an aimless Sunday morning
The night was not so good as yesterday – I realise the pillow is just too big, and I must do something about it. I suppose I'll use a sweater as pillow for tonight, and then try to take care of it during the week. I might also have to try and shift the eating times a little earlier, as I'm waking up quite late (8AM). The sun rises very early in Slovenia, so I could make use of more sunlight.
Today was quite a good morning, though, as I managed to meditate, do yoga after a ten minute walk, and then have a cold shower – if tomorrow I can pull this off as well, it should be nice. I did not linger at home too much, as we all went to near the church: Hanna and Luka went to mass, but I stayed in the café with Antonella, practicing my Slovene.
We went for a bike ride afterwards. The road was pleasant, and the bike, although with a saddle in a much lower position than what I'm used to, behaved well. We had lunch at a restaurant near a lake; I had a mushroom soup, a slice of pizza and some bread with olive oil. It was nice; now we're back home, and it rains outside.
notes about cooking on a slighty distressed late morning
I've been at the computer for quite a while now. I studied some more Slovene and transcribed notes on Ecology of Wisdom; but I might be getting a little tired. Sometimes I feel it is a little daunting to see a purpose in what I'm doing: the stay in Slovenia, my programming, the books that I read and take notes about. The feeling of trying to be an overachiever, without really achieving anything, lingers about.
It all got better as I started cooking: there is only so much mental work one can be put through without losing energy and/or motivation.
The farm has the stance to only provide locally, organic food; yesterday we received a big bag of sugar snap peas. This year I was more formally introduced to another variant – snow peas – which can be cooked whole, without necessarily removing the pods from inside the shell. As I also have the stance to try and use the most of the vegetables, I went ahead and experimented with cooking the whole shell, peas inside. It did not go so well, although there were many recipes with full-bodied pea shells – when sautéed, the inside pods were cooked and quite tasty, but the outer skin was still too fibrous, and barely edible. So something must have gone wrong, or maybe these are not meant to be cooked at all.
In the end, we had some buckwheat with vegetables (had never cooked buckwheat before, but it's quite akin to rice or quinoa), and peas with eggplant and pepper on the side; we also had some leftover lentils from yesterday, so this really felt like one of my usual meals, with three different options to choose from. Everyone was very thankful, and it occurred that many times it felt a waste to cook for myself only back when I was in Porto.
At the end of dinner, we had some fun reminiscing about the bike trip we had in the afternoon. On the way back, we passed a very weird human-like plush figure, sitting on the sidewalk, with a basket of cakes in its lap, inviting us, on a handwritten note, to take some. Is this some sort of usual village hospitality? We took the cakes, and we also ate a few; but this, of course, was highly irresponsible – or maybe not? Of course, when I offer food to people, it's usually in the context of shared eating; if I'm not eating, as has already happened quite often with the cakes, I am at least personally offering.
