (or, obviously not a Techie)

A month or so or ago a stranger posted a comment on my blog. I didn't know the person, for all I knew no one read the blog (Ok - G. You told me you read and you posted once too, but I've been looking at blogs lately and mine is definitely not the most active on Cyberspace.)
It was abit of a wake up call - a blog is after all on the internet and the internet is open to every one. After two days of obsessing (how did he find me??) and muttering under my breathe who looks at my blog anyway Alister's continuous response of "Get a counter" finally broke through the haze.

A quick Google search later I determined that the simplest solution would be to use Google Analytics. Since that time, I have definitely not been disappointed and have in fact been amazed and entertained on all that it does. It has definitely opened up my eyes to how much information actually floats around out there on the Internet.

For instance, just by pasting a simple code into the sidebar, Google tracks how many of the visitors are new, and how many are returning. It tracks what country they are from, (Turkey, Romania, Taiwan - I have no idea who you are or how you found the site - well that's not true, it also tells you if people came directly or through a search engine or a link from somewhere else, In fact I even discovered a scrabble blog that had linked my entry on Russian Scrabble to theirs!

Beyond this Google can even tell me what browser visitors are using, their screen resolution and connection speed, and hundreds of other interesting (and to me probably worthless) tidbits - but can you imagine what this must do for marketers, and surveyors, Just by putting a code in the sidebar, they can design their sight around visitors - What if for example they find that a majority of visitors are still using Modems? They stop using the connection eating graphics.

While feeling slightly invaded at all the workings of my personal computer being up for the gleanings of whoever decided to look, I can't help but marvel how they figured out how to track this stuff.

For more on this see the Article Published in the New York times via the Seattle Times: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004271898_internet.html