THANKS

I think we Czechs need to celebrate Thanksgiving. I don't mean the turkey part; we can come up with excuses to stuff ourselves easily and besides, I'm not particularly fond of turkey. I mean the thanksgiving part. We could do with a holiday that makes us think of all our reasons for gratitude, because we tend to overlook them, even though we have many. But then, that might be a universal human problem.

Right now, it's thank you, Lisa, for sending me your Madeline hat. Thank you, because you did not have to send it overseas, and thank you, because it's so perfect. It's not just a schoolgirl hat - though I did wear it to school today - it's a bit of 70s (and you did tell me I look good in 70s things) and a bit of mid-19th century (so it could go with my 1848 outfit, one day), and it's a mix of what the men in Leone's films are wearing and the hat Jill is wearing (well... sort of), and perhaps it would fit into other eras as well, and all in all it's very much ME.

Only I have trouble photographing myself in it.

As I said, I wore it to school today. So it sat on the desk next to me on the lesson of Polish literature, and as we listened to two Kochanowski/Gomolka Psalms, and I got a very Advent-like feeling (Advent will be here soon, after all), I thought it was a very fitting first outing for a gift from a part-Polish lady.

Oona, I hope you're happy

It does not match, but it's very pleasant for lounging around the house.
And it could be worse. I could be wearing the aqua stockings. Actually, I'm contemplating it now.

(Most of the items have been seen around here already. The skirt I got from one of my sisters last Christmas.)

Kites and birds

I've entered my first Spoonflower contest with this fabric.
I don't think I have much chance of winning, because there are far more beautiful kites designs to be found on Spoonflower. But one never knows. I wanted to try my hand at it.
I made the design in the fantastic free vector program Inkscape, and the finishing touches (lots of them, like moving the kites around, flipping half of the birds horizontally and adding quite a lot of the birds) in the bitmap file.
The fabric is purely virtual right now, not for sale. One day it might be, but I don't think it's a very near future.

As promised, the sauerkraut soup with sour cream (UPDATED Sept 2019)

This is my absolute favourite soup. It sometimes involves sausage, but is equally good without it, and in fact lesser carnivores of the family prefer it without, so I only add it when I'm home alone...

This "recipe" was originally posted back in 2011, without any introduction. I've learned a bit more about cooking since, and have also learned a bit more about this soup. It always puzzled me that my family's "zelňačka" was so very different from other Czechs' idea of zelňačka which involves fried onion base and paprika and all sorts of unnecessary and harder-to-digest complications like that. It turns out its lineage in my family goes back to a co-worker of my Wonderful Crafty Grandma (TM)'s, and its trace gets lost there. But strangely enough, its lineage also can be traced on the other side of the family, i.e., to Moravian Wallachia and its kyselica, sauerkraut-and-potatoes-and-cream soup (which I always take care to get somewhere when I visit the region, because when I first visited it was the first time I felt like someone else understood my love of this soup!). These days, kyselica is a richer one, always involving sausage or bacon, sometimes even more vegetables, maybe thickened with roux; but originally, it was very simple peasant food and the word "kyselica" actually referred to the sour liquid from sauerkraut alone! So it's entirely possible that the originator of this recipe on my mom's and grandma's side originally came from Wallachia...

Wallachians have a saying "brambory a zelé - živobytí celé", "potatoes and cabbage - the whole livelihood". It's almost correct here.
(Note that "zelé" is a dialectism; the "correct" Czech form is "zelí".)

(September 28, 2019)


You will definitely need:
- sauerkraut
- potatoes
- sour cream (or very thick, creamy yoghurt; don't bother with the thinner kinds)
- salt
- water

You may also want to use:
- caraway seeds or other spice to your preference (I like my food mild, so I prefer caraway) ETA '19: These days, I also add about two or three bay leaves and about three allspice balls per big pot, to be removed before serving. (I've also found out I actually don't mind spicier food every now and then - but the sourness of this soup works well with milder spices.)
- flour
- sausage
- prunes / dried plums

I cannot give you exact amounts; it all depends on how much of the soup you want to make and how rich do you like your soups (ETA '19: Because I tend to use this soup instead of a main course, I like it fairly full of sauerkraut and potatoes - 0,5 kg of sauerkraut and, let's say, 4 mid-sized potatoes for a c. 5 litre pot). I'd recommend using at least a cup of the sour cream in either case, though.
You start by cubing your potatoes and then cooking them and the sauerkraut (both salted) separately in two pots. (ETA '19: Add your caraway seeds to the potatoes and your bay leaves and allspice to the sauerkraut.) Then you unite them in one pot, add water to the amount you want to have, add the sour cream and cook a bit more (ETA '19: I tend to cook it all together for about 15 minutes, for the tastes to blend). And that's it. It tastes better after a day or two when the tastes "settle", but you can eat it fresh from the stove as well.

Variants:
- You can mix a tablespoon of flour into the sour cream for more thickness - I'd recommend doing this if you use yoghurt, with thick sour cream it's not necessary.
- Add cubed sausage.
- Add cubed prunes as well (they expand a lot in the soup, so that's why cubed). They lose a lot of their taste themselves, but add a nice overtone to the whole soup.

A variant with a not very spicy sausage and prunes. The prunes make it darker than the plain variant.

A variant with spicy Hungarian sausage and prunes. Paprika!

And, really, that's it. I like it when the sauerkraut is very sour, but that's my own personal preference. The fun thing is, it's so versatile, depending on the type of sausage and/or spice you use; while preparing for this belated post, I ate sauerkraut soup for about three weeks in a row, and did not get bored with it, because I used different kinds of everything.

One pair in, one pair out + My first "vintage" dress

While on the subject of shoes, and thrifting, and that sort of thing...

I've been to another of my cousin's-once-removed clothes exchanges. I got rid of some old clothes (and forgot some others at home), and got myself a new pair of white heeled sandals.

To replace this pair:

I loved these when they were new, and they went well with the 1970 dress I graduated from Grammar school in:

But they're sadly uncomfortable, because the straps are elastic and don't hold very well, and the heel is situated in the very back of the shoe, which I have discovered not to work very well with my style of walking (long, low strides, toes facing straight forward) it's simply not comfortable, I've heard complains from others, too. The new shoes also have elastic straps, but they're more strategically situated, and the heel's definitely much better situated. So the old pair went into hiding in a wardrobe and in spring it will be brought to the next clothes exchange. That's what's so great about these events; somebody else will get to use what does not suit me, and if it's left behind, it goes to charity.

The dress: It used to be my best friend's mother's dancing lessons dress, made from a fabric they got from their American great-aunt (or was it their aunt and my friend's great-aunt?). It does not fit me perfectly, but for a while it was one of the best dresses I had (and, come to think of it, still is). I graduated from Grammar school in it, and was inaugurated into university in it, and wore it to a ball. There were some fabric scraps, too, that I made into my first headband ever, which started it all (I now wear headbands/headscarves almost all the time).
When I arrived to the Grammar school graduation exam, one of my classmates told me what a nice "retro" dress I had. I did not tell her it was the real thing.


This sort of wrap-up post makes me feel less sorry about getting rid of that old pair of shoes. I should do it more often; perhaps I'd be able to get rid of more things I'm not using anymore.

Adventures in colour coordinating

Huh, I haven't posted in a long time - again! School, and sloooow internet when at school, and flu and not much blog-worthy creating...

I went to a thrift store I hadn't been to yet, hoping to find winter boots. Of course, thrifting being what it is, I did not find winter boots I liked in my size. I found these beautiful shoes instead (and I see now that the photo isn't the best there could be, because you cannot see that they have a slight wedge of about an inch and that there's a piping of the greenish yellow fabric running along the wedge), and a silk shawl to match.

So I didn't find winter boots, but this is very good.

I also, finally, finished the aqua stockings.

Well, not exactly finished, because there are still some finishing touches to be done. But finished knitting.
Each stocking has a different toe. That's what comes from figuring things out as you go. I like the look of the left one (the newer one) more.

I love how bright and cheerful this aqua yarn is. Maybe too bright for me, but I don't care. Winter requires bright things. I'm going to make myself a hat as well, and if there's still any yarn left, mittens or something.

But the raw fish are so good!

That saying comes from a news article years ago, about some Asian country or other, where eating of traditional raw fish caused some health problems, or something, and the minister responsible for the resulting regulations said the above. In my family, "raw fish" has become synonymous with something irresistibly tasty we probably should not be eating, or not as much, but we still do, because it's so irresistibly tasty.

I've just had sushi for the first time in my life.

And it's definitely raw fish. Especially the kind to the right, which was covered with sesame seeds, nom.

Those two stains are result of my clumsiness with the sticks. I used up two napkins because I got the sauce everywhere.

I still liked it.

I went with a friend from a Czech web board, who's not such a sushi novice as I am. We went to an Asian bistro that offers both sushi and Chinese food. We shared the sushi, and both had Chinese plum wine to go with it, which is raw fish, too.

When we finished there, we went to a shop that sells dried fruits, nuts and other such tasties, and I got myself 150 g of licquorice. Licquorice is raw fish, too.

In other food news, I made myself sauerkraut soup with sour cream, Hungarian sausage and prunes/dried plums. Raw fish. Jodi, you can expect a write up on the soup - it's really simple, I just need to take a photo of this spiced up variant. ;-)

There's no sewing news. School has started, and I didn't have time to sew. Hopefully I'll get back to it soon, though. And to that Baltics series.