Mastering the Art of Czech Cuisine

Sometimes this blog does come off a bit like a confessional. The truth: when I first moved to the Czech Republic I thought the food was...well...less thatn desirable. It's a very heavy working man's kind of fare. Lots of meat and dumplings and all these piles of cabbage. Then there are the cream sauces. Talk about heavy. The first thing I learned to order was Smaženy Syr, also known as Fried Cheese. I was good with that. Yeah, it's heavy, but there's something about that gooey cheese and crispy breaded crust, not to mention the horrifyingly delicious smear of tatarska (Czech Tartar Sauce) that never fails to delight. Throw in some nice greasy fries, and a slice or two of cucumber and tomatoe, and it's amazingly delicious. I had no trouble telling my students it was my favorite Czech food, although it's sort of like telling people in HK that my favorite food there is Hong Kong style French Toast. I'm still the kind of girl who orders what she knows she likes, because why would I want to pay for something and be disappointed? When you live with a Czech family, however, you have to learn to expand your horizons. There's lots of oil and fat and heavy starches, but when prepared correctly with lots of spices, Czech food actually is quite tasty. This weekend my mom-in-law was free from work, so she set about teaching me a couple of Czech classics. I still can't claim to have them mastered, and I still need some help with the translations, but I did help out and even got my hands dirty every now and then. On Saturday we took on the collossal task of making Svičkova. Roughly translated it means "Candle Sauce." Funny name, but probably this is due to the bright orange color provided by the carrots. The meat and vegetables have to cook for a long time until the meat is tender. I'm thinking it could be translated into a crock pot recipe, but it's just a thought. I was surprised to learn that the sauce is mostly made up of the pureed veggies that were cooked with the meat. They are forced through a flour sifter and then slowly mixed back in with the juice together with cream. I really didn't do anything but watch the process for this one, but if I can get a translation of the recipe, I think having seen it being made will be useful. It was then served with store bought bread dumplings, the sauce and meat, with a dollop of cranberry sauce and a bit of whipped cream as a garnish. Today I learned the art of making potato dumplings. (Note: there is acutally a store here in town that exclusively sells dumplings. Not something you find on every street corner in America for sure. Bread, potato and fruit varieties are in great supply in these parts.) I actually got the hands on experience this time, although the meat was already totally cooked by the time I joined in, I did see a bit of the spinach preparation. It was a slight variation on the classic Czech dish of Knedlo, vepro, zelo. The original being served wtih cabbage instead of spinach. I was quite pleased with the result of my potato dumpling making experience, and was likewise excessively full. I don't think I'm quite ready to open a Czech Kitchen in America just yet, but I'm hopint that if I can at least figure out some of the basics I'll be able to make my husband happy every now and again with a taste of home. I would really like to learn how to make the Czech Potato salad, but everyone tells me that American Mayo isn't as good as the Czech variety, and therefore it just won't taste the same. Who knows? For now I'll just keep plugging along. Hard to believe we're already almost half way through our time here. I still have lots of things I'd like to do, and people I'd like to see, so hopefully there will be more entertaining posts to come. The truth is, just like life in America, when you're here all the time life in any country is just life. It only seems more exotic when seen as something foreign. Today, however, was about changing sheets and cooking lunch. But I'm still hoping for a little of that feeling of adventure that makes traveling so grand.

2012: Now Official Worldwide

Well, over here in the Czech Republic we brought in the new year with a BANG! And a pretty serious one at that. My father-in-law is amazing in the pyrotechnic department. It might have taken a little while to get it set up, but that just meant that all the amatuers were finished so they could enjoy a real show. I've got a few pictures of the set up, and I'll try to get them in later, but for now, just trust me, it was amazing. I have now experienced New Years celebrations in 5 different countries, and I have to say that the fireworks here were by far the most exciting. We didn't go into the middle of town to see the craziness there, but out here in our little corner there were all sorts of people setting things on fire and letting them shoot up into the air all over the place. However, at the end of our display there was actually applause. Nice! The rest of the evening was spent quietly watching TV, including some New Year's celebration from 1979 which was pretty interesting. Defintely a different era. This country sure has been through a lot during it's long and tumultuous history, and I wish it the best in the coming year. I've also been thinking a bit about resolutions. I think I mentioned before that I've been hearing a lot more about goals vs. resolutions. There seems to be something mroe palatable in the idea of a goal that you are striving for, rather than a complete an unequivocal change in lifestyle. Some of these are rather general ideas, and others are things brought up by my inspiring husband, so let's see what I can come up with... 1) Collecting more than 5 recipes (not counting cookies) that I am not freaked out to get in the kitchen and make. 2) Publish an e-book (this one is from Mark, who is encouraging me to put out some of my old stories as free books to start creating a following) 3) Contact traditional publishers with my (soon to be) completed manuscript. 4) Finish up some of the other books I have lying around on various devices in various stages. 5) Get a job (did I mention these are in no particular order?) 6) Work on creating a more balanced and healthy lifestyle, as opposed to my general lackadaisical approach (this is partly due to the fact that, while I might still feel 23, my body has slightly different and more bloated ideas.) 7) Scrapbook of my wedding 8) General crafting incorporation into life. (I'm hoping that once we have our own place and can sort of set things up I can create a better system so it doesn't take so much effort. I'd really like to work more with the journal making project that I came up with last summer and see where it can take me.) 9) Find a way to integrate myself more into local life, wherever it is that we "end up." 10) Try to join a writer's group. 11) Improve my Czech. (This is a constant, endless, and frustratingly impossible goal, but it is something I always want to try. In my dreaming of 'someday's I imagine sitting in a real classroom with other language learners, studying Czech in a serious sort of way, but it's not likely to come anytime soon.) 12) Improve my blogging record. It would be great to hit the 100 mark. That only means a couple blogs a week, and if I stay focused I don't see why that shouldn't be manageable. I'm considering monetizing as well, but that's still in the air. There are more things bouncing around in my head right now, but I'll stick with this as it's already a long list. as always, I want to live more, love more, and experience God more. There is so much in life to enjoy and experience, whether in good times or in bad, and I hope to continue making a concentrated to be engaged in the life that I am living, rather than just passively letting it slip by me. So I end again with Happy New Year! and wish whoever stumbles upon this humble blog of mine all the best in life and health and love and joy in this new year.

It's VIP Prostreno Time!

The Czech Republic is a small country. Again, I claim no absolute knowledge of geography, but by train you can travel all the way across the longest bit in about 8 hours. And trains are slow and make frequent stops and have delays in between. Due to the size, it is a lot easier for them to have a closeness that does not exist in Mega-Countries like the United States. The Czech's have a much longer history than Americans, and this also serves to hold them together. Perhaps this is a possible reason that shows like Prostreno can exist. The basic premiss of the show is that a group of 5 strangers takes turns hosting dinner one night of the week. The person in charge for the evening creates a menu and sends it out to each of the other members. As part of the show they interview the people to make guesses about what the person will make, then ask their take on how the dishes will be when they have a chance to read the menu. Throughout this time they cross back over to the cook of the day and watch their preparations. The guests arrive and have a chance to snoop around the person's house, giving commentary of course. Then they all sit down to dinner and share opinions on the food and the atmosphere. There is usually some sort of game for entertainment somewhere in the middle. Each host offers up a starter, soup/salad course, main dish and dessert. At the end, the others are interviewed on their own to give a score out of ten. On Friday, the person who scored the most points is rewarded with 10,000 KC. Not quite like the $10,000 prize on most Food Network shows, but while those tend to be a production on a grand scale, Prostreno looks more like something you could actually do with your friends. In the process of my Czech cooking training, I think I have finally amassed enough knowledge to take my shot on Prostreno. Okay, maybe I'm not quite up to that (the word literally means "intermediate") but I now have the correct number of dishes in me repertoire. Starter: Smazenky - a slice of bread fried with an egg and flour mixture on one side, then topped with mustard and veggies. Salad: Light green salad with a homemade dressing. Main Course: Beef with an onion sauce served on rice. Dessert: Almonds caramelized with cinnamon and sugar. I'm not saying it would be the meal that wins the money, but it should at least count for something. I have all the recipes stored on my iPad complete with my rough approximation of ingredients and instructions as well as photos to help illustrate how it all should look. This week they are having the special VIP version of the show. Four famous Czech couples are taking their chances at cooking. I'm not sure if there is any monetary prize in store at the end. I think it's just the pleasure of knowing that they won, but it's still pretty entertaining. Last night the final couple to arrive didn't even know who they were coming to see somehow, maybe they lost the number they were supposed to ring, so they just started calling up to all sorts of different flats to see if they'd found the right one. Pretty entertaining. The whole show is so intimate, that I'm not sure it would work on US television. Perhaps on a local channel they could tuck it in after the nightly news. There is just such a lack of continuity in the US. Sure, people put on some sort of patriotic front, but they all seem to stand for such different things that it's hard to even define what American culture is. I guess it doesn't really matter, but there's something nice about the cozy feeling of national identity that people have around here. Guess that comes of having a language that only 11 million people speak, instead of most of the world. Note: according to my Love, google translate is wrong. Prostreno actually means: set the table. makes a bit more sense at least :)

Flashback Photo Frenzy

At long last we have the computer working with the internet. That means full access to pictures with ability to post them. Hopefully it also means no crankiness on the part of the server when I try to make this post a reality. Today seems as good a day as any for doing this, seeing as how I'm not leaving my room much on account of a barfing dog. Poor Katcha has been all kinds of pukish today, and so we're trying to keep things nice and mellow for her, which means me sitting on the bed and being present if she decides to up-chuck again. Yummy, isn't it. Let's just say I've had a lot more experience with bodily fluids than my husband has, which makes me the prime candidate for doggie sick duty. But enough of that, lets go for that stroll down memory lane I've been promising for ages. We're going all the way back to Moscow for the start of this trip. Back when my dear little white mac decided it was full and didn't want to accept any more photos. Silly little thing. Hopefully after a three month respite it will be ready to accept me with open arms once again. So here are those little autumn lovelies from Idaho.

This water was actually kind of sickly looking, but the reflection was so nice I just couldn't resist.

And what would a little photo montage be without a poser shot? Do you know how hard it is to get a camera to balance on a branch at just the right angle? It's tricky. I have nice tripod that would make it all easier, but I often forget to carry it around in my purse all the time. Our next segment recalls those brutal cookies I whipped up for Halloween. I did post a few of these photos off my phone as well, but these are gloriously awful. You can see in the first one that they looked even more fingerlike before baking, but they puffed up quite a bit. I'll know better if I make them again.

Apparently I find it shamelessly entertaining to post photos of food I've managed to make. Perhaps it's because I'm so not a "foodie." So here are the Thanksgiving cookies my mom and I made out of another Rachel Ray mag. They had a lot of cream cheese in them, and were stuffed with apricot jam. A definite hit with the men in the house :)

A small nod now to the lovely Starbucks cup I got from Amy and Nate. I was extra excited to learn that you get a ten cent discount when you order your drink in the cup. So here you have Christmas (that's peppermint mocha for those not in the know) in a Hong Kong cup :)

We now have a bizarre little segue involving some food that I did not make. I must say that my wedding cake was a bit of a disaster. The cake lady delivered it basically as the wedding was starting, probably to avoid actually having to deal with anyone directly involved. It was more than a little off balance, and the longer you looked at it, the more obvious it was that it was essentially patched together with excessive quantities of frosting. At the same time, she made really beautiful sugary flowers, and it didn't taste bad. Wanting to hold with tradition as much as possible, although I've always been curious how a tradition like saving the top of your cake for your first anniversary came about seeing as how it started before refrigeration, we pulled the cake topper out when we were in McMinnville right before heading to Czech. Amazingly, it thawed out into a moist,delicious, chocolatey mess. You can see how the frosting mostly separated off revealing what a hack job it was, but at least it was tasty and the flowers remained in tact.

Next we have a picture of my most recent crochet job. A blanket I made for Jessie's new baby, Daniela, who entered the world the day after I left. At least I got to deliver the blanket in advance :)

On the day we flew out we decided to enjoy a little bit of Seattle. I feel like I have neglected Mark's education of cool things to see in the US, so it was nice to at least give him something before we left.

Yes, this is the first Starbucks. How could we resist checking that out.

I just couldn't resist that last photo of the Ross store. It looks a wee bit classier than our little Moscow Ross, but I imagine it isn't nearly as neat, clean and organized :) After our flight this was the first real Czech advertisement I saw. It was so absolutely bizarre and creepy that I just had to take a photo.

And here you can see the lovely little room that my mom-in-law had made up so nicely for us. It's where I'm sitting at this very moment as I type, with Katcha down at the end wrapped up in Mark's comforter and thankfully not barfing.

And the final photo on our little journey is of the cookies I put the cream on. I have yet to taste them, because all the cookies have been boxed up to take out at Christmas time, but at least I know they look beautiful.

So there you have a quick tour of photos from the last couple of months. Sorry for leaving it all as such a blur, but so it goes. Now that I know this computer will go online I'll try to keep things better up to date photo wise. It really helps to break up the posts, which I think makes them a bit less intimidating.

And Then It All Went Away...

They've gone and changed something. I'm really not sure why they feel they have to do this. Whoever they might be, they really out to check and make sure before they just do things. Especially when the things they do cause lovely blogs that are all nice and neatly typed to suddenly disappear. Now I'm not even sure I want to go through with even trying to recount it all. The worst bit is, that I actually saw that something was askew after hitting publish twice and getting a big fat nothing, so I specifically made sure to copy it all so I could just reconfigure things and paste it back on. But the thing is so irritating that it refuses to paste it. So, post gone. Self, irritated. What I had done was share the story of today. It was all full of the little trip I went on with my mom-in-law today and how I had to be brave to just put myself out there and go shopping with her on my own. I talked about how it was a glorious day to begin with. The sun was shining brightly, the sort of thing you just don't ignore in the middle of December. We took a crowded bus and wondered together why there were so many people not at work on a Wednesday morning. I felt like I was even somehow being clever with my tale. I wrote about our visits to the expensive shops, and how she fit right in there. In contrast, when I tried to go in the same places during last summer I always felt a bit out of place. And it wasn't just because of my lack of Czech skills. There was also a nice little anectdote about going into the Vietnamese shop, the sort of place you'd find in Mong Kok, full of cheap imitations and odd smells, and how she actually found a couple Czech's working there to make her feel a bit less out of place with her mui mui bag and her Guess boots. Then, just because my world seems to have been doused with domesticity, I shared about my pathetic attempts to peel potatoes in the face of her quick strokes, and then about how I actually copied down her recipe for green salad, but mostly because I was so intrigued that she added powdered sugar to her little dressing mixture. Now I've just gone and slopped this all together into something far from brilliant, and I'm filled with dread that even this will turn out to be a waste of time, because chances are that it won't post either, leaving me seething. I forgot to add that in the middle of our shopping trip the weather turned, as promised, to rain, and when Mark and I took the dog out later it was an absolute downpour. I suppose that's just what's to be expected at this time of year. Now I'm just going to put this grumpy little post to the test and see where it gets me. (sigh) I really do wish they'd learn to leave well enough alone!

Adventures in Czech Cookery (Part 3)

Okay, so I didn't lable part's one and two, but I think you can figure them out. The mom-in-law came home early with an intense eye ache, but insisted that she'd brought a chunk of meat out of the freezer with the intent to continue my education, and therefore, It just had to be done.

I must admit I'm getting a bit worried about the wordiness of my blogs. They miss the pictures I'd love to insert, but iPad and photos continue to refuse to work together with blog. So. I regret to inform that the picture of my beef with onions in sauce (my own name for it) will just have to wait.

I brought only two books with me to Czech this trip. It's week two, and I'm already half way through with the second. Oops. At least I have a few downloaded on my iPad. I imagine War and Peace will take me a while. (The beauty of free classics!) Anyhow, the book I'm devouring at the moment is Julie and Julia. I saw the movie with my mom and sisters (Jessie included) a couple years ago, and really enjoyed it. I have to say this might be one of those times when the movie outdoes the book. I know, those cases are few and far between, but style, while entertaining, isn't exactly friendly for all audiences the way the movie was. Regardless, it seems a fitting book to read while taking my own stab at culinary something or another. After reading the chapter about her murdering lobsters, it seemed only appropriate that I should have to touch raw meat.

Today's process started out with mom-in-law chopping a chunk of partially frozen raw beef into chunks, then having me pound them with a pokey metal mallet. That done, she began the frying in oil bit, whilst giving me the task of peeling onions. Now, in general I'm a pretty fast person. Maybe not always as fast on the uptake as I'd like to be, but I do things quickly. I walk fast. I clean fast. I write five to ten page papers fast. It's how I roll... Until I find myself in the kitchen. Then langour is probably a better word for it. Mostly because it sounds like a mixture of being really slow and a little horrified, and maybe kind of bored too because I know it's all going to take so long and that I'm going to end up looking inept in the process. I have peeled my fair share of onions, back in the Great Harvest days when I made Curry chicken salads, and fresh slices for sandwiches it was part of my daily routine. Always healthy to have a good cry in the morning, right? But it seems like everyone has a method, and hers involved being faster and less frightened of knives than mine. Likewise, everyone has their own way of chopping onions, and so I did my best to follow hers, but I'm sure that if given the task on my own, I'd probably do it differently. Either way the meat got it's sear and the onions got in to become brown and translucent and things were well underway.

The funny thing about people who know how to cook in general, is that they think it's easy. Okay, maybe it's not rocket science, but easy? That's a bit of a stretch. Yeah, I know following a menu is about reading. I can do reading. And I know that prepping ingredients is so basic that kids can do it. Well, I can do it too. It's not so much all of that part that is the issue really. It's knowing how to know that it's done, and having it turn out like it does in the pretty picture books.

In the book I'm reading, Julie had that problem too. Julia Child would talk about everything like it was a mixture of ease and a thrill. When attempted in real life, however, it was often a disaster. Because how is a person just supposed to know or feel when it's exactly the right moment between perfection and granulated, or charred, or straight up mush? Now imagine trying to figure all that out when someone is speaking a language you don't really know all that well.

Each time "easy" and "finished" were spoken with glee, I knew that when it came my time to cook it on my own it would be more like: Now build the great wall of China in thirty minutes and when you're done it will look like the Eiffel Tower decorated in twinkly lights for Christmas. Just gonna have to wait and see how it goes I guess.

Jiste Jedno, Noch Einmal, Once Again...

As "anyone" can plainly see, I've been in Germany again. I must admit, I always tremble a bit when I enter tri-lingual situations. Hard to know if I can possibly be up for the challenge. The truth of the matter is, I know one language. Sure, I've dabbled in this and that in the lingual sense, but most people don't consider being able to count to ten and say I love you sufficient evidence of language mastery.

Surprisingly, speaking to four year olds in German ins't quite the daunting task one might think it to be. They're used to people asking them the names of things to test their brilliance, and see nothing wrong with this practice at all. They also speak simply, if not exactly slowly or clearly. You know, you get used to being called "Sigh-ya" and "Mall-ek." Of course try to repeat these words in the way they say them and they'll look at you like you're clearly lacking something in the intelligence category.

But there was more to the trip than just wracking my brain for the right word. I've discovered that I can speak German more easily yet I understand Czech better. I think this is partly because I actually studied German so I have a good feeling for the sentence structure and while I might not always have the vocabulary I can wiggle around it a bit more than I can in Czech. As far as the understanding part goes, I've been listening to Czech a lot more often, be it in conversation or on television, and that has definitely helped with my comprehension. Just don't ask me to string words together because I'm certain to put them in the wrong order and with totally incorrect endings. Thankfully, I was able to pull it off well enough that the twins probably don't even realize I don't speak German, the girls at least felt like I could follow what they were saying and make basic replies, and I was able to carry on a conversation with my sister-in-law during which we both communicated successfully. Granted, I might have occasionally agreed to things that weren't exactly true, but what's life without a few micommunications, right? Even when both parties are fluent in a mutual langauge they don't always get the whole story straight, so I'd say we did pretty well, all things considered.

Of course, there was more than just talking that took place. Saturday morning I had a completely new experience. I'm not sure if this is cultural or what (probably some health regime I've just never heard of) but we had garlic soup for breakfast. That's right, a nice water garlic soup with a few random chunks of potato on the bottom and little crunchy balls of some time sprinkled on top. Considering the fact that my husband thinks eating syrupy waffles in the same meal as bacon (especially for dinner) is the strangest combination ever, I have to say that I've never heard of anyone having garlic soup for breakfast.

After that odd start to the day (well, actually the day started much earlier, seeing as how we still woke up at - gasp - 5 AM, but that's beside the point) Mark left me to fend for myself. This is when I not only impressed myself with my ability to cope, I also learned a new cooking skill. First I helped the kids a bit with putting jam in the middle of sandwich cookies (not nearly as complicated as it sounds unless you're four and think that you should lick off the excess around the edges...). Then I was called upon to make cinnamon sugar coated almonds. I've often bought these tasty little treats at holiday and festival markets in Czech, but this was definitely my first attempt making them. While I did have a large amount of helpful supervision in the form of my sister-in-law, I think I could actually produce said nuts again on my own. I even went so far as to use my iPad skills to document the process and translated the recipe from German to English. Nice.

Later in the afternoon, after the men returned from their shopping trip (oh the joy of electronics stores) the entire crew headed to the ice skating rink in Weiden. Now let me first say that I've only been ice skating once before. It was either Junior or Senior year of high school, some sort of youth group event I believe. I spent the entire time just barely not clinging to the wall. Much as I hate to admit it, 16 or 17 was a long time ago. I won't say quite how long, but suffice it to say, I can basically call this my first time ice skating for all the good that prior trip did me.

For those not in the know, ice skates are really very painful contraptions. My ankles are bruised just from strapping them on. And there is really nothing natural about the stance you have to take in order to drift across the ice. Perhaps, once you really get into the swing of things, your body naturally bends to the point that the skates are somehow comfortable, but I never got there. I just did my best to stay standing. By the end of our outing I felt just about confident enough to allow for several feet to separate me from the wall, and I even got to the point where I would actually lift one foot completely off the ice for more than the briefest of moments. I wasn't about to start trying a triple sow cow (yes I'm quite certain that is not how you spell it, but that IS how it sounds) and my one nasty fall was enough to make me think that being even a little bit daring was a little bit too much, but I still managed to have a good time, and even let Mark take me out into the middle for a couple fast loops. Note: I was clinging tightly to his hand the whole time.

In the evening, the girls made dinner for us all. They were very cute about keeping us all out of the kitchen while they prepared it all. There were name cards set for everyone, and all the makings for sandwiches were spread out on the table for us to enjoy. Very fun.

I would also like to note that the two reptiles - Gary the turtle and Gary the chameleon - somehow met their demise over the past year and were replaced by two rodents. One is a rabbit (okay a bit better than a rodent, but still a nocturnal creature in a cage) and the other was some sort of creepy albino sort of something. The rabbit seemed to be allergic to something and kept sneezing all the time, and during the night the other thing kept making sounds like it was trying feverishly to escape. Not the most encouraging sound to hear when you're trying to sleep.

Overall, it was a really great weekend. Even though I'm still not sure what language to speak or even think in at times, I'm doing my best to get a hang of things :)

Making Christmas, Making Christmas, Making Christ-mas, It's Czech This Time...

First line of business this morning? Making Czech Christmas cookies with my mother-in-law. Now I woke up around 7:30, thinking I should still have a decent amount of time to get ready for the cooking plan, but by 8:30 when I'd finished my journal writing and getting dressed, she already had things well in progress.
Perhaps before I get any farther under way I should explain a couple of things.
Thing One: The Czech Christmas Cookie Tradition
Czech's really go all out with their holiday cookie making. Yeah, we like cookies and other sweets at the holidays in the US too, but here it's a big deal. When I was teaching my students would start talking about how they were already making cookies for Christmas a good month in advance. The cookies, or cukrovy, are really something special. Most people make a number of different varieties, I think we have four or five here this year. They're tiny little delicacies, more mouthfulls than the American variety, and are passed out as gifts and shared at parties and consumed in mass quantities at home.
Thing Two: My Mother-in-law
She's really quite a wonder. She's a full time nurse and an immaculate house keeper. After a long day at work the first thing she does when she comes home is to clean. As spotless as the place looks to me, she always seems to have this need to make it even cleaner. She reminds me a lot of my Grandma in that sense. Everything she does, she does to perfection. Cooking, cleaning, and her other passion - shopping - are all perfectly executed.
So back to my story, I got up thinking I could really learn something today about making Czech Christmas cookies. I was all set. I had my iPad prepared to write down recipes and serve as a translator when necessary, as well as taking photos to better illustrate what was going on. However, there wasn't really anything left to mix up when I got there. I still got to help, but it was beyond any point of actually learning what went into them, so in the future I guess I'll just have to look up recipes and figure it out on my own.
The first thing she had me do was pipe a nougat paste onto some nutty crescent cookies. At first I thought it was going to be a filling, but once they were all topped with the cream she put them out on the balcony (this is what she uses instead of refrigerator space) to cool and harden. Later on in the afternoon they were topped with a chocolate drizzle, but I missed out on that bit. At least I played some small part in their creation.
Okay, so I've just discovered that for some unknown reason my iPad doesn't want to let me upload photos to my post. I'm really not certain why, I mean I even figured out how to do it on my phone, but for now I guess this is going to be a rather bland post. I have some fun photos too :( Ah well.
Guess I'll just have to make do with words. The next cookies we worked on were my favorite ones. They are pretty similar to sugar cookies. I was responsible for rolling them out and cutting the shapes. It was fairly easy at first, but as the dough got softer and softer it became really difficult to get it to hold together. The very last shape Anna had to do for me because after I don't know how many pans of cookies I just couldn't make the last one come out in one piece. They only cook for about five minutes until they're lightly brown. She was in charge of the cooking and cooling bit, and she commented on how thankful she was to have me helping because it really makes it easier to manage it all.
Two more things I should add:
Thing One: my mother-in-law speaks no English.
Thing Two: despite having already baked cookies all morning there was no evidence of any dirty dishes becasue she just keeps it that clean. This isn't any huge American kitchen. I can just hear the annoying chicks on House Hunters complaining about how small the galley style kitchen is and how they'd never manage to do anything there, but she does it all and keeps it spick and span. Yes it can be done.
While keeping the cookies cooking, she also boiled off the skins of a huge bowl of almonds. She talked about making a final kind of cookies, but if she did them today it was while I was out with Mark and his friend so I wasn't involved.
The cookies we were working on had to cool and were later filled with jam and closed together, then were finished off with chocolate drizzle on top. The first pan we cooked I'd just been cutting shapes at random, but then she pointed out that there have to be an even number because they're little sandwiches. We really managed to communicate quite well, or at least she communicated and I did my best to keep up. She also made sure to separately bake the ones I didn't roll out thinly enough from the ones that were the proper thickness. She didn't actually point it out to me, but I noticed and was glad she was the one in charge.
In the end, we have a great little collection of cookies. She told me that most Czech women these days don't take the time to make the cookies and buy them at the store instead. We both agreed that the store bought variety are not nearly the quality of homemade.
Overall, it was a great practice for me, even though I still have no idea how to make them on my own. The plan is for me to continue cooking with her to learn how to make other traditional Czech dishes. Next time I'll just have to be sure what time she's going to start so I can actually be awake for it. :)

Secret's in the Sauce...

Here's just a little glimpse into what I did for Halloween. And you???

Food and Crafts

Let me start out by saying I am NOT a food blogger. Shouldn't come as a surprise to most people. Generally speaking, food has never been my strong point. On a wedding gift card my friend Ben pointed out that I'd made the comment: "Food is Fuel." He thought I should change my outlook and see it as something exciting, invigorating, life giving. A little tough to stomach.
But since getting married, or even since Mark and I started our relationship, I've learned that food is important. Part of creating a family requires feeding them, after all. And more and more I've found myself blogging about food. Not just pretty little dishes that I threw together to feed me, or different things that I ate in restaurants, but actual food that I cooked by myself. Not to mention the fact that I've become a little obsessed with shows on the Food Network, and reading Rachel Ray magazine. But despite all I've read and watched and tried to let infiltrate my being, cooking still sorta freaks me out.
Sure, when it comes right down to it, I can make something to eat. My parents have been gone for the past week and Mark and I have neither starved, nor eaten at McDonalds. That's quite a feat considering that our first month or so of marriage we were staying in McMinnville and I bought BigMacs for Mark almost every day. But that's the sort of spending trend that was destined to end. This week he's been served a variety of egg burrito renditions involving pepperoni, not to mention countless pepperoni, butter and cheese sandwiches, and some egg salad for good measure. Still, I'm a long way from being any sort of culinary anything.
Today, Mark said he wanted something chocolate. We were out of anything specific, and so I decided to make chocolate chip cookies. Only problem: no chocolate chips in the pantry. But did I let this stop me? Normally the answer would be yes, but today I decided to do something brave, something bold. I used the internet. Wahoo! I knew we had nutella so I did a search for nutella cookies, and was blessed to find one that only required 3 ingredients. How cool is that? And how could even I possibly go wrong?
So within half an hour of so I was able to serve Mark a platter of cookies.

They're a bit on the crumbly side, and probably wouldn't suffer from having a few more ingredients, but they were even relatively moist.
To make things even more shocking, I decided to create my own variation. I added about a tablespoon of peanut butter to the mixture that was left after baking the first pan full and came up with these little buddies.

In my opinionation (little salute to "Blossom" there ;) you just can't go wrong with nutella and peanut butter. And basically I'd say I was right. While they basically fall apart as soon as you pick them up, they taste pretty fantastic, and went excellently with my Hills Bros. Mocha.
I'm pretty all over the place with the links today, but they add a little something, and I like to give credit where credit is due. As I said, I'm not any sort of expert who will tell you about the brilliant and complex combination of flavors, or the expert plating designs of a dish. It's just a mishap or a magical moment here and there in my own haphazard experiences in the kitchen.
Now on to topic number two. After all, this is my blog, my place to say what I feel like saying, and I can be as mishmashed and all over the place as I'd like. So I'm going to share a recent inspiration/project idea. I've decided, thanks to years of personal experience, to create journals. In Prague I found what might be called, found journals, on display for 300kc+. In American markets I discovered re-purposed book journals for $15+. I've also found different sites online where you can buy handmade journals like one of my current blog faves Gadanke. All of these visions have helped to inspire me with the idea that this is something I could do as well.
Over the past few weeks I've been to a lot of garage sales collecting components for this fun new project. I still have a way to go in figuring out how to really do the book re-purposing, partly because it's hard to bring myself to cut up the lovely old books, and partly because it's hard to figure out how to get the pages securely inside. But I'm working on it, and am slowly gathering ideas on that front.
The past couple of days, however, I have done a lot of work on one journal in particular. Here's a little sneak peak into what I've come up with. It would be my niece Adelia's dream journal for sure:






Beyond what I've already inserted, I want to add bits of my own poetry to some of the pages. I thought about doing famous quotes and maybe Bible verses, but I don't want to risk any sort of copyright infringement, so for now I think I'll steer clear of things like that. With my collection of photos from around the world, I'm certain that I can create unique journals and pieces of art, that hopefully other people will enjoy as well. It's a thought at least. And if no one buys them, then I'll always have the chance to fill them myself...Perhaps at some point I'll even add creative covers using my powers of crochet, or include original artwork by Haley. Always best to incorporate family, right?
The writing dream is not dead. It still resides here in my head. But life proceeds. I just have to do my best to keep up and not go crazy in the process.

Smazeny Kureci Rizek, Bramborovy Salat, a Tatarska Omacka

I think I was a pretty smart kid. I had this idea that I wanted to be a Grandma when I grew up. There are some pretty cool things about being a grandma. There are all those joys of having kids filling up your house with joy, but you don't have to be the one responsible for late night baby feedings, dealing with the stomach flu, or the pesky task of discipline. Instead you get to snuggle sweet kids who are delighted by your presence, dole out the sweets, and buy adorable toys and kid clothes at your pleasure. A pretty sweet gig.
You also get to be known for specialties. There is no need for a long repertoire of meals to prepare, just a couple of basics for holidays (when you have other people around to help pull it off) and some classics like mini pancakes with berry syrup, sugar cookies, and lefse. You manage those things and you're totally covered as far as the kids go. And chances are that if you have a husband he'll be old enough to know better than to expect anything more than jelly toast for breakfast and regular meals out. After all, you're a grandma and you deserve to be treated after all those years of slaving away to take care of your family.
That's where the clincher comes in and ruins the whole perfect scenario. The thing is, you can't just skip to being a grandma. There's a whole lot of other stuff that has to come first in order to acquire that title. That's what I'm learning about now.
By Jr. High I'd come to the conclusion that I wanted the whole getting married and having a family deal to be a part of my future as well. There have always been novelist dreams, even fantastic fantasies involving the silver screen and recording labels. Most of those have chilled, although I've got a couple of books in the works that I'm trying to mull through and figure out how to get them into the hands of the masses. It took a long time to get to the marriage point, but today I've made it three months into wifehood, and I can see that I still have a LONG way to go.
Yesterday, I decided that I wanted to make a grand gesture. The type that hopefully makes up for some of the general mundane existence life so easily falls into. Anyone who knows much about me, or has even read a wee bit of my blog, realizes that cooking is NOT my strong point. Not even close. I can muddle my way through, and given guidance even pull things off for the most part, but it's not with out a lot of failure and a good deal of squeamishness.
My husband is from the Czech Republic, for anyone not aware, and he has been challenged by his foray into American cuisine. He grew up in a small town riddled with four and five star hotels, and even studied things about the restaurant business in school, so to say he has "ideas" is an understatement. I've been well aware since his arrival here, that he has been hugely missing the food of his homeland. We went out a lot when we were back in Czech, and there were certain dishes that he positively adored. His birthday is coming up next week, and it's my dream to recreate one of these dishes for that occasion. In preparation for this task, I decided to start making some attempts at other Czech food.
So, after finding some lovely resources online, including a blog that I think will become my new go-to for all things helpful and Czech, I was able to plan a menu for the evening. Just a brief plug for this blog, it's written by a woman who moved to the US from Czech several years ago and wanted to provide an updated sight for other Czechs and Slovaks who find themselves in the US. I already think she's wonderful, even after visiting her sight a few times. Anyhow, I decided on the above title. For those not familiar with Czech menus, that's a fried chicken steak, potato salad and tartar sauce. Granted, none of these things are like their traditional American counterparts, so I couldn't just cheat and substitute, but had to really work with the recipes.
I started working on it around 5, thinking that it shouldn't take terribly long to throw it all together. First, I started boiling the potatoes. It was a good thing I thought of that first since the internet informed me it could take 40 to 60 minutes for them to be ready, then they would need to cool to make the salad. Did I mention I'm a cooking novice? Anyhow, I at least trusted my boiling egg and potato skills enough not to stare at the pots for the duration, and I mixed up the tatarska. It was a bit sour, but with a few suggestions from my Love, I was able to add some sugar and help it to be okay. Except when making spaghetti sauce, improvising is definitely NOT my strong suit.
Once I had a bunch of ingredients chopped up and ready, I decided to tackle the chicken. I remembered watching the cooking show and seeing Agata Hanychova, a famous Czech supermodel, making the same dish. (I wanted to supply a link, but had trouble finding any with only appropriate pictures...) I decided that if she could get her hands all covered in raw chicken then I should be able to as well. So I forced myself to just go with it. To make this dish the meat has to be pounded, but I couldn't find a meat pounder. Julie didn't have one, and when I called Mom she said she didn't actually have one either. So, with Mom's advice, I improvised. I put the meat between two plastic cutting boards and beat it with a big pan. It was, well, I guess effective. It took quite a while and I never got the meat as thin as I should have, but at least it sort of worked.
In the end, I managed to get the meat all nicely breaded and fried, gently peeled and cut the potatoes and mixed them gently into a salad, and served it up with tatarska on the side. I won't say that it looked or tasted quite like the Czech originals, but it worked. And when I brought it down it was accepted as pleasing and he even told me it tasted really good. I think the fact that it took me three hours also showed him what an act of love it really was.
So at 8 we ate, and by ten I was nearly falling asleep in front of the TV. I can't say that this inspired me to dedicate all day every day to the art of cooking, but at least I managed. I did take some pictures, but they didn't turn out super good, and I haven't put them on my computer yet, but I'll have to have a photo post one of these days. My blog has gotten awfully wordy, and that only works for so long, so I promise to make it more colorful soon.

CupCakeFlop...

I know there are a lot of people out there who have trouble believing that being a housewife, homemaker, stay at home Mom, or what have you can be a real job. I remember once when I was doing a lesson on job values with a class they were supposed to evaluate each job based on a number of different criteria. They were based on things from level of importance, salary, difficulty, etc. One of the jobs included on the list was "housewife." I was curious to see where my Czech students would rate this career choice on their priority lists. In a country where they pride themselves on their work ethic and allow three years of maternity leave followed by instant enrollment into "kindergarten" I had the feeling that most of them wouldn't be able to see the importance of staying at home to raise your own children. The funny thing was that they went a step further than I had even expected, basically assuming that this was a made up job title. They had no concept of what a housewife could possibly be.
I know that in our world of enlightenment and liberation, there are a lot of women who find the belief that they would even want to stay home insulting. They have fought so long and hard for the right to be out there making a living so they can afford to pay for the highest quality childcare. I'm not at all saying that women shouldn't be allowed to work or anything like that. If that's your drive and your dream, go for it. All I know is that, if I ever have kids, I want to be able to stay at home with them. Not just because I want to be the one who raises my children, but because, even without children, this taking care of the house business is excessively time consuming.
I've taken care of myself for a goodly long time now. I'm pretty low maintenance. I like my place to be clean. I like to eat mostly healthy food. These things aren't that hard to manage for a person alone. But you add just one more person into the equation and suddenly it seems to take every waking moment just to manage things. And I still don't even have a "job."
On Sunday I decided I wanted to add one more thing into the mix and make cupcakes. Basically that meant I didn't cook any other meals in the day so I was able to do this project. Honestly, I have no concept of how people end up with multiple meals on the table every day without literally spending all their time in the kitchen. Rachel Ray might claim there's something called a "30-Minute Meal" but I'm quite convinced that belong prepackaged salad or PB and J sandwiches, if you're trying to feed more than yourself it takes an excessive amount of time!
Anyhow, I did find the recipe for these little goodies in the Rachel Ray magazine and they didn't look too terribly difficult so I thought I'd give them a go. There were two parts to this recipe. One was a batter that could be used for multiple dishes and the other was the recipe that the batter was to be added to. It looked simple enough.
The recipe was supposed to make 6 cupcakes which I thought was rather silly because who only makes 6 cupcakes? Besides, I've watched enough Cup Cake Wars to feel like they can't be all that hard. Right? So I was going to double the recipe. The only thing was, I just needed to double part two, not the batter part. But naturally I doubled the batter bit and then realized how stupid I'd been.
However, since this batter had multiple applications I thought, if nothing else, I could make myself pancakes instead of just eating a mini bowl of yogurt at some point during the week. Only problem was, when I went to add my cupcake ingredients I dumped them in the batter. That might not sound like such a big deal, but with the doubled cupcake ingredients I only needed two cups of the batter, and I dumped them right into 5 cups. Not being accomplished in baking rescue missions, I was in a bit of a quandary. I didn't have enough ingredients to quadruple the cupcake bit, so I just threw in some extra flour so it wouldn't be a soupy mess, and decided to throw it in the oven anyway. The result? Big fluffy Muffcakes I think would be the best description. They're pretty eggy, and definitely not cakey enough to fall into the cupcake category. It was an interesting experiment to say the least, and once again shows that just being enough to read isn't enough to save you when you lose the ability to concentrate and reason and all of that good stuff. They still tasted okay, but calling them weird would be a bit of an understatement.
So the battle over capturing life and making it my own continues. I still feel like I haven't a clue how to manage it all. But I'm trying. I honestly am.
Tonight's plan is to make fajitas. Let's just say the ball is mostly in Julie's court but I'll do what I can to assist.

3,000

So I added a counter to my blog a while back and find it rather fascinating to see that it has logged on 3,000 page views. Not really sure where all of that comes from, seeing as how I only have ten "official" followers (however that works) and a handful of friends and family members that I know check the blog. And as much as my mom hassles me when she thinks I haven't been updating enough, I rather doubt she checks THAT frequently.
Anyhow, a new week has begun and I started off by giving in to my next door niece and nephew. They decided that, since Grandpa is away, Auntie Sarah should be their walking companion on the way to school. Of course their mom and the whippets are there too, but they seem to think it's more fun to have another walking helper.
Had to pull my sorry carcass out of bed at 7:35 in order to be up to the task. I know that sounds pathetic, but having been unemployed since last July I've rather lost the daily routine sort of thing that generally keeps my life motivated. Anyhow, after a grape juice disaster that slowed them up (Adelia's thermos leaked through her whole backpack, leaving her to carry her pink Hello Kitty backpack from K-1. Being a third grader that's totally ancient history and reflects a girlier stage in her style choices) I did join the crew for the walk. It wasn't too cold, or windy and there was no blowing snow or rain, so it was a nice way to get the day started.
Julie has taken to the idea of me helping with the cooking, so we decided to try out a new crock pot recipe. Thankfully this one involved hamburger that I didn't have to touch. I pretty much did the whole thing, with Julie doing dishes and occasionally giving insight into what size things should be chopped and how to improvise a bit so that the seasoning would be strong enough. Then she had to ride quickly back to the school to deliver Rowan's "Me flag" and by the time she'd returned I'd decided that I would follow the old "If you can read you can cook" advice I've heard so many times.
I cooked up the hamburger, drained it, and added everything into the pot. I was feeling like I'd managed not to freak out too much, only to have Julie return and inform me that she'd had things planned slightly differently...apparently it's more than just following the instructions after all. I always knew there were sinister underlying rules that cooking instructions refuse to divulge! Guess we'll just have to wait until dinner time to see if it all turns out okay.

A Small Accomplishment

It's kind of funny how much Mark and I have enjoyed cooking shows. On both sides of the world, we've found shows about culinary greats and wannabes that have highly entertained us. In Czech there was the celebrity cooking show as well as a couple shows with chef Zdeněk Pohlreich who helps restaurants improve the quality of their kitchens or challenges chefs to be the best they can be. Over here we actually have the Food Network. Can I just say there are a ridiculous number of highly entertaining cooking reality shows. From "Cupcake Wars" to "Chopped" they've got all kinds of kitchen drama.
I even occasionally look at my friend's food websites. Whether it is Crystal with her beautiful food photos and recipes, or Robin constantly wowing me with how many projects she manages to do while still producing a blog explaining how to get it all done, I'm more than impressed by what so many women manage to do.
While it may be true that in Hong Kong I often had to cook for as many as 15 people, what I produced was far from something spectacular. Basically, it was something to get them through evening shift without starving. Not that it was inedible, but it certainly wasn't anything exciting either. Basics. Pure and simple. Things quickly chopped up and served cold or thrown together at minimal risk and tossed in the oven for a while. Those are the sort of things that work for me. I was always thankful when there were enough people around that I only had to cook twice a month. Those days when I had to write up the schedule and sometimes put my name down more than twice in one week made me want to cringe.
Needless to say, cooking isn't my passion. I recently was reminded in a wedding card that I once said "For me, food is fuel." And that's the truth. It's something that my body has to have in order to keep going. Not that there aren't plenty of tasty dishes out there. Those Food Network shows even manage to make me salivate every now and again. But the thought of going out of my way every day to put something fantastic on the table is a huge stretch for my imagination. One one side food is fuel, and on the other side cooking is stress.
But these days I find myself a wife. That has to mean something, right? For a while in Czech I got all excited about wanting to cook for Mark, but life there was complicated and it just didn't end up happening very much, so that flame sorta died. My kitchen wows in Cheb focused on the likes of fruit salad and hot open faced sandwiches. So it's a bit of a struggle for me to suddenly need to feed more than just myself.
Now we come to the main point of this post. Beyond the fact that cooking doesn't give me any sort of thrill, I'm excessively paranoid about touching raw meat. It's just gross. Slimy, unsanitary, ugh. But yesterday...yesterday I cut chunks of fat off raw meat. I held it in my hands, I got goo everywhere. Then I put it in a crock pot under the direction of my sister Julie, and I produced an honest to goodness dinner. It's not likely that anyone will give me the honorary title of chef any time in the near future, and I'd likely even fail at "Worst Cooks in America" but it's a step in the right direction...right? And if nothing else, I've gotten really good at making the Czech version of Turkish coffee. If only Starbucks would get back to me on that job ap...

Ja Mam Gulas Im Mein Kopf!

So I'm in Germany, enjoying the crazy things of life with kids. I had no idea we would be here this long, but it has been refreshing and mind straining all at the same time. We're staying with Mark's sister and her family and so I'm having to keep up with conversations in Czech, German, and English and it's quite a challenge. We came on Sunday the 5th of September, so it's been quite a run and definitely good fun. There are four kids here. The girls are 9 and 11 and the boys are 3, so there's a lot of energy and excitement when everyone is around. The boys are in daycare during the week, but the girls were still on holiday last week so we were able to spend a lot of time really hanging out with them. It's definitely frustrating to have such a low language level. I can understand quite a bit, but any sentence formation is patchy at best, and just plain despicable most of the time. But it's all good for me, right? This learning and growing and oh so slow going...
It's been nice to have some fresher air to breathe, just something different from the routines I'd been living in. I've fallen horrendously far behind in my journal, and let internet connections dwindle to the point of freaking people out a bit because I was no longer on top of things in my Lexulous crazed lifestyle, but it's been good for me.
I've also been taught how to make Czech bread dumplings, although I'm not sure if I'll be able to find the right kind of flour in the US, and I'll have to reconvert the measurements. I also made chocolate chip cookies, but I'd done gram conversions and it just didn't really work. We're talking solid grainy sugar pools instead of the lovely perfect ones I made in ML a couple weeks ago. But the kids don't mind. After all, it's a bunch of sugar and Milka. What's not to love? I've forced myself through quite a few as well, just to make up for the fact that they aren't really what they should be. Ah well. Nothing like a few more pounds gained to make me feel better about life. Of course, if I ate all the food people around here seem to think I should I'd be a balloon, so at least I'm still working toward protecting myself on some counts.
I also was quite pleased of my jump roping prowess. The first day we were here the kids had me jump while they turned the short rope and in the process I believe I'm now supposed to have 58 children...I also managed to jump 114 times without a missed step on my own, which was pretty impressive to me considering how long it's been since my personal playground days.
Speaking of which, I was randomly remembering my stint as a cheerleader this morning. Don't ask how it ended up in my head, but I found myself trying to recall the moves and wondering if the video still exists when our little Klamath River squad managed to get a third place trophy both in Cheerleading and Basketball. Of course, at most I think there were five teams competing, but we never had a chance against Grenada and Big Springs who had at least triple the number of students we did. But at least we were able to overpower Hornbrooke. Just thinking the names conjures so many memories. Suddenly I was recalling the Castle Rock Basketball tournaments and sitting around late at night at Castle Rock Elementary school playing Murder and eating gummy bears and listening to the classic scary stories of Diane Oliver.
Perhaps it's partly being here with the kids that draws me back to those old days so long gone by. As the girls have been preparing for school I've been basking in the glow of fresh school supplies. The pens and folders and notebooks of fresh paper. It's interesting to see how different even their school supplies here, and yet the kids are still so much the same.
I've even found myself missing the idea of going to school. Odd, considering how stressed I get just thinking of tests, and how it fills me with dread to think of having to retain all that information again. But I was good at school. I worked hard, but I could do it. I guess that's part of why I've always been frustrated when it comes to finding new jobs. I know I can do whatever people need me to do. It's that way with cooking too. Okay, I'm not any sort of expert in the kitchen, but if I have to do it I can. The main problem is that I don't enjoy it. There isn't this feeling of joy and accomplishment, but more of, what if I boil the rice too long and it ends up a soggy mess - thus I read the package fifty million times during the 15 minutes it takes to boil 15 minute rice just to be sure I'm REALLY doing it all right.
So for those patient enough to make it to the end of this sloppy mess let me say that the title refers to a Czech saying. When they are feeling all messed in the head and can't think straight they say they have goulash in their heads. So the first half is written in Czech and the second half in German since those are the main languages I've been trying to manage around this place.
I guess that's probably enough of an update for now. We'll likely be here at least til the end of this week, so I'll try to share more once I'm back to my normal turf.

An American Breakfast

Few people who know me well would do more than laugh at the thought of me being a cook type person. I'm just not. It's not in my nature. Partly because of perfectionist tendencies. If I've never made something before the probability of a massive FAIL is just to high. We're talking astronomical. There are people who like to say if you can read you can cook. Perhaps there is something to be said for that, but there is also much to be said on the side of, say, natural talent. Not to mention interest.
There was a brief phase in 7th grade when Mom thought it could be...interesting...maybe beneficial, for me to join her on forays in the kitchen. I think it lasted 2 or 3 Friday nights. I mostly remember the time we made pizza from scratch. Did I mention my mom's a wizard in the kitchen? Um, cause she is. And that partly led to the end of these little ventures. You see, it was a whole lot easier for her to make the masterpiece without the meddling little apprentice there to screw the whole thing up. Do you all recall what happened to Mickey when the wizard left him untended for a moment? Yeah. So.
I had to enter the world of domesticity when in Hong Kong. In fact, my first attempt at feeding 15 people involved that same homemade pizza. I told myself over and over that it was true, if you can read, you can cook. I followed Mom's recipe to the best of my abilities. Now, I suppose I should give myself a few honest excuses. Hong Kong and Horse Creek exist in totally alternate realities. There is little comparison between one of the largest, most densely populated cities in the world and Horse Creek, CA population 115 on a good day when all the livestock has had a good breeding season. Hong Kong is located in a tropical climate and is rather ridiculously high on the humidity chart in the middle of summer when this little disaster took place. Horse Creek is located in a mountainous region of Northern California. Through the winter months the sun never shines on the little nook where our house and church nestled up against the mountains. They just aren't the same, and, believe it or not, that causes differences in the ways that cooking happens. There's a reason that there are elevation charts in cook books. All this to say, the crust that was supposed to spread out enough to feed 15 people scarcely covered one and a half pans...
It is true that, in the nearly three years that I lived in Hong Kong my skills got better. I learned how to chop veggies and fruit which led to some truly delightful salads ;) I also mastered the art of vegetarian spaghetti, tacos, French toast, and my mother's biscuits. All rather awe inspiring when you consider the half hour it took me to make 15 minute rice in my Redding apartment because I had to read the instructions so many times. Add rice to bottom of pot. Add twice as much water. Add a little salt. Boil. Keep boiling. Boil some more. When water is gone you're done. Tough people. Seriously tough. (And I'm pretty sure Jessie is still laughing at me 8 years later! Ha!)
Since leaving Hong Kong I've not done much to develop my culinary skills. I became the master of cheese, crackers, and those famous chopped veggies. Not to mention my mean Asian noodle boiling skills. Wild. Simply wild.
Those who've been following my blog for some time know that this summer my family took it upon themselves to improve my domestic qualities. There was a blackberry pie, orange and cinnamon rolls, and numerous dinner helping occasions. Funny how a man comes into your life and suddenly you're expected to be a woman of all things. I mean, I'd always managed to skip out of the womanly duties at family events. Granted, I can clean with the best of them. See, cleaning you can't really screw up. Water, soap, and elbow grease. These are things I can understand. I mean, I was a maid for several summers. (Two to be exact, with an extra month thrown in for bad measure just to remind me that it's a job I'll not likely do again unless the recession means that it's a choice between that, cleaning grease vats, or cleaning out the sewer.) But enough of the asides. I was thrown into the oven, and came out lightly browned on top...well, not exactly.
Basically, after the summer of preparations I came back and haven't done a whole lot with these recently brushed up skills. Sure, I've cooked for Mark a few times, but not enough to really make it look like I've at long last become the cook type person that my mother may of dreamed that I could be. Instead, we've eaten out a lot, or had my now famous open-faced sandwiches (shades of Great Harvest).
This week, however, I've had a little extra time. You see, last week my colleague decided that it was perfectly all right for him to ditch out on a week of school. Yes, that's right. Just two weeks after our Christmas holiday he took off for a week to ski in the Alps with a couple of students. Now, perhaps this would be all right at a normal school. You know, one in which there are a full staff of teachers who can wiggle their schedules around and fill in a class or two here and there. But at are school there are 3 full time teachers. That's right, 3! So when one of those is missing that means the other two of us have a LOT of slack to pick up. We even had to call in some extra help, which is scarcely heard of in a country where they don't have substitute teacher hot lines. (One more side note: I have to confess that it's nearly impossible to help students figured out compound nouns. The truth of the matter is, were it not for spell check I'd constantly make errors. Sure, I know that fire engine has to be two separate words, but fire man and fireman both look perfectly all right to me. The only way I know that it really is just one word absolutely for certain is the fact that when I type in fireman there is no squiggly line underneath it, unlike when I just typed in hotline as one word and there was one. End Side note.)
So this week Jonathan has to fill in some extra morning hours for me. That meant time for my mind to think again on the culinary arts. The result? I made mint chocolate chip cookies for Mark on Monday. Well, I mixed up the dough Monday afternoon and then cooked them up Tuesday morning so they'd be ready in the afternoon when I went to see him in his town. They turned out fabulous this time. Quite a relief after the disaster cookies I tried to make my students last year. Those ones ended up puddles. Seriously, it was not a pretty picture. I ended up shoving the rest of that dough into a pie pan and trying to convince them that it was now a bar cookie and they really should give it a try. Ugh! But this time they came out beautifully. Sadly I didn't get a picture, but I saved some of the dough and plan to cook up some more so we can have fresh hot ones with our team time tonight so maybe I'll snap a picture of those.
After this baking high note, I felt prepared for the next step. You see, unbeknownst to me my colleagues decided that today, Wednesday the 27th of January, would make a lovely day for a ski trip. I. Don't. Ski. Period. Yeah, I tried it. Once. Last year. And it's going to stay at once thank you very much. So they decided, again this was ALL done without me, that I could do something with the students who weren't interested in skiing. They'd offered up swimming. Um. It's January people! And I don't really swim either. Allergic to chlorine, remember? But at least it sounded a bit better than skiing.
I, on the other hand, thought up an alternate activity. So on Friday, when trying to sell the idea of watching a movie with me and being nice and warm, rather than freezing cold (consequently today is the coldest day of the year so far. Jarmila informed me it was -20 C on her farm this morning. That's cold. We're talking snot freezing cold.) I added that I would also take them to my house for the movie, and would serve an American breakfast. (So I accidentally just wrote sever instead of serve. Good thing I caught it since spell check would have been okie dokie with that little slip up.)
Now I didn't win over the whole crowd, but once the words had come out of my mouth, those who didn't want to ski sunk their claws into them and I was stuck in the promise. And so, today, I pulled out my mom's award winning biscuit recipe. Okay, so she never actually entered her biscuits into a county fair, but she could have. These biscuits are the reason I didn't starve as a child at potlucks. To say that I was picky as a child would be the understatement of the new millennium. Many apologies to all the people whose homes I entered only to turn my nose up at their gracious edible offerings. I think sometimes I was the bane of my parents existence at social calls. Here people invited the pastor and his family over to dinner only to have their adorable little girl turn into a demon at the table. At least I never threw up at other peoples' houses...
Anywho...I was an olive on every finger, deviled egg, and jello eater at potlucks. Good for the figure I suppose, but when you're 5 no one really thinks about that. They're more concerned that you aren't getting your four food groups. Thankfully Mom's biscuits always came to the rescue. She'd usually slip out of church just as we were all singing "Bless be the tie that binds..." and hurry to the house to throw the biscuits in the oven. She'd bring them down, piping hot, and be rushed by the frenzy. There were never any left over. Truth be told, they seldom even made it to the food table. People rushed to get at them and devour every last golden morsel. They were rather like the manna that rained down from Heaven. At least the first few days when the Israelites were still being thankful. Truly a blessing.
So I pulled out the recipe this morning, as I said before, and set about making these show stopping favorites. I mixed up the dough and then had to go to school to pick up my students. I didn't want to cook them in advance, since fresh is DEFINITELY the way to go. I rushed through the cold, watching my breath turn my hair gray as it froze immediately, after leaving my biscuit dough in the closet which is substantially colder than the rest of our flat.
I collected a grand total of three students. Honestly, that was the sort of number I was hoping for. My house isn't exactly designed for crowds. We headed back to my house with a disappointing stop at the not yet open video store. I had three L1s in tow, that means three people who really don't speak English. They're getting a lot better, but for the most part I had to scrape together what I know of Czech to follow what they were saying as we walked. Not that it was all that hard. I'm sure most people who speak English and not Czech would be able to figure out that "autobus" and "taxi" relate to modes of transport other than feet. Clearly the ten minute walk was not to their liking in this Antarctic climate. But we did make it, and I made them fruit tea to warm them up while the biscuits were cooking. The closet did it's work and kept it from turning into a fluffy monster whilst I was away. Twenty or so minutes later I had them seated at my table with a glorious spread.




Delightful!
Mom's biscuits did it yet again. They all sang the praises, and I knew it was the excellent recipe and not any ability of mine that could have pulled it off. We then watched Twilight which one of my other students had brought to me a couple months ago, because it was the only DVD I had with Czech subtitles. They seemed to enjoy that as well, so it all worked out.
American Breakfast.
Success!