To market, to market
Summer is obviously long gone. I mournfully packed up my summer clothes and replaced them with sweaters weeks ago, the temperatures last week made me consider getting out my long winter coat, and yesterday we got a decent amount of snow (!).
Despite having bid farewell to summer, there’s something from the summer that made me very happy and is making me happy still– namely, the fact that I made it to the market quite a bit this summer. The previous summer I didn’t go at all, as we spent half the summer traveling and the other half too exhausted to go out of our way to get seasonal produce from the market. That made me really sad. But this year I was a market-goer, which was facilitated by the fact that they opened a small marketplace right around the corner from us at the beginning of the summer. I could stop by there on my way home from work and grab whatever looked good. My first time there I impulsively bought green peas and raspberries at ridiculously low prices, not sure of what I would do with them. The next day my sister and her friend finished the camp they were attending here and came to spend the night at our place. I put them out on the table and those fresh, Estonian-grown peas and raspberries quickly became the best afternoon snack imaginable. I later got more raspberries, some of which are still in the freezer.
And remember these strawberries, from one of our first trips to the market this year? Beautiful!
I miss them!
I also got chanterelles from the market at a very good price (although the price dropped even lower later in the season). Chanterelles are called kukeseened in Estonian, which I love– it literally means rooster mushrooms! 
Sounds a lot less fancy than “chanterelles”, doesn’t it? Kukeseenekaste, or chanterelle sauce, is an Estonian favorite. I made some with the fresh mushrooms, then cleaned and froze the other half of my haul to use later in the winter. I love freezing things. I’m thinking of making some kind of quiche or pie with them.
I’m so glad I rediscovered the wonder of the market this summer. Somehow it makes it a little easier to face the impending winter knowing that I filled up (and stocked my freezer) with as much fresh, beautiful local produce as the short season has to offer. As we head into the cold months of carrots, cabbage and potatoes, hopefully those delicious berries and fresh mushrooms will keep me feeling strong, warm and healthy until next summer comes along.
The Omnivore’s 100 revisited
It’s been over a year since I dedicated a post to the Omnivore’s 100, a list that a blogger compiled of “100 things… every good omnivore should have tried at least once in their life”. At that time, I had tried 43 of the things on the list. As of right now, I’m not doing a whole lot better. I can check off spaetzle (#56), which I had at a restaurant in Tallinn this past year, and louche absinthe (#73), which I’ve actually had earlier but I didn’t check off initially because I thought it was some special kind of absinthe (when actually it’s the traditional method of preparing absinthe). And that’s it. Kinda sad. I blame it on the fact that a lot of the ethnic foods on the list aren’t available in Estonia, but there are also some things on the list, like nettle tea (#2) and blini and caviar (#72), that are readily available here, so I could seek those out at some point. I also didn’t make much of an effort to try any of the things on the list while we were in London in May– I’m sure I could’ve very easily found stuff like pho (#12) and steamed pork buns (#19) there. Oh well.
I think the list should include “an amazing chocolate chip cookie”… maybe I’ll add that to mine
I’m not taking the list too seriously– I think I’ll be OK with never eating a Hostess Fruit Pie– but it is a fun source of ideas for foods I’d like to try someday. Somebody also made a version of this list made up entirely of American foods– I’ll see how I do with that one another day.
Liver: Not a fan
J’s been focused on eating a lot of protein lately, and he tries to mix it up so he doesn’t eat all the same stuff every day. The other week at the grocery store he came over to me, said “I know you’re probably not going to like this, but…”, and revealed the label of the package he was holding– pork liver. He knew that liver was one of the few foods I dislike, but I told him to go ahead and get it, and I’d try some.
Tiny little picture of liver… hope I don’t gross anybody out
While he was cooking the liver along with onions in a sauce of beef broth and tomato paste, I tried to explain what turns me off of liver. I didn’t grow up eating it. I don’t believe my mother ever made liver when I was a child. I can’t actually remember the first time I tried it, I just remember gradually beginning to understand that there was a taste I didn’t like, and that taste was liver. It doesn’t bother me that it’s organ meat– I mean come on, I eat (and love!) blood sausage. It’s not the texture either– when J finished cooking the liver, I actually liked the chewy texture, almost like steak. But… the TASTE. It’s not bitter exactly, more like earthy, kind of a dirt taste, and it coats my entire mouth regardless of what other flavors are present. I actually liked the taste of J’s sauce, which was quite heavy on the white pepper, but as soon as I bit into a piece of meat, BAM– all I tasted was liver. I ate a few little cubes, but gave him the rest.
I wonder if I’ll dislike liver forever. I promised J that whenever he makes liver, I will taste some. Maybe I will acquire a taste for it over time, or maybe each time will just reinforce why I don’t like it. The try-it-until-I-like-it method has worked for me once before, with olives, which I really really wanted to like and eventually did. And I’m a firm believer in the theory that a person’s taste changes over several years. How about you? Have you ever taught yourself to like a food you initially didn’t enjoy?
Halloween at our place
Like I mentioned last year, Halloween is not a big deal in Estonia. But we still like it, so this year we figured we could make Halloween happen by having it at our apartment. It was fairly last-minute– we sent the invitation out less than a week before– but I think we pulled it off very nicely .
J took care of decorations. I love the fact that even though he didn’t have the experience of carving a jack’o'lantern until he was 25 years old, he still really wanted to do it this year. He got two small pumpkins from the central market in Tallinn, and carved one in the same style as he did his first-ever pumpkin:
and one with a slight variation:
I love the fangs! I think they look very spider-esque. And the red smeared all over is red candle wax, which added a particularly creepy touch.
I, of course, was in charge of food. I decided to try my hand at these vampire cookies from Baking Bites. Not only were they fun to make, but they also tasted amazing– a basic butter cookie surrounding a pocket of raspberry jam. Luckily our guests liked them too .
For the rest of the food, I kept it pretty simple. I put out some veggies and dip with creepy carrots “fingers” emerging from it, mozzarella-olive “eyeballs”, candy corn (which my mother sent to me again this year– thank you ema!!!), orange slices, guacamole, and some little “dirt cups”.
We lit some candles, turned off the lights, played some scary movies in the background (well, not that scary– the ones we ended up watching in their entirety were Scream and Shaun of the Dead), and that was it– the makings of a casual, fun Halloween party for grownups (or, you know, grownups who still like to dress up in costumes once a year). I’ll share pictures of our costumes tomorrow!
Happy belated birthday to J!
J’s (aka the Cooking Poro’s) birthday was last weekend, and as it was a rather important birthday, we had a little party to celebrate. I don’t have pictures of most of the food, as it wasn’t anything exceptional– veggies with dip, cheese platter with crackers. I did bake two things, though, and was thrilled with how well they were received. One was this blondie recipe, with about a cup of semisweet and white chocolate chunks and a few spoonfuls of toasted walnut bits thrown in. I was a little worried they’d be too rich, since like I’ve mentioned before, Estonians don’t usually have very dense, rich desserts. For my part, I knew these blondies were awesome– I tried this recipe in August and could barely keep myself away from them, even after I cut most of the pan into squares and stashed them in the freezer. And I needn’t have worried what others would think– people were OBSESSED with them. Pretty much nobody in our multi-cultural party (not just Estonians– we had Finns, a German, a Briton, etc.) had ever even heard of blondies, and some people thought I was joking when I said that’s what they’re called. People would ask “Is this some kind of brownie or something?” And then, after that, they’d ask for the recipe 
. I think a highlight of my night was when I was slowly starting to put the food away and I said aloud, “Look at that, only one piece of cake and one blondie left.” And my German friend said, “One blondie? I’m sorry, I cannot let that happen. These are just too good,” and proceeded to eat the last one.
And yes, my other successful creation was the birthday cake. I thought for a while about what kind of cake to make. I didn’t want anything too complicated, and neither did J. I’m not any kind of cake master, so I wanted something easy. Then I decided that a chocolate stout cake would be perfect for a man’s birthday (another recipe from Smitten Kitchen– I love her stuff so much!). My man likes beer and he likes chocolate, so it was a perfect choice. I made a two-layer cake, and we had a minor crisis when one layer essentially broke in half (horizontally) when we removed it from the pan (the recipe had warned of sticking, so I buttered the pan really well, but as it was silicone I guess that just wasn’t good enough). The other layer came our nicely because I was smart enough to put a buttered round of parchment on the bottom of the pan and let the cake cool completely before removing it. Since the broken layer was a bit lopsided, so was the completed cake (with chocolate ganache between the layers and on top), but I don’t think anyone noticed. It was delicious.
Those are my ever-so-delicate hands cutting the cake (not the birthday boy’s)
This is seriously a great chocolate cake recipe, and of course it’s a lot of fun to inform people that there’s beer in it. You can’t really taste the beer, but it does give a bit of deepness and almost bitterness to the cake. The ganache, or some other kind of sweet frosting, is a must to tie it together. As mentioned before, there was only one small piece left, which I was happy to finish off the next day as a reward for a job well done.
But anyway… while I was happy that my baking endeavors were successful, the most important thing about the night was that we had an awesome time celebrating J’s birthday among friends (… and a vodka watermelon ). Happy belated birthday, honey!
P.S. When I logged onto WordPress today, I laughed when I saw that a search engine term that led somebody to the blog today was “old man poro”!! How terrible! 
