pthalo

Karma: 48

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 9:13 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Eugine_Nier’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
Спасибо for the correction.

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 9:07 UTC
1 point
in reply to: jasticE’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
For practice:

Akkor rossz a tojás, ha miután feltörtem, furcsán néz ki (homályos, valami nő benne, piros pöttyöket látok), illetve rossz szagú. A tojásokat mindig külön pohárban töröm fel, nehogy az egész ételt rontsam el vele. Miután megnéztem és megszagoltam, nyugodtan beletehetem a serpenyőbe. A barátnőm azt mondja, hogy amelyik úszik a vízben, az már nem jó, de ez csak azt jelenti, hogy már nem a legfrissebb és óvatosan kell bánni vele. Szeretem a rántott tojást és a töltött tojást és a tükör tojást is de az utolsót csak pirított kenyérrel.

Szegeden élek. Ez körülbelül 4 óra busszal Pécstől. Vonattal még hosszabb az út, mert Budapestre kell utazni és ott átszállni. Így Szegedről Pécsre 180 km-t kell utaznom északra, ahhoz hogy délnyugatra menjek. :D A busz egyenesebb útvonalon megy.

Eggs have gone bad if, after opening one, it looks strange (cloudy, something growing in it, I see red spots), or if it has a bad smell. I always break eggs in a separate cup, lest I ruin the whole meal with one. After I’ve looked at it and smelled it, I can safely put it into the frying pan. My girlfriend says that the ones that floatin water are bad, but it just means that they aren’t so fresh any more and need to be treated with care. I like scrambled eggs, deviled eggs, and over easy eggs but the those I only like with toast.

I live in Szeged. It is about 4 hours by bus from Pécs. It is much longer by train, because you have to travel to Budapest and change trains there. So from Szeged to Pécs I have to travel 180 km north in order to go south west. :D The bus goes on a straighter path.

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 8:38 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
Thanks for the information. :) I suppose that in general, then, “unheard of leaf vegetable that’s being suggested for a salad” can be replaced with “regular salad leaves” and “unheard of vegetable being suggested for pasta” can be replaced with “vegetable i like in pasta” and “some cheese that i dont know what it tastes like” can be replaced with gouda, which is good on everything.

I wonder if leaf parsley’s roots taste the same as root parsley’s. Wikipedia says they are smaller, since they’re not being grown for the root, but I think since it’s pretty much the same plant, it should taste at least similar. I don’t know if you garden, but if so, you might plant some regular parsley and when the time comes to dig them up see how much root there is. Otherwise, if you shop at farmer’s markets, you might ask the parsley-seller about the roots. Types of carrots (in Hungarian anyway) are sugar beets (called sugar carrot), parsley (called white carrot), and carrot (called orange carrot)

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 8:23 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Unnamed’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
I am planning to move in about a year’s time, to live with my girlfriend who I’m engaged to and live together. I cannot move sooner because to move in with her, I need to apply for a partner visa, and then wait for it to be processed. It is theoretically possible to move somewhere else, in the interim, but it’s only a year, and I don’t think I have the energy to move right now. Also, I really like my landlady. She’s the kindest person I know. My previous apartments were much worse. At the last one, I was attacked and then stalked by a neighbour and the landlady talked to me about the commandment not to commit adultery (neither of I nor the neighbour are married.) Before that things were kinda okay for five months, then the landlady had “new ideas for the apartment” and I had to move into the first place I found. Before that I was living with an aunt would say to me without warning “we’re going somewhere in an hour. wash [explicit list of body parts including private ones] but dont wash your hair or [random list of body parts].” and never mind if I already had plans (like a class to go to or something). There was more insanity that that, this is just an example. And before that there was a mother who was worse than the aunt. And before that there were two parents, which was the worst of all.

Here, the neighbours say hello in the stairwell and that’s it. No one bothers me. I’m not afraid to leave the apartment. My landlady is understanding. So, fungus is a step up. and there will be another step up in a year when I get to live with the girl of my dreams.

I have two cats that can’t be abandoned for a week, and im not sure where i’d go anyway.

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 8:02 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Bagricula’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
Well, it was food left out of refrigeration as well. I’ve never really thought of ramen as cooked food—it was heated in the microwave for the required time, though, so I suppose you’re right.

Humidity has been around 80-90% recently, and the temperature that day was probably no higher than 30. The amount of growth was small—just a few clusters less than a centimetre in diametre, but black and definitely fungus. I put it on the opposite side of the room where it wouldn’t be near me and let it grow a little longer and it was covered within a few days.

The building is made entirely of concrete. If you think of a stereotypical cold war era eastern european apartment building, you’ll get the idea, though ours has been prettied up (insulated, new windows put in, painted cheerfully) by the city. The walls in this room are hard to the touch, but in my bedroom, the wall is slightly spongy, but not visibly damaged in any way. The sponginess is uniform throughout and feels like I’m pressing against styrofoam instead of concrete. I assumed it was some sort of insulation.

I live on the fifth floor with cats and have no fly screens. There are shutters in the bedroom, so I leave the windows open and the shutters closed, so that air can get in, but cats can’t get out. The window in this room leads to a balcony, though, which the cats are scared of because they don’t like the noises from the street, so I can open the window in here as well if I keep an eye on them. They really like sitting on windowsills, though, so I’m careful about that. The cats aren’t allowed in the kitchen (enforced by a closed door), so I can leave windows open there. I can also air out different rooms alternately with closed doors.

This is what the fungus looks like that was on my clothes: http://pics.livejournal.com/pthalogreen/pic/0012sbbx I managed to wash it twice yesterday, which decreased the smell and made the spots go away. I want to wash it a few more times before deciding what to do, and I think washing will kill at least enough of the spores to make it safe for me to throw them out, if I deem them unsalvageable.

There is a doctor I know of who would see me for free that I could go to. I’ve lived here for almost three years, and I really like my landlady. Also, I’m planning to move in with my girlfriend in about a year. It can’t be sooner, because it will take a long time for my visa application to be processed. I am still at the satge where I have to run around and gather things for the application, but health problems makes it difficult. I want to improve my life as much as I can before I can move, but I’m reluctant to do drastic things ilke move out when I know I’ll be moving again so soon.

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 7:29 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
My preference is a happy medium between the two. My experience vascillates between “chewing little rocks” or “i’m eating baby food” yet I like lentils, despite these problems.

My lentils are labeled in greek (ПΟΛΕМИΔΙΩТНΕ КΥПИАКХ ΦАКН), and my greek is worse than my russian (i can recognise about half of the letters and only those words which English stole and didn’t change very much) but they look red to me and definitely not green. I got them when a friend was moving home to Cyprus and didnt want to lug her pantry back with her. That must have been five years ago. She gave me several bags, and a little lentils go a long way.

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 7:14 UTC
1 point
in reply to: D_Alex’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
Because I live in a former eastern bloc country (Hungary). My only guess is the fridge is that old. (It’s not mine, but it came with the apartment I live in. The building I live in is Russian built too. :)

I will look again it, to make sure I got the letters right and to make sure it is pointing at what I thought it was. Since my Russian is so bad, when i checked last time what the words said, I was repeating “V soft sign K L” to myself so i wouldnt forget it before i got back to the keyboard. (I was confident i could remember min and maks) so it may have stood out in my head enough that i forgot what it was set to.

But it’s definitely cold in fridge, so it cannot be set to “turn off.”

This time, I take my camera with me :)

.… and discover that it is set to maximum (МАКС).

Here is a picture http://pics.livejournal.com/pthalogreen/pic/0012rat7 . It also has another setting “НОРМ” which im going to assume is the “normal” or “medium” that i was remembering that it had. I think I set it to maks some time ago in attempt to solve the food spoilage problem.

It’s really hard for me to remember выключить because my knowledge of Slavic languages (and understanding of Russian via cognates) comes mostly from southern slavic languages which I have studied, like Serbian, and uključiti in Serbian means “to turn on”.

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 6:57 UTC
0 points
in reply to: AdeleneDawner’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
neat

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 6:53 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
googling “when is ripe” in hungarian gave me a site with a chart (but not all the fruits and veggies i could think of) as the first link. im sure further links down the google results page would include the missing ones.

i will try making the water soapier. also, evaporation plays a problem if i leave it too long. but i want to get in the habit of cooking often enough that i wont have to worry about that. i remember i used to wash any stray dishes while waiting for water to boil. i have lots of tricks like that i seem to have to rediscover again and again. a couple years ago, i had an epiphany that soapy water made things clean, not soapy, and that helped for a while, until i forgot again. i mean, i never stopped using soap, and i used soap before that point, but there was a moment when i understood at an intrinsic level that the soap applied to a dish could be removed from that dish, and the dirt would be removed along with it, through the application of water, and that all dirty things could be made clean, that nothing was dirty beyond repair. whereas othertimes i remember that i don’t like the taste of soap and i sink into a vague suspicion that i’m just adding soap to the dirt and making soapy dirt and wonder what makes me so sure that adding soap to a spoon will make the food that later comes onto that spoon more edible. The manner in which I wash dishes doesn’t really change, but by mental approach to it changes from disgust at the wrongness on the dishes to delight at the opportunity to right a wrong.

Spinach canned. Hm, so it does. I’ll keep an eye out for it. My mental image of the aisle in the store that sells canned food mostly contains corn, peas, and beans, along with a few types of soup (mostly goulash soup, the one i like best), but googling in hungarian tells me there is indeed such a thing as canned spinach. i’ve seen it frozen, too, in small enough quantities that it could conceivably be eaten in one sitting. and i think frozen spinach would keep for at least a day in the fridge as well.

oh, the english wikipedia page for turnip shows something completely different. the dictionary I was using was wrong. I’m not really familiar with turnips, I guess. What I call white carrot is, according to wikipedia, actually parsley root, which looks somewhat like parsnips, but doesn’t taste like them. it’s not really carroty in flavour either, just shape. you put it in soups and stews, and chicken noodle soup should have at least one of them and at least one carrot as well.

the roasted squash sounds easy and good. i think i have a vague memory involving squash, zucchini, tomato and pasta with a creamy sauce. which sounds easy to make.

i’ll give leek another chance. :)

cream of broccoli soup is wonderful. i tried to make it once, but it wasnt very creamy when i made it, and i used too much broccoli (and therefore too much water and too much of everything else), but it was good.

I remember finding a recipe once online that if I took out everything that I was confused by/didn’t think I could get here/didn’t like, I was left lentils and water. i didnt like lentils and water all by themselves, and realised that anything i could add to it would be something of my own creation, not resembling the original recipe at all. it’s not usually that bad. usually it’s something like “capers” (which seem to be something pickled, but i only like pickled cucumbers) or “cheese-whiz” or takes an english cookbook off the shelf and flips through randomly “parmigiano-reggiano (a small handful)”, “radicchio”, “swiss chard.” The book was a present from my mother, but almost every recipe contains something we don’t have here, or something i don’t like, or something expensive. I’ve mostly given up on the cookbook as useless. :)

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 6:14 UTC
0 points
in reply to: AdeleneDawner’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
Anyway, a quick googling of “mikor érik” (when is ripe) got me to this page: http://www.hazipatika.com/topics/zoldseg_gyumolcs/seasonality (warning, not in english)

although it doesn’t list strawberries. for july, it says: sweet cherries, gooseberries, black currant, watermelon, sour cherry, peach, currant, apricot, plum. the ones that are in the middle of their season will be cheapest. the ones just starting or just ending will be expensive. so my bet is that sour cherry is cheapest.

for vegetables: zucchini (meh), kohlrabi, lentils, sunflowers, capsicum (bell pepper), tomato, pattypan squash, pumpkin, green peas, and horseradish.

If I can figure out what’s wrong with the fridge (and whether it has an easy solution), I could make cherry soup http://www.chew.hu/meggyleves.html (recipe in English)

i dont know if they have vanila sugar where you are, but it’s equivalent to a tsp or tbsp (but definitely not a cup) of a vanilla i think. you could just keep adding small amounts of it until it tastes good. :)

on the veggies list, the only things on that list that i’ve cooked with before and would know how to make something edible are: lentils, tomato and capsicum (Both of whom are just starting their season and arent at their cheapest yet)

but there may be other fruits and vegetables not on this list.

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 5:53 UTC
0 points
in reply to: AdeleneDawner’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
Hungary (southern plains, specifically, but it’s a small enough country that it doesn’t matter. My city is the one that gets an average of 2000 of sunlight a year, the highest in the country.). I noticed a while ago when strawberry prices stopped going down and started going up that strawberry season must be ending, but I didn’t attach a date to this noticing in my mind, so when next year rolls around, I still won’t know. (Though I remember they never went below 665 HUF/kg (about $3. I would’ve bought if they went down to 565. This information may or may not be useful next year due to inflation)

Just checked Freecycle. There are three in the country, but none in this city. Deliapro (southern classified ads) has people selling stuff used. currently, someone’s selling a gigantic one (230 litres) for about $75, someone else says they’re selling various kitchen appliances for $40 and up. i dont want a large one. I wouldnt have space for it anyway. But I could fit a 30-60L one somewhere. I live in a 1.5 room apartment, and the kitchen is tiny, but there is a space in the pantry where I could fit a small freezer.

The fridge I have is a bar fridge. There is a freezer compartment, but the door broke, so I fixed it with duct tape (which means I can’t open it). Before the door broke, it would fill with snow on a weekly basis and was tiny anyway (it would fit one frozen pizza.) so I gave up on it and just use the fridge.

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 5:37 UTC
3 points
in reply to: taryneast’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
i’ve started crocheting semirecently. i actually started with “smoke less” in my mind. my first project is a hyperbolic möbius strip (directions: chain as many as you want, sc to end of chain, repeat for a few rows, crochet it together into a möbius strip, then continue sc increasing one every three stitches). perfect for mastering single crochet stich. Maybe I’ll do the next with double crochet stitches to work on those. im slow at it and not very good yet, but that is because i am a newbie.

and i do have a ring to play with. i’ll try to use it more. :)

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 5:31 UTC
2 points
in reply to: taryneast’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
This is true, but I’ve also read studies that within 24 hours of quitting smoking, there are already noticable health benefits and lowered risks of problems, which continue to get better the longer the time has elapsed. I’m not arguing that smoking between the ages of 15-18 & 20-27, as I have done, will have no effect, but if I quit while I’m still young—I probably have a few years left where one way or the other won’t matter too much—then by the time I reach an age where heart disease, lung disease, cancer, stroke, etc. are more likely dangers for me, my lungs will have had a decade or so to recover and hopefully that will be enough. I’ve gotten a few grey hairs already, and a few wrinkles, so I know that the time to quit will be soon, but I don’t know if I’m ready to do it just yet. The last time I quit (for an entire year, cold turkey), it was because I got tired of the way I smelled and didn’t want to smell like that anymore. I only started up again because I had friends who smoked (who have since moved away). I think if I can get into that headspace again, where I really don’t want to smoke and am tired of it, then I will be able to quit easily, whereas if I’m just doing it because of knowledge of health risks in the distant future—that’s not immediate enough to make it easy.

As far as pregnancy goes, I think that as long as I quit at least a year before I’m planning to get pregnant, the fetus will be okay. My grandmother was encouraged by her doctor to smoke during pregnancy to calm her nerves. (This was in the early 1960,s I believe, and I’m fairly certain the effects of smoking were known to doctors at that time, but i dont know) The kid was born weak and sickly with all sorts of allergies that none of his siblings shared. He survived, and it could have been much worse than allergies, but it was still a bad thing.

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 5:20 UTC
1 point
in reply to: novalis’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
the fridge isn’t mine—came with the apartment. and it’s a communist era fridge (complete with Russian labeled dials), so it probably dates back to before the wall came down. i have it on medium setting and will look at acquiring a thermoter to see if that means <5°C like it should or, something ridiculous like 10°C (i think i’d notice if it was warmer than that. it feels cold to me.)

I think the beans in question are just old beans. I add salt to taste at the end.

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 5:16 UTC
0 points
in reply to: dyfrgi’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
I love indian food amd I like lentils and beans. And lentils are supposed to be quicker to cook (I have some really old lentils. I should get newer ones. They aren’t expensive.) The trick seems to be getting them soft but not mush. I used to cook indian more often, but I always made too much. It’s amazing how much food one carrot, one onion, one tomato, and some lentils turns into.

I have some spices—one year for my birthday, I told my mother to get me spices. And small quantities of spies are available quite cheaply—packets containing only a few grams can last me over a year, since I’m only using a pinch of one, a pinch of another. I have most of the common european spices (salt, black pepper, sweet paprika, rosemary, thyme, oregano, dill, basil, sage, etc.) and also I have some curry and garam masala, ground and whole cardamom (which I never knew what to do with). i have chili powder as well, which i add in small quantities to various things for health reasons—i dont like very spicy, but i dont mind it a little.)

I live in Hungary, and I’ve been trying to shop less European, because if I don’t have emergency supplies on hand and I can’t leave the house, then I’m stuck. I try to keep foods on hand that won’t spoil to use as emergency foods (some days I have a migraine and don’t make it outside), but on the days I can go out, I should be a good European and visit the market across the street in the mornings where there’s fresh seaonal produce from surrounding villages, and the bakery just down the street where I can buy ¹⁄₂ kg of bread for 115 forints (about $0.57). Lately, though, I haven’t been making it outside very often and so I eat into my supplies until I have to buy more.

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 5:01 UTC
2 points
in reply to: taryneast’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
woah, that is so totally cool. Expensive—more than a month’s rent and utilities combined, but seriously cool.

Also, they sell them in my country—even in my city, and the webpage says they have a promotion thing where you can borrow it for a night and then take it back the next day for free—under the idea that a person would be sold on the idea and wouldnt want to go back to their old vacuum cleaner. So, basically, I could get my carpet cleaned for free, and then give it back. If the thing would clean it thoroughly (and I’d be willing to babysit it for a night if it needed to be emptied frequently), it’s possible that it could get enough of the ingrained dirt out that i could make reasonable progress with regular vacuuming.

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 4:49 UTC
1 point
in reply to: lavalamp’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
hm, that’s interesting. That doesn’t seem like something I could easily test for at home, but I may ask a doctor the next time I see one.

The symptoms I have are really weird… not like what I’ve seen in adverts about heartburn (no burning pain in the chest, no stomach pains), but they come after eating acidic foods, so I try to avoid those foods. After eating something like chili or pizza, I feel like there’s something ‘stuck’ in my esophagus (the feeling is like when you swallow a pill, and it gets stuck on the way down), but there’s nothing really there. It is accompanied with burping and/or hiccups which last for hours. it hurts to lie down, so i have to stay seated. and it’s a recent development. I never had problems like this before a few months ago. I thought that until I could see a doctor I should just avoid foods that make me feel like this, and googled “alkaline foods” to see what foods might calm my stomach when it does that, if it’s reacting badly somehow to acidic foods. unfortunately, there’s a big pseudoscience diet called alkaline foods which lists foods like “lemon” as being alkaline, not acidic, because of some sort of reasoning that i couldnt quite follow. the signal to noise ratio was so bad that i gave up on googling for this information.

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 4:37 UTC
2 points
in reply to: BillyOblivion’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
We don’t have Craigslist in Hungary, but we have a newspaper for classified ads that posts the ads online as well. I could search that to see if anyone’s advertising something. My landlady has a steam cleaner and has said I can borrow it sometime.

I always take off my shoes at the door, but the cats get hairballs (I give them special treats to cut down on hairballs, which seems to help, but not 100%), and accidents happen, so some sort of shampoo might work.

I wrote a small program in PHP/MYSQL for keeping track of my migraines. You list what you ate that day, what (and how much) you drank, how much you slept and between what hours, pain levels, other complaints, and a few other things. It keeps track of your menstrual cycle as well (if you’re doing it every day, there’s a checkbox to check on the first day of the cycle). It then lets you sort by any of those criteria so that you can look back over the data and try to make sense of it. It’s not hosted online anywhere (i was never done tinkering with it, and i never added anything like a login form or support for multiple users, so you have to have a server with php and mysql set up on your computer to run it. I kept track of it for a while, but then started forgetting more and more and I had no idea how to analyse the data I’d amassed (and probably would’ve needed more data anyway). Also, I wasn’t sure if I was asking the right questions (or enough of the right questions). A big source of my migraines was the bad mattress I was sleeping on, which wasn’t even in that data. Getting a new mattress earlier this year helped a lot, but things have started to get bad again (though now at least, I know I’m sleeping well on a good mattress).

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 4:25 UTC
0 points
in reply to: jasticE’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
i think if i ate eggs once every 3 days ( to keep from getting tired of them. i tire easily of eggs) I could get through a carton (10 eggs) with time to spare before they expire.

milk: i’ve mostly switched to powdered milk (which i wont drink, but can use in cooking and it doesnt go bad). When I want drink milk, I’ve started to buy a half litre of it that I will drink as soon as I get home. The problem with UHT is that once I open it, I have to drink the whole litre in a couple days. I need to figure out what’s wrong with my fridge. I was more using milk as an example of something that I can’t buy and use in the way normal people do because it spoils quicker than it should.

meat: i do like those, and a little can go a long way. There’s a store here (Aldi) that sells 300g Nürnburger Rostbratwurst for ~€3. 300 grams can last me quite a while. -- These don’t seem to go bad in the fridge actually, as long as I use them in a week. I keep them in the original package which I don’t open very far and also wrap that in plastic. I can buy a small amount of minced meat for 1€ and make a stir fry with it that serves one person, but I don’t do this very often.

pasta—yeah, I live off of pasta.

Ungarn :) I live south of Budapest, so food is cheaper here than it is there. The price of tobacco is set at a national level, however. A box of cigarettes costs 560 forints, about €2. However, I have found it is cheaper to buy tobacco directly. A 40g packet of tobacco also costs €2 and will make 50 cigarettes. A box of 200 empty cigarette tubes costs €1. So, the price of 200 cigarettes made by hand is €9. The device that puts the tobacco in the tubes costed €5 and has lasted me over a year so far. It paid for itself very quickly. I smoke about a pack a day, so €0.90. 1 kg of bread costs €1. 10 eggs is a little more than €1. At Aldi I can buy a can of Gulyás soup for €1, but it is €3-4 in stores close to me.

pthalo 28 Jun 2011 4:05 UTC
0 points
in reply to: taryneast’s comment on: The True Rejection Challenge
i’ll look around. it sounds like a nice way of cooking.