retroactive fridays [done saturday]

i am still interested in letting you all in the poland adventure, so to organize and structure my posting habits, let's do it on fridays. or saturdays, as it may be.

above: behold our apartment in debica. or, rather the view from it. i don't believe i have any pictures of the inside; if you have catholic grandparents, picture that. that is what the interior looked like; a lot of kitschy knickknacks, at least one crucifix per room, creepy pictures of jesus, a couple of marys scattered around and more than one magnet of pope jp ii. oh man. plus all the closets smelled like mothballs and i had such a fear of picking it up that my clothes remained on the floor.

please notice the soviet-block style flat, gayly painted. and the carefully manicured garden round back, maintained meticulously by babuskas in scarves. the building across the way is a bakery - it had pigeons living in the window.

there was always a thin haze of smog over the city - and the distinct odor of burning rubber. oh debica.

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.

dzien dobry

in poland!

no flat internet yet . . . our "native speaker coordinator" got confused when we asked for such a thing, so perhaps that is a bad sign . . . must convey the urgent need of north americans for constant wireless.

town is smaller and much less anglo than expected, but adam and i are trying to keep positive.
will write more later!