Labor of Love

Cherries!

Never buy the housewares brand "Feckelman"...they just stink.

I took over pitting and scooped out all the worms. Liquid courage to my left. 

There are the worms, right there. You all needed to be included in the grossness.

Very juicy.

Surgery, circa 1800.

Boiling.

Thickening.

Rolling out the dough.

Ready for the oven!

While we wait... eat some baby cheeks.

Done!

I made a cherry pie on Sunday from the last of the cherries we could reach in our yard. What seemed like a simple request in the beginning turned out to be a 2 hour ordeal. Luckily I enjoy simple, repetitive, silent work. If it hadn't been for the small white WORMS in just about every cherry I pitted, it would have been an almost therapeutic endeavor (and taken half the time). Perhaps on some level it was anyway. As you can see from the picture above I was not excited to be scooping those worms out - but I did it!

Everyone agreed, the pie was a success and although  I will teak a couple things here and there next time, it really was quite delicious.

Also, I wanted to share my dough recipe. In America they have something called "pie sticks" which are basically just pie crusts already made, pre-packaged, and you just take them out of the box, unroll them, and throw them in your pie dish. I used to always use those, it quick and they are delicious in that flaky, fake buttery kind of way. Here in Poland I have not found this type of dough or crust available so I make my own. I consistently get compliments and I feel slightly sheepish because it's not that hard.Very easy and quick to make (and much healthier I assume)...

Makes one 9 in. pie crust (so, for this pie I doubled the recipe)

1 cup flour
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup milk

If it's a savory dish like a chicken pot pie I usually add a couple tsps. of salt. (if you use salted butter you can skip this)
If it's a sweet dish like a cherry pie, I add a couple tblsps of sugar.

Cut the butter into the flour, crumble and mix until it creates course looking crumbs, chunks of butter are ok and even preferable. Add milk. Mix until dough forms, cover in plastic wrap, pop in fridge. Make your innards and then get the dough out. Knead until smooth. Form into ball and roll it out as a circle. With a pie like this I use 3/4 of the dough for the bottom crust and 1/4 for the top. Easy!

It always comes out flaky and crisp. There are definitely fancier recipes out there that probably taste better...my sister makes one that requires vodka, she's fancy like that... but this is simple and gets the job done.

Plums will be ready soon! I can't wait to try these again!

Breathing in a stranger's face

Me: Please don't pull me over, please don't pull me over....crap! he's pulling me over. What'd I do? Lights on? Check. Speed limit? Check. Maybe it's because I'm driving this dang van. Dang it, dang it, dang it!

Just smile, explain that you just got here (technically we did just get here ;) , you don't speak good Polish, you live very close. Crap! Where are all the documents...glove compartment?! Where?! And my wallet?! My license! Should I call Martin? He could explain...

Here he comes.

Roll down window.

Police officer: Speaking in Polish and holding up some sort of device to my face.

Me:  Oh, thank goodness! It's just the breathalyzer test!!

Breathe deeply into the little machine. DON'T touch it with your lips. Gross. How nice for him that I was just chewing gum.

Police officer: Dobrze, dziekuje Pani.

Me: Dziekuje!


Happy Weekend folks!

Futuristic mail - Paczkomaty Post

I bought something online a couple weeks ago and was quite excited when the shipping options allowed for me to choose "paczkomaty post" for delivery. I *just* found about this wanted to try it out. Luckily, they have a pick up center close to where we are building so it was easily combined with a trip to check on the progress out there. Krakow has over 50 locations.

You choose your location. Ours is in Wielicka at Armado Pizzeria (I think they were going for an Italian sound, I like to imagine rolling the r when I say it since i can't actually roll my r's). We've eaten here before so I knew where it was. Pizza is not so great, but luckily they do have two gambling machines inside to class the place up.


You find your location, and retrieve the code from your phone. (If you don't have texting on your phone then that means you have a phone older than the one we have and you and I should meet so that I can feel better about our technology situation)



Then you punch in your phone number and code on the screen.


After punching in all the appropriate numbers on the touch screen (fancy, fancy - again, reflect on the era of technology I'm used to dwelling in), you take a step back (this was intuitive, since there is no other way to open the doors and I can't see the screen to follow other instructions) and one of the doors, appropriate to the size of your package, pops open somewhere on the big yellow structure... and then a creepy voice with a British accent speaks very loudly and tells you to remove your package and shut the door.


The Koniec.


Pros and Cons...

It does't really make sense to travel outside your home to pick up a package if you don't have to, that's kind of the whole point of buying things online. BUT, it was cheaper this way (by 2zl.,) and I wanted to try it out. This is definitely going to be something I try next time I ship something within Poland. The first and only time I did that the item never made it and it was a pair of handknit fingerless gloves and I am still a bit peeved. (I'm very slowly knitting new ones to replace them but gosh darn it, how do you lose a package? Where does it go? It's just sitting somewhere either thrown away or being used... I'm gonna see someone wearing them someday aren't I?...) Clearly if more technology is involved no packages will be lost. Sigh. Martin will want me to add that he has sent many packages and documents within Poland and never had anything get lost AND I have sent several things to the States and they have always made it.

The biggest con, and it is a big one... you can't see the screen, at all. If you were a really tall man you might not have any problems but the height of the screen plus the sunlight made it impossible to read instructions or even see the touch pad unless I stood on my tiptoes and shielded the screen. They need to add a piece of cloth to hang over the screen to shield the sun like they do at the Redbox's in America. And perhaps add a little step up on the ground for shorter people. It would be almost impossible for someone shorter than 5 ft. 4in. to use it.

Why am I boring you with all these details? No reason other than I thought this was really cool.

Problem solving

Last week I noticed our water heater over the sink wasn't working. It still hasn't been fixed so I hand wash all my pots and pans in cold water. Meh.



And the bathroom faucet is leaking so bad that there is a constant puddle right in front of the bath tub. 3 soaked towels (anyone who has to do lots of laundry knows how precious dry clean towels are) later and I finally figured out that it wasn't just the kids being crazy in the bathroom when I wasn't looking. The puddle is a permanent fixture for the time being. I strongly dislike wasting so much water but there is no quick fix.

That's a reusable picture of a cat. An abandoned belt. And empty toilet paper holder. Again with the kids.

I can't solve those problems. Most likely we will call in outside help and most likely, knowing us, it will be several more days until we even do that.

You might remember the post some time ago about my online grocery ordering debacle (skip all the other incoherent dribble and go straight to the picture). It would seem that though I was pretty peeved with myself at that point in time it might not have made the impression we were all hoping for. Fast forward a few months... to this week...

I was in the bakery section (on the computer - the bakery section ONLINE - that's important to remember) and came across some delightful little rolls. Good for sandwiches or just butter and jam. Quite popular with the kids. So I bought 8.

8 = 1 meal for our family.

What arrived from the grocer was this...

That's coffee, old hamburger buns, a math workbook, a bitten into apple, some aging bananas and a pair of baby socks, taking up my precious counter space. Oh yeah, and 8 LOAVES OF BREAD

8 of them.

Because 8 LOAVES OF BREAD is different from 8 SANDWICH ROLLS. In my defense all the loaves of bread look exactly the same size on the screen and I just wasn't paying attention to the price, plus,  I had a  few distractions. This sometimes happens when ordering online. And it will probably happen again. Oh, how we laugh and laugh...

So, I quickly finished panicking about what I was going to be doing with all of the bread and planned a few homemade pizzas and some bread pudding.

No outside help needed. ;)  (bread pudding not pictured )




And for dessert... (from our garden...the basket used to be full)

This picture makes me feel sick to my stomach, like I'm gonna fall over dizzy...anyone else?

He'll survive

Friday night. Painkillers and cute babies help with the pain.

The chair in our backyard (not to be mistaken for an abandoned lot)

Last Thursday afternoon the weather was beautiful and I was inside. Martin insisted I go out and lounge in the one "beach chair" we own. I insisted that there was no way I could lounge in a chair while knitting and nursing a baby. He assembled the chair anyway. And he assembled it incorrectly. It collapsed under him and as it fell his finger was caught between the sides and as a pair of scissors would, the chair chopped off the tip of his finger behind the nail. Pretty. disgusting. And painful! Once he realized exactly what happened he yelled at me to get him a towel to wrap around his hand and then asked me to look for the missing piece. Wow. Never thought that was how the day was gonna go. I found it. I picked it up. And a neighbor drove all three of them- herself, Martin, and the missing piece- to the hospital. They couldn't reattach the piece because his finger was technically mashed/crushed, not sliced, so a lot of the actual flesh was just gone.What I found was mostly just skin. (shudder) So they took a lower skin of his finger and swung it up over the tip and sewed it all up. Because skin regenerates like that, and I can't believe it's that easy.

The nearest hospital to our house actually has the best plastic surgery center in Krakow and our neighbor knew just where to take him. He had surgery to repair the finger and I came upon him lounging in a hospital gown, watching his flat screen television in his own private room, with a really swanky bathroom. (I wouldn't be mentioning all that except that from the outside the place looks like an abandoned building. Inside it's all brand new, state of the art...we were both impressed).His surgeon came to check on him, made a joke about him needing extra back rubs to heal correctly, and then left smiling. Martin said almost all the people were friendly and appreciated a good joke except the x-ray technician. Perhaps she was just having a bad day.Or perhaps his joke wasn't funny.

He went back today for a checkup. They said it all looks good and his finger is healing the way it should. He'll survive. He will have a whole finger, even if it is sort of cobbled together. When he asked about payment they said that since he's a Polish citizen it will all be taken care of, for free. That sounds nice. Let's hope it's true. ;)

Summer school

Hejjo: I can't do this, I can't remember all these wojewodzki!
Me: Hejjo, you just got finished memorizing all the States and Capitals. There are way more of those. Of course you can do this.
Hejjo: Yeah, but do they have names with 1,2,3,....  17 letters??!

He has a point.