Better, but still weak...

[alexpgp]

I felt about 1000% better this morning when I got up than yesterday at the same time, but puny enough later on in the day to hit the sack twice (though the second time, it was just to lie down). When I got up, I felt adventurous enough to do some cooking.

The goal was pretty ambitious, at least for me: pelmeni (Russian dumplings). A few days ago, LJ friend velvet_granat supplied me the key information I had been missing, which was a recipe for the dough.

With me rolling the dough (using a wine bottle, as the roller could not be found) and Galina stuffing and pinching shut the pelmeni, we soon had a pile of the little marvels, which promptly went into merrily boiling water.

In the end, aside from imparting an "off" taste (i.e., one I am not used to), my use of whole wheat flour may have made it difficult to really roll the dough to a sufficiently thin state. No matter. Galina and I both finished our portions (and put away the rest of the raw material, of which we probably used about a third).

Galina pronounced the escapade a "proof of concept," which is good enough for me.

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The snow finally eased up a few hours short of the scheduled end of the "winter storm watch" in our neck of the woods. As our property sits on top of a rise, there are places where the snow is more than a yard thick, and other places where - due to the howling wind that blew for much of the past couple of days - you can see actually the ground.

Shiloh is in her element. She particularly likes to climb to the top of the mounds of snow that have been scraped off of our driveway (some of which are taller than I am) to survey her domain. She's also pretty adept at "gazelle-ing" through the snow.

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Despite being sick, I managed to read John Sandford's Certain Prey, which I enjoyed. Somewhere close to the top of the pile is a tome by Viktor Pelevin titled П5: Прощальные песни политических пигмеев пиндостана, which I have managed to mentally translate into the equally alliterative Parting Pæans of the Political Pygmies of Pindostan not knowing whether said songs are really ones of "praise or thanksgiving" (which seem to be essential to the definition of a "pæan") or something else.

Not that it particularly matters, as I didn't buy the book to translate, but to read. Hopefully. Someday. Soon. Really.

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Apropos of which - sort of - clients are promising all kinds of work for next year, which is good news, but I've learned, over the years, that the only kind of work that counts is the kind you get paid for, or get paid a retainer to wait for. So we shall see what develops.

Cheers...

Comments

[russia-insider.livejournal.com]

I thoght that dumplings dont have meat inside. Am I wrong?

Pelevins book is pretty good actually. Though not as good ad Clay machine gun.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

You're probably right, in that the traditional "mark one" dumpling is either a dough mass or contains fruit, but the word is easily stretched (and understood, by the casual listener) to describe a small bit of flattened dough wrapped around any filling in general, at least until pilmeni enters the language (doubtful), as did, say, ravioli and tortellini from the Italian.

Cheers...

P.S. FWIW, while I realize Wikipedia isn't the end-all source for completely reliable information, their articles on pelmeni (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelmeni) and dumplings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumplings) sound eminently reasonable.

[russia-insider.livejournal.com]

Wow, Wiki dumpling entry impresses!

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Well, you just did. :^)

There was an article in the Moscow Times back in early November that suggested some possibilities behind Pindos and its derivatives, but I didn't find them convincing.

Then again, words don't require a pedigree; some are simply onomatopoetic.

Cheers...

[velvet-granat.livejournal.com]

Am I very glad that you pelmeni passed the quality test :) I still haven't made mine... perhaps when the weather cools down a little.