Borscht!

I love learning to cook different types of cuisine. I have had friends from Mexico and Japan give me lessons on how to cook traditional, comforting foods from their homelands. While living in Belgium I learned to make some Flemish specialties. I also hold some Finnish and Slovenian recipes dear (since that's my heritage).

Gathering around food is such a universal tradition. It's interesting to me to see and participate in making food from different countries. I feel like it gives me a window into different cultures.

For years Troy and I have been talking about having a borscht-making party with our Russian friend Yuri. Finally we made it happen!

Yuri shared a very traditional, Ukrainian borscht recipe with us.

Lots of slicing and dicing was involved.

 The soup included beets, but they were one of many ingredients.

It was a tasty but VERY filling soup. It was definitely unlike any "borscht" I have ever tasted in the U.S. Luckily we invited some folks over to share the meal. We still had leftovers for a couple of days afterwards, which was nice because the flavor of the soup got even better the day after.

Holiday Trip Home

Troy and I just returned from a road trip to Minnesota for the holidays. I'm really glad we have the job flexibility to travel for a longer time period when we want to. Our trip was action-packed, as usual. We mostly visited with our families. Somehow, even after living away for all of these years, it's getting harder and not easier to be far away from them.

Some trip highlights:
 
-Bentleyville with my sis and her family immediately upon our arrival in Duluth (after a 11 hour day of driving). It was so sweet to see my nieces and how excited they were about the Christmas lights.

Ethan and Ria roasting marshmallows

-Getting time with family--especially with our nieces and nephews. They are growing so fast!

Auntie Lissa with Ria, Taylor and Amelia

Maks

Troy's brother Casey and his boy Jack

My sisters and nieces

Grandpa and Grandma with the girls

Grandpa Rick with Taylor

-The Rogers family get-together. We saw lots of folks we might not have gotten to see otherwise. Also, when I mentioned that I don't really drink hard liquor anymore, Troy's mom insisted that I do a shot with her. Ha!

Me and Angie

Troy with his uncles and dad

The Rogers clan

-Staying with Matt and Eryn in Chicago on the way back. They are such incredible hosts. They always have a variety of great activities and restaurant options planned for us. We laughed a lot and enjoyed some great food and pie together.

-There wasn't much snow in MN but we managed to get two cross-country ski outings: one with our good friend Sarah and one with my dad.

-Annual wine and cheese party at my mom's with close friends. Always lots of fun!

More pics are on my Flickr page

Bye bye Liz

We were really sorry to see another good friend move away last week. We've known Liz since we arrived in Charlottesville in 2005. Troy and I got to know Liz well when we lived in the apartment above hers for a couple of years. We threw some really memorable joint parties.

Liz is a beautiful, stylish, funny and incredibly smart woman, not to mention a kind and considerate friend. We will miss her dearly.

We were lucky to be able to host Liz at our house in her last week here. We made her a special, farewell dinner of beef stew cooked in Belgian beer (stoofvlees/stoverij) and homemade Belgian frieten with mayonnaise.

The musgrad community also got together to throw a terrific party for Liz. There was a delicious potluck of "hot dishes," including my first attempt at a tater tot casserole. There was also an improvisational, avant-garde "good-bye" performance and a ukulele sing-a-long. What will we do without Liz and her ukulele?

Still giving thanks

I guess you could say that I've been busy. It's nearly Christmas and I'm finally getting around to posting Thanksgiving pics.

But we had such a lovely celebration with friends in Charlottesville this year that it had to at least be mentioned. And Troy smoked the turkey on the grill. It was delicious!

We had all the traditional trimmings. And our guests did more than their fair share of the cooking, which was nice. Some standouts: Liz's sweet potatoes, Aurie's cornbread/chestnut stuffing and Lyn-Dell's cranberry-mango relish.

Troy, Liz and I topped of the evening with a ukulele sing-a-long! Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday for a reason: good people, good food and good times.

Pierre & Pippi

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays, despite the fact that my mom always hated having to help come up with costume ideas for us. As a child, I was a clown, a gypsy or a hobo for many years in a row because those were easy costumes.

I really enjoy the creativity that goes into coming up with new costumes each year. It's not very often that adults get permission to channel such creativity and enthusiasm. It's so much fun to see kids and adults dressed up. It's such a playful holiday.

I like that Troy shares my enthusiasm for dressing up for Halloween. Unfortunately, he always has to pick costumes that are elaborate. And he puts them together at the last minute. He usually arrives to the Halloween party several hours late because he's putting on the finishing touches (this year that involved soldering some LED lights into a mask). But he always makes a dramatic entrance!

This year, I went as Pippi Longstocking (no wig needed!) and Troy went as Pierre the Pantsless Voyageur of Two Harbors, MN.

The statue of Pierre was recently renovated and moved to the Earthwood Bar, Grill and Motel (where BradFest takes place). Pierre is a really strange roadside attraction. Nobody seems to know why he's not wearing any pants. His head turns very slowly (so slowly that you wonder if you are imagining it). Future renovations will enable Pierre to talk and I think he'll be getting a new paddle for his outstretched hand. Oh, and he has these blue, LED lights in his eyes that are incredibly creepy at night. Check out Troy's rendition, he's got the creepy factor down. ;)

A picture of Pierre during BradFest.

Piearchy

Last weekend we had some surprise visitors--some friends from Minnesota's Iron Range. Kevin and Sela were taking a road trip (which we discovered via Facebook) and just happened to be traveling through, so we invited them to stay with us on Saturday night. 

It just so happens that Troy had entered the Charlottesville pie contest (also a benefit for a homeless shelter). He had to turn the pie in on Sunday morning, which ended up being kind of a challenge since Saturday with our visitors was a really fun but late night. He didn't actually start making the raspberry chocolate chiffon pie until around 7 am...

Sela is a singer/songwriter who must require little sleep. She got up and played guitar and sang for Troy in the kitchen--surely inspiring the process and then later assisting with the mad pie preparation. When I woke up, the kitchen was chaotic and they were both delirious. It was complete piearchy--that's for sure.

But the results were still beautiful and tasty.

The contest pie!

Contest and test (tasting) pie!

Ready to hit the road after a pie breakfast and packing some Robot Roast Coffee.

Unfortunately, Troy's pie didn't win. He received some serious criticism from one of the judges (who we found to be a little pretentious). We were told we could go down to the basement to sample some of the competition. Since the judges only took a small taste of each one, there was a lot of leftover pie! Interestingly though, by the time we went downstairs, Troy's pie was nowhere to be found (though there were many others left). Troy's pie had already been eaten, which proves to me that despite the judge's ample criticism, it was still a spectacular pie.

Festy Fun

A former student of Troy's called him a couple of week ago to say that he had tickets for a big music festival in the nearby mountains but wasn't able to attend. He didn't want to sell his tickets, he wanted to give them away. He thought Troy might enjoy the festival.

Troy and I had already been thinking about going to the Festy but really couldn't afford the tickets ($100+/piece for 3 days of music and camping). We were thrilled to receive this incredibly generous gift, and determined to make good use of the tickets! We scrambled to prepare and then the next day set out on this little mini-adventure.

The Festy is curated by the Infamous Stringdusters, a bluegrass band that really impressed us. This was the festival's second year and it featured a wide variety of music, workshops, yoga and more. It's a really well organized, incredible event and gave us some good ideas for BradFest.

Troy with some of the many wonderful food vendors in the background--everything from pig on a spit to "Hippie wings"

Sarah White and the Pearls (with our friend on bass--Michael Bishop)

The String Dusters with members of one of our favorite bands from the fest, Rubblebucket

Rubblebucket, a great band that puts on an incredible show. Check them out!

One of the coolest camping set ups

I hadn't been to a music festival in a number of years. We lucked out and got a nice camping spot beneath some trees. It was interesting to see all the different folks who came out for the fest. We were camped between some kids who were just barely 21 and some older gentlemen who brought their instruments (including a mandolin and upright bass) and jammed out all afternoon on Saturday. People came from near and far, we met people from VA, MD, NC and NJ.

The overall environment was really friendly and people were obviously just there to have a good time. We feel really fortunate to have had this experience. We hope to make it back next year, and to convince some friends to come too!