It’s been a few months since I wrote about Gefilte Fish and, as I expected, impatient requests for the recipe did not pour into my mailbox. It doesn’t matter, you are getting it anyway; I am not letting good pictures go to waste.
Before you start, get yourself into the fish-making mood by listening to the music like this.
Now that you are ready, collect all of the ingredients. You will need some fish, customary is to use carp and its relatives, pike and walleye. 3/4 lbs of yellow onions for every 2 lbs of fish. Onions should have nice dry brown skins, which give the fish darker color. We laugh at the people who use carrots for that, that’s a huge faux pas. Also needed is a slice of bread, a small amount of oil, salt and pepper and 4-5 eggs, depending on the amount of fish.
On the day when we went fish-shopping, carp was not available. I wanted to drive to another store, but my aunt suggested we buy mackerel. Long time ago fresh mackerel was available in Odessa, where we used to live, and my aunt used it before for the gefilte fish. In retrospect, I suggest you stick with carp – mackerel sold here is previously frozen and even in it’s best days has a strong fishy smell when cooked. However, the process is the same and that’s what important.
Purchase the fish. I recommend not going overboard for the first time. 2 medium carps will suffice. Imagine those are skinny long carps.
“Sunset Over A Sea of Corn” would have been a title of a picture I should’ve taken but waited just long enough for the sun to finally dissolve in the eight-feet-tall waves of corn somewhere between Bowling Green and Laddonia.
Maybe I am compensating for not having a car for the first 23 years of my life and never taking a real road-trip until I was a grown man but I’ve been doing a double-duty putting some miles on my car driving around these here United States. It also helps me maintain a healthy-sized carbon footprint, adding my little share to the global warming and destroying the environment. Luckily my daughter doesn’t mind hours of driving as long as I don’t sing in the car, which is hard because the seemingly omnipresent country station is pumping out things like:
You should hear this stuff with the Russian accent, it will really “turn you on”.
Over the past weekend we added another 1,200 miles to my car’s odometer, going to Chicago and back. This time we took a different route cutting through the South-Central-Eastern Missouri and Central-Western Illinois in order to make a stop at Springfield,IL to check up on the Land Of Lincoln. Driving on the rural highways has a more intimate feel since you actually have to slow down in each little town on the way, you get to see people’s houses, rusted farm equipment, smell the manure, and pass a tractor or two on the way. Somewhere between the anti-abortion billboards, entertained by a single country radio station, another breed of American people goes on about their lives unconcerned by their standing in the social media.
We took our time driving through this area and if I actually stopped and took every photo I wanted to, we’d still be on the road. So here are a few I actually had a chance to take.
The General Store in Atlas,IL has this sign that is the most concise restaurant review I’ve ever seen: “Eat Here – Get Worms”.
Pike County Courthouse in Pittsfield,IL Lincoln’s Home in Springfield, IL.
Lincoln’s Home is just a part of a larger historic site which preserved Springfield as Lincoln would’ve experienced it, sans tourist crowds. In front of his home Lincoln Troubadours perform the period songs.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvshZW_Zfik
Next the Illinois State Capitol (compare to the Kansas State Capitol):
Chicago always has the neatest-looking sculptures. This one looks like alphabet soup on acid:
Chimpotle’s likeness scares customers away near some local bar:
Obligatory skyline shot:
I guess you can find peace and quiet even at the busiest corner in the middle of the busy city:
This could be Chicago’s mayor and his wife, or KC’s mayor and his wife (after skipping a dinner or two).
Lincoln’s body is still there, tourists disappointed by the lack of a souvenir shop wandering around the cemetery.
View of the Mississippi from Louisiana, MO.
Louisiana turned out to be a very nice small town with several streets lined with Victorian mansions overlooking the river. Some in better condition than others.
Health-care debate goes on here as well.
After watching the sunset we finally got back on I70 and the countryside disappeared in an unending strobe-lights of trucks and road construction cones. We were almost home.
This year marks the twenty-year anniversary of the triumphant end of my military service. Shortly after my long-awaited discharge from the Engineer Corps in June of 1990, the American Secret Services sensed a weak spot in the pontoon troops where I had served and used it to break up the Soviet Union. Of course, it was unthinkable while I was still in service; my fierce looks used to send the enemy running for their lives.
My Mom and Me. …long, long time ago… I can still remember
Today is the Soviet Army and Navy Day – a long-renamed holiday of a long-gone country. 20 years ago I couldn’t imagine being nostalgic thinking about my military service. But here I am – it was a time uncomplicated by work, taxes and raising kids and now it doesn’t seem like such a horrible way to spend two years of one’s life. So instead of rewriting my last year’s post I will share a few music videos on the subject.
This song is called “We Are The People’s Army”:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANU2Rz4WNcI
And lastly – world-famous Kalinka, here you can find the lyrics and sing along.
Recently a set of photos taken at the Kansas City’s Wonderland Arcade in the late 1960’s made rounds on the Internet. These photos are stored at the National Archives in the file “Wonderland Inc. v. United States of America, 1968 – 1968”. The National Archives allows searches but not direct links or bookmarks, so you will have to enter your own search terms.
The Arcade located at 1200 Grand from the 1940’s to the early 1980’s was covered in the press numerous times, like this Billboard Magazine article: Wonderland Arcade Good Model of Well-run Amusement Center published in 1946, when The Billboard was still an amusement industry trade magazine.
Same magazine in 1947 informed about the time when the Wonderland Arcade was robbed of $150 in nickels, some of which was spent on a “new suit, shoes and a tour of the city by taxicab”.
