Catching up

Dear Life: Not that I'm complaining, but if you don't mind I would like a bit of spare time every now and then. Thank you.

Non-resolutions, and a bonnet

Well. Happy New Year. We made it through another one, didn't we, and here we all are moving on. So, what to do here, I wonder. Because the thing is, I've spent most of my time so far trying to figure out what it is that I do best about the whole blogging thing. Mostly it was a futile quest, since all I ended up with was motley, and sundry bits of unimportance that I thought were pretty anyway.

Yet I like doing it, even though the result is often not as good as one would hope. My goal for this year is to get better. (Specific, aren't I?) The details aren't there yet; I haven't quite gotten it sorted. (Anything resembling a new year's resolution scares me a bit. I haven't tried one in ages. I'm rather a failure that way.) I want to change the look a bit, more of a makeover than plastic surgery because I don't dare get too wild. Honestly though, if you please, what do you think?

I was about to point out that this is a baby bonnet, as if no one could tell. It was made as a gift for a new baby at my church, Adelina. I couldn't find a pattern that I liked, except one that came in a book with a bunch of other patterns that were either rubbish or knitting, so I improvised. It is quite simple really, a rectangle stitched together at the back and an edge of shell stitch. (Though I must admit to feeling rather proud of the texture.) It looks even more adorable on her, to no surprise. She's a cute one.

Five

That is the number of ingredients needed to make these biscuits. It's intriguing how good something so simple can taste, and very handy when one doesn't have a lot of time.

Biscuits

2 cups flour
4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
not quite 1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup (8 oz) milk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Cut in the butter, rubbing it into the dry ingredients with fingers.
Make a shallow hole in the center of the dry mixture with your fist. Add milk slowly to make a soft dough. The dough should be soft and pliable, but not sticky.
Knead dough lightly for a few seconds. Shape the dough into partially flattened balls about 3 inches across.
Place biscuits on a greased cookie sheet and bake for 12-15 minutes, or until lightly browned. Serve warm.

The "army" at work

I belong to a small parish, with only about thirty families and a small church. It is logical that being so tiny necessitates a way to generate income, unless we want to be sitting in a church without air conditioning every Sunday, never a good thing in Florida. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the slavic kitchen. There is a tiny sales counter in our tiny hall, adjoining our luckily not-so-tiny kitchen. Run by members of the parish, it sells all sorts of slavic goodies, predominantly kolach, kielbasa, halushki, halupki, and pierogi. My, how spell-check despises those names.

The best part is that it is all homemade, by none other than us parishioners. And oh, what fun it is! As the pierogi are the most frequently in need of replenishing, we have dubbed ourselves "the pierogi army". The last time we got together to make a batch of the sauerkraut, I decided to take some photographs.

I started out with the mixer full of flour, because the machine is bigger than I am. The bowl has a diameter of about two feet. I haven't been involved in the dough making process yet, but I have been a "catcher", for lack of a better word. After the dough has been mixed, kneaded, and formed into flattened balls, it is put through a different machine that rolls it out. I wasn't able to take any pictures of that because I was busy catching the dough as it came out. Next the circles get cut out and put onto trays, which are taken into the hall. There they each get a ball of whatever filling we use for that batch, and are pinched closed.

The pinching is my favourite part. And it's funny how everyone does it a little differently; after awhile you start to recognise who did what, even after they're cooked. Mine turn out with ruffled edges, another lady does marks on hers like a pie crust, and one older woman twists her edges into a braid-like design. We have yet to discover how she does it.

The pinched pierogi are taken back into the kitchen to be boiled and drowned in butter. You'll notice there are no pictures of that either. There wasn't enough room over there. But I do have one of the finished product, strategically cropped so you can't see the broken one on top.

***

I must apologise for my long absence. To be honest, I don't even have a very good excuse. Probably the most likely cause is that I am not the best at managing my time, and I've discovered that being a working student is no walk in the park. I'm back now though; that's all that counts, right?

Apparently I am not very good at introspection.

Vintage photo that I found... somewhere.

I find myself suffering from a lack of material. There is the almost-completed gift that I have yet to even attempt to photograph. I did make lemon poppy-seed muffins yesterday which turned out delicious and looking lovely, though they came from a box mix. But still, I don't think I could squeeze a post out of that with no pictures.

Therefore, I decided to try writing about myself a bit. Undoubtedly it is not something I am good at doing, but I think I've been tight-lipped so far. And I've noticed that the blogs that I enjoy reading the most are personality driven. I read them because yes, I enjoy the content and seeing the interesting things people do or make, but more importantly because the writers themselves are interesting. Unfortunately, I don't usually consider myself to be a very interesting person, though I do try. I had to write a two minute self-introductory speech in the tenth grade; it was the hardest assignment of the class. I am eccentric at heart, but too shy to be interesting.

And yet here I am, dear reader. So to begin, I live in a relatively small town in Florida, where it is too hot and there are palm trees everywhere. The common opinion seems to dictate that palm trees are tropical and exude exoticism; I think they look scruffy. But I have become very attached to living near the ocean. I was born in Florida, so I learned to swim when I was a year old. Then I forgot over the winter and had to learn it again when I was two.

I would like to travel in the future, because you hear about all these interesting places and I'd rather see them in person than in a travel guide. So far I haven't been out of my time zone. It seems travel requires money. My first destination is Ireland; I've had an inexplicable fascination with it as long as I can remember.

For now, I play the piano and the violin, read a lot, write (or procrastinate about writing), crochet, and take photographs of the crafty and culinary things I make. Right now I am listening to "Wind and Rain" by Julie Fowlis, one of several song versions of an Irish/Scottish legend. Such is my life.

Also, I am a nanny, and I make souffles.