Lithuanian cuisine

I am quite familiar with the smell of tuna; I use it quite often in the quick-fix pasta meals I make.


But judging from the smell that is wafting through the house now, it appears that my flatmate has done gone and grilled an entire ton of tuna, sprinkled it with an over-generous heap of salt and then left it in the oven to bake for 10 hours.

Because some things don't require words at all

Auschwitz

He could have been somebody's grandfather.

Birkenau

Some places you go will stay burrowed in your heart and mind; for as long as your memory doesn't fail you.

Dobry dobry dobry

I LOVE large, circley, chockfull-of-bread pretzel things,

as I do mother-of-Maciek's home-cranked apple crumble ,




and you all know I could choke a dog to death with my incessant hugs (yes I do love things that I cannot eat too),





and there is little not to love about fields of green and gold where if you tip-toe, you can see Ukraine.

So this probably means I love everything I got to see and do in Poland.



But what I reeeeeeally love about Poland, I think, is a boy who wears bow-ties and lets his mommy dress him.
The kind of boy who always looks too eager for school. Schmanzy smarty pants!

And the same kind of smarty pants who washes all your clothes for you while you're sleeping the morning away, and who quietly puts them on hangers all over the room to dry before tip-toeing out to school.

Must admit; always had a soft spot for the kind of things Poland still does offer.

Alloyed stomach

No I don't have an iron stomach; I have an alloyed stomach. Which is much stronger and which contains more room and depth than its iron counterpart.

Ok ok, this alloyed stomach does not do innards or anything that comes from under the meaty body of any animal.

No lard and cracklings either.

And nothing spicy.

And preferably, nothing with whipped cream either.

That said, there still exists a whole WORLD of food that doth not fall into these unfortunate categories. And alloyed stomach takes them all!

I conquered PIEROGI. But yes, I cheated. I had the vegetarian version with cabbage and mushrooms because I really didn't want to have barmy mystery meat (or innards! Burrrrr) swimming in my mouth.

And cabbage rolls stuffed with gruel and potato. Ukrainian food is a newfound friend that I intend to keep very close to my heart/tummy.

And oh, this one is a definite sinker for any set of sculptured abs. Placki, or very deep-fried discs of julienned potatoes, onions and what tasted like a lot of starch. Good shite, but please, go easy on this, lest you end up stumbling back half-groaning and holding your aching belly like we did.

With claims that it really is a Georgian restaurant, what the Chimera should actually do is put up a bigass signboard that shouts FREAKING CHEAP FOOD: A'LA CARTE QUALITY PAIRED WITH BUFFET QUANTITY AT STREET PRICES!
My dibs, clockwise from top left: broccoli tart, wild mushroom salad, potato and cream cheese mash in filo pastry, grilled eggplant with stewed tomato puree, sour boiled egg salad, spinach fritata. Burp.

And seeing so many pictures of various creamy concoctions that I merrily saw fit to partake in is now making my belly swell in horror. Oh mercy, woe is me for I have sinned.

Pancakes with Polish jam. Which really is syrup preserve with the thickness of industrial strength white-glue. Belch.

Tagliatale with tenderloin (which wasn't tender) in a (veryveryvery) creamy champignon sauce. Double belch.

Panga fillet in a creamy sauce of shrimps and mushrooms. Triple belch, plus it was as unappetizing as the picture looks.

But this little Ukrainian baby saved the cream-filled family from going down permanently into my book of death. White borsch with hard-boiled eggs. Sheer genius. Thick with just the right amount of tiny bumps to let you know the food processor didn't kill every single bit of fresh produce these good Ukrainian grannies put into their borsch. Tart, without being cloying. And smashed against the firmness of boiled egg-white is a soup that only a loving granny can conjure.

It's official, I'm obsessed. Oh white borsch, would you marry me?

It might be a while, darling

This lazy blogger has become very very weary from blogging about her crazy travel tales. Most of all, Blogger is driving her crazy with its erratic picture-posting functions, and after having lost 3 full posts with peek-tures and a lot of time in the past 24 hours, she is THIS close to snapping.

A very needed hiatus will come in place of the dizzy and too-comprehensive travel posts she is now too tired to pursue.

SO. Check back only if you are interested in random nuggets of stupid things she has to say and of course, for her rants and raves on FOOD. (Ah, this, she cannot give up) If you're looking for shots and prose on castles, bridges and various historical places, nada. Not for now honey.



Buhh-bye! :)

It's all about the crust, dahh-ling!

(In the tiniest, tiniest voice humanly possible),

I want to eat Godma's cheesecake squares.

Now, that wasn't very subtle, was it?

(Meep!)

Look how the Swedish winds blew

Hello (single) ladies,

I have a prime candidate here to end your spinsterhood, and he is none other than Mr Ng Rongwei. You should trust me because for four days, I was living in the room next to him and we spent an average of 16 hours together daily.

Let me give you the Top 10 reasons why he should be the one and only candidate on your mind.

#1: He navigates when you are too lazy to. You never have to lift a finger to even find the general direction; good for lazy girls like Lirong and me and for hopeless navigators like our dear Jo Yeo.

#2: He subscribes to old school methods of love! Like throwing coins into the Lake of Love in Bruges to make a wish for love. He was unfazed even when I told him that the locals fish out coins people throw in at the end of the day.
#3: He subscribes to all your culinary recommendations, and always returns a resounding thumbs-up even when the afore-mentioned doesn't taste even remotely close to perfection. (Applies to waffles, limp cream gauferes, pasta, and cookies that you baked)
And he is easy to please too; a simple mua chee satisfies his chinese food craving. (This means a hole will not be emblazoned into your pockets should you decide to give him a rare treat)

#4: He zeroes in on your cravings and pays for your eventual enjoyment of said desired food. (Sometimes, you even have to fight him to pay for half the bill)

I was whining about how good all the chocolate looked in the little choc'lit shops in Bruges and he immediately bought a pick-and-mix box and insisted I choose most of the chocolates to put in them.



And of course I was the one who wanted ice-cream. Once more, he obliged.

#5: He believes in snail mail! 'Nuff said.

#6: He remembers how to make hearts out of bus tickets and the lo-mantic way of folding letters. On request, he can make cranes and boats too.

As demonstrated here with the placemat and napkins of a budget Italian restaurant.


#7: He trawls old towns to look for musical boxes for ahem-ahem. And he searches between rows of wooden puppets, porcelain dolls and fondue sets for that elusive toy zee entire day. And he buys bags for his 3 sisters and agonizes over what to get his mom. Dayum, you say!

#8: SPG alert! His looks allow you to boast that you snagged yourself a boyfriend of Peranakan/French/Portugese/Indian/Javanese/Whateverchapalang descent. You'd be lying, but he wouldn't be so mean to expose your little white lie.

#9: And best of all, HE LEAVES THE TOILET SEAT DOWN!

#10: Because I say so.


So look no further, really. This is YOUR man! You can apply by emailing either Lirong or me at sellingourindian@h10f.com.

Kind regards,

The friendly Management at H10F