Missouri: Southern, but not really Southern

Or something like that. Looks like it's the Show-Me state, but I don't really know what they are showing (off). I did do some googling and this is what I came up with. The state motto is kind of cute. Or a bit pretentious, I suppose. They love their Latin, huh? "Salus populi suprema lex esto" it says and, at least according to the neighbourhood we stayed in, the welfare of the people is the supreme law. Actually, it's more like wealth, too.
 

Kansas City, the one in Missouri that we visited, borders another Kansas City. How odd? Not really. There are several in the US. On our way there, we also visited Waterloo, Albany and many other places. Just not the real ones. The city center, meaning the blocks with skyscrapers in them, is quite bigger than Des Moines and, I think, even Minneapolis. The highway system is a lot easier to figure out without navigation or even maps than what it is here in Minnesota. We hopped off I-35 and pretty much found ourselves downtown. No map, no navigation. My inner compass dragged us all the way to the hotel, too.

We were staying in a neighbourhood called Country Club Plaza. It's for them richies, it seems, but we somehow managed to find one single hotel (Holiday Inn) that was charging reasonable prices per night. Like, about one third of what other places wanted for a room with just about nothing in it. Or perhaps those other ones would have had a microwave and a fridge for two hundred more. Who knows.

The first night, we explored the neighbourhood by driving around. We went into the Plaza (it's actually a shopping center, but with regular stores instead of the boring mall ones), drove around, shopped. Walked a bit. Found a restaurant. Sat down. Sat down outside, wearing nothing but thin long sleeve shirts. And this was at almost ten in the evening (or is it ten at night?) in late October. The place was called Kona Grill and the food was awesome. Like, really awesome. We had no idea it was a chain at all (other than Big Bowl, which is pretty good, other chain restaurants are really easy to figure out) - I actually learned about it just now, as I searched the Internet for a possible website for this venue. It seems to be a sushi bar of some sort, or just overall relies on that kind of cuisine.

I had the best cucumber salad ever. Tasty sliced cucumbers, some crab sticks, some algae and a ton of sesame. Unknown dressing, but I'd say it was some rice vinegar or something similar, with a bit of honey and a hint of ginger. Actually, it doesn't even matter what it was, it was simply awesome. I took a few photos of our meals, but only with the cell phone. It would have been a bit too much, again, running around with the EOS.

As usual, Derek went with two appetizers and I choose two different rolls. Again, I was too big a chicken to go with raw fish or seafood. Can't do it, pretty much ever, as I don't trust anyone living this far from any and all seawater. So it was a vegetable roll and then one with shrimp and crab for me. The cool part about the crabby one was the cucumber my roll was wrapped in. It came in place of the nori. Tasty!

There are Derek's potstickers (ick! ick! ick!) in that picture, as well. And then he also had some chicken satay with the best peanut sauce ever. And this is coming from someone who really doesn't like peanut sauce. Price? Really affordable. There were some leftovers we took to the room, too, but they ended up in the garbage can the next morning as we had no refrigerator to stuff our goodies in.

The whole area, the Plaza center that is, was insanely alive. The whole setup reminded me of Dubrovnik in the middle of summer, when you can't really move around, let alone find a parking spot or even a table at a cafe or a restaurant. After quite some time, the whole thing made me feel alive again. There was movement, people were actually walking (!!!) and they were dressed a lot better than what I'm used to seeing around here. There was a lot of noise, chatter, music and overall - sounds of life. Neat. 

The next morning, I walked back there with the camera around my neck and the wallet in my purse (yeah, right... purse). As I kept moving, the wallet part grew thinner. Ohwell. After all, that was some shopping mecca down there and the prices were really good. I already said on Facebook, but I'll admit to it one more time here: yup, I do have my moments of being horribly shallow and yes, I did like it. It felt good. I enjoyed dragging my paper bags with ribbons and tissue paper. It was so much different than two years of good deals at local sales (Target, yes, it's okay, I still love you and will be back).

One thing I could not find were shoes. It looks like nobody cares, even there, what they wear on their feet. They had a few stores with something on a heel, but, hey, that's not for me. They had a couple orthopedic shoe stores, too (no, they are not prescription shoes, it's just what I tend to call a random, average American shoe store... can't help it) and that was about it. There was an Aldo and I have to admit it kind of cracked me up. One of those used to be in the center of Zagreb and, as much as I know, it went out of business. It was nothing special, let alone expensive, yet it somehow made its way to this Plaza in Kansas City, too. I did want a pair of cheapish shoes from this store, but the style and/or size just didn't quite work out for me. I'll just have to order something online. There is nothing in Mankato (other than some sneaker-like things, such as All Stars and the like, that I usually pick up at some sale for just about no money), and there's pretty much nothing in Minneapolis either. Orthopedics for the win!

The whole Plaza area is cute, but also insanely tacky and funny. Apparently, Kansas City is the second city in the world when it comes to fountains. It's right after Rome. They seem to be in love with Spain, as well as Italy, but that's only in this little neighbourhood (they even have gondolas, hello!). Everything else looks just about hundred percent American.

 

The rest of the second day we spent shopping (yes, ok, again) and then driving dowtown, where we went to during the rush hour. I mean, it was supposed to be a rush hour, five o'clock and all, but there was pretty much nothing. We got stuck at one traffic light and that was it. Approximately twenty minutes after five, the downtown was as dead as Des Moines on a Monday morning (see previous blog entry, or this album here). There was nothing left, other than the huge skyscrapers. No people, no movement. Just buses and a homeless person here and there. This is where my bubble got popped. Up until this point, I kind of believed Kansas City was the shit. Well, not really. Or not everywhere. The Plaza lives and I guess the Power and Light District does as well. But those two don't seem to be enough for me, I suppose. Yeah, ok, I'm picky.

The second day's meal was horrible. Derek picked out some restaurant in some different neighbourhood, a little bit further south from where we were. It was supposed to be good, but I guess all the eighty-some reviewers must've been some people with no taste in foods. It was, or at least was supposed to be a family run bistro, but all we were given were some horrible industrial/frozen dishes. Whatever. Considering the price of this so-called food, which was similar to what we paid at Kona, I was tempted to argue, but then didn't. I practiced my zen there, I suppose. We went back to the hotel eventually and chewed on our French bread from Des Moines (at this point, slightly old and dry, yet still edible).

On Thursday morning, we drove into Kansas and went out before we knew it. This adds yet another state to my list of those I have visited so far, whee. On this same day, we went all the way back to Mankato in one stretch, even though we originally planned to stay in Des Moines overnight. It was a beautiful day for driving and the roads were perfect, too. I enjoyed each and every one of the 650-ish kilometers (400-ish miles). The cat was happy to see us a day sooner and, well, the guy we found in our bathroom didn't mind our presence either.

All in all, this was a good trip. It took five days and about 1500 kilometers (930-ish miles) to see all these things and we only needed two and a half tanks of gas. That's almost odd for our gas-eating machine. (I keep telling Derek he should buy me a Rav4 for my birthday, but it doesn't seem to be happening...)

Iowa was better than expected, Missouri even more. They were even pretty interesting to drive through, except for the northern part of Iowa where they really don't have anything but corn. Like, literally nothing. Missouri people are really warm and pleasant and they speak some weird mix of heavy Southern accent and I-don't-wanna-be-Southern kind of thing. Actually, the younger they are, the more they try not to sound Southern. It also matters where you encounter them, too. If it's your hotel reception area, they will easily offer you some shramp, fewt, sirl or aspergers. If you're shopping at Armani, they will make sure they don't understand you if you ask for those.

What I learned from this trip? Hm. Well, I keep learning that just about everything is more about the people than just the looks of it. And I don't know my people. Or I'm simply too different to fit in. It's mostly about the things I'm used to as opposed to those they seem to like. Kansas City was, for sure, a bigger kick than, say, Mankato (I still haven't really experienced much of anything in Minneapolis, as I pretty much never get to go there in the evening, thanks to my work and the American way of life), but it still really isn't the right thing. I actually am not sure that any cities here ever will be. I'm too used to being European and living in an European environment. And it's different. Very, very different.

I do, however, enjoy seeing different things. So... a few eons from now, when I manage to line up another vacation, I'm sure we'll find something new to bite into.

P.S. More pictures from Kansas City can be found here.

Iowa: American Ghostland

Okay. I messed up. Originally, I was going to work on this blog entry the first day we arrived in Iowa. Or possibly yesterday, when I walked the streets of Des Moines for the first time. But it didn't happen because, at the end of the day, I was too tired to do so. Ohwell.

Anyway. We're on vacation. As in, we are off work, not at home and are, for the most part, doing things that at least somewhat differ from everyday chores and activities. We are not at a lake cabin of some sort, a resort, or in the woods, hunting. Or fishing. We are not going to bars or casinos either. I guess many wouldn't even refer to what we are doing as vacation, then. Ohwell, again.

We decided to go to Iowa, which made just about everyone laugh their ass off. I am not quite sure why, though. It's just another state and, after all, it's pretty similar to Minnesota. Hell, it's pretty much the same. Corn field here, corn field there. The end.

We stopped in Albert Lea (still in Minnesota). I expected too much from this town, I guess, probably because of its lovely name. There was nothing. By which I mean - nothing. Not a thing. Not a soul. It was lunch time, so we stopped at the only place that looked like it wouldn't literally poison us. This is the wholesome meal we had (yes, there was a Happy Meal involved and yes, I got to keep the bucket):

Soon enough, we made it to Ames. Actually, stopping in Ames was absolutely random. We had no clue what it was, yet it turned out to be a pretty interesting town. It's the home of The Cyclones, which I guess are some team belonging to Iowa State University. Rugby, I bet. (Yes, rugby. Football is the thing played with your feet.) Go, Cyclones, I guess. They're also really into fraternities and sororities, it seemed. They also have weird hula-swans.

Next stop - Des Moines. Nice looking city: a few skyscrapers, some skywalks... looked promising. It was pretty easy to figure out how to get around and we pretty much just stumbled upon the hotel we were supposed to stay in. The room was the size of an average European apartment, with a king bed, which resembled a smaller stadium. We even had a kitchenette. This was a gift from Derek's parents, for our birthdays. The two of us are too cheap for this kind of luxury. We stayed at Renaissance Savory, right downtown. The room was one of those with a view:

Night time, with a lovely shadow of my beautiful self.

And, given that all the literature was in its right place... we hoped for a good, peaceful night:

The room was really good, though. Comfortable bed, functioning bathroom. What else does one need, anyway? The deal came with no breakfast, so I went hunting in the morning. There was a bakery down the street, but it didn't open until eleven (to make it even worse, it closes at two in the afternoon). Actually, this is where I learned that Iowa, or at least Des Moines, was a ghost town. Beautiful buildings, nice streets and nobody to use them. Yup. I left the hotel at ten in the morning, came back around noon and saw maybe ten people during my walk. There were plenty of stores, but most were closed. They either don't care to unlock their doors on Mondays, or they start sometime late. Or close at four or five. Weird. We didn't see many people during their rush hour either. So, yeah, I guess Iowans are actually ghosts and they built their entire state for random visitors.The weather was perfect, though. High seventies, or, for my dearest Europeans - around 25 degrees Celsius. I actually got somewhat sunburnt.

Things to see in Des Moines? Downtown, for sure. It's interesting. They have a beautiful modern public library. They have a sculpture garden, somewhat smaller in size than the one in Minneapolis, but just as interesting and neat. Actually, it seems they both have the same artists' stuff on display.

 

 

There's an area called East Village, which they consider to be historic and awesome. It was cute, but at the same time, it was pretty dead, too. That's where I encountered closed stores and weird working hours. Too bad. 

Then they have food. It took some effort to pick the restaurants we wanted to go to. The first night, we ate at Centro. Italian. It looked good, the staff knew what they were doing (unlike the majority of waiters and waitresses in Mankato) and the food was pretty damn good for something so simple as random Italian. I was pleased to see that they left the pretentious part out of the equation. No beds of arugula caught my eye and I have to admit this was more than enough for me to like the place. Derek ate some salmon, I ate some parmesan encrusted aubergine with salsa and spaghetti. Before that, we shared a bowl of tomato bisque. Yup. It was that simple.

On Monday evening, we chose Django, owned by the same guy who has Centro, as well as South Union Bread (where we ate lunch the same day). Yup. Three different meals, three different places, one owner. And we had no clue beforehand. Django is also downtown and also looks pretty damn good. Plain and simple, yet classy. Again, the staff knew how to serve the meals, when to pick up the plates or simply pour more water into our glasses (yup, glasses, as in cups made of glass, something that a great deal of Mankato eateries have yet to discover and implement). The food was even better than what we had at Centro. Tomato-artichoke bisque to begin with, then some tilapia (with pistachios!) and mashed potatoes with pickled red cabbage for me and homemade goat cheese&spinach ravioli for Derek. They also had some cheese platers to gnaw on, so we gnawed. Manchego from Spain, homemade crackers and fig marmelade. Yup, good stuff. Would have been an A+ had it come on a wooden cutting board. This way, dear Frenchies, it's just a plain A.

Looks like iPad vine lists are the shit these days. Too bad we don't drink, I guess.

We left Des Moines on Tuesday afternoon, or actually, right at noon. The original plan was to visit Omaha, Nebraska, but, luckily, we changed our plans. I googled it on Monday night one more time and decided it looked too ugly, as well as boring. If that isn't true, well, dear Omaha, you've got to thank this picture. It made me not want to go there. (Okay, I have to admit that I failed to find any articles or something similar that could or would have convinced me to drag my ass there either.)

Kansas City won our today's lottery. It seemed big, it was close enough and they had an affordable hotel room available in the area we wanted to be in. And I guess the Wikipedia entry for KC did a better job than the one for Omaha. They included a better photo, too.

So that's where we went. And on our way out, we stopped at a bakery. Yup. A real bakery. Like those at home. At home home, there, across the ocean. We googled this one, as well and it looked promising, but I trust nothing and nobody before I see it. This was, for sure, worth seeing. It's almost worth going back to Des Moines for. The atmosphere, the smell, the prices and the variety of baked goods.... ohyes. I had bread today, that I did not bake myself, for the first time since October of last year, in Zagreb. Gorgeous.

Off to Missouri we went.

Two Days To Go...

...before my one entire week off work. Yup. A week off work. One. Entire. Week. 

Originally, we were supposed to go to Croatia this year and the work people scheduled my vacation for end of October/beginning of November. Lame. We have some weird seniority system where a relatively new person such as myself gets to choose only from some random leftover days on the calendar. Oh-so-neat! Especially when people seem to be enjoying taking vacations on random days of the week and when our department's policy doesn't allow more than one person gone from work on a same day.

Obviously, we didn't go to Croatia. First of all, I used a few of my paid days this summer, while my sister and her boyfriend were visiting us here in Mankato. After some struggle and help from a few co-workers, I managed to line up four days in a row (plus one weekend) and get my butt all the way to Yellowstone and back. And that was fun, but not nearly enough for a spoiled Croatian. I mean, yeah, back there we actually go on vacations that last longer than one day, three hours and seven minutes! 

Oops. I digress, as usual. We chose not to even try to fly to Europe and back. Too much effort and not enough vacation, or, well, better luck next time, I'd say. Hopefully next year and hopefully in summer. Derek's not yet seen pretty much any of the Croatian coast (except for some of the island of Krk and some Rijeka and Novi Vinodolski and none of it in summer). 

So we're gonna go to Des Moines, after a lot of thinking. One of the plans included New York. Second one was Washington DC. Then we almost packed our bags to go to Chicago. Then we gave up on that one, too. There were no cheap plane tickets in sight and, at this point, we're not comfortable spending some insane money. There might be something else down the road (or not so down?) that could hit our wallets. Then we wanted to drive to Chicago. Then I got lazy even thinking about it. Eight hours some minutes of highway and highway and highway? Man. Boring. Yawn. So off to Des Moines we go. I keep hearing it's a pretty place. We'll see. Omaha and Kansas City are close enough for one-day trips, too, if we'll feel like it.

Yay vacation. It's about damn time, I say.

Another good thing about today - I went to the post office to pick up a mysterious parcel (they left a notice in our mailbox yesterday and I had NO clue at all what it could have been). Well, this is what I got:

What came in the mail was my birthday gift from my best friend from way back when. She's also one of my two maidens of honor (yeah, ok, I actually had a third one, my sister, in the American version of the wedding - I'm that special). I love the gifts, but I also love the fact that the mysterious parcel that had to be signed for, too, wasn't some lovely invitation to a prison. (No idea what I'd be sent to jail for, but you never know, right?)

Also, I dragged my butt to YMCA tonight and signed up for some cycling class. Cycling Tone Fit blabla something. It's two times a week for one hour, a combination of cycling and strength training. Finally something that fits my schedule and I really honestly sincerely and more than anything hope it won't be yet another class I will share with 60 year olds who weigh about three times as I do. Dear Gods of Exercise Scheduling, did you hear me? Please. Please. Pleaaase? 

My bike is about to retire for the winter, I guess, so this is going to be useful. Hopefully soon I'll be able to organize my work/school/housework activities and get some vinyasa yoga squeezed back into my schedule. Anyway, it feels good to get moving again (on a more regular basis, since I've not really been just sitting on my ass all this time).

And now, before I go watch an episode of Breaking Bad (which may or may not result in snoozing on the couch) let me tell you how famous I am. Or perhaps it's not me, but this small village also known as Minnesota.

This evening, I finally decided to become a member of Radio Free Current. I like that station (actually, radio is my old love...). And I love this guy - is there anything better than some British accent on the radio, in the US? Tonight's special was an extra donation of $50 from Newman's Own for every new sustaining member. So, yeah, I became one. And on the membership form, I ticked a box that said sure, feel free to say thanks publically or whatever it was. So they did. I was pretty pleased to hear Mr. Wheat pronounce my name correctly (then again, I'm sure he's heard it elsewhere, perhaps in Europe where it doesn't get mangled as much, if at all).

Just a few minutes after that, the phone rang. Derek's mom wanted to know what I was up to. I wasn't really up to anything; she actually caught me typing here. Well, she said, her sister called. Because her son called. He was driving around Minneapolis and listening to the radio. And heard my name. I mean, seriously, even if you weren't, say, my cousin-in-law, would you put two and two together if you heard about a particular Ines, originally from Croatia, who lives in Mankato? Well, funny, either way. So now everyone knows, says Derek, that I'm a filthy rich American who can afford to donate. [insert a nice LOL-ing smiley here]

And that's it.

Can't wait to drag my famous ass to Iowa. Whee. Corn field to the left, corn field to the right... so, dear Des Moines, I'll wipe you off the face of the Earth if you're boring and ugly, ok?

Stuffed Peppers, Stuffed Post

I never really like stuffed peppers. I'm not talking about any stuffed peppers, as in peppers with some sort of a substance in them. No. I am talking about this kind of traditional Croatian (or just regional?) dish that consists of bell peppers filled with ground beef and a little bit of rice. So, yeah, I never liked it. But I am somewhat a masochist and sometimes I cook things I don't care for.

I cooked them peppers the other day, I so did.

I had four bell peppers, dark green in color, bought at the Farmer's Market here in Mankato. They smelled decent. They looked decent. They tasted... err, let's talk about that later. They were not the right peppers, that's for sure. It seems America has not heard of those, the real bell peppers not made of wax or plastic. The skin needs to be thin, yet still crispy. They can be yellow, red, green, orange, or whichever combination of these colors. The meat of these peppers is not half an inch thick. And their smell fills the room. 

These are the right guys:

So, yeah, I did not have those. I worked with what I had. Then, the meat. Ground beef just needs some fat. Without it, it might as well be charcoal, or cardboard, or whatever. There is no difference, really. I don't think I've ever found anything with more than 20% of fat. It looks like Americans are obsessed with fats. They just ban them, for whatever reason. No fat this, no fat that, no fat everything (mind you, I have found one (1) kind of yogurt here in Mankato that consists of, believe it or not, milk with some milk fat and nothing else)... but then, at the same time, everything is loaded with sugars. Whee. Anyway, yeah, meats. I worked, again, with what I had.

The end product was disgusting. Well, okay, we did eat some. The sauce (thick tomato-soup-like broth) was pretty good. The meat was boring, dry and kind of hard as a rock. And the peppers? Those weren't even food. Chewy, bitter piece of rubber describes them better. And I cooked them for about three (3!) hours. Ick. The raccoons had a feast that day, that's for sure.

No more stuffed peppers, Croatian-style for this family here. At least not before I manage to grow my own (yes, I'm looking for some seeds, thank you for asking).

I did better today. I made some French potato (I'll never understand what's so French about it, to be honest) and there are leftovers for tomorrow, too. Perfect. With the nasty online class that's been devouring my Monday evenings, a leftover meal is a great way to go. I remembered to take a picture once we were done eating. Yay me.

The weather has (finally?) turned into something that resembles autumn. Autumn? Fall? I guess I prefer autumn, or at least that's the word I used all of my childhood (all of my 15+ years of English school were filled with British English speakers and professors), but everyone here around me uses the word fall. So I guess I do, too. (Which one belongs where, anyway? I'm still in love with neighbours, favours and licences that my American computer programs keep trying to turn into neighbors, favors and licences. The one I never learned to live with, though, were colours. My life has only been colored, for some reason.)

Oh. So what am I talking about here? Who knows. I, for sure, do not. I turned the heat on this evening. It got a bit stupidly chilly in here. We tried it out yesterday, for literally a few minutes, just to burn down all the old dust in the vents. Now it's nice and warm. Neat. The cat loves it, that's for sure. She was sunbathing this afternoon in the middle of our bed:

I also did some raking today and then, finally, I got all of our Halloween decorations out. I didn't even know we had that much stuff. I suppose I sometimes sleepwalk to sales, huh? 

A whole bunch of Halloween pictures are here, along with a few dozen (or more?) albums from my US life.

Boo.

Good Mood Food

I swear, Mankato dies around the time chickens go to bed. Once the sun falls behind the local YMCA building, everything is done and over with for the day. If there is night life, it's happening far away from this pair of eyes.

There are bars, I guess, but those don't seem to be my cup of tea. I don't drink, I don't care about sports (especially those I don't even understand) and I couldn't care less about bar food either. Derek is the same. And that, then, leaves us with nothing.

Every once in a while we'd like to grab a bite to eat at a later hour. No, we're not talking about three in the morning - ten in the evening would be just fine. And what happens? Nothing is open, other than a few fast foods. 

We spent a couple hours at Derek's parents' house this evening, scanning some paperwork for my immigration business. And then we got hungry. Amongst the awesome choices, he picked Arby's. The door said -  restauant closed for the night; drive-through open. Argh. Hate drive-troughs. I can't choose anything for the life of me from those huge billboard-looking panels. I don't go to fast foods often enough to be ready to recite my picks. 

Derek went with some philly steak sandwich and mozzarela sticks. I picked onion rings. I like onion rings. I think I like onion rings. I've actually had them a certain, smallish number of times in my life and a few of those were really good. The rest were pretty disastrous. Arby's onion rings were a waste of money. Onedollarninetynine cents and some tax went down the drain or, actually, down the ravine. I feel bad whenever I throw some food away. Luckily, we have the racoons around here.

This Good Mood Food, as their packaging says, turned a decent mood evening into a smelly, bad taste in the mouth kind of parade.

Ick. Ick. Ick. Heaped with Happiness was more like Heaped with Rancid Oil.

Dear Arby's, you will not see me again. (I should have known better; someone made me try their curly fries long ago. I gagged.)

Whenever I get my moments of accepting fast food into my relig.. I mean system, I should probably stick to McDonalds. Their small little hamburger has yet to let me know. The fluffy bun, tastless piece of meat, sprinkle of shitty mustard... it just can't go wrong. It's always as lame as expected. These other things, however, usually get me horribly disappointed. 

Now I sound like a fast food expert. And I am not. I got to see quite a few places this summer while my sister and her boyfriend were here. Thanks to Ben's Food Manifesto, I actually went some places I wouldn't have gone to and ate things I otherwise wouldn't have eaten. I think Sonic won the Worst So-Called Food  title during the challenge. Their onion rings just beat anyone else's. I think it's safe to say Sonic is not even food.

Anyway, enough with all this food. I washed the windows today. All of them on the main floor. Then I raked the yard. And our yard is not so small. Then I got rained on. It was pretty neat. Almost mid October and I was out there in my summer clothes at seven in the evening, getting rained on. I now have blisters on my hands. I ache a bit. And that's, actually, just fine. It's a nice moonlit night, too. I turned off the lights while driving back home from Derek's parents. For a little while, at least. Yes, ok, I know that's not safe. But I get the kick out of it. Especially in the winter. And no, not on a highway or anything.

I think I felt my first heartburn ever on my way home tonight. Before I tasted the disastrous onion rings. It's gone now, though. The wheels of grease washed it away, I suppose.

Off to bed with me. 

Guten Nacht.

Mix'n'Match

We ate at a Mexican restaurant on Saturday. It was one of the two places we go to when it comes to Mexican foods. At those two restaurants, I will always eat two same meals over and over again. I've learned my lesson. Taking risks, when it comes to food, makes no sense. Every once in a while I'll still do it, but it usually results in a disaster of some sort. At one of them, Mazatlan, I will always eat Pollo Espinaca. I don't care for the chicken, but there's something about the spinach, mushroom and cheese combo it comes with. And their rice and beans are pretty good, too. This time, we went to Plaza Garibaldi and I ate their Vegetarian Quesadilla. What I love about those is that they both feed me at least two times, while they cost pretty much nothing. Good deal. And a nice pig-out-meal after a week of homemade healthy things!

Here is my meal. The picture is again taken with the cell phone. It would have been too awkward to shoot some with the huge EOS at the restaurant, after all. At least without my sister being around. She would have done it, of course. She's the master of stalking foods with a camera.  The second picture is of Molcajete. That would be... a pile of food to feed a village. Or whatever else it means in Spanish, ok.

I just need to let you all know that I really utterly hate cilantro. I will tolerate it only in some good salsa. And that's only sometimes. I love coriander seeds, though.

We had two and a half meals each from that pile of food. Good deal for something like $20.

Anyway, Mix'n'Match actually had nothing to do with our Mexican meals. The title refers to my today's kitchen adventure. I had to cook after work, for tomorrow, of course. And I had no game plan. Actually, I rarely ever do. Sometimes I will know in advance what I wish to make and I might even go get the missing ingredients. Most of the time, however, I just work with what I have. Or end up running to the store in the middle of the process because, uh-oh, there's no carne for my chili con carne. Or no butternut squash for my, how odd, butternut squash soup. 

I decided to cook some soup today. Well. Okay. Soup, to me, is clear broth with some soup noodles in it and maybe a lone carrot piece or two. Perhaps some parsley and parsnip and that kind of thing. I've learned over time to stop confusing people so now, when I cook a stew, as in thick(er) liquid(ish) dish that's eaten with a spoon, from a bowl of some sort, I just say that there's some soup to be served. And then when I actually sautee something, I might refer to it as a stew. And life's so much easier.

The final product looked like this: 

Chopped sweet yellow onions, sweet potato and yellow carrot, sauteed with a spoon of olive oil. Sliced leek, both white and green parts, of course. Later on, I threw in some green and red lentils, for good measure. Parsley, salt, pepper and a dash of ground pepper. Oh, and a can of butter beans, along with the starchy water they come in. Good stuff.

It took about 45 minutes to prepare, with all the cooking. Maybe five of those minutes were spent chopping the ingredients and stirring here and there. While it was slowly cooking, I washed the dishes, talked to my mom on Skype, read a few articles online, etc. I always get confused when people around me say that they don't have the time to cook because cooking requires so much time. It sure does, if you choose to prepare a four course meal every day, followed by a few different desserts. But cooking a simple, everyday meal? It's really simple. And does not require meat thermometers and other probes (what are those things even for?!). It requires no preparation or dedicated kitchen time. It gets done while you're running around working on other household stuff. Or while you're watching a show. Posting on a forum. Reading a book. Watching TV, if that's what you do. Sure, sometimes I don't feel like it and then I just don't. But for the most part, we eat a cooked meal almost every day and it doesn't seem like I'm missing out on... life. Or anything else, for that matter.

Also, cookbooks. I love cookbooks. I buy cookbooks when they are on sale. I love the smell of a new book. I love the colorful pages. I also love cooking magazines and I am subscribed to a few (subscriptions here cost literally nothing). I love looking at those photos. I read the recipes the same way I read a novel. You know, start from the beginning, absorb the content. That kind of thing.

And then I don't really cook anything from them. I use them as a reference or to get some general idea. Every once in a while, I will actually do my best to follow a recipe. I really will.

And then I don't. It's just boring. Or looks weird. Or there is no reason why I would want, say, two carrots and one broccoli, when I can do seven carrots, half a broccoli and two slices of tomato. Mixing and matching usually works just fine, either way.

Today, I fail at coming up with good titles. Or bad ones, for that matter.

I cooked the leeks today. But before that, let me tell you about my shopping experience.

Actually, there's not much to say, that's not been said many times either in my own posts (elsewhere, obviously), or other people's as well. I ran out this morning to get our mortgage payment dropped off at the bank (personal checks, anyone?) and then I needed a few more groceries. I hate shopping on Saturdays, but there's not much that can be done about it. With a full time job, that's usually when I have the most time. And, well, I usually don't know what to do on wekeends anyway.

I was turning the world upside down last night, and then this morning as well, looking for Golla camera bags. Apparently they sell their stuff at various stores here in the US, but I have to admit it's kind of a lie. They'll have a random cell phone bag and that's it. I did find one at our local Target. Not quite the right color, but it will do. I love the insides and the camera fits perfectly.

Here's my new baby:

 

The SD card has not made it yet to our doorstep, but the old one is, for now, doing just fine.

Anyway. I went shopping, I said. I went to Walmart; I have to admit that's my favourite place for groceries. They have just about everything I need and their prices are a lot lower than at other grocery stores. I usually don't find any fresh produce there, but that's okay - that's what I have Saint Peter's Co-op for and, only sometimes, Mankato Farmer's Market. The latter is open almost never and isn't usually accessible to anyone who has a full time job. But that's okay. Most businesses, other than retail, are not there for you unless you choose to take a day off to get the job done. At five in the afternoon, the little city dies, pretty much. After that, you can go shopping or, well, you can eat. And that's it.

So here are the photos:

This isn't butter, y'know.

Tons of different so-called yogurts. I will eat exactly three from these shelves, even though it's usually just one

Big enough?

These guys can be squeezed directly into your mouth...

Big enough? I bought the small one. Last night, at a different store, they had some ready-to-eat pudding in a can this big.

I have never had ramen.

Boxes, boxes everywhere!

Unfortunately, for me and my bank account, that is, the contents of this cart probably cost a lot less than a few items that I purchased today. All the wrong items are insanaly cheap here. I forgot to take a picture of my own cart, but it doesn't really matter.

I cooked lunch today, now that I finally had those leeks. Some time ago, I stumbled upon an interesting recipe on a co-worker's blog and I thought it'd be neat to try that dish. It's easy and simple - sauteed leek, zucchini and garlic (I used a spoon or two of olive oil), with sage and yogurt. The mixture then gets added to pasta.

The veggies, still raw.

The veggies, now cooked. With yogurt.

The final product, mixed with IKEA organic pasta. Moose-shaped!

This was good, I have to say. The leeks were still crispy and they tasted really, really good. Zucchini as well. Pasta was good. Yogurt... not so much. The whole dish makes for a nice light meal, but there needs to be something done about the dairy part of it. I'll have to try adding some Greek yogurt (I can't stand eating those things for the life of me) because its high fat content might keep it from separating as much - Danon natural (low fat, as I don't purchase anything that's no-fat or no-sugar-added-enjoy-your-artificial-poison) disintegrated and turned mostly into water and some sour-ish curds. Either way, Derek said he wouldn't eat this. Then I made it. Then he ate two full bowls. Ha. I win this time, again.

After lunch, we opened the big box that was dropped off at our doorstep again. Parthenon Foods, whee! Here are the goodies Derek chose this time:

The olive salad is godlike. Godlike, I say!

I'm hungry already, btw. The lunch lacked... substance. Which is good, I suppose. I've been losing some flab again, whee.

Derek is taking me out for dinner tonight. I have no idea where I want to go, but I am sure I will take pictures. I'd love to eat pizza. I've not had any since last October. The round pieces of dough with some toppings I've had since... well, I don't really count those.

P.S. I hope my yesterday's followers have not abandoned me already. I might've deleted their names in error, too? Uhoh.

Whatchamacallit?

- "Leek", I said as she stared blankly at me and my bunch of white-green somethings. Leek. Just a bunch of regular leeks. I was checking out at a local grocery store and the one standing in front of me was a twenty-something year old female. "Oh", she said and crammed it into a bag.

I've been planning to cook some pasta-leek-yogurt dish for a while now, but I couldn't find leeks that weren't overgrown and had the green parts still tender enough to be eaten by someone without an extra set of teeth. So I found them tonight, those leeks. Not some rare, special parts for a nuclear reactor or anything.

A few months back, maybe even sometime last winter, a woman at Walmart had a question for me. She was around my age (man, was she young!) and she seemed lost in space. Err. Lost in the produce aisle. She approached me with a question - well, she actually had two - first, she needed to know if a six month old baby could eat zucchini. And then she also wanted me to show her what zucchini was. I sure do hope she peeled and cooked them, too. She might've, because there were no articles in the paper including babies and zucchinis.

I am such a nice cabbage lady. Even though I have not attempted to pickle any since 2009.

I used some of those whatchamacallit leeks tonight in place of green onions. I picked a meal I was going to cook tonight (I cook, usually, for the next day) and ran to the store. And forgot some of the ingredients. No, I have no good explanations whatsoever as to why I didn't have a grocery list. I usually do, which still doesn't prevent me from forgetting at least 1/4 of the needed items.

I decided to make some quiche. There was almost a full dozen of eggs in our fridge and the box said Sell Before Oct 3. Excuse me, btw, why do I need to know before when the store needs to get rid of its merchandise? I would, thank you for asking, prefer to know how long I have before the said items poison me. Anyway. I guess it's some weird obsession of mine. I always try to have eggs in the fridge and I can never buy under a dozen of brown ones (white eggs are also forbidden by my very strict religion, okay). At the same time, we do not really eat eggs. I will cook with them occasionally and I will eat a few hardboiled ones for Easter. A couple times a year, I might eat a bite or two scrambled eggs with mushrooms and/or zucchini. But those damn bastards just need to be there in the fridge. And then the expiration date comes. Then I start panicking because I hate throwing away things that could be eaten... then I cook quiche, I suppose.

I do not bake my own pie crusts. If I do (I've tried a few times), they usually turn into something pretty bad. Why, you may ask? It's that religion of mine. It bans the use of white flour. It can be mixed with other ones, though. And wholegrain pie crusts... let's just simply say that they are not too good. At the same time, I do eat some white flour products from time to time. Just like the Amish will use a phone here and there, y'know. For my pies (which I make maybe three times a year) and my quiches  (which I make, again, maybe three times a year), I just buy premade Pillbury pie crust and, yup, just like the picture says - you just unroll it. And sometimes, like I had to this evening, you need to patch it up a little bit.

I have to admit I didn't alter the recipe that much this time. I used almost all the ingredients it called for. Almost, I said. Green onions were not used because, well, I didn't have any. But I had homegrown sweet onion which didn't even make me cry. I wanted some greens floating in my filling, so I shaved a few leaves off of those leeks. Voila. The recipe was from Coolinarika, a Croatian recipe site, so it mostly called for Croatian ingredients. Or at least those that can easily be found in Europe. Well, tough luck.

Instead of so-called sweet cream, also known as cooking cream, I had to make do with Crema Mexicana - it works for some things, but not so much for some others. I cut down on calories by splitting the quantities with some 2% milk. Good enough. I also added three eggs instead of two because, first of all, my brown organic eggs are microscopic and, secondly, I needed to get rid of as many as I could. Good enough, again. Then it wanted some shredded trapist. That's cheese. And I have to admit I have no idea if anyone here would have any clue what it was. So I got some Italian shredded mix. Good enough, ok? Pimento-stuffed olives on top. Yay, had those. A clove of garlic. Had that. Two tablespoons of olive oil. Had them.

And then - shrimp. Well, okay, did not have shrimp. The shrimp. I had a bag of frozen somethings. They're not too bad. Except that it seems that Walmart no longer has those we loved. Ohwell. Happens all the time. Thawed them, dried them (they are froozen cooked!), threw them on a pan, cooked them a bit along with those onions, leek greens and garlic. Added some spice. The recipe wanted Vegeta Mediterranean, but I didn't have any of that (we do have regular Vegeta for those few dishes that just really need it). Some Mediterranean spice mix we got in a Christmas goodie bag a year or two ago did the trick. This smelled good and tasted kind of okay, too.

Here are them shrimpies, in the process:

Finally, I stuffed it all into the oven, where it sat enjoying some high temperatures of around 200C for about 40 minutes. The house smells of fish, but the final product looks pretty damn good. However, the damn thing is our tomorrow's lunch and, at this point, I can't even tell you if it's any good. Oh, the suspense!

P.S. I am absolutely guilty of breaking off a tiny little bit of the crust.

And, another important update, the SD card should be here tomorrow. Woohoo.

O, harro thar.

So he made me do it. My husband, that is. And I guess other people, too. The masses have been waiting and I can't but deliver. Ohyes.  I own a blog now. I am no longer special, I suppose.

Does it matter who I am? Hm. Okay. My name is Ines and I am about to turn 17. I repeatedly do so, but only every once in a while I get to, say, celebrate my second anniversary of my 17th birthday. Looks like one of those is coming this year. Cool. Or not. Who cares. I am married to a guy, an American guy at that, and we live in this tiny little town in Minnesota. Mankato. It's one of the biggest towns in the state, yet I'm fairly sure it wouldn't be something anyone would randomly stumble upon when looking up a map of the US. Or any other map, for that matter. We own a house, insanely big for my Croatian standards (have I said I was not American, but instead an imported cow... err, legal alien?) and we live with a cat. She decided to move in with us last year, the day before Thanksgiving. I guess that's what you get when a pot of soup is being made by an open window. So, she's a cat. Like, you know, a regular one. White-gray-orange... a lot of fur (that she sheds regularly), four legs and a strange affection towards dental hygiene. Weirdo, she is.

Ok, back to the point, just in case I had one.

So I've been here for two years and some months. All legal. It took us a while to get all that paperwork sorted and pay all the fees, but here I am. Do I like it here? Overall, sure, I do. But no more (or less?) than I would like it somewhere else. There are pros and cons, ups and downs, but one thing is constant - there is no food here. Sometimes I find reasonable replacements, but rarely ever do I enjoy what is put in front of me. So I mostly cook from scratch.

Will this blog be about cooking? Likely. But also about other things. Any and all, whatever comes to mind. I do warn you, however, that my train of thought is pretty hard to keep track of. Ohwell. I don't like labels, so I'll try not to dedicate this thing to anything in particular. I do like cooking and I do think food is important (oink), even moreso when you do your best to live on limited calories. If I can't have it all, I at least want to like what I get, y'know.

To make the long story longer, let's start with a bowl of chili. I cooked chili for Derek today, just because he asked nicely and I am known for my own levels of, well, nice. He even found a recipe online that he wanted me to follow (hey, I just can't follow recipes, that kind of thing is against my religion). So I went shopping and I spent another fortune on a pound of grass fed beef - we eat (un)reasonably small amounts of meat, so when we do, we deal with these grass fed guys. Or, well, the grass fed guys' remains.

I forgot where the recipe was from; it doesn't even matter. I tweaked it a little bit - left out some cayenne pepper because we don't particularly like it and I didn't have any lying around (of course it didn't even cross my mind while I was shopping). I did not add sugar, I never add any to my tomato-based meals. The rest, I did mostly the way the recipe suggested. Except that I had to cut the quantities down to some reasonable amounts. Originally, they wanted me to cook for ten people.

Then I didn't fry the meat in a skillet and/or frying pan. I refuse to destroy my meat that way. Why destroy? Because in these lands, I can almost never find ground beef that still has some life to it (yeah, I get it, there's no life left...). It's lean and dry. So when you put it in a skillet and burn it, it's even more dead than it originally was. So I sautee my meats. Ground beef-like meats. And I did tonight, too. Along with onions, a teaspoon of oil, some water and a small red bell pepper grown in my own little amateur garden (which consisted of one potted bell pepper and one potted half-dead tomato plant). This tasted good. Then I added some chili powder, oregano (?!) and ground cumin. Ok, here I started getting a little bit suspicious and unsure about this whole deal. Cumin = hummus. Hummus = big, neverending love. Beans only sometimes get even close to that level of affection. Still, I threw in some tomato sauce and a can of red kidney beans, along with a can of pinto beans. I even drained and washed both batches. Yay me, for following the instructions.

It cooked for a while and that was it. It looked lame. Way too much meat. It tasted - meh. Like any other chili I've ever tried. Cheap chili from cheap restaurants. It didn't even have that homemade flavour. I don't think I'll cook this again. I prefer my mom's version of chili con carne, with or without carne, for that matter. It's a completely different meal.

So, yeah. Here's a rather poor picture of my tonight's creation. I only had my phone camera handy. We did buy a brand new Canon EOS the other day (boastboastboast), but we're still waiting for a new SD card to show up at our doorstep.

P.S. The whole layout is still in the works. What I like the best just doesn't work with the title color. The title color won't let me change it. Something ate my profile information in the process. Aliens landed somewhere. Etc.