Salt. Don’t know how weird it is in general, but I don’t know people who would do that. I don’t do it as often now, but I really used to a lot when I was a kid. I could just get a salt cellar, put the salt on my hand and eat it, without anything else. Or, what I suppose is a bit more common, when I’d finish some crisps, or chips, or something else salted, I would not only lick my fingers from all the salt but also eat the salt that was left. My Mum says it’s directly linked to the fact that my blood pressure has always been low, but I dunno, I just like salt. As a kid I had a salt lamp in my room and I liked to lick it sometimes, and salt figurines/statues as well. Now I also have a salt lamp in my room but I don’t lick it. π One time when my uncle was on holidays by the Dead Sea he got me a whole box of the salt crystals so I had a supply for a really long time and absolutely loved it. I was in a salt cave a couple of times, which is a fabulous experience and so very relaxing, and I had a hard time not to eat any of that salt, I probably would if not the emetophobia. π Sometimes I would also eat monosodium glutamate, I don’t know what it’s popular name in English is, in Poland it’s sold as Vegeta, I absolutely love the umami taste. And me and my brother often ate dry pasta. I can eat olives on their own, which some people find weird. I do think they’re much better with something else, but I do eat them on their own sometimes anyways. I guess olives are generally not hugely popular with people so that’s why eating them on their own is even more weird for many, but for me they’re one of my most favourite healthy foods.
What was the last thing you took the time to really enjoy? It can be anything – food, beverage, film, etc.
My answer:
I was reading a very interesting Polish book that I just finished today. Perhaps it may not sound interesting for most people, and would likely even be infinitely boring for many, especially if you’re one for quick pace and a lot of action, and don’t like non-fiction, but it was interesting for me, mostly because I’d never come across anything similar before, and always sort of wanted to. It was a book from (I believe) 1843, called DwΓ³r Wiejski (Rural Manor House) by Karolina Nakwaska. It’s essentially a retro self-help book for women – women who were mistresses of rural manors. – Why would I even want to read something like this when I’m not even a housewife or a mother or anything that the potential reader of such book would be, except a woman? Well, language, mostly. π Have I ever said before how delicious, interesting, full of character, or just funny, archaic/obsolete polish words and sentence structure can be? I absolutely love reading old Polish books, but I rarely get a chance, because such stuff is usually only sold as physical books, or not easily available at all, unless some second-hand bookshops, forget ebooks. And I really don’t like scanning and usually can’t achieve satisfying enough results by myself. I wasn’t hunting for this particular book or anything like that, it just happened that someone added it to the section in our blind library where people can add their scanned books, and I was interested by the excerpt. I like learning about how people used to live before, I like books about what people used to eat, what they used to wear etc. etc. about specific groups of people and their situation. I’m also quite into women’s history as well. Here, it’s not some historian’s book or a historical novel, but pretty much a first-hand account. I love love love reading old recipes! I love etnography. So this was, essentially, the perfect book for me, and I relished it properly. Well, the scan was pretty bad, so I would have relished it more if not the abundant spelling errors and unreadable fragments, but still it was great. The first volume is about all sorts of different things from how to serve and go about meals as well as good manners relating to that, to how to raise children, charitable activity and giving a good example to people, taking care of the ill and treating in the absence of a doctor, treatment of servants etc. The second was all recipes, and the third was an alphabetical glossary of all things possible that, according to the author, women should be knowledgeable in and on which she had some advice to give them. It’s from a very strongly Christian perspective. The author emigrated from Poland as far as I know during or after the November uprising and lived in several different countries – Switzerland, Germany, England and France – the book was written in Switzerland I guess, so she also had a good idea not only about manor life and a manor mistress’s life in Poland but in other European countries and had quite a modern perspective for her times. She often makes comparisons between how all these different countries she’s lived handle specific things like toilet training of children or cleanliness in the house. Apparently, she was quite ostracised by people before the publishing of her book as they thought she simply wants to promote and imitate foreign ways of life, but I think she really just wanted to introduce the good things from other countries that could be adopted in her motherland. And it seemed to be successful because eventually her book became quite popular with women.
In the third volume, there’s a mini section about language mistakes and how it isn’t appropriate for a lady to make them, and she mentions a lot of particular mistakes that apparently were common at the time. Interesting to see what was considered a language mistake over 100 years ago, especially that some things that were considered appropriate or some words or phrases that she uses in the book are now considered incorrect and some of the things that she says are incorrect are now normal, but most of those mistakes I’ve never ever heard in today’s speech so it was quite funny. Or when talking about table manners, she writes in such an indignant tone how it’s absolutely hideous to eat more than one dish with the same fork, and even proceeds this comment with the warning that she’s about to say something extremely hideous. Or she says things like how it’s not appropriate to make balls from bread and throw them around, or spit or eat from someone else’s plate. You’d think she writes for kindergarten children or some barbarian vikings, not the gentle women in the age of romanticism. But my Mum has a pre-Vatican Council II book for lay people about the Mass to help them understand it better, and there is also a fragment about how one should behave, what to wear etc. and spitting in church, (or rather, not spitting) is mentioned, which she found rather hilarious.
My Mum also loves old books like that, and old recipes, and as I read it I thought that she would be interested in it even more than myself. I mentioned it to her and she said she’d love to read it. So, tomorrow is Mother’s Day, and I decided to buy a physical version for her, which is exactly what I did yesterday.
This is such a difficult question, isn’t it?! At least it is for me because I think it depends on what category of food or when or other things, I don’t think I have like one MOST favourite kind of food. So I’m going to just say very generally what kinds of things I like. I eat quite a lot of dairy although at the same time I never drink milk as such. I used to, but at some point I just decided it was no longer fun and have heard lots of different theories on whether it’s healthy for people other than babies or not. I do drink kefir though and that’s still milk. I also eat a lot of things like pastas, rice, pierogi, one of my most favourite dishes are Silesian dumplings which are made mainly of potatoes and you can have them either savoury or sweet, we usually do savoury, with champignon sauce or as a side dish. I also eat a lot of soups. Chicken soup is probably my most favourite. I like most vegetables really, but usually I much prefer them raw rather than cooked or boiled or whatever. I eat a lot of green stuff. I also like the vast majority of fruits out of those I’ve ever had and could probably count on the fingers of one hand the ones that I do not like. I like things like almonds, sunflower seeds and most nuts. I do eat meat, but am not somehow in need of it so much that I’d have to have every meal with it, as some people need it to be. And I much prefer white meat over red. I think though that if for some reason I had to stop eating meat altogether, I would manage quite well. Usually if it’s just Mum, Sofi and me at home, we don’t eat any meat at all. I like a lot of spicy, hot things and salty things. Therefore I quite like for example Indian or Mexican cuisine, but for example Chinese not so much even though it can be very spicy too. And I love Mediterranean food as well. I do eat some fast food sometimes but I was not really raised with eating it regularly so I can live a happy life without it and I don’t even really like things like hot dogs or hamburgers or a lot of other fast food. But I really like chips/fries. Speaking of chips, I like chips/crisps too, and a lot of other similar snacks. Also a lot of sweets, but definitely not all of them. This is definitely not an exhaustive list of what I like though.
I am really grateful for the fact that I like a lot of healthy foods, because I can be also quite picky and if I wouldn’t like all the veg and other healthy food, I simply would not eat it at all and it would be super hard if I needed to be on some kind of diet or something, I really don’t like to force myself to eat things I don’t like, similarly as I would never force anyone else to do so and I totally don’t understand why some people force their kids to eat something they know they don’t like if there are other things they like and could eat instead, especially if they are healthy foods, or how some people who are on some restrictive diets manage to eat things they don’t like, often for many years. My Mum has always said I must have some kind of taste hypersensitivity or something, I don’t know if it’s a thing. I definitely have a problem with some textures though and I know it is a thing.
How about you? Do you actually have one single food item or dish that always springs to your mind when you think of your most favourite food? π
Definitely spaghetti. I like most pasta dishes actually. Pizza, on the other hand, has been on my emetophobic so called no-no foods list for a long time. It never made me vomit, but I often feel awful after it. I have no general problem with gluten or anything like that, I don’t have a weak or easily upset digestive system by any means,either, but pizza I guess just doesn’t agree with me and I suppose it depends what kind of dough it has and how good it is in terms of quality or something like that. These days it’s not like I won’t eat pizza at all, I will if I have to or am very hungry or something, but usually I’d rather avoid it. It’s also not that I don’t like pizza, but I’m not very crazy about it either. The only exception I make is whenever I get to eat home-made pizza somewhere or at a place that I know has good quality pizza. But I still prefer spaghetti.
What food was a disappointment for you that you were excited to try?
My answer:
One thing that comes to mind is mango. I somehow always thought I’d love it, if not for any other reason then at least because I love most fruits I know. Then one year at school, my friend took me to a Moroccan restaurant. She was actually my Godmother’s friend but ended up also being my friend because she lived relatively close to my school and my Mum arranged with her that she’d speak English with me, as she used to work as a missionary in many English-speaking countries, so that it would be both beneficial for my language skills and also help me emotionally because that worked as a good excuse thanks to which she could often take me somewhere out of there, because officially she was my private English tutor, and I always appreciated a change of scene like that, and we grew quite close over time. So at some point it was my birthday and I confided in her that there was going to be a school prom happening on that same day, and I always hated school proms, and especially wasn’t going to deal with one on my own birthday, and asked her if she was free that day and if we could do something fun instead, as it wasn’t obligatory for me to be at school anyway since there were no normal classes. So we ended up going to that Moroccan restaurant and that was amazing, there was lots of great food and I had never eaten a lot of those things before. And one of the things we got ourselves was mango juice and that was also delicious. So, naturally, I felt even more sure that I’d like the fruit in general.
Finally I had a chance to eat it a few years later, and wasn’t impressed at all. I just didn’t like it whatsoever for some reason. That’s a bit weird, I didn’t have any texture issues with it and I don’t normally have such things that I’d like a fruit juice but not the fruit itself, but oh well, I just don’t like it.
Another such thing for me was zucchini. I know a lot of people who liked it and I always wanted to try it as a little kid thinking that it would be right up my alley because from what people were saying it sounded really good. Well, it’s gross. And by now I’ve tried it a lot, prepared in a lot of ways and in different dishes, but I always hate it just the same. Similarly with other similar things like pumpkin or cucurbit. Of pumpkin, I only like pumpkin seeds. π
I like them both soft-boiled and hard-boiled. They’re not my favourite thing in the world but I do like them and have them for breakfast sometimes. I really dislike fried eggs though, and scrambled as well, plus scrambled eggs are on my emetophobic no-no food list so even if I theoretically liked them, I wouldn’t eat them anyway. I used to eat scrambled eggs years ago before they made it on to my no-no list even though I didn’t really like them, because it’s a deeply ingrained habit of my Dad’s to eat scrambled eggs every Sunday and we all used to do that, also I had them sometimes at nursery. But then I got sick from them once at nursery and since then I don’t even pretend I like them and I don’t know what you’d have to do to make me eat scrambled eggs. π For some time, as a teenager, when my emetophobia was at its worst, I had a huge problem with eggs and almost anything containing eggs because of salmonella and the like, and it was one of the products with which it really took me quite some time to get back to eating them normally, and I still feel wary in places like restaurants, but what helps is that my grandparents sell eggs – they used to have hens of their own for years but now they get their eggs from somewhere – and we also buy from them, they get them from one source and neither I nor anyone else in my family ever got sick from them. Then again, I’ve never had salmonellosis or a similar thing at all, except from that one short episode with scrambled eggs which I don’t think was due to any bacteria, but that might be just because I’m emetophobic so I’m always cautious. π
linkup, and it’s my first time taking part in it! π The question he asks us this week is:
Whether itβs soups, stews, or chili, are there certain foods that you consider βwinter fareβ, only suitable when the temperature dips low enough to turn the furnace on, or do you just eat whatever whenever?
The soup that I definitely associate with winter is chicken soup. It’s not that I only eat it during winter, but it has a very wintry feel, and I think with the right amount of spices and made the right way it can be so incredibly warming. I like it either with noodles as a proper soup, or just a drinkable broth. But it has to have parsley in it and a lot of spices so that it’s also hot in terms of taste, not just temperature. My Mum always makes it very fat and sticky with a lot of collagen, because she’s crazy about collagen and having enough of it. I guess there is some relationship between broth/chicken soup and getting rid of mucus, because I tend to be quite phlegmy and especially in winter, and for many years I used to get a recurring winter allergic bronchitis every single year that would last for months, now it’s been getting better over time and there are even years when I don’t get it at all or it’s a lot milder than it used to be, but even if I don’t end up getting the bronchitis itself I’m still more or less always phlegmy in winter anyway, and chicken soup is one of the foods that I find to be helpful with the mucus thing, but it could be just all the spices doing the trick rather than the soup itself. When dealing with mucus, apparently millet is one of the foods which helps to get rid of it, so at such times I’ll more often have my chicken soup with millet.
Another soup I very strongly associate with winter is borsch, which is a Polish soup made of beetroots. It’s often traditionally eaten on Christmas Eve, typically with a lot of seasonal spices like cloves and a sort of ear-shaped noodles with cabbage and mushrooms stuffing, which is why it’s often called borsch with ears, or it can be drinkable. This past Christmas Eve, we had both. You can also eat borsch any time of the year but then it typically is without the “ears” and spices, but will often have beans in it instead. I love both the casual and the Christmassy type of borsch, but the Christmassy is better and it feels so hearty and it has a very characteristic taste.
A drink that I strongly associate with winter is also kisiel. Kisiel is made of fruit and it like a sort of jelly, only more liquid and thick, which you can either eat with a spoon or drink, and it’s best when warm. You can get it as an instant product but you can also make it yourself especially from things like preserves or jams, which is what my Mum does. I’m sure that for most Poles there is no connotation between kisiel and winter, but my Mum always makes her kisiel around Christmas and I absolutely love it. It is a very warming drink. Kisiel is often given to people who have some tummy troubles, as long as they can eat fruit, because it’s very light and also oliquid as I said, I remember when my grandad was recovering from colon cancer surgery he was drinking it very often. My Mum’s winter kisiel always has cloves, cinnamon and the like in it.
Also anything really that contains things like ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, cloves, chilli and the like is a good winter fit in my opinion.
But I absolutely love spicy food, and I can’t imagine eating it only in winter. Which is why chilli in particular I’m happy to eat all year round. Same about other equally hot spices like kalonji and such, which I don’t associate solely with winter like I do ginger for example. Ginger is very much a wintry spice in our household, chilli rules all the time.
I’m not particularly big on stews so they aren’t my thing neither in winter nor at any other time, however it’s not like I don’t eat them at all, it’s just not something I’d be a huge fan of.
What are you watching/listening to/eating/drinking?
My answer:
I am not watching anything. Today I only watched a few short videos on YouTube in the morning.
I am listening to Cymru FM, but not very actively, currently it’s more like a background noise. And I’m listening to Misha slowly waking up and tossing in his basket, that’s so lovely.
Eating – Sofi had a big party for her friends yesterday and Mum made a cake so we’re finishing this.
Drinking – I have water in my room so I sip on that to stay hydrated. Other than that the last thing I drank was a glass of kefir that I had with dinner.
Today I have something very short and sweet for you – a Welsh nursery rhyme. I find this little tune quite interesting – as a lot of nursery rhymes are, even if they don’t seem to be at a first glance. – I’ve always believed that since nursery rhymes are generally for children, and we put so much pressure on teaching kids all sorts of things even through literature or music that is made especially for them, that they’d have some kind of a moral. But if this one has a moral indeed, it seems quite hilarious to me. People complain so much that times have changed a lot and how so many children now are overweight or even obese. Well, perhaps it’s nursery rhymes like this, emphasising the role of our bellies that are at fault. π Perhaps it was just made for the fussy kids… Well yeah, sometimes music provokes strange thoughts in my brain. π
I like how stoical this bird is and accepting of the possibility that we may die just absolutely any time. Reminds me of how Sofi was little, and when you asked her what she was going to do tomorrow, for example, she’d say “I don’t know, maybe I will die”. No, Sofi wasn’t suicidal or depressed, I can assure you of that. She would always say that in a happy/neutral tone, like the most natural thing in the world. Since our family is Christian and my Mum has a very similar mentality, she was simply taught that you just never know what will happen but whatever will, it was surely meant to happen, and even if it seems a bad thing, something good will likely come out of it for someone at some point. This, rather than making her nervous and worried about the future as some would perhaps expect, made her a very spontaneous girl who never plans anything too far in advance and prefers to live in the now. Which has its good and bad sides, obviously, but that’s just what Sofi’s like, and this bird reminds me of her. The part about the belly also reminds me of Sofi when she was little, because there was such a time when, whenever she would introduce herself she would say something like this: “My name is Zofia, I like to dance, draw and eat”. She doesn’t remember that but she still loves to eat more than an average person and even though she eats a lot, it doesn’t show as she’s very thin, and, because she knows about that thing she used to say from what we’ve told her, sometimes now that’s what she tells people on purpose when she doesn’t know what else to say about herself: “I’m Sofi and I like to eat”. π
Perhaps then, the actual moral of this nursery rhyme is accepting whatever happens to you, even if it’s death, and being aware of the fact that it may be just about anything, but while you’re alive, doing things that will keep you alive and that you find pleasant at the same time. Very simple, but perhaps not necessarily as obvious life truth as we may be tempted to think.
I used to wonder why there’s a bird in this nursery rhyme, but Welsh nursery rhymes and lullabies generally seem to be full of animals (which is, after all, not a distinctly Welsh trait at all), moreover I’ve heard about similarly nonsensical nursery rhymes from other countries where an animal is asked where it’s been or where it’s going and its answers have nothing to do with what animals of its species actually do/eat etc. The word for little bird in Welsh is aderyn, and I’ve seen somewhere that it could also mean a boy (don’t know how accurate it actually is though as I’ve never heard it in such use and am not sure how credible the source is) so perhaps it could be a boy, not a bird, but each and every mention of this song that I found in English says bird, so it’s much safer to assume that it is actually a bird.
Okay, now I’ll let you formm your own opinion on this song, here is the translation, and the song itself is below.
βWhere are you going, little laden bird?β
βIβm going to the market, if I will be alive.β
βWhat will you do in the market, little laden bird?β
βGo and get salt, if I will be alive.β
βWhat will you do with the salt, little laden bird?β
βPut it in the soup, if I will be alive.β
βWhat will you do with the soup, little laden bird?β
βPut it in my belly, if I will be alive.β
βWhat will you do with the belly, little laden bird?β
βIf it werenβt for my belly, I wouldnβt be alie.
Is there a type of candy/dessert etc. you absolutely hate?
My answer:
Sure! Just as I love a lot of candy, desserts and stuff there are also such that I hate. I hate any kind of candy filled with alcohol, they’re gross. I hate strawberry-flavoured chocolate, in fact I dislike a lot of flavoured chocolates with fillings, plain milk chocolate or with hazelnuts or dark is best. I hate anything banana-flavoured. I hate marzipan. As I mentioned in response to Kacha’s comment in an earlier post, I hate tiramisu, anything with mascarpone really. That’s what first comes to my mind.
What is your favourite type of dessert that is NOT cake, pie, or candy?
My answer:
I don’t know if it counts as a cake or pie or not but I love meringue with whipped cream and fruit, especially blueberries and peaches, but a lot of other fruits work well with this too. If this doesn’t count, hmm… I like a lot of things really, haha… perhaps muffins? Muffins are great!
Recently we talked about our favourite cakes, so let’s talk some more about yummy sweet things.
What is your favourite type of candy?
My answer:
I have very many favourite types of candy, but the ones I’ve been particularly loving recently are Bomilla caramel hard candies. We’ve got a lot of these for ourselves with Sofi and still have a large supply. I don’t even know if they’re called Bomilla any longer because now that I’ve tried searching for it to see if Bomilla is a thing anywhere else it turns out it was a Polish brand and actually doesn’t exist any longer, but I’ve always known this type of candy as Bomilla since Bomilla was the first brand of them that I had and these are pretty much identical with the Bomilla ones.
We’ve had similar questions before, but I thought there’s never too much of a yummy thing and perhaps there will be some new peeps who’d also like to answer.
What is your favourite type of cake?
My answer:
I think my very most favourite would have to be toffee cake. It’s really sweet though, so you can’t each much at once, but it’s such a delicious cake!
Yes, I have had it. But let me give you a bit of a backstory first as I guess it might be interesting. The first time I had couscous was around the time when I started primary or perhaps during nursery yet. I had an aunt back then, who wasn’t my real, biological aunt, but I always called her aunt anyway and will always think of her as such. And whenever I think about couscous, I immediately think of her. π She lived very close to my boarding school, and at some point during nursery, when my Mum realised that I was struggling there and wanted to do something about it, she was looking for a flat or a room to rent there so that she could be closer to me and so that we could live there at least temporarily and some of the time during the year. The prices were really high though in that part of the country and there weren’t that many satisfying offers anyway, and so finally during her search my Mum phoned just another real estate agent, who didn’t have anything to offer for her but felt really moved by our situation as it seemed and offered that, since she lived so close to the boarding school, she could be like my aunt and visit me or I could visit her and perhaps having someone like this would make things easier for me even though it wouldn’t be my actual family. Mum was euphoric, though I remember being rather skeptical about the idea. But it actually turned out to be a great thing, we got along very easily and I grew very attached to her. It wasn’t quite like as if I lived with my family and it didn’t resolve all the problems, but it did make things easier. I absolutely adored spending time in her house which was very different from my ownn or from any houses I had been to so far. I visited her on weekends or we went out somewhere. When my Mum couldn’t be at stuff like different contests, Nativity plays or other such that I might have taken part in, she would often come and cheer me, despite she neither had to nor actually should as she was chronically ill and had something with her immune system so it was a bit risky. When my Mum came to me for the weekend or longer rather than took me home, she let us stay at her home upstairs so we didn’t have to continuously spend the time in the boarding school. She was extremely altruistic, to the point that you could consider it foolish or extremely naive. My family and her had a lot in common, though also at the same time she was very different from them which attracted me all the more to her, and also we both shared a passion for figurines, which I collected at the time, mostly porcelain figurines, and so did she, and we exchanged a lot of our figurines. Sadly though, this relationship didn’t last too long, because over time she felt worse and worse physically and had a lot of familial problems, so couldn’t see me as regularly as she used to, and finally, some two years or so since we first met, she moved out with her daughter to the city. I tried to keep in touch with her and called her infrequently but regularly when I was at home and could do it, as I felt very grateful for what she did to me and knew she was struggling with a lot of things and of course my family also encouraged me to show my gratitude towards her, and she continued to have more and more health issues of her own and also her two granddaughters were very ill. And then at some point we lost touch. Both me and Mum tried to find her, as it seemed like she changed her phone number, and we both wanted to show her our gratitude and perhaps help if possible, but from what we could find out it seemed like she might just as well have moved out somewhere else and we were unable to trace her. So it’s been very many years since we’ve last heard from her and this sucks a lot, as I’d like her to know how very helpful she had been to me, and I’d like to be able to reciprocate somehow. Since she was in her early fifties when we were in touch and as I said she was already struggling a lot with her health, I’m not even sure if she’s still alive.
Anyway, she was also a real foodie and quite sophisticated in general and, during my stays at hers, I got to try a lot of things that were totally new to me. Like the couscous, for example.
Interestingly, I found it absolutely delicious and I was a real fan of couscous. But when, years later, I asked my Mum to make it and she did, somehow it wasn’t quite as good, and my Mum found it even more unpleasant. My Mum is a fab cook and often makes various grains so I wonder was it just that it wasn’t so new and exciting anymore, or did my aunt make it in some special way that made it have a bit more character or have I just grown out of couscousmania. Whatever the reason, these days I find couscous incredibly bland, and so does everyone else here, so we don’t really eat it in our house. Perhaps we’re just not classy enough hahaha. I know that, because it’s so neutral, you can combine it with a lot of things, but either we haven’t combined it with the right things or it’s just not our thing because no matter the additions, spices and stuff the couscous itself always feels bland.
Do you add salt to your food if it does not necessarily need it?
My answer:
It’s not a rule, and I don’t have to have lots of salt on my food to enjoy it, but yes, sometimes I do it. Both me and my Dad are salty spicy people and we seem to have higher tolerance or something to more salt and more spicy stuff than most people I know.
What is something that is making you feel good, these days? π
My answer:
Misha’s presence is always making me feel good. Right now he’s sleeping on the wardrobe and he has spent almost the entire day with me.
The cooler weather is making me feel good, too. The summer heat has been quite exhausting for me, and for Misha too, also for my Mum and I think for a lot of people as it was really a long time and at times felt insanely hot, and I’m really glad that it’s cooler now, it feels very pleasant outside.
The fact that my Dad’s at work so I don’t have to deal with him for a few days π – he’d had quite long holidays recently and now he’s gone back to work yesterday. It gets unpleasant and stale when you’re spending so much time with someone and you’re not really on the same wavelength at all.
Music. I’ve been listening to lots of great music, but that’s nothing new. Also my great speaker and headphones that I’ve got myself recently and that I use with my iPhone. I really love my computer speakers as well, but, as I always listen to something quietly at night, it wasn’t as much of a pleasure listening to something at night on them, with all the accompanying hum of my desktop computer.
Food always makes me feel good as well. Today we had very yummy chocolate budyΕ with Mum. Mum makes it on her own, it’s not the instant, shop-bought budyΕ. I think I’ve explained somewhere on here earlier what budyΕ is, but if you don’t know, it’s kinda like a creamy Polish pudding. Only Mum put a bit too much chocolate into it, and while it was extremely delicious, it was really, really sweet, and neither of us was able to eat a lot. π
Books make me feel good. Right now I’m reading a very amusing Polish book, which is basically an anthology of different texts from mostly Polish literature, but not only, from different time periods and genres, all about cats! I’ve just started it today in the morning but I think it’s going to be very enjoyable for me. And the last book I read was “Harriet and the Cherry Pie” by Clare Compton, a lovely English children’s book, the style and plotline of which reminded me very strongly of Noel Streatfeild, and I like things like these. Since the main character lived in her great aunt’s cafe, there was lots of food involved.
Is there something special you feel like eating or drinking, at the moment?
My answer:
It’s roasting hot here, and when that happens, I’m not really eating much. But I’d love some really delicious, cool drink. No, not cool, freezing! lol Yeah, with lots of ice in it. I’m generally a sucker for iced drinks, except for iced tea which I somehow don’t have any strong feelings to, and alcohol drinks, a lot of which I like, but I avoid alcohol these days all together as it makes me feel super crappy both physically and mentally and it’s not quite as yummy as coffee that I’d even feel very regretful about having to say goodbye to it, especially that the effects of alcohol are usually worse for me than coffee. I just love the sound of ice in the glass, and the feel of ice, I’ve always had that weird fantasy since I was a little kid that I’d love to have an endless supply of ice, or popsicles, or something, that wouldn’t melt, or at least not so quickly, so I could touch and lick them whenever and how much I wanted. I suppose it could be an indicator of something being wrong with me that I’m so obsessed with ice but I don’t care. I also love to suck the pieces of ice after I drink the drink, if only my teeth can bear it. So, I don’t know, it could be a milkshake, a creamy, not too strong, iced coffee, but I think most of all I’d like some freshly squeezed orange juice, preferably without the mashy orange bits but even with the mashy stuff would be okay. We had a carton of shop-bought orange juice last week, which would always be something, but it’s gone now, and I don’t even think we have ice cubes in the freezer at the moment.
Let’s continue with the fruit & veg theme for a while.
How much fruit do you eat each day?
My answer:
Despite I love the vast majority of fruits, it’s not like I eat a lot of fruit every day. Sometimes I don’t eat any fruit during the day at all. Actually quite often. Now that we have our own garden, and professional, enthusiastic gardeners for neighbours, we get to eat fruit every day during summer, but I guess overall it’s never been a thing in our family to eat a lot of fruit on a daily basis. My Mum also doesn’t make fruit preserves typically or anything like this, unless when it’s like last year, when we had lots of fruit that we didn’t know what to do with as we couldn’t eat it all before they’d go bad, so Mum did looots of jams, juices and kissels but it’s not a tradition like it is for a lot of Polish households. We like oranges and tangerines in winter but we don’t have them all the time in the season. So I think in my case we should rather talk about weekly than daily. But we usually have apples, so at the very least, if there aren’t any more attractive fruits, I like to eat one or two apples every few days.
