Almost Halfway Up

I've managed to get almost halfway up the side, meaning I'm almost halfway done with part two.  It's coming along, finally.

Cupcake Lessons

 Stephanie, a fellow embassy spouse and professional baker, shared her tips and secrets for making cupcakes a few weeks ago.  Thank you to Luidmila for the photos!  I learned a lot from observation, but I didn't really get much in the way of hands on practice.  It wasn't Stephanie's fault.  One lady brought her nine year old, who monopolized every part of the process.  It meant that the rest of us got imposed with a nine year old's sensibility of style.  I learned later that children weren't supposed to be there, but it's nearly impossible to be nice and to turn away a child at the door.  

I've practiced some with my own Wilton tips later and have had some good results.

Wandering Down The Sides

Down the bamboo sides I went this time.  No work on the leaves, but at least the frame is getting a bit more complete.

Block Progress

Top block is how I received Alice's step round robin block.  Bottom is my progress so far.  I plan on adding something to the top left before mailing it on.

Gone To Gok Oguz

 Salads and placinte look different when you go to southern Moldova.  The Gaguz people are of Turkish descent, Christian, and Russian speakers.  Their food sometimes even has spice.  The top salad is chicken; the second plate is placinte.  You can see how they look different from normal ones.  for one thing, they're puffier.  They taste good, too.  Sashlik and mamaligia are about the same.  Andreas got rice pilaf.  It looked kind of bland, but he said it was flavorful.  I had kuvarma, which is a kind of stew.  I chose chicken.  It had a bite of red pepper and was very well done.

Cloudy Day At Pani Pit

The consular department went to lunch on a chilly, cloudy day.  We ate outside anyway.  It was June, after all.  Pani Pit has a really good orangeade, so I had that to drink.  I also had the zeama, as theirs is supposedly the best in town.  The others took pictures of their lunches for the blog, too.  The picture below the zeama is salmon in sauce, followed by stuffed chicken wrapped in bacon.  I had the rolled up steak stuffed with bruschetta stuff.  It was really, really good.  Dawn had a typical Moldovan lunch of sashlik and mamaligia.  We all left replete and happy with the food!

All Wrapped Up

As part of my fascination with wrapped temari lately, I made this three way bow.  I think it came out pretty neat, despite being in absolutely nontraditional colors.  I am now on a three week temari break, as I did not bring any of my temari supplies with me to France.