Smazeny Syr

Dobry den!
You may recall my new location.
Well that me tell you something. If you ever go to Prague, go to little Czech restaurants where they don’t speak any English and when they come up to you and seem ready to take your order, say this: Smazeny Syr, prosim.
I’ll put that phonetically for you: Smah-shen-ee see-r pro-seem.
What is smazeny syr? Fried cheese. Syr is the word for cheese, and smazeny is the word for fried.
Your arteries will hate you, but your taste buds will love you.

Smazeny syr is generally made with edam cheese, but you can also find it made with other cheeses. Get whatever cheese you like, although edam is a nice taste, and goes well with the tartar sauce they’ll hopefully serve with your meal. (You should also get it with “American potatoes” or french fries!)

Smazeny syr is so good, that if you search “smazeny syr recipe” on google, you’ll get a quick youtube tutorial that sounds a lot like a porno.

Trust me, when you eat smazeny syr, you’ll sort of get it.

It’s like a mozzarella stick, but bigger, and an entire meal, and you’re actually encouraged to eat it by itself, instead of with vegetables or as an appetizer. Also, it’s eaten with tartar sauce instead of tomato sauce.

You can also find smazeny syr at stands in some squares like Wenceslas Square. The stuff at the stands is good, but the stuff in the restaurants is to die for.

If you can, make yourself smazeny syr. It’s totally worth it.

Na shledanou!

Places to de-stress on the interwebs

So I had what was possibly the busiest week of my life last week. A week ago, I moved to an exciting new city for a full-time course at a local university (yes, that’s right, moved the night before school started), and I’ve still got my regular freelance gigs on my plate. This upcoming week doesn’t promise to be any better, and I’ve been thinking of ways to manage my stress level.

 Though I’ve come up with some good ideas (regular exercise, taking a day off school if absolutely necessary, working during my commute and school breaks so as not to leave it all until I come home), I know I will also be going on my favourite blogs as part of project Stay Sane. Of course, this is a dangerous undertaking – there is always the chance that you wind up clicking through archives, and suddenly find you’ve wasted an hour looking at captioned pictures of cats. So, with these dangers in mind, I present some of Roberta’s favourite places on the internet to de-stress (aside from Lady Business, of course):

 

Greetings from Prague!

Dobry den!

In the past week, I’ve moved from good old New York, New York to good old(er) Prague, Czech Republic. I’ll be taking classes here for a semester, and hopefully learning my way around both the language and the city.

When people ask me why I chose Prague I explain in the easiest way possible- my major (a Communications program at an NYC university) offers programs through three sites- one in London, one in Beijing, and one in Prague. I’m spoiled, and have already been to London, and I also have no desire to go to Beijing. What was left? Prague.

I’d never been to Prague, and the chance to go somewhere completely new was exciting to me. I’ve been fortunate enough to do one month summer programs in England and Venice, and getting to live and know the areas I’ve been in is an experience. You really get to love where you are, and I wanted to experience that with somewhere new.

The more I learned about Prague, the more excited I got. I learned that the architecture was beautiful, the beer was supposed to be the best in the world (although I’m not really a big beer drinker), the history was rich, the arts were well-loved and performed, and there was a love of sports like hockey.

Beautiful architecture, art, and hockey? Consider me sold.

True to form, everything here is beautiful. It’s a lot like living in a fairy tale, except that Snow White never slips on snow on her way to the dwarves’ house.

The trip from the airport (Ruzyne), however, is deceiving. As we traveled by bus from the airport to Prague, we passed lots and lots of buildings- not one of them was beautiful. Instead, they were all 1950’s style, big boxes. The square shaped, square windowed, sad looking architecture that was so prevalent in the middle of the century. It just looks like a cliché of communism.

I panicked, thinking I would be surrounded by this architecture, until we actually entered Prague. I had no idea what to do- I wanted to take a picture of every single building. We even passed the rather out of place Dancing House on the way to my dorm, which, although not exactly fitting in with the aesthetic, was still a joy to see.

As you can see, the buildings in Prague are beautiful. It’s only my fourth or fifth day here, but I’m going to the Prague Castle later this week, so I’ll report back then!
With any luck, by the end of this semester I’ll know tons more about Prague, and I’ll be able to pass the knowledge on to you!

Na Shledanou!

Gardening: Growing fruit from seeds

Perhaps for being born and raised in a desert area, my parents were never plant people.  Of course, some plants exist where they lived: cacti, shrubs, and maple trees in a natural environment, and pecan trees and cotton fields in the farms.  I never saw so much as a cactus at home, and the grass area my childhood house had was kept as short and unobtrusive as possible by a gardener named Mario, whose entire livelihood he dragged in every week in an old and rusty wheelbarrow.  When we moved to a townhouse later on, our driveway and our patio were immediately tiled and our potential garden space got reduced to whichever potted plants were bought, which were exactly none.  Many years later, being the rebellious and contrarian child I am, I had to move away for college to a more humid area and BEHOLD, I discovered I loved living in a place where things were green.  I loved it so much I didn’t mind the incessant chirping of bugs at night and the summer army of small green mosquitoes that were ever-present in front of my face.

(Instructions and pictures after the jump.)

My Lovely Valentine: Mix CDs

            Valentine’s Day is coming soon, and even though I don’t make a big deal over the holiday, I do have a favorite gift to receive, a mix CD.  Mix CDs bring one of the best things ever, music, and do it in a fun way.  They show you that a person cares about you, conveys a message you want to tell said person, and instantly bring back memories of your history with that person.

Explorations in Retail Sexism

I had a pretty memorable customer the other day. She was a very sweet, elderly lady. We chatted for a bit about nothing in general. When I asked her what I could help her with, she patted my hand, and said, “Oh, honey, it’s an electrical problem. You’d best get a man who knows about this stuff for me.”

In that instant, she went from “Nice Old Lady” to “Giant Raging Sexist Jerk”. In my head at least.

All she needed was a new light switch, and an explanation on how to install it. I could do that in my sleep, and I’m the one who trained most of the men in my store. I took a deep breath and introduced her to a man in that department. Over the years, I’ve learned when to make my stand.

When you work in a hardware store, especially a “small business” type, you get assaulted with stuff like that nice lady all day long. Although, I will say it’s rarely from employees, and NEVER from the higher-ups. My company is owned and run by a woman, and that would never fly with her.

I’ve had customers straight up look at my breasts (like my brains were kept there) and have them loudly demand to talk to a man. I’ve had customers be genuinely surprised that I could help them. They’ve been hostile, they’ve been nice, they’ve been loud, and they’ve been subtle.

I can tolerate the loud and hostile. They’re just jerks in general, and you can’t fix that. One of the women who trained me (She is a self-described “bra-burning hippy”) told me to think of it this way: Why on earth would you want to help an asshole?! That would just make their day better, and your day worse.

The ones that make me sad don’t even realize they’re sexist. These are my regular customers who I really, really like, and who are otherwise awesome. These are the people I make my stand with, and they LOVE it. One of the perks about working at a hardware store is the contacts you can make for side jobs. Just because people decide to put in their own toilet doesn’t mean they actually want to! Getting an employee to do it under the table is way cheaper than hiring a contractor (remember that! Not Big Box employees, but smaller hardware stores). I’ve had my regulars actually come up to me and ask how to do something. When they realize that it’s over their heads, they’ll look right at the next male employee ask them if they do side jobs. God bless them, the male employee usually refers them back to me. The customer is always surprised, and they almost always say, “I didn’t think that girls would be willing to get dirty!”

Tradespeople offer the young men in our store apprenticeships, based on their performance in the store. Young women are NEVER offered this, even if they work harder and better than the men.

I had a conversation with one of my regulars (old hardware stores are great. It’s part of the climate to stand around and bullshit all day). He knows how I feel about being treated as second class, and he gave me this to think about:

Think about a department store. Think about who’s working there. Think about the departments themselves. Would you feel comfortable talking to a straight man about formal wear? How about purses? What about lingerie? If you were in charge of hiring for the department store, would you even consider hiring a man for those departments? Yet there are women in the departments that are the male equivalent. How is this not sexist?
The problem as a whole is that we see women as “shop keepers” and men as “fixers/builders”. Yes, you have jerks that won’t let you help them because you’re a girl, but the reason people aren’t asking you to do side jobs or offering the other girls apprenticeships is because they see you where they think you belong. In a shop.

This made me think a bit. It doesn’t explain the old lady (I really think that was a generation gap issue. I got over that), but it did give me a point of view I didn’t have before this.

Is retail sexist as a whole?

Discuss in the comments.

Recipe: Stuffed Mushrooms

Click for more after the jump.

We Don’t Care About the Young Ones: The Current Late Night Struggle as a Metaphor for the Economy

Good news, Jay Leno’s 10 o’clock show has been cancelled! The bad news is he won’t be leaving our screens, as NBC have decided to give him a slot at 11:30. I have many problems with Jay Leno: his lack of comic ambition or actual comic skill (it doesn’t really take much skill to pick out Headlines or to ask general knowledge questions to ignorant passersby), his ridiculous and undeserved ego, his way of getting what he wants through tactics that I would deem unethical, and his general sliminess that leaves you disgusted after a few minutes of staring at his grotesque mug. However, in the last few weeks my number one concern about Jay Leno’s undeserved success is that it is reflecting our current economic climate.

The Great Post-Holiday Clean-up

This morning, my family started our annual “clean-out”. Well, we mean it to be an “annual”, but this is the first time in four years we really dug ourselves out. I’m pretty good at chucking what we don’t use/need, so I thought to give you some tips to do your own “Great Clean Up”.

Pull it all out

It’s easier to see what you’re dealing with if you can visualize your big pile of stuff. My family’s problem is that we tend to buy new giant rubbermaids when ever we run out of space for anything. So for me, pulling out all of those totes made me see the hoard we had accumulated.

Give yourself time

You are going to run into things you haven’t seen in years. You will stop in wonder and browse through things. If only give yourself an hour to clean out, you will get frustrated and just shove everything back where it was. And what good would that do you? However…

DO give yourself a REALISTIC goal

You are better off if you set limits for yourself. It’s even easier if you have some one working with you set them for you (my husband sets mine. I set his). If you know you like to drag things out, say “I will take this pile to Goodwill today at ten. When I come back, I will take this pile to the dumpster.” If you freak out if something’s left incomplete, you can say, “I HAVE to go to bed, TOMORROW I will finish this project”.

Be merciless

You have a whole pile of crafting stuff you haven’t touched in five years. If you’re honest with yourself, you know that you will never touch that stuff in the next five years. Toss it. Donate it. But GET RID OF IT. And do it as soon as possible, before it has time to fester and grow even bigger. Clothes that you’ve been holding onto that you haven’t worn/don’t fit/out of style: GET RID OF IT. Anything you have more than two of: GET RID OF IT. (This more applies to old toasters/kitchen appliances/tools)

Be honest with yourself

If you know you will never make the trip to the donation place, just throw it away. Yes, I realize that this is wasteful of perfectly good items, but honestly, if you know that you are going to put off the trip until you just re-absorb the clutter, just toss it. If you are keeping photos of people you have cut off from your life because they’re toxic, why keep the picture? They don’t care. They will never know. If you’re keeping stuff just because you might use it, be honest: will you use it? Probably not.

Reorganize

Once you get everything out, you need to reorganize what’s left. What good is all of that work you did gonna do you, if you just shove it back into the nooks and crannies of your life? Get some storage (I have extra if you need some…), LABEL it, and put it away neatly. And REMEMBER you have that stuff.

Really, that’s all there is to it. This morning I was going through my rubbermaids, and found all sorts of neat and not so neat stuff. I had a HUGE rubbermaid filled with half done crafts from years ago. I tossed all of the unfinished projects and ended up with a small gift bad of unopened cross-stitch. I had a whole other tote of pictures, and my husband had found tools he forgot he had.

List of things I found while gutting my crap:
A newspaper from September 12th, 2001
My old babybook
My husband’s high school baseball team picture
My camcorder, which I thought got stolen
An unused ChiaPet
A remote to a car I no longer own
A gazillion empty photo albums, to go with the gazillion loose pictures
Notes from high school (the kind you pass to friends. Spent awhile looking at those! Then I threw them away)
A nekkid Polaroid of me (In the days before affordable digital cameras, kids)

And most important of all, a thank you note from the sister of a man I performed CPR on. He had a sudden cardiac arrest in the parking lot of my store. We had just installed a public automatic defibrillator, and I was able to use it to save his life. It was the greatest, most important moment of my life, and I had “put away” the thank you note so I wouldn’t lose it. I forgot about it. The most important thing EVER, (alright, besides my kid) and I FORGET about it. I would like to share that with you all now, so it can’t be forgotten again.

Dear Kim,
My brother Gary was saved by you & I wanted to thank you so much. He has congestive heart failure & has had heart problems for years. He is a wonderful brother & means the world to me. I can never thank you enough for saving him. My parents and I are so thankful & grateful to you. Gary has a pacemaker now & is doing good. I would like to learn CPR & hope I can take a class soon. Everyone we talked to at Mc____’s was so nice and helpful to us. Thank you so much, Diana

Whenever you “clean out” your life, don’t forget to keep what’s important and valuable to you. What other people might consider junk, if it’s important to you, it isn’t. Unless you’re a certified hoarder, then you have a whole other set of issues I can’t help you with.

PS. I know I promised a beer-bong last week, but I ran into trouble at work, picture-wise. I’m gonna try to promise my newly 21yo yard workers amnesty if they’ll model with it.

Movie Review: Good Dick (2008)

I occasionally have an insane streak of boredom during which I have nothing on the to-do list to check off, no way in sight to be productive, and music gives me headaches. Normally, I read to kill this boredom. Lately, since subscribing to Netflix, though, I watch movies instantly. Such was the day that I recently watched Good Dick starring Marianna Palka and Jason Ritter (Yes, John Ritter’s son).

The description on Netflix involves soft-core porn and somewhat of an anomaly of a relationship, so I knew I would love it. After all, off-beat indie films are my calling. I was not wrong.

The movie begins rather interestingly, with Palka renting pornography from the video store, where Ritter works. She looks somewhat drugged out, shrugging off any commentary and small talk. She leaves a happy customer. He decides to follow her home.

Good Dick is not your standard romantic comedy, nor does it fit into any genre easily. The closest I can come to is a romantic drama, because it has many intriguing and intense scenes. The two lead characters have their share of issues, from past mistakes and an inability to respect boundaries to intense isolation and aloneness. This makes them interesting, a volatile mix, and ensures a lack of peaceful moments.

Overall, the movie is quite simple yet it has its place in the world. Do not watch this movie expecting to learn something about human nature, or even to learn something about the characters. Do expect to be entertained and to be very, very confused at times. You will enjoy it, if you let yourself.

I give this movie a 7/10.