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CURRENTLY VISITING HAWAII!!

Hawaii

Hawaii
Akaka Falls

See the World for Free

The idea here is to TRAVEL THE WORLD regardless of time or budget. It dawned on me one day that even if I had unlimited time and money (which I definitley do not), I still couldn't see everything in the world that I'd like to see--I'm simply not going to live long enough to do it.

But I had a bit of brain wave and soon after the travel envelope was born. This is an actual physical envelope. I typed the name of every country in the world, plus every state in the US on little slips of paper which I then put into the envelope. In the beginning we (myself, my husband, Dave and daugher Catherine) would draw out a slip at random at the beginning of the month and that's where we would go---at least in our minds. We grab some books about the country from the library and put them in our bathroom to look at. We also check out some videos about the country if any. We check it out on googleearth, listen to the music, try the food, maybe even attempt to learn a dance or celebrate a festival.

After the first two years we discovered that even virtual traveling can be tiring, so we travel now whenever I happen to be in the mood.

It's great fun. I especially love it when people I meet have been to the place I'm "visiting" in real life, or get excited and have some virtual adventures of their own. I hope that anyone who comes across this blog will feel welcome to come with us on the trip!



You have a standing reservation to see it all!

Jan 19, 2011

Food Food Food Food

We had a lovely polish dinner on Sunday, but I feel like I cheated.  Looking through the cookbooks, I remembered many of the recipes by the things my grandparents used to eat.  Herring is big in Poland--I actually ate herring sandwiches when I was little-- beets served in all kinds of ways are popular too. I realize that lots of people love beets, but shudder--I'd rather eat the herring. Probably the most repulsive traditional food--at least to Western pallets was my grandparents beloved golat.  Take pigs feet or some other unacceptable joint and boil them--save the water and chop up the meat, add some spices and return the meat and spices to the water (or a portion of it. Refrigerate until solidified, then dig in.

We chickened out and had a good dinner instead.  First up was a kielbalsa sausage--fried up and eaten with mustard. Then a "Toadstool" which is a hard boiled egg. Slice a bit off the top and bottom so it will stand up--top it with half a tomato so it looks like a toadstool and dot with mayo.  Quite fun.  Next was "nothing soup." Beat egg whites with sugar to make merengues--the soup itself is milk with vanilla and sugar, cook the merengues on top of the soup (that boiled over), the result----vanilla pudding soup.  Moving on---salad with sliced rutabaga (not bad), the the main dish of Pierogi--(stuffed dumpling things that are boiled then fried in butter)--I made two kinds--meat/onion and cheese/potato. Quite good especially when dipped in sour cream. Dessert was a poppy-seed cake.  Word to the casual cook---watch out on these foreign desserts--the cakes tend to turn out simply HUGE. I'm not sure if the general idea is to cook enough for the whole village, but that's about the scale of things.