Another quasi fight with Tejka, she tried to strangle me. I'm concentrating on Oli Boj, though, not out of spite. Oli Boj, OTOH, has made peace with Đica. Had to promise them to bring some green apricots, which were crazy popular at the time (and don't have any taste yet, they're just sour).
Our daily bread is somewhat malfunctioning. Could be caused by LebarProm having built a new bakery, more modern, or for them switching to this new, enriched recipe... isn't like it used to be. While fresh it was still excellent, to wish to be sent to buy it so you can pinch the end while it hangs, hot and crunchy, under the handlebars while you pedal home. But it'd dry quickly and become hard; to prevent that, my folks kept it in a plastic bag, where it'd become... not quite squishy, fresh dough is squishy, this was more compressible, like clay, and somewhat grayish, sad looking, nobody liked to eat it when it was more than just one day old. For a while we thought it must be the pickup truck they used to distribute it to the shops, which was one of those that the driver doesn't dare turn off, for who knows how many tries will it take to get it running again. Such contraptions would always churn exhaust gases in odd places, and quite probably in the cargo box, thus tainting our bread. But no, that's not it, it didn't get any better when delivered by a new truck.
Eh, wish we had „Panonija“ now... when their two kilo cipovka* comes by, it takes us a whole week to eat it, and it's still good the last day. But they were merged into LebarProm and the good bread was gone. We didn't mind it then, because the mainstay bread wasn't too different then. But they had to improve it, dog mother*.
We always had some cooked meal for lunch, rarely a yesterday's reheat, and if the meat wasn't allways prime league nor the best parts, it was present almost always. Fat pieces were avoided. Liver was frequent. Breakfast and supper were generally the dry meat stuff from Bek - sausage, salami, bacon, parizer**, sometimes viršle*** (that while I was a kid, now rarely). The better stuff - ham, kulen, pršut, dry neck, prague ham... almost never. Only now, since Bek had the „shop on the gate“, these more expensive things started appearing in the fridge. This shop sold „goods with error“ - mislabeled things, for instance the cans made for USSR but the producion date was embossed in american format, or the mortadela where the wrapper gut had burst. Happened at times, because the rack on which the salami and sausages were hung after leaving the production line was a coatrack on wheels, and when full it would be pushed to the other end of the hall, where it'd wait for the next day to be delivered as fresh, or to be put in cold storage. Now there it happened that the workers would be overeager to meet their production goals, so they'd push the rack a tad too fast, and it would bang against the other racks, or the wall. The whole mass would slide down the bar on its hooks, and the last one to the wall would be pressed, and may burst its gut, eh, what can one do. They had other tricks as well, like not lowering the mixer handle all the way down, so some salami bars would have too much spice on one end, too bad, discard. Dad, being on good terms with his workers, was in the loop and would know when this or that would be in the shop. The majstors kept a lid on things, tried to keep this down so it would still seem accidental.
----
* the unabridged phrase is „may a dog fuck their mother“.
** although the same, ours is named after the german word for „parisian“; yours is the whole Bologna city.
*** frankfurters or wieners, never knew the difference; ours looks like it came from german word „Würschel“ or „Wirschel“, but there's no such word. Ok, got some help, it's from „Würstel“.