Saturdays and Eggs

I'm working through another weekend evening to try and ensure that I will be done by tomorrow and in time to go toss my cousin's kids around in the Gauja River. It was around 30ºC in Latvia today and will probably be the same tomorrow. Great swimming weather.

Though I'm supposed to be translating right now (I feel most of whatever I write or do at otherwise inappropriate times comes about when procrastinating), I can't stop thinking about the omelet I had for breakfast and the egg situation in Latvia.

Oh yes, we have a situation. About eggs.

Although life in Germany gave me the choice of buying brown or white eggs, life in Latvia generally greets you ONLY with brown eggs. White eggs only show up around Easter, right in time for them to be bought out and used for traditional egg colouring. (Truth be told, they might be available year-round somewhere else, but I'm used to not expecting to see them anymore.) So, brown eggs it is. And that's cool. I'm down with brown eggs; I have been since Germany.

The thing I'm not so down with is the fact that, when living in Latvia, you are reminded on an egg-by-egg basis just exactly where that egg came from. Almost every single carton of eggs is filled with individual reminders that, even if Egg did come first, this one definitely came from Chicken. Specifically, from the internal, body-juice, feathery nether regions of Chicken.

Eggs in Latvia are, as could be surmised, not cleaned very well or at all before being packed into cartons and shipped off to grocery stores for shelving. Standard cooking procedures at home have also changed. Gone are the days of carefree egg cracking straight into the bowl. Now everything is prefaced by wrinkled noses and gasps of disgust as eggs are turned over to reveal bits of feathers, bits of other egg and even blood before attempting to wash it with several cleaning fluids before use.

Granted, you can always opt for the plastic six-pack of eggs of non-specific origin, wrapped in a thin, black carton slip sporting a picture of a glistening body builder, but as these eggs neither come with miniature tricep and bicep bulges, nor do they make you strong enough to challenge strongman Raimonds Bermanis, the extra four santims don't really seem worth it.

Now, instead of popping the lid off the carton at the store just to check for cracked shells, I also check for the carton that has the least amount of carnage still attached to it. The day I find a tiny chicken beak or underdeveloped wing tip in a carton is the day I go ovo-vegetarian.

Ze donats/The Donuts

First – I wrote this somewhere else a while ago, but it is once again relevant because I may be grabbing handfuls of breakfast there tomorrow if a) I get enough work done tonight/early tomorrow morning (such are my Friday nights, boo hoo), b) if I wake up in time to not miss three consecutive trains out to Riga (it happens, life moves on) and c) the Ze donats is open early enough for the pending feeding to be considered breakfast. (And d) who am I kidding? Breakfast is clearly an any-time applicable meal concept.)

Second - DOUGHNUTS. For some reason these pop-culture type re-spellings of words (also: drive thru) really, really bother me.

Third - oh my HOLY BUTLERS OF AMSTERDAM*. I'm not a fan of cake doughnuts, but these circles of perfection are a nice middle ground between cake and raised types. They also cost only LVL 0.25 a piece (unless you go for filled, which run 5-15 santims higher) and come in all kinds of flavours with exciting names, like "Džons lemons" (John Lemon). That's right, they're clever, too. The people, not the doughnuts.

Ze donats/The Donuts is located on Kr. Valdemāra Street in riga, between Dzirnavu and Lačuplēšu Streets (closer to the corner of Dzirnavu Street). The staff are extremely nice, the place itself is really unassuming and comfortable and the eats, well... Let's just say "two's company, three's a crowd" does NOT apply to this as a Sunday morning breakfast item.

This place used to be a slight problem (reference name's days, birthdays, last-day-of-work-on-contract days, random days) as I used to live a half block from it. The only benefits were that it wasn't open late (thus eliminating any post-office day depression fixing via sugary carbohydrates) and that I tended to quickly forget that there was anything in this country similar to a "good doughnut". Now that I live outside Riga, temptation has dropped considerably. This lack of temptation, however, makes taking the 30 minute train ride and 15 minute walk from the station to the cafe all that more important because, dammit, if I came all this way I'm going to go there and eat WHATEVER I WANT.

I also just discovered their website is up and running and full of annoying sounds. Just wish it had opening hours available!Hours of operation are found under the "Kontakti" section.


*I don't get it, either. That's how I roll.

More Pumpkins and More Vets

Please grant me Weekend NOW.

This has been week two of three rough weeks; I'm happy to say that the third week of huge projects will only last until next Tuesday. Then I should be somewhat back to normal in regard to a work load, though there is a possibility that this will not happen.

Tonight is "American Culture" event night at work. I'll be leading an English activity and have made 16 cups-worth of cranberry sauce and baked three loaves of pumpkin bread (this was the way I spent my US Thanksgiving evening). The sad thing is that I have enough pumpkin purée left over to make pumpkin bread for another year.

That's a rough estimate.

Saturday the cat gets another vet visit, this time to catch him up on his vaccinations. Sorry, buddy, but it has to happen. I honestly am partially expecting to have to leave the cat at the clinic overnight so they can extract all of the broken needle tips that will lodge into his skin. This cat is the King of Skitters and I don't foresee that this visit will go smoothly. The less traumatising purpose of the trip will be to get him some more de-worming pills.

This morning I had my left hand scratched up and nearly took a paw-smack to the face FOR NOT GETTING UP THE MILLISECOND MY ALARM WENT OFF. Thanks, cat.

I am incredibly tired, incredibly drained, and want nothing more than to go to sleep relatively early tonight, go for a run tomorrow morning and take an easy weekend. I'm trying to watch my health as best as I can -- two more people have died in Latvia due to H1N1+complications. I'm considering re-visiting a clinic to get a prescription for a steroid inhaler, just in case I get a head cold that develops into what I had earlier this year.

Garlic and Vets

Saturday night some friends and I went to Kiploku krogs – The Garlic Bar – and had a very flavourful dinner. As far as I know, almost everything on the menu has some amount of garlic in it, including some of the desserts and beverages (ice cream with honey-garlic sauce, anyone? Or how about some delicious garlic mulled wine?). The joke/saying that goes with this restaurant is that if you plan to go, it is recommended to spend the rest of the evening hanging out with the same group of people who were at dinner, as you are the only ones who will be able to stand the garlicy company. I don't think any of us ate enough garlic for it to be seeping out of our pores, but I definitely still had the taste on my tongue the next morning.

But the food was delicious, the garlic mulled wine was as well (for this they don't actually crush the garlic, just drop one steamed clove into the drink, so the garlic taste is almost undetectable) and the prices were decent. Definitely a must as far as going back for more.

Now about the visit to the vet. Oh, experiences. First I called the taxi company to make sure I could transport the cat that way (by car from my apartment is the most direct, as with any other transport I would have to walk through the city for 10-15 minutes to reach the respective tram stop or the main train station with a howling, dagger-spitting cat, then sit on said mode of transportation for another 30 minutes while people eye me either warily or with annoyance as the cat makes horrific "I think I'm dying slowly and painfully so I'm going to make you experience every second of it" sounds. The cab company is run by saints who allow pets and even said "Hey, if you have a kennel for the cat - even better!" Like I was going to just carry the cat down to the car without any problems. On the way to the vet the cat literally crapped himself silly (at least we had some fecal samples for the doctor when we got there) and stunk up the cab. Not my problem.

The visit itself went well; the vet was a younger guy who kept dropping things all over the place, including at random and uncontrollable intervals from his pockets. He also knocked a few things off the exam table and expressed his frustration that something was going strangely that morning. He couldn't find anything wrong with the cat, and I started to think it might be because of his own judgement. The man is holding my cat down while sticking a thermometer up the poor animal's butt and tells me, "Wow, your cat is really freaked out." I just looked at the vet and kind of laughed. If he can't see the reason for the cat's nerves, then he's beyond my help.

The cat got a de-worming pill, prescriptions for a kind of anti-diarrhea pill and a "natural bacteria" balancer, and I got tagged with an LVL 19 bill (NOT bad at all - this price includes the medicine) and the strong suggestion to take the cat in for more de-worming and the next round of shots once he feels better.

The cab ride back started with the cabby picking up the cage and looking at it, then up to me with eyes glowing like a small child's and asked excitedly "A kitty!?" The cat was able to control its bowl movements better during the return trip and immediately forgot his recent trauma once back at home and stretched across the top of the radiator.

At this time it seems like the cat has gotten better. It was absolute hell trying to get the medicines in him; the pills were ridiculous (my cousin, also a vet, said that he doesn't even give that specific type of pill to clients for their pets until he chops them up and puts them into gel-caps to mask the bitter taste) and if I fail miserably trying to shove those down the cat's throat, I was generally too tired to try to get the other paste (which is apparently semi-delicious and tolerable) into his mouth. But the symptoms of whatever look like they're gone and I was able to call the clinic and let them know that everything seemed to be back in order. The cat is now splayed out on my lap, but little does he know that another vet visit is just around the corner.

Tonight I also went to choir practice with the Martinu koris. It went about as well as I could have expected it to go. I haven't completely forgotten how to sing, though practising my violin more will definitely get that hearing back into shape. Tomorrow night I go to play my violin in a Latvian fiddle-type setting with some folk dances/games people. That may be a bit more nerve-racking.

When there's a Crisis...

When there's an economic crisis –- bake pastries! There is a relatively new bakery/café on Terbatas Street called "Kukotava" (The "Cakery"), another Martina bekereja (Martin's Bakery) opened up in Old Town on Valnu Street a month or so ago, there's a new Vecrigas konditoreja (Old Town Bakery) shop on Dzirnavu Street, a relatively new bakery/café around the corner from the House of Blackheads called "Opium" and, coming home tonight I walked by a "Coming Soon"! sign on Dzirnavu Street for a bakery that will be called "Smilsu kuka" (roughly "Shortbread").

So...you can have your crisis, your depression, your losing of a job, but you can totally have your cake and eat it, too! That is, as long as you can afford it.Wednesday is Independence Day here in Latvia, so I'll take that opportunity to sleep in, have a slow breakfast and then wander around the city and take many pictures.

Rome information by Wednesday the latest. If I miss that deadline, it's because I have 250 pages of fishing brochures to proofread by Friday.

Kaija, Kornelija

As information about Rome, my Latvia road trip and my recent visit to the vet with the cat are STILL PENDING, I've been greeted on this my Name's Day with a lazy, snowy morning. I'm still trying out pumpkin pie recipes for an event at work at the end of the month. Recipe number two seemed to be better consistency wise, but I did something wrong with the oven temperature and scorched about half of the top of the pie. I'm bringing it with to work today as my Name's Day office treat and am planning on slathering it with an artistic layer of whipped cream to cover up the damage. I made cupcakes for my birthday and though I realise that this process is more time-consuming than just buying a torte, it's also less expensive and more interesting for me.

That being said, pumpkin pie is very easy to make, completely from scratch. Like, almost dirty easy.

Pumpkin "goo" used for the pie filling can also keep in the freezer for a little over a year. This means it would be possible to steam, blend and pack pumpkin for an entire year's worth of pumpkin pies, cookies, and other assorted baked goods. I know I could go the soup route, but I'm not into that. I deal with oveny things.