17-X-2022.
On twelfth we readied the quince for brandy. We simplified the work a bit, didn't grind them, just quartered them, clean and cook in the still for a while. We did everything in the yard, the weather was fair. I didn't cut myself, though the quinces are much harder than apples. The fingernail, thanks for asking, grew almost fully, missing a millimeter in the corner. Sanda and Linda sort of helped here and there.
We filled the big 100l barrel about three quarters, so it'll be about three stills, maybe four lighter ones. Now to wait out the fermentation. Fingers crossed, there's only a quarter of a liter left from last year's.
On thirteenth we ran gas. Not that there was anything to distill, it's that we were without power all morning, until 13:09. We endured coffeeless for a while, but no, can't prolong that forever, so take a pot of water and improvise a hearth. Warmed up, made coffee, tech to the people.
She is stubbornly cracking nuts. She figured out the trick that, despite the widespread conviction, they need not dry before cracking, but are better cracked right away and then dried. Fewer perish, are easier to shell and with the dryer it goes quicker. And there's a lot of them this year, and we seem to have hit the right time to pick them up.
On fifteenth Nina had her maturski - 24 years after elementary, the first traditional one. We persisted as dežurni with the kids, which wasn't hard, it's only Raja who got worried about his mom, until I explaiend that they were in zanatlija few weeks ago. Ah, once he got that, he was at ease and went to sleep.
She came around 4 on 16th, in good mood. We heard a bunch of stories. The guy who owns a lumberyard, where we bought most of the material in 2013 and 2016, turned out to be her classmate. And he belatedly figured out who we are, after seeing us with the twins in the stroller once.
Wound up for a wake, we couldn't sleep right away, so we had a couple of tutifrutis to relax (it's a relaxative) and went to sleep at five. I got up at nine, under pressure, internal. Had a nap around lunchtime, Sanda woke me up by means of gentle massage. Feels good :).
On sixteenth she did a huge job, which we postpone for years, and was about time: clean up the freezer. Found various treasure, fossiles, since cenozoic. The ham of 21-II-2016., still whole, we'll see about the taste. Two bags of strawberries, made pekmez of them the same day. One box each of sweet cabbage, sarma and beans (the cats are sorted out at least until wednesday). There wasn't too much ice on the sides, considering how many times the lid was opened - the kids now try to get the icecream themselves, and it happens at times that an end of a kitchencloth gets stuck under the lid, which then closes as if sealed, but isn't. Two boxes of some apricots in transparent syrup, what could that be... aah, eggs. That's when Lena went for a vacation and just couldn't take them, so not to throw them away. Will make noodles later (did, on wednesday and thursday, on the new machine, can do alone now).
So lots of it, but in the end turned out she was done fast enough, so we had time to swing to Čankovo for the last pickings. Took the van this time, so not to have it develop malfunctions for lack of use. Nothing much was done nor picked - more squash, pumpkins and green tomatoes. We didn't even make coffee, no time. I picked up the švorceniger to use up the last of gasoline, the new engine oil perishes after a month (so it says in the manual, fucket). The gras grew as if it were april or may, mild weather, no wind. The soil doesn't dry, for six weeks now there's no dust, it's always moist. It was dry for nine weeks before that. Monsoon clime, just about.
Got Borko on the first try in the evening, and Dragana not at all, except message. Okay, they're coming tomorrow.
Didn't get much sleep the next night either. Talked with Go and Stanley until midnight, then drank a couple and then around three my nose got clogged in the back. Not snotty, but swollen, and then the only thing that helps is to sit upright about twenty minutes so the pressure falls. It works that way for last few winters, a dozen nights each, at random. Slept five to eleven.
Their landlords got the willies, after so many years when they barely met, just sent the check with the rent and that was it. Now everything's getting expensive and they'd like to raise the rent, and according to best american practices they think it will be cheaper over an intermediary, so they mean to engage an agency :facepalm:... They'll try to convince them that every middleman takes off the kajmak, so better to meet halfway on their own. When his stepbrother's life insurance lands in his pocket, and perhaps half of inheritance (the other half would go to the father of the deceased, who'd be his step-father had he stayed with mother), they're thinking of buying a house somewhat out of town. Not that the current place is anywhere close to downtown, but the chaos in the center tends to spread.
Had a nap in the afternoon, mostly spent the day working on Byo. Someone on burundi went on about how much of a salary is needed to survive in NYC, so Linea and I agreed one can survive quite comfortably while spending less than half of normal. Though, it wasn't hard for me, working from home, not having to show off with a car appropriate to my status, no dress code to stick to, not having to avoid shops which were to cheap etc etc. Then someone quipped that I should tell how I, the nonconformist, got screwed for the greencard because of all that, just because I didn't want to be what they wanted me to. Well no, that's not how it was... so I posted links to 10-V-2006., then on 11-II-2004. and a couple more. Which snowballed into a minor avalanche of visits. On the other side, Dragana started reading me this week (when I emailed her a link) and now I had some traffic. Not even close to what it was in june, when Vasa of burundi read me regularly from the eighties until current day. So far I got all of 99 views for october - compared to almost 3000 for june; sGradlj.com had barely 280 while once it had 10000 a month. Gugao* forces its own rules, and I can't be bothered to jump to comply each time and hate to pay. So, guerrilla marketing**... slowly.
The 82nd frendz parti was good, each of the specialties amazed the guests - the flipover omelette of squash and whatnot, the shoulder in the stove, the swiss chards, the dried squash to munc, the salad, the sudžuk and cheeses from Divčibare, and on top of all that, pancakes with fresh cenozoic strawberry pekmez... The only eclipse occurred when Borko fell into pedagogic goals of schooling and why bother when 80% of teaching staff work over their dicks, start each academic year with a regulated strike which nobody hears about, has no effect whatsoever, with classes lasting effectively 20 minutes... shoot, he's teaching a class again. After some half an hour she somehow managed to snap him out of it by reminding him that he hasn't pulled it out yet. Ah, yes, he remembered and pulled out his phone to wade through whatever funny stuff accumulated since the last time. Nothing memorable, but at least doused this educational flame.
Eighteenth, did the pics, she made noodles of those frozen eggs, and I was buzzing around burundi and writing here. We have three new guys, seems refugees from ppp, where another decimation of princes just passed and the world politics topic was closed. Their moderators have flipped, it seems the Russians don't fare well in Ukraine so the populace lacks a cause to slit their wrists for, so they take it out on each other. I don't know which wave is this. Even our once dežurni Croat returned, Rođa Sančez (but he's not the only one, we have Bleeding Blitva from Zadar and Tovar now), and a few faces we haven't seen in a while.
Nineteenth did mostly nothing, except distilling the one still of pear brandy. Nothing much, got only 2,8 liters, but the fragrance while it dripped was divines, promising. Now the quince.
Now in the evening we sat to drink, and after a lengthy silence we spilled what beans we had. On top of the list she didn't like that I published Byo, and come to think of it, the experiment lasted long enough. I unpublished it the next day, and while I was at it, went to site's admin pages to check the throughput. And got shocked. Where statcounter.prg reported few dozen visits a day, this said a thousand. So I'll keep tracking it, but I think I'm done with these guys. Twice already I caught them with nobody at the helm, server crashes on a weekend and nobody notices until monday, so I unsubscribed, stopped paying them. But this is now not working, reports almost nothing. And it's not that I did anything wrong, it used to work for years. It can't be me, it's simply that they gradually got blacklisted as a foreign or suspect url on the page and simply filtered out by almost everyone. So chances are that from now on I'll just swing by the admin pages and copy a couple of numbers into api_posetu.prg (which will be retired now) and be done. So far it seems that the 311 visits they registered this month were actually about 54000.
On 20th, she prepared all the utility bills for all four houses (this, old house, Čankovo and Lalinski), and I took them to Milena's aunt's kiosk, lifting some cash from serekeš first. And look, there's a new brzožder (v. house dictionary) in their old kiosk again, in preparation. The brzožder which was there last year wasn't glorious... the maam held it open whenever she remembered to, less and less as it went, now you see her now you don't, answers the phone at times, at times not.
On 23rd, last visit to Čankovo, I guess, seeing as she picked the last of the green tomatoes, squash and pumpkins. I mowed a bit, to empty the tank in the mower. Though the weather is very fair, there was some frost already, and the leaves on the middle third of the tomato patch, and two thirds of the squash and pumpkins, are black and hung. Now she'll pickle these green tomatoes with bolivian hot peppers. The four best flowerpots of those (not ceramic, it's the six liter bottles) she moved to salon upstairs, looks nice there, and with some luck should make it through the winter and we may have hot peppers in the spring.
Tried the habanero the other day. Miracle. Red, juicy, firm, one would say it would ring when struck, textured like porcelain, and when sliced it emanates some fragrance, of which we all said to remind us of young cheese. Quite unlike the other hot peppers, which smell... well, like hot peppers, all having that same smell. Even the čorba smells of young cheese, even with what little we slice and mince into it, bare 1-2 square centimeters. A miracle, really. And hot it is. Not a problem, we got calibrated higher, so the portuguese chili sauce, of piri piri brand, doesn't come across as more than mildly hot.
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* properly Gugl in serbian, which in slanted cases sounds analogously to ugao (angle) - ugla, uglu, uglom and gugla, guglu, guglom... so its nominative must be gugao, to rhyme
** in serbian I used the word „pijaca“, green market, not „tržište“, the general market, and not „market“ as the adversatisers would say
Mentions: 11-II-2004., 10-V-2006., 21-II-2016., api_posetu.prg, burundi, Byo (Byo), Čankovo, čorba, dežurni, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), frendz parti, Gorana Sredljević (Go), house dictionary, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), kajmak, Lalinski Konak, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borko), maturski parastos, Milena Požarić, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), pekmez, ppp, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), sarma, serekeš, sGradlj.com, Stanley Berger, statcounter.prg, švorceniger, zanatlija, in serbian