Yog(a) Master

For who doesn't want to balance mind, breath, body and spirit? (for a while I felt like writing spirits :D looks like this weekend was too long). However, I restrained from naked yoga poses, which supposedly liberate you more than updating your menstrual cycle on Facebook ;) Instead, I chose a 'light' version of inner pleasure. Not only did it go easy on my conscience as nobody had to get undressed in a public place. It was light-easy on my stomach - fat free and calorie low, and cheap-easy on my wallet - little as I know about yoga classes, I almost feel an expert on frozen yoghurts prices… and, little by little, frozen yoghurts themselves as well.

Here comes my next obsession. After peanuts and chocolate, which are too calorific, and I can indulge them only once in a while. After tea, which, by no means, can get me full for more then half an hour (this is when I usually start another one). After popcorn, which I continue devouring, whose nutrients are nowhere to be found.

What's coming now seems impeccable. It surely beats chocolate, tea and popcorn. FROZEN YOGHURTS! Mind you, it is NOT a Polish-style treat with a pot bought in Tesco and frozen at home. What is it then? I have no bloody idea how they do it. Is it really the magic cow they advertise? :)

nothing more, nothing less

Whoever came up with the idea was a genius although he hasn't demanded by law to put an outlet every 100 metres. With those babies just around the corner I dare say I would have my (two) main meals sorted :D Out of my hair!

So far we have met three magic cows:

- Mr Yog the Frozen. With 24 unbeatable toppings, he is always on TOP of everyone, confident yet humble - http://www.yogyogurt.co.uk/index.php?p=home

- Mr Chocmoo and his faMOOly :) They are the funniest but very strict and sometimes orthodox. Will not allow to be messed up with ;) - http://www.yoomoo.com

- and Miss Samba Swirl. America-born and Italy-raised, she is hell of a temperament and, as opposed to her colleague from LA (Yoomoo), she is extremely flexible - http://www.sambaswirl.co.uk

You enter the websites at your own risk! If you fall in love, I don't take any responsibility. You're on your own!

A sin-free devil :O

Mi amiga del alma :)

It is not surprising now that I sometimes did plan our evening out with yogos in mind. ''Where shall we go?'', ''Wherever we can find a Yog''.

And what when we come across a Yog paradise on our way somewhere else? Lucky accident! Chriss doesn't give a tiny rabbit's ass but he can tell what is up when all of a sudden I get all disconnected, my eyes glazed and hazy ;) We just need to pop in or otherwise I will tune out and he no longer has a girlfriend but a zombie cow-lover (horrible as it sounds).

Bravo The USA for inventing it (who else could do that?) and bravo The UK for bringing the health, taste, energy and passion in here.

On a final note.

At the age of 16 I discovered what I want to be (not a Jogobella fruit, fortunately). Then, at the age of 20, to my enormous surprise, I found teaching profession something for me but at the age of 22 years saw how crazy my first thought was :) and went back to the first option.

At the age of 21 I discovered who I want spend the rest of my life with :*

At the age of 24 and 9 months I discovered where I want to live.

At the age of 25 I discovered what I want to eat away.
I am growing up! :D

The preacher in truth and verity, I'm telling you the truth - there is Yogo and the rest of the food.

Legend Of Graceful Omnivore (in short: LOGO)

You know what they say... show me what your logo looks like and I will tell you who you are ;) Aqui tienen! Sweeter than ever ;)

By courtesy of Chriss.

Coo(k)ing spree

The way to a man's heart is through his stomach... I, however, conquered his heart with a severe inability to cook anything but scrambled eggs (In fact, I mastered scrambling at the age of 10 ;)). When we met, he was the one to cook... well, only pizza and tagliatelle but still… I couldn’t even boil pasta properly ;/ (No, I wasn’t 5 when we met. I was 21 :O and excuse meeeeee, but they put instructions at the back, and it is written in very small print). Anyway, he took me as I was, the act of which I treat as a real love :) and never asked me to prove my cooking skills. More concerned with heart-shaped toasts than a duck in plum sauce, he must have accepted that till the end of his life he would be fed with French breakfast (and here I mean food, not sex)… secretly frying a chicken breast when I sleep or staying till late at work just because his boss offered a dinner at an Italian restaurant.

But here I come! Reborn from the dust of ashes and black burnt toasts ;)
I welcomed England with a strange bent for cooking. And I did not start with an ordinary pork chop or minced meat balls (ordinary... my mum would kill me!). It is not that I don’t like it, but everybody knows it and I cannot kick off with everybody-knows-it food. So I went for a puff pastry plait stuffed with spinach and feta cheese, with a bit of ham as the base and a bit of an egg-yolk shiny gloss finish on top. I deliberately made it long so that you can get the impression that the difficulty level is proportional to the length of the name. That’s the way we roll! :P

Her name is plaît'... s'il vous plaît' ;)

                           

Actually, it WAS difficult:

• to come up with an idea (Agnieszka* had planted that a few months before, but digging my messy brain to get to that was hell of a task)

• to harmonise the time I had to prepare it with the time Christopher had to come back home from work – You can’t tell spinach to cook faster, if you know what I mean ;)

• to steal some seasoning from flat mates ;) (we didn’t even have proper towels at that time!)

• not to mess that up with an old oven (which took years to ignite, btw), a burnt to death frying pan (if a frying pan can actually die), two plates only and a load of will-it-work-out stress.

The only easy part was to pick up wine… as it goes with everything :)

So this is how my cooking spree started. All of a sudden, I felt like an experienced cook who can make anything out of nothing. A casserole from leftovers... spaghetti with broccoli and self-made sauce... shish kebabs with what-the-hell-there-is-in-the-fridge... jacket potatoes with what was left after all that you have just read about (i.e. spinach and grated Parmesan). And I must admit, I was quite good at it, wasn’t I?

A bit of Poland. Winiary!

                           

Mrs Jacket Potatoes half undressed

Yet, my passion did not last long as my working hours killed it. Then, came the new flat, where we are literally left with a frying pan and a £1 baking tray. I cannot even pop kernel corns without the fear that a plate, which I use as a lid, will explode under the heat.

Welcome to our small Africa. Creative Every Day Challenge!
A paper lid made by Kellogg's (limited edition).

Thus, for some time we limited ourselves to frozen pizzas and wedges, pre-cooked rice (the mere thought of which makes me want to cry and blush for shame), ready-made sauces and tortillas… Kończ waść, wstydu oszczędź! I'd better stop this madness. Yes, need to pop out to the shop, see if they have something I can cook with little that I have (meaning money, cooking utensils, time, and spirit).

Cooking makes me write, and writing makes me wanna cook... "and that's the way the cookie crumbles!"

* Cziczerona; my mentor in many fields

Tempest in a teapot

It is virtually a perfect world where you can find what you’ve been looking for your entire life, what you’ve been missing, the lack of what used to remind you that your life is not complete… a teapot! :) Really, it came to me as a great surprise when one day I decided to try brewing tea in a teapot I had found in a dresser (A teapot? A dresser? It must be Great Britain). It all suddenly fit into place and that moment I knew this is the way I wish to have my Twinnings. How come I hadn’t known that before? Everybody around me knows how much tea I drink and that a regular size mug (let alone a cup) to me is abnormal as you cannot relish the brew for too long. Thus, a teapot sounded like an idea. Since the leaopardish one I found in the kitchen belongs to the couple living with us, I was asked… told… yyyy, forced not to use it anymore in case I break it. Yeah, as if I was somebody who breaks things ;p Actually we broke one of borrowed wine glasses, but that was after – a teapot was something I had to have for my own. However, having little money, I had to find a cheap one. Where to look for it not knowing the place or stores around? Charity shop? Which, by the way, made me wonder who actually needs charity… those who get the money from the sale or those who buy there? ;) Anyway, I browsed through two of them located nearby (didn’t know about the third one yet – which probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference) and found a black (thus elegant?) teapot for £3.99… for a song! Yet I didn’t sing my song of triumph for long as Tesco offered exactly the same teapot for £2.99 and it was a new one obviously! ;) Apparently, they know something about charity, too. Never mind, as an ex-teacher with two-year experience I am full of internal peace and tranquility. One pound is not that much and I believe I helped somebody out there ;)


World from a teapot's point of view :)

So now I have my teapot and the best selection of teas in the world. Cristobal has his Barbecue sauce at his fingertips. Doesn’t it sound perfect? I guess we’ve found our place in the world. It took me 25 years to understand that: “Outside of the chair, the teapot is the most ubiquitous and important design element in the domestic environment and almost everyone who has tackled the world of design has ended up designing one.” But it’s not only about that.
* I found a place where Activia costs £3 for 12 pots and Cristobal found a place where he could get his iPhone 4s for free.
* I found a place where I can speak British and he found a place where he can wear his headphones without being pointed at (it’s more probable he would be pointed at if he didn’t wear them).
* I found a place where I look better than any average genuine citizenship and he found a place where he looks better than any average genuine citizenship ;)
So here we are! Greetings from heaven on earth :)

pop art

I can’t trace back the origins of my fixation about popcorn. Probably, as it usually happens with all the obsessions, it started quietly, more in a why-shouldn’t-I-try-this-one manner. Mind you, nobody plans an obsession. And an obsession it is. Back in Poznań, the smell of freshly made popcorn was pervasive and ubiquitous regardless of the time of day (yet preferably evenings), day of the week, weather, mood, busyiness etc. It almost became my hallmark and one could ‘smell’ my presence the second he or she entered the hall on the sixth floor. I made our flat smell like a cinema hall. But that was with corn kernels, natural as God made them. Now, with Jolly Time microwave popcorn from Tesco, the only smell I can conjure up is that of an old pair of socks. Shit! (I started swearing in English… love it!). I am no longer a gourmet… have been demoted, to my despair. Still, it’s not all that alarming. I’ll worry when I start eating ready to eat Crunch’n’Munch sweet butter toffee flavoured popcorn with crunchy roasted peanuts, coated with a rich, caramel glaze. I’ve never known there exists popcorn with the name longer than the full name of the UK ;) The list of ingredients is probably even longer. So I already know what I’m going to miss about Poland (apart from weather obviously). Even Polish shops in the area cannot help me out. Allegro? ;) http://allegro.pl/kukurydza-popcorn-1-kg-4-50zl-i2301190867.html. Worth a shot. I still have some remains on my Polish bank account and have no idea how to use PLN, other than spending it on necessities like this one. BTW, this is why I dared to buy the most expensive coffee in my life while waiting in a departure lounge – 11 zlotys for a rubbish café latte with no syrup ;/

The birth of perfection

Going back to the hero of the note… Corn kernels are meant to pop in a frying pan and to be seasoned with a bit of salt. They aren’t supposed to be squeezed in packets, which are to be opened “away from face avoiding contact with steam that will be emitting from the bag when first opened”. Sure you should keep it away from face. With such an amount of chemistry it deserves to be named explosives. Pure desecration! However, I can accept one deviation. Shoddy as it may sound, chocolate with popcorn is ok (”ok” is enough… can’t find a better word for it). At first, it seems like popcorn has to do with chocolate as much as chalk has to do with cheese (don’t try this at home). Apparently, Philippe Suchard’s team know what they are doing. Milka Choco&Popcorn may make the fans anxious, yet it tastes just about right. But don’t you think I bought it myself. I got it, along with Toblerone and Martini, as a gift for being the best hostess in Wielkopolska* Bull’s eye. Ania! Will you marry me? ;) I'm lost in admiration for this woman. How did she find it, in the first place? The only other person who would make so much effort and who knows my eating and drinking fixation so much is... Chris :* (I feel like I didn't even have to write it). This makes the significance of the significance even more significant. Ok, need to POP to the kitchen. The POPcorn is ready :)

* she actually did not verbalise it, but I think this is exactly what she thought ;)

I am a cuckoo... a drunk cuckoo (and I'm not in the nest)*

I don't know how fast cuckoos are, how high they soar and whether they fancy popcorn cooked in margarine. Yet, this is a piece of knowledge I don't really need to relish the opportunity to unwind with a glass (or two... or three**) of home-made liqueur. Actually, it was just a support before the main artist (dry, red wine), and it got me perfectly into the right mood to... drink? I only planned to taste it, but I ended up half-emptying the bottle, feeling highly unwilling to proceed to the sour-sweet concerto. The splendour of the ambrosia (which I'm trying to imply here) is perfectly rendered with a Martini glass, gleaming like a real star in the bright light. It's good I managed to control myself in time, or else I would find myself half-emptying a packet of pills curing all of the following: hangover, headache, stomachache and guilty conscience ;)

Cuckoos in a hot bath :)

Mind you! Messing with cuckoos is actually quite dangerous. Cuculidae embodies all the extremes, and if you don't watch out, you may fly into trouble soon after a take-off ;p
To start with, the recipe is extremely EASY, yet finding the number one products and opening (maybe I shouldn't have given it to my dad...?) a can of condensed milk appeared extremely DIFFICULT.
The price I paid in a shop was so LOW, I started considering whether to double the proportions or not. However, the price I paid for consuming so many calories was HIGH and it took me the whole Sunday to get absolution.
Wheras, flexibility in mixing with other liquids is very POOR, flexibility in mixing with everything else :) - EXCEPTIONAL (try it with ice cream! What? You don't feel like sweets... After a glass, you will!)
And do not be deceived with the fact it takes A GREAT DEAL of time to pour the cuckoo into a glass, since pouring it into oneself amounts to NO time at all.

Non-rum with the prestige of Bacardi Limited

So how could I possibly go through Easter without mixing it one more time? I can already feel how well it'll match a piece of cheesecake...
... an Easter sponge cake...
... a slice of Glicemic Index bread (for diabetes)...
... lamb-shaped butter...
... a precisely-chopped vegetable salad (Here I come, mommy!)...
... horseradish...
... a tablecloth***...? ;D

So here we have the hero of my Easter 2012! I've heard it's stimulates appetite. Shit! So am I going to put on weight a lot? ;/

* http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/a+cuckoo+in+the+nest
** sweets intensify appetite
*** can you also feel it's getting more and more weird?

British vs. Polish h2h combat

It's high time my two egos met each other and oficially established the hierarchy so that I stop fearing a serious split personality and solve some headaches. It's already obvious to literally anyone who knows me, that I'm Polish on the outside and British on the inside with the latter one prevailing remarkably. So be it! :)
Nevertheless, I feel like I should perform some thorough self-examination for the sake of my conscience. Don't want to act as a blindly-loving mother, do I? Thus, to be on the safe side I have to consider all the pros and cons and since I'm in the MA-thesis-writing(-and-flying-into-the-rage) mood why not do it in a research-like manner. Let's not get into extremes, however, and leave aside all the variables, between-subjects factors and within-subjects factors etc. which, btw, don't tell me much ;/ It's enough to set up some criteria and the subjects... enough to prove the precedence of my British side over the Polish one :)

Subjects:
In the left corner sad Polish the Weak: a fried egg with a spoon of ketchup, stewed peas and carrot, and a rice cake.

Polish the Weak in person


In the right corner cheerful British the Muscleman: two fried eggs with baked beans, and triangle-shaped toasts with margarine.

British the Muscleman ready to fight

Criterion number 1: Taste
Well, I am a strange creature who likes peas and carrot and whose stomach is fully satisfied with rice cakes, let alone ketchup ;D
On the other hand, they say that beauty is in simplicity and debauchery hides in white spongy bread (who says that??). The first one makes me feel an ascetic and it dawns on me even Lenten fare is a way richer. The latter one lets me eat life to the full at the very beginning of the day :)
All in all, my taste buds say it's a draw
First round result - 1:1

Criterion number 2: Price
Here, the round gets a bit complex as it involves two more wrestles (wrestles? I didn't say it's wrestling before) - Mr Złoty and Mr Pound, but it makes things easier on the whole. Whichever currency I take or whenever I check an exchange rate, the British side wins irrevocably. You don't know why? Ask all those Poles fleeing Poland.
Second round result - 1:2

Criterion number 3: Health
An orange carrot and green peas are smiling at me from the plate sure of their nutritional values, an egg is still sizzling "looooooow faaaat and muuuuuch prooooootein", and a rice cake is dancing around the plate with such delicacy as if it was promising I can be as light and healthy as he is (how do I know it's he?).
Baked beans are blushing for shame (or maybe it is the sauce??), two eggs fried in deep oil by my personal cook ;* resigned from saying anything - they are tooo fat and full to open their mouths, and triangles wish to pretend they are wholemeal using their brownish colour. Eh!
Third round result - 2:2

Criterion number 4: Overall impression
Eating alone (I won't count my hp in front of me), still hungry after the questionable feast, feeling unfulfilled.
Eating with the love of my life (actually, this one wins everything!), full half way across the plate, feeling satisfied yet with a bit of remorse.
Fourth round result - 2:3

And the winner iiiiiiis... British the Muscleman!
So here we are, I told you :)
I knew it from the start... It couldn't be different. I left my heart there :)

Chriss.mas ♥ i.e. how to fall in love with London in a week

London gave me so many extraordinary food eperiences that I could, literally, write twice as many entries dedicated to London-related delicacies only as I have managed to write so far. Don't you worry! I'm not going to do that as I'm perfectly aware that my modest audience has some other s... to do than decipher what 'that cracked 24-year-old big head with high self-esteem and low blood glucose level* meant'. Still, there are two or three more entries yet to come (come on, I can't waste all those pretty pictures ;)). The one about Christmas is obviously the first one so that you can make use of the last bits of the Chrismassy atmosphere, which, as I discovered today, has now started making me sick.

24th: Before I left I asked myself if I wouldn't miss my mummy's cooking. A deep-fried carp, pierogis, borsch with uszkas (Gosh! The last one sounds gut-churning... though tastes mouth-watering), vegetable salad, pickled herrings in sour cream, and most importantly... croquettes. All in all - it is a great part of what Christmas Eve is about. I didn't answer back then as I usually don't answer when I ask myself questions ;) Yeah! That would be strange, your peculiar creature - to answer ;D Instead, I can answer now and with all the honesty I admit I didn't miss it a bit. No wonder! When we called my daddy and wished my parents all the best for Christmas I asked my mum quite clearly and alludingly (not to say forcingly) to spare some of these babies mentioned above for me so that I can taste a bit of Christmas in January. What a cheeky monkey I am! ;) But really, how could I possibly feel like I was missing out on something I can gorge myself on every 24th of December? That wouldn't make any sense at all. So it didn't! I relished sushi instead (wish I could remember the names to share with you). It was still fish and it was still a meatless meal, although I can't remember if I abided by the no-meat rule the whole day... Probably not beacuse this is usually what happens on Fridays - I feel, all of a sudden, like kiełbasa or bigos... Well, I am a woman, tell me I can't watch football and the next second I become the most staunchest fan of Manchester United screaming 'score!' with a beer in one hand a packet of Lay's in the other on Saturday evening... Leaving Magda Gessler, 'Agent' or 'Friends' aside. (Please, don't tell me not to watch a footbal match - I couldn't stand it ;)).
Anyway... thanks, Vas for this delicious Christmas supper with no Bethlehem star on the sky but with a lot of sun on the plates. BTW, I would never pay this much money for this little food no mater how artistic, posh, healthy, omega-3-fatty-acids-loaded and upper class it is ;p

our stylish Christmas supper


25th & 26th: Ok, but what about the rest of the feast? Bigos, kiełbasa with horseradish (take it after my father), roasted chicken (actually all kinds of meat available within a few kilometres from our house**), Greek-style fish (is it really Greek?). As a matter of fact I didn't give a bugger about it as, again, I treated myself on Italian Melanzane alla parmigiana ;D (Shit! I feel like (a) I'm going to become a polyglot once I move to London! Also hope (b) I won't absorb kcalories and kilograms as quickly and swiftly as I wish to absorb the languages and even more of British accent ;) And definitely, (c) I will turn into a big-headed bitch with the best body throughout the UK, the cutest boy ever and all these Prada bags, Hilfiger shoes, Louis Vuitton dresses and Bulgari jewellery nobody in my hometown is able to afford).
What was magical about this one is the fact it was prepared by a real Italian guy who had to spice it up a bit with a shot of vodka between one toss of pizza dough and another (Chriss saw him do it) and who said that the wine I asked about was neither too dry nor too sweet but just about right. Which actually tells me he knows shit about wine, yet somehow (probably by accident) this one appealed to my taste, which, anyway, is not that sophisticated, let's face it.

My juicy Melanzane with Christopher's crunchy Capriciosa and Our summer wine


Sweets (always a different story): That was about proper food but what about improper sweets? Back at home we baked Snickers (which, this year, apparently wasn't as good as ours - chapeau bas! Christopher ;*), there was moist poppyseed cake, soft gingerbread and the creamiest cheese cake ever. Can anything beat that? I dare say... Cadbury®! ;) It certainly isn't mummy-like but maybe this is the very secret why it is so special. Not even a super mum could make it with mere household appliances. I was (and still am) wondering why it isn't available in Poland? They*** have got the whole range of chunkies, roses, buttons, caramels, eclairs, flakes and even heroes ;) You may imagine my facial expression when I had them in one place at some point. Opened and tried all of them. We both did (It's so good to share the guilt ;)). Chechnya children? No, Polish imigrants ;)

Mummy, look what Santa brought me! :)

So, if one asks me if I could feel Christmas this Christmas I must deny. A bare-faced lie doesn't make any sense (in public - even less). Yet, I felt loads of love and tenderness which any Christmass cookies, delicious mixtures or best-prepared meat couldn't make up for it in thousands of years. My first Christmas in London and I feel completely bewtiched. Well, they say the way to man's heart is through his stomach :) But this is about the city. Chriss got down to the very bottom of my heart and filled it completely in the number of other manners ;D


*not at all because I'm short of 'truly irresistible Belgian cookies' by the co-operative® (which basically, taste so much better back at home were thay were miraculously born than in Poznań - I guess they don't go with the salty tinge of sadness and longing). I'm short of the sugar of my life:
[C]rispy on the outside
[h]orribly tender on the inside
[r]eally juicy
[i]rresistibly yummy
[s]crumptiuous (I've just learnt a new word) with every bite, sip, lick or suck ;)
[s]trong with an enduring aftertaste****

** yes!, my daddy also gives in all the Christams shopping rage and my mum professes the pawn-but-splurge-to-show-off theory.

*** soon it's going to be 'WE'

**** the riddles must be the influence of 'Agent' and the follow-up asterisks - of articles on lexicography