Pad Thai

Cousin Mart is staying over with us while he works on building his masterpiece violin. For dinner yesterday, Ave made Pad Thai for us that was also a masterpiece. I didn't get to take a picture, but it certainly looked like the real thing, and tasted even more so.

I was supposed to make hamburgers tonight, but it turns out Mart will be working late on things musical. He will miss the burgers, then, but I've yet to meet an Estonian who likes my burgers much, so maybe he lucked out.

Notes on shopping

I'm not sure how this came to be but this Saturday I got Mike to go shop with me. We visited one of the major shopping centers in town and bought a bunch of warm fall sweaters in this season's hot colors and patterns. OK, and afterwards I demanded we go check out a relatively new (about a year and a half or two years old perhaps) neighborhood grocery store/cafe at the border of downtown I had been meaning to check out for quite some time. It is one of the few innovative small food businesses over here that sell and promote locally grown produce and organic and "clean'' food from other countries. They also prepare and serve dishes that are made of the same clean ingredients and can perhaps be found in a menu of a fancier restaurant but not in your everyday cafe or lunch spot. Dishes like risottos and quesadillas, pureed soups, and salads with bulghur, couscous, or chickpeas. Sound good, don't they? And taste good too, I suppose, to the collection of supporters and praisers they have gathered. To Mike and me, the sandwiches were good, not great and the service was a bit lacking in attention, maybe due to the compactness of the dining area that caused it to be noisy at the ordering counter but perhaps because for the young lady the switch to English came unexpectedly. I was greatly disappointed they didn't have any chocolate chip cookies ( I only wanted to see and judge them) or butternut squash but I did enjoy the freshly squeezed carrot juice and was satisfied with their, say sun-dried tomato and grains selection.

Was one day of new grocery experiences enough for me? No! So on Sunday I dragged Mike to the newly opened entertainment center as they call themselves, the bait being a grocery store announced to have the best selection in town for non-seasonal fruits and vegetables and international delicacies. Well, yeah, trying to make our way from one isle to another, zig-zagging between all the other first-look takers, we only managed to gather two bell peppers and a bottle of fish sauce (no yams, no green beans, no coconut milk, no curry paste) before giving up. I don't expect we would have found dried red chiles or star anise, not to mention lemongrass or even peanut butter for that night's intended Cambodian curry. Had to make another trip to our "home" grocery chain and get what they had, which turned out to be enough for the tasty dinner. And I don't think I'll be going back for the German sausages and yogurts to that other store. Okra? Hmmm...

Moods

from the first full day of fall, from around the house.

Farmers' markets

are one of my favorite things in summer. Going to one on a sunny Sunday is such a great tradition; I should make it a tradition. There's a marketplace between our house and A & O's, that means within walking distance. It's been there at least from the Soviet times and I suspect the non-farmers' part that is has is a leftover from the end of the Soviet times. The non-farmers' part, which is not strictly separated from the produce section, consists of vendors selling unknown label (as in opposed to all-known Levi's and Ecco and Guess and such brands represented in stores) apparel at Target prices. Such clothing market in Tartu used to be my go-to place for most of my outfits back when store shelves were filled with emptiness.

Anyway, whenever I go to the market and see the abundance of strawberries, blueberries, apples, plums, cranberries, cauliflowers, tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, leafy greens etc., etc., I just want to buy a little bit of everything. When they're in season and you take the word of the merchants that claim they're locally grown, the fruits and veggies taste so much better than the supermarket kind. I trust my local growers to provide food as safe as if I got it from Grandma's but the problem with having lived in a city too long is I don't know when to expect which veggies. Did peas ripen before beans and were carrots already available then? And is 3 weeks after Midsummer Day too late for strawberries but too early for black currants?

So it's a good thing we got this new, upscale market open now that keeps a blog where they let all city slickers know when to come for what produce. Added bonus of course is that the said market is pretty much behind our apartment building. This market is quite small though as I think its purpose is to serve more as a cute tourist attraction rather than a welcoming meeting and bargaining grounds for smart shoppers and old timers. And it can't make me lose my mind that easily.

So good,

it was +5 degrees C yesterday when Nuffle's plane landed and when he walked through the town, smelling the air and thinking the spring was making its way over here. How do I keep him from looking or venturing outside today?

It's not that often that we get visitors,

especially those coming from the southeast side of the apartment. I actually know of only two cases. The first was in the fall. We have this tiny, old fashioned fridge in the flat. It needs to be turned off or to the warmest setting every once in a while (luckily just once so far) to melt the ice from the freezer compartment. And this is what I did that day. I took out the plastic containers holding summer's berries tenderly picked and packed by Grandma and set them outside, on the windowsill. Sure enough, not 10 minutes went past when a big white seagull came, landed next to the boxes and started nudging them...

This time it was that we had brought beer from a store but it wasn't cold enough so to keep it cooler between the sips I stuck the bottle between inner and outer window. I think the bird was just bored and very curious and looking for a reason to come spend some time with humans.

So this picture and a few others taken this winter are up on Mike's gallery in the Estonia album. Maybe one day the Christmas snaps will be up as well.

I was taught to be a polite person,

one trying to please other people, I believe, so even when I'm in the middle of a most secret money-counting process and all of a sudden hear a knock on the window(?) I wake up. Well, silly me!, we don't get window washers and birds don't land on the window ledge unless there's some edible looking stuff out there, so the knock must have been on the wall separating us from our neighbors. I try to pretend nothing happened and get back to the money-counting but the neighbors play music and bounce around (seems to be the time of their monthly party of which there was no trace eight hours earlier. when would you start your parties?). The music is not loud - we have great walls in this apartment - but there also seems to be a bunch of people in a festive mood standing in the street, in front of our house, and its no longer dark outside. (For my own record and future reference if needed: Yes!!, the days are short and gloomy only in December and January. Starting at least the second week of February it is possible to wake up before the sun and to get home from work in daylight. Mike and I are both wishing for spring, though. Should I not have jotted down that last line?)

Yesterday was Valentine's day. I don't think a lot of teddy bears get bought for the occasion but flowers for sure, and chocolate. The day is called Friend's day so friendship more widely rather than just that one special person is appreciated/celebrated which I think is a pretty good idea. We went out to eat in Nuffle's favorite Italian place, just around two corners. I think I remember how on those two years that it didn't snowstorm in Fred it was recommended to make reservations for Valentine's dinner and I was wondering myself how it would be in the old town here. I know there were talks recently about several restaurants being for sale and I often walk by an establishment "temporarily" closed. Sometimes I walk by restaurants that are open; the only ones that always seem to have clients in them are Mickey D's and another fast hamburger joint from up North. Turned out we weren't the only customers in the ristorante, and it wasn't packed, either. Well, perhaps a little at the end when an eightsome of friends showed up to claim their reserved table.

Earlier in the day I was riding around town and noticed letter-size yellow posters taped onto apartment windows. ( I was riding around town, but through parts of it so I can't tell how many of those posters there really were, plus, it might be the beginning, still.) Anyway, these were the same leaflets we found in our mailbox on Friday. It's bright yellow, has " I heart City Center (or another district)" on one side and a call for fighting for the survival of the City Center/ another municipal district on the other side. You see, one of the local parties has proposed to unite a dozen city boroughs and nearest townships under one municipal government as it is supposedly done in Riga and Helsinki. Most of the citizens, however, don't seem to care for having to drive kilometers to go have a chat with their elders.

Getting up before the sun does

is not that hard, really. I've done so every weekend in January. (Please don't pay that much attention to the publishing date up above.) On four of those weekends I've been outside waiting for the sun to rise or waiting for other sunrise spotters to return and on the fifth weekend, I'm sure I gazed out. The mornings of the first weekend in January were different from a whole bunch of previous ones in a sense that at 9 a.m. there were other people strolling the streets of the old town. It was so out of the ordinary and not expected but also good feeling, as if summer had returned. The people in the streets were dressed a bit differently though than you'd see them in a summer. A lot of them wore fur coats but also furry hats and boots. Most of them had come from Russia, either by bus or their own car, either back after previous New Year's visits or perhaps first time because recommended to do so by friends. For some reason, part of which might be steady marketing, Tallinn seems to be quite popular New Year's destination for our eastern neighbors. Even more surprised, I later found coaches with Swedish and Latvian license plates lined up outside the old town, waiting for their passengers.

The last Saturday in January was similar: I wandered outside and was surprised by all these early risers that looked touristy enough but whom I couldn't label as coming from a certain place of origin or for a certain reason. They seemed to be Northerners, though. And it was sunny that day which made it even more summer-like.