fun in threes, sometimes fours
Four Fridays in a row now I've managed to get a post-school bike ride in. This time, a good friend from work joined me, and we made an evening of it. It seemed like it might be a bit too hot to ride, but once we got on the trail, it was relatively pleasant. Ending the week with a 19.7km mountain bike ride -- perfection.
Every year it's the same: I'm going to do a better job encouraging and facilitating independent reading. And every year's initial visit to the library starts out with that intention. And then reality sets in, deadlines for covering content loom, and the independent reading time slowly gets strangled.
Polish cuisine, in my experience, is centered around soups. I'm not a culinary expert or anything of the kind, so this is undoubtedly my personal preference coming to the fore: what has always caught my eye (and my tastebuds) in Polish cooking has been the soups.
Barszcz z uszkami is a treat beyond treats: we only have it once a year because the uszki are so time-consuming. It's one of E's favorites.
Żurek is such an odd-ball dish for Americans: soup made from a base of fermented rye flour? How weird. And how utterly delicious. It's one of L's favorites.
Ogorkowa? Pickle soup? "Get out!" was my first reaction. Who the hell makes soup out of pickles?! It's absolutely perfect.
K likes most Polish soups, but she probably agrees with L and E that a simple rosół is the best. Babcia always makes it for us as our first dish in Poland, and a gentle, easy broth like that is the perfect thing after traveling.
And then there are the other: koperkowa, chłodnik, kapuśniak -- the classics. But there are a couple of soups that stand above them all for me: flaczki (not because I love it so much -- I do, but it's not a favorite -- but because I only get it in Poland: K absolutely is not a fan) and my hands-down favorite, kwaśnica. Not so much a Polish soup as a regional highlander soup.
We usually stick to soups in the winter and give them a break in the summer: having the stove on that long really warms up the house, and we want lighter meals in the summer. Except for rosół and koperkowa (none of us is really a chłodnik fan), the soups disappear.
Until the Girl asks K to fix that one soup -- you know, with the potatoes and bacon bits.
And so we had for dinner a soup I have always thought of as a winter soup.
"We should do kwaśnica," I will say some time in October or November.
"No, it's not cold enough yet," comes the reply.
But all our Girl has to do is ask for kwaśnica, and it can be 90 degrees outside, and K will not hesitate.
The volleyball season hasn't officially started yet: we still haven't had any regional games, but we've been in a few tournaments. Tonight was our first home game. Our girls had a tough time of it the first two sets, losing by quite a margin due to silly errors. They pulled it together for the third set, but ended up losing it 23-25.
What impressed me about the Girl -- other than a couple of monster hits she had -- was how little she's changed regarding volleyball. She's always been the most enthusiastic cheerleader on her team. No matter how the game is going, she's always up, always positive, always cheering and encouraging her teammates.
Everyone notices it; many have commented on it. More than her playing ability, I so admire that positivity.
Over the summer, posts from our 2017 trip to Warsaw appeared, as they do every year, in the timeline feature to the right. I read about looking for baked goods that first morning, and I remembered how very communist-era Świętokrzyska Street looked then, and I wondered if pictures of it were on Google Maps.
I felt like I was walking down the street in a scene from Miś. Those shop windows looked exactly like they did in the early eighties.
Two years later, it was all gone.
Two more years after that, an entirely new and modern building had taken its place.
More of the old Warsaw fades away.
Continuing down Świętokrzyska Street, one reaches ONZ Rondo. In the distance, building after building appears year after year.
Finally, there's Prosta Street ("Straight Street"). Looking off in the distance, one could see only the ubiquitous Easter European apartment blocks.
Just a few years later, a typical Western city has sprung up in the distance.
The Warsaw I knew in the mid-90s is all but gone. Then I remember: that was thirty years ago. Of course it's all disappearing.
What's on my mind lately? The amount of stuff I have to do:
And that really doesn't cover everything -- that's just what I could list off the top of my head.
Is it any wonder so many teachers are burning out?
