Apr 30, 2009

Happy May Day!


This and a couple of other postcards were mixed in with family photos. I think my father brought them back from his one trip to Uzbekistan. Mementos from another time and place. Now I feel old.

Apr 27, 2009

Monday


I'm a sucker for red poppies. As a child I learned how to make poppy people: You fold the petals down and tie them around the stem for body. Stick a stick through crosswise for arms. Done.

Apr 24, 2009

Be Merry


Sometimes letting loose and being a goof is the best thing you can do for your sanity. Go for it!

Apr 19, 2009

I Will Never Pay Money For Pickled Beets Again

2 kg red beets
5 tbs vinegar (20%)
15 dkg sugar
1 tbs salt
2 tsp caraway seeds
7 dl water

Wash the beets, cook them in the water. Let it cool. Save cooking water. Peel beets, slice them, put them in clean jars.
Add the vinegar, salt, sugar and caraway seeds to cooking water and boil. Poor it over the beets. Put the lids on tight. Keep refrigerated.

I know, it's all in metric, but the truth is I wasn't measuring anything. You can't get 20% vinegar anywhere anyway. So I just threw in stuff as it seemed to make sense and it came out fine.

Once you ate all the beets, use the pickling liquid to pickle some hard boiled eggs.

You may say, dear reader, "yech, beets, who needs them?" Well, don't so be hasty, the beets are tasty. They are also said to have high levels of anti-carcinogens and some other healthy stuff.

While some people can't tell beets from kale, folks in the Old Country have a heightened awareness towards anything that can be pickled. Cukes are just the starting point. Small red cherry peppers (hot), yellow round peppers stuffed with sauerkraut, green tomatoes, baby watermelons (size of a tomato, unique flavor), and so on.

Apr 16, 2009

Spring


It is the last chance to check out the poppies in the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. The peak of the blooming season is over, but it is said that the North Poppy Loop still has flowers to show. I went there a few years ago at the hight of the peek of the poppy bloom, and it was quite a sight. From a distance it looked like somebody dropped hundreds of tons of bright orange stuff on the hills. It's also a nice drive.


Back in the olden days all you had to do is drive to Hollywood to see some colorful flowers. It must have been a long time age when it was covered with poinsettias instead of tourists. Technically they are not spring flowers, but who's counting.


You could also head up to the hills and check out the dogwood, like young Babs did, back in 1941.


Babs' friend, Miss Joyce McGonigle lived in a bungalow in South Pasadena, built in 1924.

Apr 13, 2009

Bunny


I'm late to the party, aren't I? I just realized I had an Easter themed photo in my collection. C'est la vie.

Apr 9, 2009

Road Trip


Something I love about LA is that if you know what you are doing, you can drive for twenty minutes and find yourself somewhere where you feel million miles away from civilization. I was feeling stir crazy yesterday, so I headed for the mountains. I did a nice long ride up on Little Tujunga Canyon Rd to Bouqet Canyon Rd to Palmdale, and back down on Angeles Forest Hwy to the 2.


I drove past the reservoir. I like driving on little roads, at places I've never been before. There is always something interesting to find.


This weird piece of faux classical architecture sits on an otherwise deserted stretch of Vasquez Cny Rd that connects Little Tujunga Cny to Sierra Hwy. People build the weirdest things at the weirdest places.


Bouqet Cny Rd had a real nice stretch with hardly any traffic, a babbling brook right along the road, and occasionally odd little houses perched on or nestling against hills and rocks.


Palmdale failed to impress me. This is a spot on the edge of town where I wandered off.


In this is what happens when you use camera flash against highly reflective traffic signs.

From the whole trip this is probably my favorite image. It got a bit rainy and the hills in the back are wrapped in fog.

Apr 4, 2009

Memory Lane

I was reading Dive's blog (thanks Petrea for letting me know about it), about the scary children's programs he grew up with. Which made me wonder how mines would hold up. Wouldn't you know, they are all on YouTube.

By the way, what did we do before the internet? Will the children who grow up without memories of a world before computers and the internet, facebooks, text messaging, etc... will they think of us as dinosaurs? For goodness sake, I remember the days of type writer ribbons and white-outs.

Aanyway... Here are a couple of shows from my childhood. Maybe it's just the nostalgia talking but they are really not bad, some quite enjoyable, actually. You, my dear reader, won't be able to fully enjoy it of course, because of the language, but some of the visuals and music might come through. It's a pity though, some of these have pretty funny songs and dialogues. It's a little know fact that The Flintstones are much funnier in the Hungarian dubbed version - that also happens to be entirely in rhyme.



This is Dr. Bubó, General practitioner of a strange forest. His assitant is nurse Ursula the bear, who has romantic aspirations towards the good doctor. The visuals are slightly Yellow Submarine-ish.



This episode tackles the subject of alcoholism and domestic violence, with a fair sprinkling of cursing. At the end Mr. Boar gets cured of his abusiveness via a concussion, but Mrs. Boar is not happy. Crazy Hungarians.



Mézga Család (The Mezgás) is a a little bit like the Simpsons. Less topical - unless there was some subtext I missed -, but a bit more scifi. It's about a disfunctional family who is in radio contact with a relative from the future.