don't call ME a tourist!

for our 6-month wedding aniversary (yes, we're dorks), my husband and i trudged through the snow, across the liberty bridge, to the st gellert medicinal baths. we spent nearly three hours soaking and thawing in the steam baths (yes, the ones that require swim suits). Dz went into the cool pool a couple times, but by the time i walked from the hot one over to the cool one i was already so cold that i hurried back to the steamy one without even employing the chilly one.

the baths were very relaxing, as long as you didn't actually look at the water and what was floating in it. also, i'm pretty sure that the old men don't come to the baths 'cuz they want to be clean. eww. anyways, there are these dragon head things that shoot out warm water--yeah, baby--it's like a massage! they actually offer real massages, too, and mud baths and pedicures and every other indulgence you can imagine. we stuck to the budget option, but weren't disappointed!

we found a new cafe, a block from home. there is a huge camel mural on one wall, and inlaid stone on the ceiling and other walls--gives a very funky atmosphere. it was just us and a bunch of hungarian university students. this cafe takes the prize for "best melange ever"--the melange is our new favorite espresso drink, discovered here in budapest. has anyone heard of it? i hadn't, but i am going to require my favorite cafes in the states to add it to the menu! it is a layer of honey, a layer of steamed milk, a layer of espresso, with foam on top. SO GOOD! i formerly added honey to herbal tea ONLY, but i am a new woman: honey in a latte is much cheerier than mass-produced torani syrup!

the day after the baths/melange heaven day, we explored the great market hall. it is an enormous, two-story building chock-full of hungarian necessites. the building has very interesting lighting inside, due to its many windows, large openings in the 2nd floor that allow sunlight to flow down to the 1st floor, and its unique location next to the danube with the buda hills just on the other side. we arrived in the late afternoon, just as the sun sank low enough to stream out over the city from beneath the low-lying clouds, and the clouds simultaneously released a heavy rain. i quickly took some pictures of the rain and crazy sunlight in the street (with the liberty bridge in the background), then took a bunch more inside the market hall--the light was awesome on the bottles of tokaj and piles of lace.

i'm usually very shy about taking pictures of people. i guess that makes me an unlikely candidate for portrait photography, but i'm trying to get over it. i admire the work of one photographer (i've forgotten his name) who spent days/weeks/years just photographing people on the streets of manhattan from the window of his apartment, with a long lens and black&white film. the expressions on people's faces are very interesting: some people are merely thoughtful, others look plain mad. so i've been meaning to embark on a similar project, by sitting in a main city square and just photographing everyone. i especially want to photograph people on buses as they go by (there's something about buses and trams that make people retreat into their own pensive world). i have a particular affinity to old ladies. not like that. elderly women (especially in this part of the world) have seen so much, put up with so much, learned so much... and black&white photography really captures expressions, thoughts, and wrinkles.

today we rode the yellow metro line, which happens to be the oldest subway in all of continental europe. it plays a cheerful little tune as it enters and leaves each stop. the stations themselves are lined with beautiful tiles and have lovely old woodwork. we stepped off at "Heroes Square", also the sight of the fine arts museum where we saw a bunch of van goghs last week (my fav part of the whole museum was a hippo skull with mummified grass still between its teeth). we walked around the Pest castle, through the city park, admired tons of cute dogs, and looped back past the carnival, another medicinal bath, and the zoo. we hopped back on the metro and went to szent istvan church to see his mummified hand.

we're back home, about to eat the gulyas i made yesterday... there's enough to live on for a week. it tastes pretty authentic, with potatoes, carrots, parsnips, celery root, chunks of pork, mini egg/flour dumplings, and a spicy paprika broth. we have another delicious loaf of hungarian bread--we're gonna miss that stuff--some sheep cheese, and another inexpensive bottle of wine (a decent wine here runs about $2). dessert is just down the block-- 50 cent pieces of baklava from the gyro stand. mmm.

my hometown is this great.

i am currently making genuine hungarian goulash.

i can't remember how to spell it in english, but here it is gulyasleves or something. i've deduced from various menus that "leves" is soup. we bought official, approved paprika at the market hall today--a large, daily indoor market that sells everything a hungarian could ever desire: unicum (an herby alcoholic beverage), tokaj (the famous hungarian sweet, white wine), pig legs, cow kidneys, lace tablecloths, veggies of all shapes and sizes, naughty magazines, and paprika. sweet paprika, spicy paprika, dried paprikas all woven together into strings, and powdered paprika.

while i'm on the topic of food, there are some lucky vegetables that just have really cool names in every language. i think that means they are the foods of the gods. for example: eggplant (cool name, even in english) also goes by aubergine (in france), mulignana (in italy), and padlizsán (in hungary). another good one: mushroom is champignon in french, paddestoelen in flemish, and gombas (pronounced "gombash") in magyar. finally, cucumber is also pepino, cukini, and cetriolo.

time is relative, anyway

my husband and i have been on time for church TWICE this week. by "on time" i mean "the readings hadn't started yet." this is due to our geographical setting: the church is outside our bedroom window and it rings the bells 15 minutes before a service starts.

for those of you who don't know us very well, fifteen minutes is almost exactly the amount of time we need to, for example, walk next door. the bells start ringing as i'm sitting on the edge of the bed, wondering if my favorite socks are clean (the eggplant-colored ones from mama t-tine), thinking about which earrings i should wear today, pondering whether or not i should bring my big camera when we walk from mexico to canada, frowning over my split ends, asking my husband if he wants to go ride bikes, and wondering why france is so far away. then the clanging of the church bells remind me that it's sunday, and i'm going to mass, and mass is in 15 minutes. i think we'll always have to live next to a church.

we didn't do so well last night, however, when going to an 8 pm concert (we were supposed to collect our tickets at 7:30) that was a 45-minute walk from here. we left at 7:20, picked up some gyros on the way, stopped at an ATM, backtracked 1 1/2 blocks to see if we could figure out the metro, discovered that the metro is closed on friday and saturday nights for reconstruction, then walked the 45 minutes. by the way, we found the ultimate indigestion recipe: eat a large gyro with extra pickled cabbage, then power walk for 45 minutes. mmm, can't beat it.

needless to say, both 7:30 and 8pm were long gone by the time we huffed and puffed our way up to matthias templon, at the top of the hills of buda. it is a truly gorgeous church, with a spectacular view of the danube and all of pest. we had long ago resigned ourselves to missing the concert, but the woman at the door surprisingly said we could still buy tickets... for nearly half the original cost! so we heard [most of] a beautiful performance of mozart's requiem, in the wildly and colorfully painted szent matthias templon (the original frescoes were whitewashed by invading turks), for less than $25!

afterwards, we munched on some dirty baklava (purchased earlier at the gyro stand, then dropped on the cobblestones--hey, 5 second rule!) and wandered around the church grounds, taking pictures. there is a large statue of king/saint istvan (stephen), who apparently bequeathed the country to the virgin mary, for lack of another heir. the statue of mary behind the altar has a real crown... we wondered if it was really the king's crown. the remains of another king, king bela, and his wife are contained in the church, although when their bodies were discovered in the 17th century their jewelry was stripped and taken to the hungarian national museum. there are various other altars around the church, dedicated to the many royal hungarian saints.

our walk home was just as hurried, due to the frigid weather! we stopped halfway for some much-needed hot chocolate (forro csokolade) and mulled wine (forralt bor), and watched some 25 spanish (?) tourists in the street try to cram into 4 taxis (they succeeded, somehow), and admired the smoke-rings the other patrons were blowing. then we were back out into the cold, to pick our way around endless dog-droppings (what is UP with that??) to our warm zen-loft.

"No compensation other than all the credit for being Jesus."

craigslist is always entertaining, but doubly so in portland. my husband could totally get this job, with the current state of his hair and beard.

we are dust...

we have been thoroughly ashed today, at St Michael's Church (Szent Mihaly Templon). it was a standing-room-only service, with an organist and two vocalists. everyone knelt reverently on the cold, hard tiles at the consecration (a first on this europe trip), even the oldest ladies.

fasting wasn't hard this morning: our breakfast "yoghurt" turned out to be sour cream. oops. (the containers were identical, ok?!) don managed to eat all of his, with a copious amount of peanuts. i gagged on the first bite.

will you be my friend?

so we've yet to find the ex-pat scene.

we've looked everywhere! sometimes we go into bars or cafes just because the people inside look like ex-pats, but no luck. only hungarians. certainly we didn't come to eastern europe just to hang out with other americans, but it WOULD be so helpful to have a couple english-speaking friends to show us the ropes.

but we've been doing ok on our own. we didn't really notice the progress we'd made until the last couple evenings, spent with new friends from our hostel. we actually were able to help them order food and drinks (!), teach them a few polite words in Magyar, and answer some questions about the way things are done here! exciting!

at the same time, we are constantly reminded just how little we DO know about what's going on around us. for starters, we thought we were so awesome for knowing that their language is not "hungarian", but "Maygar". yet, several days ago, we discovered that the reason no one understood us when we said, "we are trying to learn Magyar," is because we were mispronouncing "Magyar". yeah, i know, how hard can it be? aha, in Magyar the letters "gy" are pronounced "dj". so every time we said, "Megg-yarr" we should have been saying, "Mad-jar".

also, the sign for "one" is an upraised thumb. so when you order something at a cafe (OF COURSE, this is a hypothetical example, *cough*) and the barista gives you the thumbs-up sign, she is NOT saying, "oh, excellent choice!" rather, she is asking whether or not you are ordering just one drink. heh, heh. if, for some reason, you forget this rule of "thumb" and try to order one item by upraising your pointer finger, they will bring you TWO of that item. oops. at this point you hope that you 1)have enough cash to cover the double order, and 2)can drink/eat both of them before they get too cold/warm (whichever extreme is the undesirable). this rule applies to the other numbers as well: if you order 4 stuffed grape leaves by raising the four main fingers, you will be served 5 of them... despite the fact that it is physically impossible to signify "four" by folding down only the pinkie, while keeping the thumb and the three center fingers upraised.

we'd met very few americans on this trip, and NO west-coasters, until the past two days. but it's been the week of the portlanders at this hostel! our newest friends are another couple from Portland, Dean and Emily. meeting them was an unusual experience: we tried to correct their mispronunciation of our names, only to discover that, no, their names really are that close to ours! they are very cool, like all portlanders, but a bit intimidating--they are both tall, gorgeous, and well-dressed. we quickly found common ground: we four feel like old farts, thanks to the 17-year-old chileans who party in the hostel before partying at the pub before partying at a club, returning to party at the hostel at 3am, then somehow rising bright and early to party with their guitar, expecting everyone else to party with their party. groan.

our other new friend is Hannah, from Hong Kong. she is the most bubbly person i have EVER met. we might have to add hong kong to our "to see" list, just for the opportunity to have this delightful girl show us around!

also, matt from liverpool (the 2nd matt-from-liverpool that we'ver met this week), on his way to the middle east. josh from west virginia, taking a semester off from georgetown to WWOOF in western hungary. josh is only 20, but quite mature. he is planting fast-growing willows that will be used to make biofuel. apparently he has the farm to himself most of the time, except for the neighboring gypsies who stop by frequently to see if he needs cigarettes or pot. we wasted no time in indoctrinating him with our buy-local, grow-organic, back-to-the-land, herbal-meds theories. he was a patient, open-minded listener... we are going to make him a "reading list" before we part ways.

i guess i didn't write about 1st-Matt-from-Liverpool, but he and his aussie buddy, chris (they met in thailand), are snowboarding across europe. chris is taking a gap year; matt is taking two months off from a master's program, but in his words, "I don't righ'ly know if the Uni knows i' cuz i'm ge'ing these messages callin' me in for mee'ings." they found the love of their lives in romania: a 1984 Datchia (sp?), bile-yellow, up on jackstands, with torn seatcovers and no mirrors. 200 euros and 2 tires later it was theirs. it made it to budapest, at a top speed of 80 kmh. within their first hours in budapest they had run countless red lights, cut off several trams, done illegal U-turns in front of cops, driven on the wrong side of the street, and gotten two parking tickets.

these other travellers have been good company, until we get to know some locals or ex-pats. we've made one hungarian friend: a bartender at Apa Cuka who helps say things in Mad-jar, and we leave large tips. we've only made one hungarian enemy: a barista at Drum Cafe, where i--god forbid--put one of my feet on a chair. so things are looking up!

Viszontlatosra!

sugar, spice, everything nice

who knew? fact o' the week: hungarians are obsessed with paprika.

they seriously put it in everything. paprika is to hungary as nutmeg is to belgium. my goulyash last night was so thoroughly papriked that it actually had paprika sludge at the bottom.

my sister and her husband have an ongoing dispute about whether paprika actually does anything, other than making the tops of deviled eggs look pretty. but it DOES! it's not hot-spicy, it just gives a nice warm flavor to goulyash. and mushroom soup. and chicken. and everything else.

in fact, they are so in love with paprika that it is a crime to import it, lest some inferior paprika from an unapproved source CONTAMINATE their pure supply. whoa.

also, this is the first place that actually give me enough sugar packets with my espresso. i love my espresso, but it needs a certain amount of flavored syrup and steamed milk to make it an enjoyable experience. apparently Torani is hard to come by, in these parts, because every place is like, "oh, flavors? um, we have...one...bottle...here it is! coconut!" blech. so i stick to plain drinks. with enough sugar packets.

i rode racehorses instead of reading books

i often feel that i missed out on a great chunk of literature that most kids from educated families read in their high school years. i never regret the experiences i DID have during those years: co-training 30+ racehorses, training my own horse (increasing her value from $1500 to $6500), living in wilderness areas for two summers, singing 3-part harmony in church with my little sisters (and mom on the piano), leading a 4-H group, piglets, swing-dancing, trail rides, skiing on Mt Hood, jogging on cold mornings (while eating blackberries off the vines next to the road), cruising in my friends' trucks (singing along with the newest Blink 182 CD, i know, i know, but the drummer was so cute).

but when my friends talk about Chesterton, Waugh, For Whom The Bell Tolls, To Kill a Mockingbird, Jane Eyre, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner, Poe, Steinbeck, and Tennessee Williams, i get a little nervous and just smile and nod. i never read those in-between books-- i skipped straight from Island of The Blue Dolphins (junior high) to Aristotle (college). the years of painful, dry philosophy took away all my desire to read since. i don't think i read a single book during my two years away from school (and i certainly didn't read anything during my last 3 semesters there!)... my sense of wonder was THAT stunted.

now i'm catching up. i managed to read a book or two per week at Virus Central. thanks to book exchanges at hostels, my reading list catch-up continues. in brussels, i picked up a copy of The Mill on the Floss (The Floss is a river--didn't know that, now i do.) by George Eliot, and YUP! George is a CHICK--didn't know that, now i do! i'm 125 pages in, 410 to go, and i'm enjoying myself quite a bit. i love the naughty little girl who upsets the proper people to no end, then runs away to live with the gypsies.

here's one of Eliot's many acute statements:

Mrs. Tulliver was what is called a good-tempered person--never cried when she was a baby on any slighter ground than hunger and pins; and from the cradle upwards had been healthy, fair, plump, and dull-witted; in short, the flower of her family for beauty and amiability. But milk and mildness are not the best things for keeping, and when they turn only a little sour, they may disagree with young stomachs seriously. I have often wondered whether those early Madonnas of Raphael, with the blond faces and somewhat stupid expression, kept their placidity undisturbed when their strong-limbed, strong-willed boys got a little too old to do without clothing. I think they must have been given to feeble remonstrance, getting more and more peevish as it became more and more ineffectual.

annoyingly the last owner of this book felt the need to circle--in pen-- all the "hard words" such as "frivolous" and "erroneous". NEVER do this, no matter how good the idea seems at the time. you are NEVER really going to look up all those words. and every future owner of the book will HATE you. and it's just bad karma. i repeat, you are NEVER allowed to circle the "hard words," ok?

fun times.

ps: why can't i EVER remember if i'm allowed to let the commas in, or if they have to stay outside? bad commas!

what do you mean, "when are we coming home?"

we ARE home!

i've been neglecting my photography, somewhat. here i am, finally a professional photographer (my dream since age 9), and i only bust out the camera about every other day. i frequently think to myself, "oh, i should take a picture." and then i lazily talk myself out of it, with some lame excuse about, "aww, it's probably too risky to show off my camera in this neighborhood anyway."

but today, walking down Vaci Utca (that's the name of a street), my husband gave me a wake-up call, saying, "we're going to have culture shock when we go back to the States." i had a 2nd wake-up call several hours later at a sweet bar/coffee shop.* some guy came in & started a slide show of pics from his recent trip to cuba. he had taken pics of everyday things: cars on the street, billboards, his hotel room, a guy's tattoo. but they were drastically different from everyday things here in Pest. and i realized: i NEED to take pictures NOW. now, while the strange and different things are still new to me. while photo ops are still obvious to me, rather than, "oh, it's the midget in front of the grocery store again." and, "that guy is fiddling in the metro tunnel today, too." soon everything will be commonplace. already the "at home" feeling is taking the itch out of my trigger, uh, shutter finger.

where's my film?! i've got to get on this! Operation Photograph Pest must begin!

*everything here is a bar. ie. bar/grocery store. bar/hostel. bar/gyros stand. bar/bakery.

will you be my Ecoli-ntine?

we ate our romantic v-day dinner at a ready-to-eat chinese diner around the corner from the new hostel. after catching up on sleep all day (consequently missing 2 meals), it was the first place we saw and could afford without first making an ATM stop. the owner was very friendly, and even knew the words cheekin, beef, and porrrk to tell us which entree was which. her warming lights worried me a bit (she had to MICROWAVE our food!), so hopefully Universal Lovers Day isn't followed by E. coli Toilet Day.

we walked around most of inner Pest (remember, the pronunciation is Pesht) yesterday, and covered most of Buda--the west side of the Danube--tonight. we are finally getting our bearings... but we might have to buy new shoes if we keep this up. seriously. i actually can tell at the end of the day that my shoes are more worn! we are regaining all the muscle mass that we lost during the month of the great chunder.

our health is better and better. i have a bit of a nagging cough, not aided by the inescapable, large volume of cigarette smoke that is EVERYWHERE in europe. so i'm sipping on a cup of warm tokaji--a sweet hungarian wine (i don't know if they really drink it warm, but i'm not coughing anymore).

we are the sole guests in our new hostel-- hopefully this isn't a horror movie-come-true. it's a small place: originally a 2-br apartment, now a 16-bed hostel. it has a funky australian theme, but the Australian fellow on duty tonight says he's a little weirded out by all the aboriginal paraphernalia. nevertheless, the place must be busier in the summer, since it was voted into the top 10 hostels worldwide this past september!

our hungarian, *ahem* MAGYAR, is progressing. as usual, i have an easier time remembering my new words than i do getting up the guts to try them out! everyone we've spoken to has responded in english, so we've avoided a lot of difficulty. it makes us a bit lazy, though. we've given up asking, "Bezelek angolul?" and have just started speaking in english straightaway.

let us know if you hear of a cheap, rat-free apartment for rent!

damn spaniards!

i don't consider myself to be a discriminatory individual, but i'm starting to strongly dislike the spanish.

i know, i know, i shouldn't judge an entire country or culture by a few individuals. but they are costing us our precious (and expensive, at this hostel) sleep. yesterday we spent all day rejoicing that the spanish women who, for some unknown reason, loudly and jubilantly answered every cell phone call they received-- ALL NIGHT LONG!!

we were looking forward to getting some good sleep last night, and finally got to sleep despite the japanese snoring champion in the next bunk. but at 3:30am we awoke to another lovely individual of spanish nationality, noisily helping a drunken "Victor" into the top bunk next to us. they frequently reminded one another (using their outdoors voices, i might add) just how drunk they were, while unsuccessfully attempting to ascend the bunk ladder.

Victor was in fine form at breakfast, a mere 6 hours later. we, on the other hand, were completely exhausted with large dark circles under our eyes. our whole room reeked of sweaty, drunk dudes.

we are now passed out on the couch of our NEW hostel (we checked in an hour ago).

the weather here is ridiculous. it is sunny and warm every afternoon, freezing and dry every night, and then it snows a couple inches in the morning. repeat cycle.

come to think of it, there is an equally ridiculous pattern in the children's behavior. they come home exhausted from daycare, eat a huge snack, throw a tantrum because they're not hungry for dinner, get locked outside for two minutes, eat enough to get dessert, and go to bed. i've never gotten up early enough to join them for breakfast, but every morning we hear the kids crying in the dining room, then the crying increases in volume as the child is locked outside for a few minutes (we sleep in a trailer in the yard, so we get woken up at this point), and is let back inside for another eat-your-porridge battle. the kids are then trucked off to daycare. repeat cycle.

among other cycles, the disease special of this week is... pinkeye for me, and burps-that-smell-like-farts for my husband! YAY! i can't wait to see what next week holds.

robin or rebecca would have drawn blood

we went to the most liturgically incorrect mass EVER yesterday.

now, i'm not exactly a liturgy snob. i've been known to enjoy guitars in church, *gasp*! i enjoy going to church in a variety of languages and cultures. but this was over the top. i'm telling the pope.

i don't really speak or understand french, so i only caught a small percentage of it. but it WAS clear that the readings were replaced with poetry and speeches about imprisoned journalists. and the creed was exchanged for a "modern" one, that started out with: we believe in a unique god, and we believe in a free god who created freedom and created man. we believe in love and in the language of love. it ended like this: we believe in the church that we formed in the name of jesus, and in the Light, the Freedom, and the Strength of Love.

as my dad would say, "gag me with a spoon." what are these people going to take home with them? how will anything that they heard in those TWO hours affect their lives? yes, love and justice are good. but there was no mention of HOW to love more, or HOW this particular group of (mainly retired) belgians can make the world a more just place.

they missed completely the reason why we attend mass. we go to church to learn (through prayer, scripture, and a few words from the priest) how we can change ourselves for the better, consequently changing the lives of those around us for better. we do not go to mass to hear the latest count of jailed journalists.

i read an article recently (i don't remember what religion the author was, but i don't think she was christian) that distinguished between prayer and meditation. she said that prayer involves asking or requesting, but meditation involves listening and hearing. yes, catholics believe that meditation is one of the types of prayer, but don't get your panties in a bunch. i'm not sure what more-educated catholics say on this matter, but i believe mass is the prime time to both ask and listen. the rest of the week is for actions, for social justice, and for educated ourselves on the injustices of the world. sunday mass is a "recharging" of sorts, not a time to discuss wronged people that we will never help. am i right?

the chunder trials

we are giving up.

for four weeks now we have been on the influenza weight-loss program. seriously. but we're giving it up on saturday.

the kids are cute and all, and we can put up with all the nit-picky household chores, but the flu has got to stop. 4 times in 4 weeks is WAY too much bodily-fluid excitement. and the parents are in complete denial of the fact that KIDS HAVE GERMS! and when kids go to daycare 4 days a week and hang out with other people's grubby kids, kids have MORE germs. like influenza.

and then the poor american WWOOFERs, who are only immune to grubby american germs, get the grubby belgian kids' germs and thus begins the influenza weight-loss program.

but we're dropping out. we're going to hungary and we're not letting ANY kids breathe on us. and we're going to eat and eat and it's not going to come out again for at least 24 hours.

sorry for writing YET AGAIN about poop. it's the main event these flat-on-my back days.

my name is X and i've been recipe-free for two months

i've done it!

i haven't used recipes for main dishes for quite some time, relying rather on an internal sense of some kind to tell me what to add when. if i want to make a particular dish i haven't previously made, fettuccini alfredo, for example, i'll look at about 10 recipes on cooks.com to see generally what they have in them, then take it on my own from there.

my "creative cooking" sense works best when i'm just cooking for myself, or for the two of us. it gets a little blocked when i try cooking for a crowd, or when i am under stress. i discovered it first upon arriving in guatemala, seeing that my father weighed 135 lbs. and my mom weighed 105, and deciding that my malnourished family needed a good meal. i further developed it when living alone in the hills of Yankton at auntie trish's lavender farm, one fall. i couldn't afford food, really, but auntie trish has a fully stocked spice rack that i got quite comfortable with; yes, without compromising myself. ok, maybe a little: i watched Friends every night while i cooked (i didn't have any of my own, ok?). so even cheap veggies and pasta tasted good.

but i've never been able to break free from baked-goods recipes. the chemistry of it all was WAY too scary for that. but recently i've made cookies (twice), pancakes, apple pie, another pastry, and noodles... ALL from scratch, NO recipes! and, better yet, NO disasters!

ok, i'm done bragging.

colon blow, anyone?

i've had more diarrhea in the last week than at any other time in my life. well, except that one christmas eve mass right after i moved to central america when i used a whole roll of toilet paper.

now you know.

among other who knew? facts: brussels sprouts are actually from brussels!

they are "a very belgian food," according to the belgians. i've avoided this vegetable for most of my life, outside of two events. the first was a well-meant attempt by auntie trish last summer.

the other was about 10 years ago. my family went to the sauvie's island market one saturday to stock up on fresh fruits and veggies. my dad spotted some brussels sprouts and excitedly brought them home. he proudly and carefully prepared them for his family, who protested the entire time. i vaguely remember some discussion and confusion about how long they should be cooked. as my family gathered around the table, my dad tried the old, "now you each only get ONE, and the rest are for me" trick. we all complained with new vigor, and announced that we would rather starve to death than eat one brussels sprout. my dad proceeded to authoritatively show us how to add a little butter to each delicate treat, and then pop it into our mouths (yeah, right). as dad bit down on the sprout, the expression on his face changed from kid-on-christmas-morning joy to i-think-i-might-be-eating-poo disgust. he fled from the table to the kitchen sink and hacked up EVERY last bit of sprout, then continued to run water over his tongue for many more minutes.

who knew? fact #3: over-cooking brussels sprouts makes them extremely bitter. in the meantime, back at the dining room table, the rest of us quietly plopped our brussels sprouts back into the pan. to the soundtrack of dad's brussels sprout removal (aka gagging over the sink) we solemnly vowed never to touch a brussels sprout again.

until... living less than 20 min from brussels, i felt obligated to give them a try. and, who knew, they are actually quite tasty. hmm.

ps: the two ideas contained in this post have nothing to do with one another... or do they?