enjoying the drive

It`s not very much to get satisfied about but I enjoy having driven the peugeot of my Mom`s today. As I am driving a diesel VW Golf at school I wasn`t very succesfull in starting the little French benzin. Today it worked for me, of course much easier with the car than with my nervous fearful mother but anyway it pushed up my seratonin-level. :)

drive turbo

I haven`t written for long which is, due to the fact no one ever reads me, not so catastrophic. I let myself fall for driving cars what changes my long-time prejudices. For instance I lived my life being a daughter of someone telling me diesel cars are bad. They stink, they must work loud and they always freeze in winter and so on- that`s what was in my mind on tdi.

While learning to drive I experienced though how blessing the German TDIs are. I drove VW Golf IV 1,9 and opel astra 1,7, both manual and tdi. They are gifts from beyond, the diesels, for they go for their own, no problems with starting them, stopping them and - the wonder of wonders my parents, both driving for over 40 years didn`t believe -diesels go just by easily letting the pushed down clutch go up. They do, even upwards.

The whole driving experience of mine was something so very very Eastern European kinda funk. I got that VW Golf, black, my instructor happened to be a smoker, so the interior of this the most popular car in Lithuania had that "taxi or so" odour in it which was so pleasing and so masculine. As if the car whispered all the time: 'come on,you can drive me, I am powerful and patient, have no fear, let me go, just let me show you how...' And so I fell for this whisper and it still urges me to make my best. :*

And what a disappointment, the car my mother has, is only 1,4L, just as big as golf and no tdi. How will I ever make that kitten roar after having spoken with a tiger??? And I don`t speak French (my Mom has a peugeot)while Frenchmen don`t really like Germans??? I need to get some source of income, begin my own life alone and buy myself a German diesel wreck of my own age which would have everything new and fake inside. well... not that fast nor so easy...

For now I wake every morning with dreaming of being able to feel that G-spot clutch the TDIs have and the 1,9 L of wild mustangs that move those cars. I have my 4th drive tomorrow

Making three wishes right. I

I`ve ended season 7 and am now on season 8 with pregnant Scully, abducted Mulder in his absence and nothing actually worth the name x-files any longer. The last episode, following all standards, was a very pedagogical one. It was on making your three wishes correct where no-one had ever succeeded. Mulder got it right, “people make the wrong wishes because they make their wishes solely for personal gains. So the trick would be to make a wish that is totally altruistic “ Later he added, “the trick is to be specific, to make the wish perfect” . And that is what I did today. I made three wishes right. I washed the floor, I made ice cream which I told you about and I made lunch. Here I have to stop for apologizing since the cold soup of kvass and salted vegetables (I consciously left out the sausage, mayo and mustard…) made me sick at once. Everybody seemed to be quite satisfied but me.

Yet the spaghetti (macaroni, actually, we had no real spaghetti) aglia olio (with garlic) were good, better than one could expect due to fastness and easiness of the process. For anyone who might feel certain interest, here`s the recipe:

For 4 spontaneously hungry (this is how it stood in the Basic cooking)
500 g spaghetti (we had only 250 g of those nest-formed macaroni, and it wasn`t too little)
4 cloves of garlic
5 tbsp. olive oil
Freshly grounded pepper
Salt

Boil spaghetti open in 5 liter boiling water with 2 tbsp. salt for 7 minutes before testing and switch off the heat just when they get al dente (still with a little crunch inside)
Meanwhile heat the oil in a pan not too hot and slice the (washed and peeled) garlics. They fry in oil for a while until golden and smooth. Then put the drained macaroni to the pan and mix it well with correct seasoning. The trick here is, the oil gets the wonderful taste of garlic and gives it to the spaghettis.
That`s it.
I guess a droplet of lemon juice wouldn`t harm as well. And you ought to remember: NO SMINT NO KISS.


P.S. remembering the 3 wishes and that “everything happens for a reason”: I`ve just got a little sandwich with feta cheese and ruccola from my Mom. Yummi :p

TO BE CONTINUED

gloomy Monday

At the end it always gets gloomy. The heat is gone, the Sun started playing hide and seek, and it`s only coffee that can help you out. Nevertheless I have to offer something cheering, don`t I? As for me, it`s the internet, black coffee and blue jeans. And Marianne Faithfull, though you could say she`s really gloomy herself. She has something dark and misty in her voice, indeed, and if you know her biography, everything on her gets reaaaaaaally dark. But, as they say, if you wanna know the artist, so go look at his art. Moreover, don`t forget it`s London we are talking about.
It`s "black coffee" by Marianne, one of those gloomily gloomy wonderful songs. :)

unbelievable

Just take a look what cats can do

Katinas kleptomanas Anglijoje vogė skalbinius
(15)
ELTA ir lrytas.lt inf.
2010-07-09 09:40

Pietų Anglijos miesto Portsvudo policija pagaliau nustatė, kas vogė kiemuose džiovinamus skalbinius. Paaiškėjo, kad vagišius yra... katinas kleptomas, kuriam ypač patiko moterų kelnaitės.
Šeimininkai spėlioja, kodėl katinas taip elgėsi.

13 metų amžiaus katinas Oskaras nušvilptas garderobo dalis „pristatydavo“ savo šeimininkams Peteriui ir Birgittai.

„Prieš kelis mėnesius jis ėmė tempti namo kojines, po to - darbines pirštines, o dar vėliau - apatinius baltinius, aiškiai priklausančius jaunoms moterims“, - sakė jie žurnalistams.

Katinas per dieną padarydavo vidutiniškai 10 „nusikaltimų“. Jo šeimininkai žada užkirsti kelią „banditiškiems“ savo augintinio išpuoliams.

Searching answers to life`s most persistent questions

I don`t actually read what I`ve written after I post it but I think I forgot my actual joie de vivre [substitute]. That is, however silly it sounds, eating sunflower seeds (which I never did before though it`s very Eastern-European kinda funk, indeed). I think it to be a very healthy and quite intellectual junk-food since you not only eat but have to open them inside your mouth, them take the seed out and spit the shell (without pieces of your teeth) out. Or take it out, whatever you like. Of course, I do it at home and throw them out to a dustbin, don`t worry ;)
You might wonder right now what`s so nice about it since they are so full of salt*. Well, it has a long and nice story. I like X-files very much and am watching them from the very beginning now (season 7, the last to episodes left with Mulder in). It was the “Bad blood”, the favorite of Gillian Anderson where Mulder ate a lot of sunflower seeds and this helped him survive because vampires collect little pieces when they are lose. Being attacked, Mulder just threw his SS (I hate to write the whole) and stayed bloodfull. I don`t feel in danger of vampires but I just think of Mulder eating them while trying to solve cases with his theories to things “highly unlikely but not outside the realm of extreme possibility” and just like Scully I am attracted to his faith to such things. He is very intellectual and clever and foxy, as well. Just like Duchovny (what a name, by the way: duchovny... you have to understand Russian a bit though) with MA of English Literature in Yale if I remember correctly. One should mention him always pronouncing “[n]either” in an English manner.
And to explain the name of this blog (which is a quote from the “Prairie home companion”) I think that you can`t solve them like Scully believes to can and tries but have to rely on Mulder`s attitudes and solve them from your heart and hunches and never really care what the others think of it. And – if you find it useful – buy yourself sunflower seeds. I take roasted and salted , they can temporarily help you out when you have nothing to eat ;)
*Did you know, by the way, that all salt comes from sea? The stone salt is also from the sea, only from those that no longer exist as seas. They just disappeared during the ages and left the salt in form of stones. I read this this very morning and feel myself “enlighten”.

I said all this writing is about writing down things which brings a ray of light to darkness we sometimes find ourselves in in life. So, after mentioning Mr. Lehrer and Mrs. Child as possible - and very likely - masters of bringing light to the gloom, cooking and mastering yourself an ice-cream I think I`ll come back to more earthy things like reading.

As for me, I like many books of different countries and authors. Robert Schneider, actually, translations of him made by Jurgis Kunčinas, is one of them. I like his "Luftgängerin" a lot. "Schlafbruder" is a little too gloomy and rural. I love most of the American authors since they seem to have something that "feels like a teen spirit", a little negative and funny and absent-minded.

But since I am arranging a happy corner and love cooking, eating and reading about it, I would very much advise an easy-to-become book "An eater`s manual" where every devoted eater (that is, every one of us who`s still able to read) will find something to laugh about and think about at once. A pity is, I can`t upload files here but I think the chapter names do speak for themselves and if someone would like to get close look to this book, please don`t hesitate to contact me. Here are the chapters:

PART I - What should I eat?
Chapter 1 - Eat food.
Chapter 2 - Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
Chapter 3 - Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human ...
Chapter 4 - Avoid food products that contain high-fructose corn syrup.
Chapter 5 - Avoid foods that have some form of sugar (or sweetener) listed ...
Chapter 6 - Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients.
Chapter 7 - Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader ...
Chapter 8 - Avoid food products that make health claims.
Chapter 9 - Avoid food products with the wordoid “lite” or the terms “low-fat” ...
Chapter 10 - Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they are not.
Chapter 11 - Avoid foods you see advertised on television.
Chapter 12 - Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.
Chapter 13 - Eat only foods that will eventually rot.
Chapter 14 - Eat foods made from ingredients that you can picture in their raw ...
Chapter 15 - Get out of the supermarket whenever you can.
Chapter 16 - Buy your snacks at the farmers’ market.
Chapter 17 - Eat only foods that have been cooked by humans.
Chapter 18 - Don’t ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to ...
Chapter 19 - If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.
Chapter 20 - It’s not food if it arrived through the window of your car.
Chapter 21 - It’s not food if it’s called by the same name in every language. ...
PART II - What kind of food should I eat?
Chapter 22 - Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
Chapter 23 - Treat meat as a flavoring or special occasion food.
Chapter 24 - “Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is ...
Chapter 25 - Eat your colors.
Chapter 26 - Drink the spinach water.
Chapter 27 - Eat animals that have themselves eaten well.
Chapter 28 - If you have the space, buy a freezer.
Chapter 29 - Eat like an omnivore.
Chapter 30 - Eat well-grown food from healthy soil.
Chapter 31 - Eat wild foods when you can.
Chapter 32 - Don’t overlook the oily little fishes.
Chapter 33 - Eat some foods that have been predigested by bacteria or fungi.
Chapter 34 - Sweeten and salt your food yourself.
Chapter 35 - Eat sweet foods as you find them in nature.
Chapter 36 - Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.
Chapter 37 - “The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead.”
Chapter 38 - Favor the kinds of oils and grains that have traditionally been stone-ground.
Chapter 39 - Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.
Chapter 40 - Be the kind of person who takes supplements—then skip the supplements.
Chapter 41 - Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks.
Chapter 42 - Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism.
Chapter 43 - Have a glass of wine with dinner.
PART III - How should I eat?
Chapter 44 - Pay more, eat less.
Chapter 45 - . . . Eat less.
Chapter 46 - Stop eating before you’re full.
Chapter 47 - Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.
Chapter 48 - Consult your gut.
Chapter 49 - Eat slowly.
Chapter 50 - “The banquet is in the first bite.”
Chapter 51 - Spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it.
Chapter 52 - Buy smaller plates and glasses.
Chapter 53 - Serve a proper portion and don’t go back for seconds.
Chapter 54 - “Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper.”
Chapter 55 - Eat meals.
Chapter 56 - Limit your snacks to unprocessed plant foods.
Chapter 57 - Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does.
Chapter 58 - Do all your eating at a table.
Chapter 59 - Try not to eat alone.
Chapter 60 - Treat treats as treats.
Chapter 61 - Leave something on your plate.
Chapter 62 - Plant a vegetable garden if you have the space, a window box if ...
Chapter 63 - Cook.
Chapter 64 - Break the rules once in a while.

As you see, the last one denies all of them. I like the 63rd most, as you do or will see.
With this "upload" I wanted to show or prove that both reading+ experiencing and jokes make fun. As for funny but still well written cookbooks I would advise Julia Child`s "Mastering the art of French cooking" (not so much of fun but of feeling her taking care of you, look here: http://rgr-static1.tangentlabs.co.uk/images/bau/97803073/9780307381927/0/0/plain/mastering-the-art-of-french-cooking-journal.jpg) and my new one, in German, "Basic cooking" (very friendly funny written but rather for ones who aren`t really sure "how to boil an egg" , http://www.qpdistribution.com/catalog/images/basic%20cooking%20002.jpg). For the latter, I paid 15 Euro in Röbel, an end-of-the-world-town in Eastern Germany at the Western bank of Muritz lake. The German book won an award as the best book on general cooking in 1999 so after all it can`t be that bad even after over 10 years (it`s a new edition in my hands).
So for now have a great read, cook, listen and giggle!