10 posts from September 2008

Aaaaaaaaaand...  we're back!  Actually, thanks to my ever capable husband, I was back in business a week ago.  Now, I can have iPhoto AND my web browser open at the same time.  People, it's amazing.  It's like it's 1995 around here.  Maybe I'll even get one of these e-mail accounts people keep talking about. 

Sorry I've been holding out the past week.  And look what I've been holding out on: kimbap!

We did it!  We made kimbap.  My friend Sunbee came over to help.  And by coincidence, Davey, who was supposed to leave Prague that day (we've been here long enough now that we actually have friends moving away) was "stuck" for one more night in Prague due to a cancelled flight.  So he also joined us in the kimbap-rolling.  Sunbee, the most experienced kimbap-maker among us, led the way and we followed.  We made a lot - about 15 (uncut) rolls, maybe?  It was so fun!  And delicious.

Oops, sorry. I didn't mean to be away for so long... 

This past weekend, Leon and I were in Slovakia to attend our friends Jano and Jana's wedding, which was great.  By the way, how cute is this invitation?

Leon and I are on the last season of The Wire.  (We have 2 episodes to go, so please nobody say anything about the ending!)  A piece of dialogue from the episode we watched last night has been sticking with me.  Beadie is talking to Jimmy McNulty:

"All the guys at the bar, Jimmy, all the girls, they don't show up at your wake.  Not because they didn't like you, but because they never knew your last name...  All the people on the job, all those people you spend hours in the radio car with...  In the end, they're not gonna be there, either.  Family - that's it.  Family, and if you're lucky, one or two friends who're the same as family.  That's all that the best of us get."

So it turns out I'm not exactly the world's best frisbee thrower.  I never really noticed this because I thought it was normal for the other person to have to run to catch your frisbee.  But then I recently noticed that whenever Leon threw the frisbee, it usually if not always came straight at me.  Huh.  Leon, wearing just a hint of exasperation, politely pointed out that I might work on that.  He's so cute when he's exasperated. 

Our kind friends L & G (with the great view, remember?) invited us to a barbecue out at their cottage.  Sometimes it's nice to get out of the city, even when that city is Prague.  We ate hamburgers, drank sun tea (G is from the American South), picked apples from L & G's trees, threw horseshoes, and played croquet - another game I can add to the list of Sports I'm No Good At.  Though I don't have a picture, Leon also taught one of L & G's dogs to catch a frisbee for the first time in its 7-year life!  They were such funny little dogs - they loved to wriggle themselves silly into the grass, as if they couldn't get themselves dirty enough (see photo below).  I guess all creatures need a little bit of dirt and fresh air every now and then. 

Summer's almost over, alas.  So we've been spending as much time outdoors as possible.

* in Letna Park

Goulash is a typical Czech dish, a stew that often has a little kick from the paprika that goes in it.  It goes really well with beer.  Spicy?  Goes well with beer?  You see why it was on my list.  There are as many variations on goulash as there are people making it, but essentially the key ingredients are meat, onions, bell peppers, and paprika.  And it is almost always served with bread dumplings (basically, steamed bread), which soaks up all the gravy goodness.  To make our goulash, Leon and I enlisted the help of our friend Davey, because we kept hearing about his amazing goulash-making skills... and he did not disappoint!  One evening last week, Davey came over to show us how it's done.  I helped a little, but really Davey did most of the cooking.  Leon served as photodocumentarian and bartender - CRUCIAL.

Goulash is usually made with beef, but we made ours with pork (the type of meat really doesn't matter).  Here's the pot early on, containing sauteed onions, bell peppers, garlic, various spices, the browned pork, and broth:

And here it is a little later, after Davey had added flour as a thickener.  Mmmm...  It's looking like goulash now:
We left the pot to simmer for a while and do its thing (the longer, the better).  While the goulash bubbled away, the three of us sat back and sipped Leon's gin-and-tonics - he makes the best!  And Davey shared a tender moment with my basil:
After a while, Davey went to check on the pot:
Come on, Davey, get your nose in there - that's it!
How is it?  He considers:
It's good!  Davey gives the nod of approval:

I love the work of Czech photographer Miroslav Tichý.  A couple nights ago, Leon and I went to the National Gallery (it was free admission night!) to see this exhibit, and among the artists shown was Tichý (whom we'd read about on kottke recently).  Here are some samples of his work, courtesy of the internets:

Tichý was born in 1926 in a region of the Czech Republic called Moravia, where he still lives and works. 

His pictures are taken with cameras he makes by hand out of scrap materials, such as paper tubes, plywood, plastic pipes, cardboard, plexiglass, thread spools, elastics.

Equally artful is his method for developing his pictures in his makeshift darkroom:

The only window was blacked out with black fabric.  A light bulb painted red provided the light.  On a table was his homemade enlarger, and beside it was a shallow bowl with developer.  A large pot for cooking was filled with fixer.  A washbasin was used to rinse off the prints.  He looked at his negatives first under the enlarger, then chose the shot and the crop.  With scissors he cut a piece of photographic paper (or he often only tore it by hand).  He then put the photo paper on the table into the light, and when he reckoned it had been exposed long enough, he took it away.  He submerged the exposed paper in to the developer in the shallow bowl. He left it over night in fixer in a tub on the courtyard.  He didn’t use tongs, working instead with his hands, which is why some of his photographs have a fingerprint in the upper right-hand corner (or even a whole handprint, if he forgot to let the paper go when exposing it).  Once the photographs had been in the water bath long enough, he took them out, dried them on the laundry line, and pressed them in books.  Lastly, he put the photos in a large box beside his bed, so that they would always be in easy reach.  That completed the first phase of the printing process.

Of the resulting imperfections, Tichý says:

Photography is painting with light!  The blurs, the spots, those are errors!  But the errors are part of it, they give it poetry and turn it into painting.  And for that you need as bad a camera as possible!

via (and more found at) here, here, here, and here

{I love this set of post-it note drawings by Marc Johns. I find them hilarious.  I think it would be cool to have a group of them blown up, framed, and hung on a wall.}