Home

29.III.13
Kristen says...

Ahhh.

While I have enjoyed being busy these past weeks, but there truly is no place like home...

 It may surprise you to know that I am really something of a homebody. If I have something to go out for, I will, but I don't have many problems with being home, either.

 This week I have gone back to my somewhat boring "regular" routine, which means cooking, cleaning, and other fun stuff.

Pip has certainly enjoyed having me home!

Let's start with the cooking, because that's what I've done the most:

 We can start with the sun-dried tomato mac and cheese. Chris called me from work one day and said he was craving mac and cheese, so I searched in my cookbook (Internet!), found a recipe, and used what we had in the house and came up with this:

Um, yum! The leftovers didn't last long around this house!

 A few days later the lunch I had with Amy at the Philharmonic building (baked eggplant) inspired me to create my own version...

 Apparently we are picking up purple vegetables in Russia, first beets and now eggplant. Before coming here I wouldn't have touched eggplant with a 10-foot pole, but after that lunch at the cafe I'm kind of into it now... :)

  Anyway, at the cafe my choices were a seafood soup, a seafood dish, Greek salad, and baked eggplant, none of which I was terribly excited about. I went with the eggplant, and boy am I glad I did!!

 Here is the recipe I made up based on what I ate at the cafe:

1 eggplant, medium sized and cut into 1/4" slices, then salted and allowed to rest

 Heat a saucepan and add olive oil; rinse eggplant, sprinkle with pepper, and cook eggplant 4 minutes on each side until golden brown **This part came from this website**

 While eggplant cooks cut bread into long, thin slices. (I used these delicious Russian cheesy buns, but any bread will do, although bread with added spice will add more flavor...you may even be able to use large croutons)

 Since your oven should be pre-heating to 375° by this time, you can put the sliced bread in to bake until hardened (see why croutons might work?)

 Layer the bottom of a foil-lined pan (I used a bread pan because it's all I have at the moment...in the future I'll use a "flatter" dish) with your favorite tomato-based sauce (I make my own, but I won't judge you for using store-bought!)

 Start layering eggplant, mozzarella cheese and the toasted bread, covering each later with sauce. This will not be like lasagna where each layer is defined, rather, each layer will tend to blend in with the ones above and below:

 Bake at 375° for 20-30 minutes until the sauce is bubbling and your kitchen smells amazing. (And if you are trying to take pictures of it, make sure you do before your husband starts eating dinner!)

RECAP: The four ingredients are eggplant, bread, mozzarella cheese and tomato-based sauce.

 So that was pretty good. I hope you enjoy it if you make it yourself! Leave me a comment to tell me how it turned out! :)

 On the sweeter side of things, our consumable shipment came a few weeks ago, and one of the things that came was a jar of unsweetened applesauce that I'd forgotten I'd included.

 I have looked here and inquired, but applesauce isn't something that Russians seem to eat. And clearly, that one small jar wasn't going to last long...

 I remember, very clearly, both of my grandmothers making applesauce when I was younger. One made very sweet, chunky, cinnamon-y applesauce that she often served frozen. One made less sweet, less chunky, unflavored applesauce made from apples picked from the tree in the back yard.

 Very sadly, while I have multiple recipes from both Grandmas, I have neither of their applesauce recipes, and even more sadly, neither is alive for me to call and ask for it...

So what could I do but search the Internet?!

I found this recipe and tweaked it (as per my usual)

Most people seem to like cinnamon in their applesauce...I really, really do not. So I decided to make mine sans-cinnamon (although if Chris wants to add it to his own dish, he is welcome to).

I started out with three types of apple: Jazz, Braeburn and Gala

 As much as I don't like cinnamon in my applesauce, I do like apple skins...also I don't like skinning apples, so the skins stayed on!

 Since I wasn't adding sugar to the recipe, I decided to use apple juice as part of the liquid to add a bit of natural sweetener and flavor.

 I also had some dried mango hanging around, so on a whim I chopped some up and added it to a second, smaller pot of apples:

Then I started the cooking process:



















Sadly applesauce isn't a terribly exciting thing to photograph in progress, but it sure is good to eat!

Here is the final product:

 And a side-by-side comparison:

Mango - Apple - Storebought

 Num num num!

Of course, cooking is not the only thing I have done in this week at home.

Go figure, we've been dealing with more (dun dun dun) bathroom drama!

 Apparently the caulk that was used to seal the tub was not supposed to be used around water...sigh. This still hasn't been fixed, so we're being extra-careful when getting out of the tub every morning! (And quite annoyed when we forget and step in water with sock-covered feet!)

We have also had our first round of Russian Car Drama (doo doo doo!)

 The RAV-4 made it safe and sound to Russia last week, with one small problem...a flat front tire. Shades of Honduras?! Le sigh. Luckily we know people who know where to get tires fixed and that problem was quickly solved.

 After waiting a week+ to get our Russian license plates, we can finally drive the car, and (with a bit of difficulty) found a place to park it:

 The angle of the garage door picture is so severe because, after parking the car in our new garage on Tuesday night, another car promptly parked directly in front of it. Sigh.

 This morning we got a chain to put up in front of the garage doors (something that is common here) and, while we were affixing the chain, somehow the person who owned the offending car knew to come down and move it. Hurrah! So now the car is safe and sound in the garage, and presumably we'll be able to come and go as we please.

If all that wasn't enough, we've also had a bit of electricity drama. Here we are in the dark the other night:

Good times.

 However, the blackout was mercifully short and we only had to walk up the 13 floors of stairs once, so all-in-all not too disruptive of an event.

 It's good to be home! :)
KF

Another Walk...With the Camera This Time

20.II.13
Kristen says...

Happy Birthday to my Daddy! :)

Are you noticing a pattern with our posts? We seem to be doing a lot of walking, which is AWESOME, after two years of forced inside-ness in Honduras.

We had a request for pictures of our evening stroll, and the honest answer is "I didn't take my camera..." Oops. :)

BUT, the next day we took another walk, in the daytime, with our cameras. So I have some more pictures for you. :)

One of the things I LOVE about Vladivostok is all the public art. There are many painted murals and metallic art around the city:

Stairway art

I love the old dresses near the old house

It's the city's Coat of Arms incorporated into a block-long mural

The old trolley rails run about 10 feet away from this mural. They are just outside the side of the picture (and covered with snow!)

Paintings and metalwork. One of the paintings says "Thanks to the World" in Russian

Metal version of the Coat of Arms

We're not entirely sure what the story is behind this one...but it's neat, and publicly available to view

There are also some public monuments near us:

 And this...so excited!

(It's hard to see, and obviously if you don't read Russian you won't know that it says "Vladivostok Christian Methodist Church." Excited to check that out some Sunday!)

 We also saw some other fun things on our walk:

All I could think of was the first line of the Monkee's "The Poster" when I saw these... :)

Who says having bars on your window has to look ugly?

 We have also had a little bit of work done inside the house...this is what the Maisy Room looked like last night...

But, on a less happy note, guess what I found after my shower this morning...

Sigh. :)
KF

Out and About in Vladivostok

7.II.13
Kristen says...

My oh my is it cold out today! The official temperature is 9° F, but the "Real Feel" is -15 and dropping!! I took Pip out this morning when Chris went to work and the wind is REALLY strong and crazy-cold. I am NOT looking forward to walking down to the grocery store today!

I may have to use one of Chris' survival blankets to keep warm today! :)

Luckily this past weekend was a little warmer, so Chris and I were able to get out and explore a bit of the city near where we live.

Our handy-dandy grocery store/bowling alley

I love this book mural. It continues around the side, too! I'd love to know the story behind it!

Not far from us is a good-sized outdoor market, but it's pretty different than the market in Honduras. The one in Honduras had a lot more fresh produce and locally made goods, while this one actually has stalls/storefronts with things like soap, dog food, coffee and tea, etc. It was kind of interesting, because there was almost a pattern to what you could find at the stalls. The first would have all kinds of soaps, the next beverages, the one after that pet food, and then it would cycle back to the soaps.

It seems very repetitive, although there are a smattering of clothing stalls and bakery shops (yum!), as well as meat and fish sellers. There is even a stall that sells bulk frozen fruits and veggies, and a seller of plant and vegetable seeds. We will definitely be checking that out when the weather gets warmer (I'm told that will start to happen within the next month, but I'll believe it when I see it!) ;)

At any rate, here are some pics I snapped of the market. (Most of them aren't great, I was trying to take pictures without looking like a total tourist):

The view from a bridge parallel to the market

Inside the market. The yellow sign says мебель, which means furniture, but we mostly saw meat and dairy products in there...so we're not sure about that one

Some of the stalls

A cat outside one of the bakery stalls

The электричка, or electric train runs just outside of the market. You can almost see the tracks in the first picture.

We're going to try this pizza restaurant soon. The building in the background is a movie theater, but apparently they never show movies in English, so I'm not sure how often we'll go to movies here. :/

 As I mentioned, in order to get to the market we had to go over a bridge. This bridge had a lot of stairs to get up and then down, and I wanted to show you the handicap accessibility features that have been built into structures here:

Somehow I don't think this meets US angle standards...

 We saw the same thing in Moscow, so I'm guessing this is a country-wide feature...eek. They look particularly scary when they are covered in ice and snow. Still, better than nothing?

We're still battling with the leaking bathtub this week...on Monday I had no less than 6 people here to look at the thing and try to fix it. They ended up pulling it completely out:

 Then after a few hours of work putting it back:

 And later came back to caulk it (leaving us the leftover caulk, wasn't that nice?!)

We also had painters in to take out the "lovely" pink paint in the hall yesterday:

Before

After

Isn't that so much better?!

They will be back to paint the dining room another day, as well as take care of the yellow wallpaper of the "Maisy" room, but progress is progress! :)

KF