yum yum pesto tofu zuke pasta

although my family was in italy for christmas, alas, i was not, due to extenuating circumstances and an unfortunate series of events which resulted in non-EU residing.

adam was very worried about holiday malaise, being as i was alone for the actual holiday. truthfully, i didn’t mind. on christmas eve, the kittens and i made sushi and sashimi, enjoyed some champagne in front of the wood stove and watched “the office”. it was perfect.

upon the re-entry of the fam, we celebrated second christmas, a heart-touching and sentimental holiday, full of foreign gifts, including the individual serving-size packs of nutella, farro (=/ spelt!) soup, and, of course, a bookmark calendar of rome’s gattos.

one particularly nice present was a jar of pesto, from up north in italy, made from sunflower seeds and basil. the cupboards are a bit bare here, so to speak, but there was a mélange of vegetables, some half-thawed tofu, a sad little stub of zucchini, along with whole wheat pasta. i was all pumped about a tasty vegan meal, but forgot the italians lovveeeeeee to pump up pesto with some parm.

adam was going out to a show (buckman page) later on, i had (overly ambitious) plans to join him, so it was a quick dinner – sauteed broccoli, zucchini and ½ package of frozen and thawed tofu, when brown and tasty, i threw in some pesto to warm up a bit. splash over pasta and done! easy.

i turned out to be a total old lady, did some etsy crocheting (stay tuned!) and passed out at 9. so sad.

huzzah gender roles!

[oh man, cabbage looks like brains]

yesterday was cold. drizzly, overcast, windy. kind of nasty and certainly the type of weather which commands a lie-around-the-house day.

despite the grueling schedule of the fourth season of doctor who, lazing about and drinking pbr, i needed a project. adam had already adopted the need to move out shelves, cabinets and ephemera from the storage room, and since he had already called the heavy-lifting, dust-inhaling, grunting work, i opted for the kitchen.

now, this has taught me something that i [half-heartedly] knew before - shop-bought dumplings are a godsend. or perhaps ravioli, samosas, pot stickers and pierogi would be transformed into a rare and luxurious treat.

my eyes had been opened to the glorious tastiness of pierogi while in poland, and while i could have bought frozen ones in chicago, why the hell not. let's roll out some pierogi.

they came out ok. i improvised the filling and took a dough recipe from the omniscient askmefi, and they were a little tough - i had used a blend of whole wheat and bread flour for the dough, which i think contributed to that. next time, less gluten.

the filling fell a little flat for me too - cabbage needed to be shredded, not just chopped, and certainly more spices - although, as a girl born and raised in a proud tradition of delicious mediterranean cooking, i don't have any sort of intuition towards eastern european tastes.

either way, smothered with sour cream and maggi hot sauce, they were pretty good - although i have a long way to go before mastering old-baba secrets.

puppy-dog and computer kept far away from flour and butter


hey! let's pretend we're polish unionworkers in chicago! pretentious?!? you betcha.

pierogi recipe

filling :

(1/2) head of red cabbage, shredded
(10-15) medium brown mushrooms
(1) med onion
an obscene amount of butter
1 tsp celery seeds
pepper

fry up onion in butter. when golden, add mushrooms, cook until liquid evaporates, then add cabbage until tender. took about 20 minutes all together.

set aside to cool while you make the dough

dough : (taken from this post on mefi)

(2) cups white bread flour
(2) cups whole wheat flour
(2) eggs
(1 1/2) cups water

make well in the flour in a bowl, crack in eggs, scramble them up with a fork, then incorporate into the flour. add enough water to make a dough, for me it was about 1 1/2 cups. knead for about 10 minutes until smooth and non-tacky. let it rest for 5 - 10 minutes and it will be a lot easier to roll out.

separate dough into (4) sections. roll out one at a time, cut out circles with a biscuit cutter or glass. add about 1 tsp [we made little guys], fold over, crimp edge with your finger.

add in batches to a large pot of boiling salt water - cook for about 2-3 minutes until firm to touch.

add yet more butter to a saute pan and fry until golden on both sides. serve with fried onions, sour cream and maggi hot sauce with a side of pbr!

yum apples + split peas

happy-domesticity is tainted a bit by hindsight, but nevertheless i have a food-post worth of [now lost?] pictures, so damnit, i’m going to do it.

i had been gifted with a couple of pounds of apples, courtesy of the secretaries and the number of bountiful trees of brytania, later in the same day that i had snagged some at the local market.
at a loss of what to do past good ol’fashioned plain eating, i came across this fab recipe for an apple curry. mmmmmh.

however, rural poland is at a severe lack of “ethnic” food; there is an abundance of cabbage and potato but not much else. substitutions ahoy!
in lieu of lentils [not able to be found in the local grocery], i subbed in yellow split peas; garlic, curry powder, chilis and a bit of ginger ad-libbed curry paste.

the day before had been loads of heavy polish-eating, the kind where hidden meat lurked around the corner of every innocuous dania jarskie. tonight, as an antidote and refresher, lots of veggies were needed; to make this dish more like a palaak dal [mmmm my favorite], i threw in a bunch of frozen spinach chunks, random mushrooms found in the fridge and plenty of garlic.

ever mindful of our surroundings, i cooked up some kasha in veggie stock for the carb underbelly. holy jesus himself, kasha is so tasty.

the whole thing was extremely unphotogenic, but mysteriously my process pictures have disappeared . . . confusing.

interests, as seen at the british museum.

after popping into the british museum for a couple of hours and only three rooms, i realized that all the pictures i took fall into four categories. who wants a crappy reflected picture of the rosetta stone anyway when you could have a crappy reflected picture of stuff no one finds interesting and you're the only one photographing it? no one.

this means that none of your friends will want to look at your british museum pictures because they are "boring". oh well.

me, i like fiber working.

that, sir, is a fine-looking warp-weighted loom.

also, i enjoy spinning.


on to clothing, #2

the musem had dozens of these - intricate diadems and headdresses. very inspiring.

another interesting motif that was spread out over clothing depictions and silverware was the swaztika. i had no idea that the classical world used it - i was aware of the indus use - but emma told me that they discussed the motif in a beck class once. interesting.

the original gladiator sandal.
interest #3. geeky classical stuff. above, a stele involving a mithraic sentator. i quoted this stele in my honors thesis and got a little giddy in the museum. again, not interesting to most.


this is fucking neat. it's the second oldest surviving piece of virgil, and scholars think it was written as either a practice piece or in a repetitive way for memory. the piece quoted is 2.601,

"non tibi Tyndaridis facies inuisa Lacaenae
culpatusue Paris, diuum inclementia, diuum
has euertit opes sternitque a culmine Troiam."

or, as fairclough translates,

"Know that it is not the hated face of the Laconian woman, daughter of Tyndareus, it is not Paris that is to blame; but the gods, the relentless gods, overturn this wealth and make Troy topple from her pinnacle."

neat!

4. food. [tangentially, mosaics.] [and apparently, just mollusks and the like]

what a nice thing to have on your kitchen floor.

this i like too, because you could just look down and be all like hey! those are tasty animals.

this is fucking neat! it's a colander. a strainer, from roman gaul. NEAT.


COMING UP: we go to an old crow medicine show, hyde gardens and have friends for dinner. THRILLING.