Bird At The Table

We had a bird at the table at Hanul lui Hanganu.  The bird was trying to protect its chick from us and managed to do that - while landing on the rocks and the table and the thatched roof.

Another Window

The uppermost window of the last row on this house has been started.  Yay!  That means I must be making progress.  Sometimes it's hard to see on this.

Some Sparklies

Got some sparkle going on this. It's somewhat harder to work on than usual because of the black fabric, but I'm getting it done.

Back To The Countryside

 A bunch of the embassy community took a trip to Hanul lui Hanganau, which we had stayed at in April.  We went back and had a wonderful lunch before getting to look at some sunflower and lavender fields.  The food was typical Moldovan and delicious.  Top is zeama, a chicken noodle soup. Next is a veggie salad.  Placinte in the northern style was next.  It's more fluffy and less greasy-feeling than the southern version.  Both, though, are spiced with dill.

Pork tocana with mamaligia was the main dish.  I just had the mamaligia, which is very similar to polenta.  They serve it with scrambled eggs, the local cheese, sour cream, and an oil and garlic mixture.  Everyone else said the pork was excellent.  There was also sarmele and dolma.  They're the same thing, except the rice and spices are wrapped in cabbage leaves for sarmele and grape leaves for dolma.  I prefer the cabbage leaves.

Last, and for dessert, were the clatite, basically crepes.  These ones were filled with sour cherries and topped with dollops of sour cream. They were soooo good!

Back To The Sampler

I decided to get back to work on this, since I'm a part behind again.  This part is the top of the sampler, so I only have a little bit to go!

Buffaloed

At the end of June, we had dinner with Corrin at Buffalo Steak House.  We had salads.  The waiter was very confused when I did not want any meat in my ceasar salad. it's just not done in Moldova.  Presentation was lovely, and we ate outdoors.  Andreas ordered a cheese plate for us to split.  It was an unusual (for Moldova) selection of cheese because they've hired a French chef.  All the cheeses were French, Swiss, or Italian, and very good.  Corrin had pasta - her favorite dish.  It was excellent, and she had enough left over for lunch the next day.  Andreas had a hamburger.  He says Buffalo and Seasons are the two places in the country you can get a decent one.  You can see from the picture that it was huge.  My steak was better than most Moldovan, but it still wasn't up to the standard I grew accustomed to in Uruguay.  There, I got spoiled on beef.

Housed

The house itself is about done, outside of backstitching!  Now it's time for the front garden.