2 Weeks of Breakfast: Day 6. Oatmeal-Banana Pancakes

It's official: spring is coming. How do I know? Well, because this week is a MASLENNITSA (stress the first syllable) week. The week when, in Russian tradition, we cook lots of pancakes and crepes and blinis (which symbolize the sun) to welcome spring.

Like most religious and harvesting holidays (e.g. Easter), maslennitsa doesn't come on exactly the same week every year - I always have to google it to find out when exactly I am supposed to get that pancake pan going. Sometimes it's in February, sometimes - in March.

In the good old days in the centuries long gone, maslennitsa was HUGE. People used to eat blinis every day for a week. There was a designated day when a family invites his in-laws, and then hers, and then when everyone went TO in-laws, and so on. There were festivities and events like burning an over-sized Winter Figure (which looks like a scarecrow) and jumping over a bonfire.

Well, as the maslennitsa starts off today, I am not planning on jumping over bonfires, but I decided to make teeny-tine pancakes for breakfast.

Ingredients:

rolled oats - 125 ml (1/2 cup)

flour - 125 ml (1/2 cup)

sugar - 5 tsp (brown, preferably)

baking powder - 1/2 tsp

baking soda - 1/2 tsp

salt - 1/8 tsp

ground nutmeg - 1/8 tsp

banana - 1/2

egg - 1

yogurt - 125 ml (1/2 cup)

milk - 60 ml (1/4 cup)

liquid vanilla - 1/4 tsp

oil

Just follow the recipe:

2 Weeks of Breakfast: Day 5. Gurieff Pudding

Ahhh, the bliss of sleeping in... Well rested, relaxed, cradling a cup of coffee prepared especially for me by my beloved hubby - perfect timing to get into a more complicated breakfast recipe!

In Russia, people say children are supposed to eat porridge if they wanna grow big and strong and healthy. Problem is, most people (especially children) hate porridge. Perhaps, because parents are too pushy on the subject.

After moving out of my parents' place, I spent years enjoying my porridge-free world. But then something happened and I realized that I miss it. I crave it. A few more years passed - and here I am, getting creative with my porridge. This one doesn't even look or taste like one! 

So here's one recipe like that. But it certainly isn't something to be undertaken on a weekday morning...

Ingredients:

milk - 500 ml

semolina - 1/2 cup

eggs - 2

ground wallnuts - 500 g

fresh berries - 300 g

sugar - 1 cup

oil

fruits and berries for decoration

Preparation instructions: (breakfast recipe)

2 Weeks of Breakfast: Day 4. Birmingham Eggs

It's Saturday today. I planned to sleep in and make something really fancy for breakfast today. But then I made plans, which meant I had to be out by 9:30 am, which meant I had to wake at 8 am to allow enough time for the breakfast woo-doo. Which turned out quite impossible.

When I finally crawled out of bed half an hour past the alarm, it was quite clear I needed an alternative recipe. Faster and easier - but, perhaps, still fancy-looking, it being a weekend meal. And I found it! 

I have no clue why it is called Birmingham Eggs, but there you go:

For 1 portion:

1 bread slice (the toasting kind)

1 egg

some butter

salt to taste

Looks fancy and is easily made. Just follow the recipe: (breakfast recipe)

2 Weeks of Breakfast: Day 3. Rice Pudding (Kasha) with Dried Fruits

I am tired. I really wanna sleep in. It's grey and snowing outside. Is it grey or gray? Whatever it is, I wanna stay in bed, curled fetus-like under the blanket. 

   Please don't wake me, 

   No don't shake me, 

   Leave me where I am 

   I'm only sleeping 

   ~ The Beatles

But no. It's 2 weeks of breakfast project. Why did I get myself into this, again? Thank God I planned an easy one today - half of it I pre-cooked yesterday evening.

What's good is that this breakfast always puts me in a good mood: it's the most favourite breakfast from my childhood. Since rice takes awhile to cook, it was a Sunday-only option (in my childhood Saturday was a weekday... just think of it: 6-day week! hideous...) Most often my grandma cooked it for me. It's sweet, it's got colourful berries and fruits in it, and it's not mushi as oatmeal (now that I simply hated back then)...

Anyway, rice pudding with dried fruits:

Ingredients:

~ 1 cup of round rice (half-boil and drain it the night before to save some time in the morning)

1/2 cup milk

2 tbsp of sugar

1/4 tsp of salt

dried fruits (I used raisins, cranberry, apricots and plums)

SO here's what you need to make a rice pudding: (breakfast recipe)

2 Weeks of Breakfast: Day 2. Risnik

You know how every time you set yourself upon a noble path, working towards a grand goal, something interferes and sends all your efforts to the pooper?

It almost happened today to my breakfast-every-day project. Almost. It turned out I had to fast for a blood test this morning. Which meant I wasn't supposed to HAVE a breakfast.

But I grit my teeth and made one anyway. For my hubby, if not for me. Noble me!

This is a simple enough recipe if you cook the rice the night before. I called it 'risnik'. I won't bore you with curiosities of Russian language and explain how something made of rice becomes a 'risnik', but that's a made-up word - by me - that doesn't exist EVEN in Russian.

Ingridents:

300 g. of round rice boiled in milk (I boiled it the night before)

4 tbsp of flour

1 egg

salt-sugar to taste 

a bit more flour for coating

The step-by-step recipe (and some further musings) is hidden under the cut - follow the link below (breakfast recipe)

2 Weeks of Breakfast: Day 1. Egged Tomato

So I don't work right now. In the past, whenever this happened, I slept in and then wandered around the apartment in my pj's pretty much the whole day. Yes, I would spend some time online searching for jobs, but the rest of the time was just wasted.

This time, I am determined to make good use of this free time I have. Obstacle number one: how to get myself out of bed in the morning?

A book called "Julie & Julia" happens to be the one I am reading right now and it gave birth to this little project of mine: to get myself out of bed in the early am and get myself going, I will be cooking breakfast every morning for the next 2 weeks. A different meal, each time! A breakfast for me and my husband (and my husband leaves early).

So here I am, with my first breakfast, I will call it an "Egged Tomato" :)

Per one serving:

1 egg

1 fair-sized tomato

1 sausage/hot dog/piece of ham - whichever you happen to have

Time: about 10 minutes

I hid the rest of the recipe under the cut, follow the link: (breakfast recipe)

sneaky cops

Why do cops hide? I mean, in the all-out war against those who speed - why do cops hide installed cameras, why do cops drive in unmarked cars, why do they hide themselves behind lamp posts or in the bushes?

These tactics are all very good for catching and punishing the speed-racers, but they aren't much of a help in preventing people from speeding. And preventative measures are supposed to be the best ones, right?




Something as simple as signs that alert drivers "speed camera here!!!" are much better as they actually PREVENT speeding. People see them and slow down. These are common in many countries.

But there are much more creative approaches! In my motherland, Russia, cardboard cops were invented. That's right - they install cardboard life-size mock-ups of a cop and his car and strategically place them along the roads. Drivers slow down the moment they spot the 'cop', and it's not until they get really close  that they can tell they were fooled. Quite a know-how, huh?



But the most creative approach - in my humble opinion - was introduced by the Dutch. Just watch the video...

Angry Birds? Lucky Birds!

Superstitions, signs, harbingers - there are so many of them. Don't open an umbrella when indoors. Lucky penny. Knock on wood. Some are common across countries and even continents, some are personal.

I have one: crappy birds. Or, rather, crapping birds.

When I become a bird crap's target, that's for luck.And I am officially one of the luckiest people on Earth. I get crapped on (by birds!) all the time, wherever I go. It happens so often that I get all worried and anxious whenever there happens to be a crapping pause.

My first crappy bird: I was about 6, soaking up the sun on a lounge chair on a lawn, admiring a bunch of ducks passing over me in a lovely V-shape. Next thing I knew, my calve was covered with a yucky brownish mass.

Ever since then, I remember birds crapping on me.

Shut Your Bag!

The evening was lovely and nothing foreboded what was about to happen. We were chatting, eating suzhi, drinking green tea. Then I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye. A flying saucer! Literally. Well, perhaps not a saucer but a bowl - but flying it is. Towards me.

Plump! And the bowl and its contents - lettuce salad in some kind of a mayo-based dressing - plasters my coat, my scarf and by bag on the chair next to me.

The waiters are jumping around the chair and my mayosalad-covered bag, scarf and coat, collecting pieces of lettuce, rubbing off the sauce... We're carrying on with our lovely discussion. Smiling at them. No worries, this could happen to anyone.

After they apologized like a million times, they waved the dinner cost, gave me a 50 bucks certificate and offered to reimburse my dry-cleaning.

I stopped smiling nonchalantly only when I decided to check my messages. Inside my bag, there were lettuce leaves, the sauce already absorbed in my notepad.

Keep your bags shut - or you might end up with something nasty in it!

The Rear End

On a day like today, with snow piling fast and tall, with most people staying home (I am guessing to avoid commute as much as to avoid driveway cleaning), with poor visibility and ugly driving conditions, I wonder: why are the means of in-car communication so limited?

It seems that all of those lights and horns were designed with the sole purpose of taking care of "the other guy". E.g. white taillights - I am backing out. Orange blinking light on the left - I am turning. Red taillights - I am stopping. Beware, stay safe!

But why is there no way to communicate that annoying tailgater behind you - to take care of myself?