House, Again...

Ceilings are mostly done...which delights me to no end, as in the last 4 days we were covered in fine powder of ceiling paint and structured cement. Yum. I gave up trying to clean anywhere: just keeping the kitchen more or less spotless. I will vacuum when the painting jobs are all done, which is problble the end of this week. Much fun: I can never know what I will find when I got home. I bet the cats are enjoying it too.
For the weekend, two of our dear friends from Austin will visit us; they don't know yet (::evil grin::) but they shall assist us in de-shelving the books from the library and removing the shelves themselves as well before that past of the house gets its new floor. I shall probably cook something decent for Saturday dinner, come think of it...
Speaking about food: book recommendation. Some of you, gentle readers, might now how much of a cooking fan I am; give me a cookbook and I can entertain myself for the whole day. A few years back I briefly glanced at Barbara Tropp's China Moon Cookbook, noted 'how cool', looked at the price tag, shuddered and sadly restrained myself. I was a student on a Hungarian student budget visiting in the US...you can imagine. Now, last weekend at Half Price Books (and what a cool bookstore it is, I may add) the familiar blue hardback beckoned from the shelf (oddly enough, it was not placed with the normal cookbooks, or with the Chinese cookbooks even; it was, if I remember right, in the celebrity cookbooks section...). And so I heeded its gentle calling...
Chinia Moon was a famous cafe-bistro in San Francisco (it's closed now if I recall, its owner-chef passed away in 2001 after long illness, sadly), reknown for its modern Chinese-European fusion fare. Now I really like fusion cooking anyways, but this particular book with its fresh ingredients, unusual but traditional combinations and North Chinese/ Szechuan basisreally appealed to me. The recipes are not simple, and require preparations, which might be a deterrent in this 'make-everything-fast-and-in-ten-minutes-ready-never-have-enough-time' age...but I am a firm believer in comfortable, long meals made from scratch. I grew up that way. On Sundays, whenever we visited grandparents, all morning (excluding church time) was an endless meal preparation, with the participation of all female members of the extended family, inclcuding, from about the age of seven, myself. A four-course meal was the minimum...I am still striving to reproduce my maternal grandmother's beef soup or sour cherry strudel, and my paternal grandma's stuffed cabbages, or fried chicken. They taught me that real food is made out of real ingredients (especially dear to me in the age of pre-prepared frozen meals out of the supermarket freezers), a good meal cannot be rushed, and that kitchen time is actually meditation/relaxation time combined with education/information exchange, depending on who's in the kitchen and what is cooking. Fortunatley, my father, who owns and operates a restaurant, continued my education in this regard, and still does, every time I visit back home. And I know, that even though my husband keeps complaining about his waistline expanding during holiday times, he probably does not mind that I know which end of the spoon stirs the soup...