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.
Just like with fruits, I am lucky to like most vegetables, as long as they’re raw. I say I’m lucky because if I didn’t, I probably would eat junk food all the time and would be badly overweight, because I don’t feel the pressure to eat stuff I don’t like just because it’s healthy. I like peppers (but especially red pepper, and chilli if that counts as a proper vegetable), nearly all legumes that I’ve ever had, except for fava beans, (don’t have to be raw), garlic, onion (also doesn’t have to be raw), cauliflower and broccoli (I’ve only had them cooked but they’re the best al dente and with lots of “sand”, as my Mum calls it, that is bread crumbs, pickled cauliflower is also very interesting and cool and one of few vegetables I truly like to eat pickled), lettuce, cherry tomatoes (“normal” tomatoes are okay but not like my favourites), horse raddish, kohlrabi, carrot (cooked is disgusting though), cabbage, fresh and pickled, parsley, chive (are these even vegetables, or herbs?), cellery (I love cellery sticks in a spicy yoghurt dip) and can’t think of anything else at the moment.
How about you? Are you a vegetable eater at all or not really? π
For me, it would be easier to say which are my least favourite simply because I love the vast majority of fruits I have tried. But my most favourite… certainly berry fruits are among the ones I love the most – berries, blueberries, raspberries. – Also I love oranges and tangerines, and pineapples. Oh, and talking about pineapples, I recently had a really weird craving for a pineapple, quite strong, so I’ve been wondering what it is in pineapples that I may be having not enough of in my system, and why. π In any case, I’ll have to get myself some. Are olives fruits or vegetables? Huh, I’d never thought they could seriously be but uncle Google says they are, so I think I should mention olives first because I love them so much. If capers are fruit too then capers should be next, if I were to put my favourite fruits in order. I used to think that I’d love mango, because I once drank mango juice in a Moroccan restaurant and loved it so much but then when I ate a mango it somehow didn’t impress me at all. I also love grapefruits but can’t really eat them because I have a bit damaged enamel on some of the teeth because of wearing braces, or rather because of other things my orthodontist did to my teeth while I was wearing braces, but never mind, anyway it hurts after I eat sour things, and particularly much after grapefruits or other equally sour foods. Oh but I also love grapes. And peaches, but especially canned peaches. And apples and pears, though they are so casual and always available that I don’t always really appreciate them. I sure should appreciate apples more now that I have an iPhone. And I love strawberries, though I hate most strawberry-flavoured stuff. And gooseberries and currants, both black and red, the soft, mini wild strawberries that we call poziomki over here, watermelon as long as it’s not too mashy, if it’s not mashy it’s great, if it’s mashy it’s really really bad. Oh yeah and I love pomegranates to pieces. And can’t think of anything else at the moment but just like I said, I like most fruits.
Oh yes! I love olives, and a lot of people seem to hate them. It seems to be definitely one of those things you either love or hate. I can well understand why people would hate them as they have such very strong and characteristic taste, which is also quite different and unlike anything else. I also love capers, and even more people hate them. Admittedly their taste is even more unusual and even people who love them like me can’t eat a lot of them at once. I normally do not like things which taste vinegary but capers are definitely an exception. I also looooove love love kefir and people hate kefir. Especially people who aren’t Polish/Slavic/Balkan as they aren’t used to it, and even many of these people who are Slavic or Balkan hate kefir anyway because as far as I’m aware even though it’s a common or even traditional drink in many countries it’s not something everyone grows up with and drinks every day since childhood, a lot of Polish people I know have never tasted kefir. Similar situation is with buttermilk, although I guess buttermilk is a bit easier to like.
I’ve no idea if this is more international a thing or not – I only know people around the globe hate Brussels sprouts and so do I, they are absolutely gross – but here in Poland loads of people hate spinach. And there’s actually an interesting sociohistorical reason for that. In the 80’s, and I guess 70’s too, Polish nurseries/kindergartens were really obsessed about spinach. I don’t know what the exact reason was, but suddenly there was one big boom on stuffing kids with vegetables, and probably because spinach was easily available, they would eat spinach all the time. It can be really yucky and tasteless when not seasoned properly so, there’s like a bit of a collective trauma around that. And it doesn’t only affect millennials/gen X, because they pass it on to their offspring, and I’ve also heard older people saying very unfavourable things about spinach for no apparent reason and not being able to give some real arguments why they thought it’s so bad. So it’s a bit like everyone hates spinach by default and spinach is evil. But when you ask an average person if they ever ate spinach, they will either say that they did in nursery, or not at all, because, duh, it’s yuck and everyone knows it so why would anyone want to eat it. When you ask them why it’s so bad, chances are great that everyone will tell you only that it’s bad when unseasoned or overcooked or that it’s difficult to make it right. Fair enough, but so is also with lots of other food. Who likes unseasoned meat? How about overcooked pasta? Yet no one is screaming that they are evil just because they can be unseasoned or overcooked. And who says you have to cook spinach? It seems like not many people realise that there actually was such a spinach propaganda around the country and not just in their nursery. There especially is a default opinion in people’s minds that children hate spinach, even though children these days aren’t bombarded with it like their parents were, but they still do hate spinach because everyone sort of tells them they should. Recently it’s a bit better, people are more conscious and of course there’s the whole fit lifestyle trend going on, all the different diets, more and more people are vegetarians or vegans, others want to lose weight, so spinach is slowly gaining some more favour and positive attention.
I also was one of those kids thinking I hate spinach just because. And indeed I remember hearing a lot about how all children hate spinach. I think the first time I ate spinach was at my aunt – who wasn’t exactly my relative at all, but I always called her aunt and she was extremely helpful to me, she lived near my school and I often visited her in her house. – She once had spinach with some meat and rice for lunch and I was like: “What? Spinach? Why would anyone normal want to eat spinach?” She told me that it’s really good when it’s well-seasoned and that most people don’t know how to cook it well and that’s why they don’t like it. I tried it but wasn’t impressed, not because of it’s taste, which as far as I remember wasn’t bad, but I didn’t like the texture of it particularly much. Then we had quite regularly lasagna with spinach at school, and I actually really liked it, perhaps because you couldn’t really feel the spinach in it very much. And some years later, my Mum has become a proper lifestyle geek, she’s always had such tendencies but it was then that it really progressed, at the same time she had just started to wear braces and wasn’t able to eat a lot of hard food and one of her obsessions at the time were veg smoothies, and she often added spinach to them. I hate veg smoothies, but since due to that, we had plenty of spinach at home, I tried how it tastes raw and… surprise, or not, I thought it was really cool. I usually tend to like raw vegetables more than cooked, baked etc. These days I often eat even sandwiches with spinach instead of lettuce. These days my Mum no longer makes those veg smoothies, as they make her feel very bloated, but we have spinach in our garden here where we live now and we still eat it raw. But even the texture of cooked spinach doesn’t bother me that much anymore and I like for example pierogi with spinach. I mean, I’m certainly not a spinach lover or a die hard fan, as I am with kefir, olives or capers, but I just like it, I don’t see anything wrong with it, I think people are being very unfair to spinach.
I don’t think I’ve ever had either of these, but cinnamon rolls sound much more delicious to me so I think I would prefer them. Since I hate bananas, banana bread sounds absolutely repulsive to me. π
I think quite a few, but what comes to my mind right now is that I hate the combination of spicy with sweet. I love love love spicy food, spicy condiments etc. and I love a lot of sweet things as well, but together they taste gross. I hate things like chocolate with chilli, or sauces that are kind of both sweet and a little spicy, or some crisps are like that too, spicy with a bit of sweet-ish flavour, it’s yucky. If something is spicy, then I want it to be really spicy, and not something in-between. Similarly, there are probably even more things that are both spicy and sour/vinegary, especially crisps or sauces/ketchups. I really like things that are really really spicy, and when for example I want to buy a hot sauce for something, I know a couple that I know are really good, but when I buy something new that I haven’t tested before, chances are quite high that, instead of being spicy it’ll only be spicy-sour or spicy-sweet. My Mum dislikes spicy-vinegary things as well, generally some people say though that I’m weird, because lots of things aren’t spicy enough for me, even if they don’t contain any taste combinations like that, haha, so perhaps indeed my perception is different or something.
Considering some items are difficult to come by these days, what would you trade me for half a dozen eggs?
My answer:
Well, if it were you who gave me half a dozen eggs, I could trade you for a jar of gooseberry jam, for example. We have lots of home-made jams, and, while we like them, we don’t keep up with eating them, haha. Or I could give you some cucumbers if you like. And we do have a lot of toilet paper in case you would be suffering because of a lack thereof. Not like really a lot, but I’m sure it would be enough to share with someone in a desperate need, haha.
What’s something new you have tried lately that you either enjoyed or disliked (be it food, music/literature genre, activity etc.)?
My answer:
For me, it was Philadelphia cake, and I enjoyed it a lot. Well actually I’ve googled it before writing this post to see if it’s a thing anywhere else or perhaps if it has a different name in English but I couldn’t come across anything like this, and I know my Mum got it from a Polish website with recipes, so in case you don’t know what it is, it’s a cake with rusks as a base layer, they are crumbled into so called sand and mixed with Nutella or other such chocolate cream until it gets sticky. Other layers are cherry-flavoured jelly as well as cherries, and either natural Greek yoghurt, or Mascarpone cheese (which my Mum used because she loves it) with cream. Mum made it for my grandma’s name day this last Monday, because grandma was ill and couldn’t make a cake herself for her guests, and she had recently eaten that Philadelphia cake at someone’s house and loved it so much and she asked Mum to make it for her. I had my reservations about it, because I generally am not a fan of Mascarpone cheese at all, I hate tiramisu and similar stuff, and I’m not particularly enthusiastic about cherry-flavoured things either, but I actually ended up liking it a lot, and almost couldn’t feel the Mascarpone cheese or in any case not so that it would be a problem for me. Mum wanted to make it today as well ’cause it’s International Women’s Day and just in case someone would visit her, but in the end that didn’t work out as she had to go out while cooling off the jelly and it ended up not edible. π But there were no guests so she didn’t have to worry.
My Inner MishMash 