Got out of the train yesterday, and it was sunny. The lindens by the station haven’t turned yet, but I caught some fine colours down by the riverside today. The weather is changing by the minute – hail, rain, sunshine, very dramatic! Come take a bit of a walk with me…
Blue skies and trees
Today I wish to share traditional Czech and Slovak recipe, although I do not think it is exclusively ours or exclusively slavic. It is called “smaženice” in Czech and “praženica” in Slovak. Both of those names could be translated as a “fry up”, but in our language it is only this one meal and not a generic name. There might be some local variations to the recipe (in fact, I would be suprisede if there wer not), so this is not “the” version.
It is a very simple meal specific for this season, because it is best made from freshly collected mushrooms. I was personally not mushroom hunting this year, because it was too dry when I had the time. But one of my mothers friends brought us this Tuesday a basket of mushrooms as a payback for tomatoes, plums and walnuts we let her take from our garden.
In my opinion best species for this are blushers (Amanita rubescens), closely followed by various boletes that are not suitable for drying – like suede boletes, larch boletes, birch boletes etc. So I collected all of such species from the basket, cleaned them and cut them into a thumbnail sized chunks and I added then bay boletes and ceps until I had a overfilled soup-plate of such chunks. It looks like a lot, but it is only one, albeit generous, serving – the mushrooms will lose most of their water during the process. Now is also the time to add salt – sprinkle an “adequate” amount of it on the shrooms, stir and wait a while. You can also add other spices of your liking, I only add shredded cumin and black pepper.
After the chunks are cut and salted, it is time to start frying. That starts with an onion cut into cubes being fried at high temperature – the best fat for this meal is therefore lard, second best is butter, after that are the vegetarian options. I still had a chunk of lard from my dubbin-making experiment, so I have used lard. The onion is fried until it starts to look glassy, and just when some smaller chunks start to turn yellow, it is time to add the mushrooms. After stirring the mushrooms into the fried onion, put a lid on it and let it stew for at least twenty minutes, checking it and stirring every minute or so.
Both of those things are important. The time to make sure that the meal is really edible – even edible mushrooms can be slightly poisonous when raw and all are rather hard to digest when not cooked long enough. And the stirring of course to asses the situation and to mix things up. Sometimes it is necessary to add a bit of water during the process, sometimes even more than once. This time I could do without it and the mushrooms stewed very nicely. Towards the end I had to stir more often and for the last two minutes or so I took the lid off and stirred continuously so the mushrooms do not burn.
Maybe you can see now that the mushrooms have lost more than a half of their volume and they all turned into the same yellowish color. The color depends on used species – the yellowish was brought in by the yellow boletes (similar to larch boletes, but these were different species). Had I used dottet stem bolette, the mass would all be dark grey or even black like a boot polish. Had I used only blushers, it would be whiteish-pink-grey.
The final ingredients are eggs, two in this case, and a generous glass of non-alcoholic beverage of your preference. Why the beverage, you ask? To drink before the meal, during cooking. Do not underestimate this – this meal can lie rather heavy in the stomach and drinking after it a lot is not recommended, because it impedes its digestion. So it is recommended to drink generously before eating it, otherwise bad dreams might ensue. The eggs are simply stirred into the mass and fried until done. The meal is traditionally served with bread, but I had two whole-grain buns so I went with those this time – more photogenic. I enjoyed the meal and slept well afterwards.
Friendship is a strange sort of alchemy of character.
In other words, two distinct people can randomly come together and discover an incredible compatibility. Alternatively, they can be as compatible as oil and water.
This short story is about the first situation, about someone I met at the beginning of summer through work. See, in the interests of improving Europe in general and participating globally, we have developed a partnership with Macedonia. The Macedonian team was visiting beginning of June, and I was invited to come along to a few social events due to my superior English (someone’s afraid to practice). Anyway, I met a new friend, quite unexpectedly. Me, the self-proclaimed pinnacle of anti-sociability. She was the interpreter, I was the language specialist, and we found strange but welcome common ground. During conversation, she discovered my art hobby, mostly through the series of small cat pictures I did for the lab going on two years ago (they hang on the walls in the new lab, I’m quite proud!) and was the first person to actually offer money for my art, specifically – for a reproduction of one of the pieces. She said the cat looked like an alchemist, and I like that naming. I had to overcome a few hang-ups about people paying for my art, as I’m used to creating randomly, as gifts, but she has insisted, and in this case I have come to the conclusion that it would be impolite to refuse, plus I’m very flattered. And from the alchemy theme, I altered the background and overall theme of the piece. Anyway, this is finished piece, slightly larger than the original (the wonders of technology!), and in a different colour scheme:
Alchemist cat!
I have titled it “The Alchemist”, and it is still small, about 15cm x 20cm. I rather like it. Next week I travel to Macedonia for the week and will have the opportunity to hand it over in person.
Anyway, as social as I can be (and it turns out I like putting on The Face and shmoozing at conferences, because there’s a lot of interesting people out there – minus a few creeps, but the biological sphere seems pretty balanced where I’ve hung out, so they are rather few), I am prone to bouts of something resembling depression and, as mentioned, being very anti-social. I like my alone time, a lot. I like dark music, I like melodrama, I like unhappy endings, never mind that I’ve managed rather well with my own life and situation. I’m always afraid that, once people discover what I’m really like, they won’t like me. So as contrast, here is Coheed and Cambria’s (we’ll be seeing more of this group) Dark Side of Me, a song that speaks to me on the unrevealed side of me. Oddly enough, it’s music like this that makes me feel better and can get me out of a funk.
(And check out dude’s hair, I went to their concert way back when and one of the distinctive things I remember is that mass of hair emerging out of the fog during the opening song.)
Autumn mums, ©voyager, all rights reserved
I love the autumn, especially the colour show of the trees and bushes, but so far our trees are still green. There’s the odd red or yellow leaf, but this year the trees are making me wait. It isn’t all drab, though. Autumn is also the season that big pots of colourful mums start to appear around the neighbourhood. Mums are hearty at this latitude and can even withstand a bit of freezing and they come in so many rich shades of reds, oranges and yellows, even delicate whites. I love them all and I’m pretty sure this won’t be the last photo of mums that I’ll post this fall.
Autumn is bringing back all the birds that seemed to have vanished during summer, including Florence the Woodpecker.
Did you miss me?
I almost forgot to post a detailed picture of the hand-made bobbin lace doily that my mother made. Mea culpa.
This is entirely my mother’s design, she made the pattern, the template, everything.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Due to drought, there probably will not be any meaningful aftermath this year. The meadows are green, but the grass is not even knee-height. But everything is covered with spider silk this fall, something that I did not notice other years. I tried to take a few shots.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Jack at Southside Park, ©voyager, all rights reserved
What you can’t see in this peaceful photograph are the dozens of geese that were honking and charging us from behind. Jack’s never gone up against a goose so he’s fearless around them, but I’ve been bitten by geese and it hurts. They’re also fairly strong, so they make me a bit nervous. I’ve never had trouble with them at this park, though, especially in the fall when they’re not protecting nests or babies. Whatever the cause I decided not to linger and we skedaddled over to the concrete skate park.
No fancy pics this week, as cooking was very plain, which brought me to today’s question for you: What are staples in your kitchen, and by that I mean dishes that you’ll (almost) always be willing to make and (almost) everybody is going to eat?
We had French Toast tonight and pancakes earlier this week (they can be small and American style or large and flat, more like crêpe). Various pasta with tomato sauce have never been turned down here, as well as meatball marinara pasta gratin (thank you, Ikea). Pizza goes without saying and wraps (to be filled at your own discretion) are also always ok.
What’s cooking in your kitchen?
Today I managed to get home before the sun set completely and I was not hungry overmuch, so I managed to grab my camera and go for a walk for a change and I experimented a bit with this and that.
Today I wish to share a few shots of a roadside cluster of rowan trees. I love rowan trees, every part of them. In the fall, they are the first ones starting to change color around here. The fall has truly arrived.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I enjoyed this video immensely. Tord of Thor’s Forge in Sweden shows a process of making a two-handed Dane Axe blade the traditional way – from recycled wrought iron and carbon steel, both refined by bending and forge-welding. As close to a Viking-era technology as possible.
I learned a lot just by watching and I hope that some day I will have a chance to try out some of those things myself.
Video is 40 minutes long and there is about 4 min introduction by Matt Easton. Take that into account if you decide to watch.
We went from 28 degrees on Saturday to single digits (and low 10s) since Sunday, plus accompanying heavy cloud cover, gusting winds and hail. I think it’s safe to say that autumn has arrived.
A few photos:
The same train station a couple of weeks later – note flaming reds and oranges right where the morning sun touches the leaves.
The walnut waving in the wind. Despite the light-coloured sky, it was quite dark when I got home, but I liked the melancholy feel.
So, here’s a song. Hawksley Workman is a Canadian artist with a nice feel for imagery. He only has the one major hit that I know of (<i>Anger as Beauty</i>), but I’ve always enjoyed his ode to autumn on an emotional level. Indeed, autumn is here.
The rolling hills of home, ©voyager, all rights reserved
Autumn is definitely in the air around here. The days are cooler and the nights are crisp and Jack couldn’t be happier. You see, the boy hates warm weather. His fur is thick and because he ocean swims in the summer he doesn’t lose his undercoat. He also has a bit of a fat pad that makes it even harder to stay cool. So when the weather turns and autumn comes Jack gets energized. Even now at 10 years old he is full of piss and vinegar. I don’t mind at all. Go ahead Jack and use that tail to clear the coffee table. Scratch my floors with those talons of yours and bark at every passing car. It was a long hot summer, but it’s finally time to have some fun.