The Comforts of Home (update)

Two notes to share:

1) Home-made haircuts are OUT. MG has lost his mad skilz. Or perhaps he never actually had any and was just deluding himself/never looking at the back of his head. It's been known to happen.

As luck would have it, though, there is a basement parikmakherskaya just around the corner from my woodland hut that charges 100 rubles* for a haircut, doesn't rush you or question how short and implicitly unfeminine the desired haircut happens to be, does not cause any bleeding of fingers or ears throughout the duration of the haircut, and asks you whether you are indeed Natalie Portman, the person in the picture you brought with you for reference. It was bar none and hands down the most enjoyable (not to mention most decent, and I'm not just eating up the flattery) haircut I've ever received. And whilst I waited, I got to watch some of the most impressive back-combing outside of Memphis happening all around me, for free. Gulia will be seeing me again rel'soon.

Question: how/how much do you tip a stylist on a 100 ruble haircut? Is it kosher to give the receptionist 100 rubles and the stylist 500? Or is that insulting?

*That's $2.90, people.

2) This is a sparrow hawk.


I think these are his eggs.

They are now in this gote's tum tum.

ETA: Okay, okay, okay, maybe not literally his eggs, and maybe not literally captured from the air by yours truly. But maybe his:


Or at least certainly captured by this king of Russky Produkt and at in turn by MasterGote? Or, can we at least agree that shopping in Russia is a kind of hunting? And MG did cunningly find this medal winner in his local cooler section. Enh? Ennnnh?

Still snowing here...

Savior Cathedral, Andronikov Monastery, Moscow. ca.1410-27

(info info)

File Under: Ebay, Trashheap of Your Lamest Fantasies

In case you're interested.

Also, a search for variations on Reisiger schwarzer Ballon revealed:

Really, German ebay? You have a 13 thousand-carat diamond to sell me? Well, I've got a diamond of my own you might be interested in. I found it on the sidewalk in Philly after my first (and last) half-marathon. It's pretty shiny...

ETA: Right, commas = decimal points. Those crazy Europeans, getting MG all hot and bothered. Blow me.

Toothy Carrot Soup

Totally unintended product placement.

People! MasterGote totally shocked himself today by improvising a recipe and having it turn out good. Like, really good. Sweet, sweet vindication goes well with a little peppery carrot soup.

Some background: I watched this awkward interview the other day and decided that 1) in addition to providing me with sufficiently indignant, yet pleasantly humorous updates on the apocalypse, Rachel M is, indeed, the cutest; 2) Martha S totally has a crush on Rachel, resulting in her uttering responses such as "Oh, really? OK"; and 3) carrot soup sounds kind of easy to make.

Carrot soup, as Martha tells us, requires a blender and two cups of broth. Check and check. Remember aerial reconnaissance? That was the prewar Bundesrepublik Fungusbrothia. Made using both fresh white mushrooms and dried shiitakes from Bella's trip to Switzerland. (Um, yes, that chocolate is long gone...)

So, to sum up, I modified Martha's recipe a little bit and, though I did not try her version from the TV machine, I was shocked (in a good way) when I saw and tasted mine. The key to this carrot soup with a kick are: mushroom broth (instead of regular), a lot of pepper and ginger, additional greenery, such as dill and parsley, to deepen the orange color and make cute little green flecks, and ixnay on the milk. The whole thing took about one and a quarter episodes of Rachel, or about an hour.

Here's how it was done:

1) Chop up a bunch of carrots into circles and half-circles to fill a deep soup bowl.
2) Heat up 3 T butter in a soup pan and add half an onion (chopped). Cook for a bit, and then add the carrots, one clove garlic (minced), a chunk of ginger (grated), sea salt, a good amount of ground black pepper and then a little more, and a couple of pinches of brown sugar. Cook the veg until the carrots start to soften up, suck up the butter, and get a bit dry. (The carrots, not you, dahling.)
3) At this point, add about 2 cups mushroom broth and keep cooking until the carrots get baby-tooth soft, around 15 minutes, or a Rachel interview with Cindy McCain, a story about the Dutch baseball team beating the DR twice in the World Baseball Classic, and Just Enough Pop Culture with her friend Kent.
4) Once the carrots are nice and soft, add some chopped parsley and dill into the mix, and cook a little bit longer, like through the Cocktail Moment and the commercial.
5) Forget the milk, and blend the whole thing in your loud loud loud blender.

Pretend like Spicy Squid Salad never happened.

Help A Brother Out

Dear readers, please take this poll and help out my friend, Buster. I know you're just looking for more stuff to procrastinate with: here's your chance. (In case you're interested, I got an 8).