Blog Archive: October 2015

How To Prepare Traditional Uzbek Plov (Lamb and Rice Pilaf)

| Food blogger | 38 seen

In this post you will learn how to prepare a traditional Uzbek plov (lamb and rice pilaf.  It might sound as a complicated food to prepare, but in fact if you have the right ingredients and right tools (cooking pot) there is nothing complicated in it.

There are three main ingredients to get that tasty plov done - lamb meat, rice and quince. Since I'm living in Republic of Georgia, it's easy to find all the ingredients here, on the other hand, it might be tricky to get the correct ingredients in other parts of World. For a seasoning there is one must have - a cumin, but unfortunately a seasoning lady I usually buy spices from in Tbilisi, sold me the wrong cumin and there are no cumin in this recipe, but cumin still is must have, to get that special flavor.

So I headed to local Turkish store called Ankara on Aghmanashebeli street in Tbilisi to buy that lamb meat. I took about 1.5 kg of lamb meat. For the second main ingredient I used the regular rices (not special ones) you can buy at your local store, got quince at local market and here you go - a traditional Uzbek plow.

Ingredients: 

…

How To Carve a Pumpkin and Make Stunning Halloween Photos

| Digital Photography School | 10 seen

In this post you will learn how to carve a pumpkin and prepare it for a good photography. Let's call this digital photography school tutorial -  a pumpkin photo session.

Tools you will need: a pumpkin, sharp knife, a marker, candles a DSLR camera and a tripod (for photography)

For a pumpkin I visited local Tbilisi market and bought one for 2 GEL (~0.6$)

Let's start with carving that pumpkin:

Use a marker to draw up lines on the pumpkin

You can use some trafaret or you can just draw by hand. I prefer doing it by hand (although have never tried using a trafaret yet)

Cutting of the top

Start with cutting of the top of your pumpkin, so you can scoop out the flesh

Use a regular table spoon for removing the flesh

Use a sharp knife for cutting out the lines

Since I love to cook I have plenty of knives available, if you don't have a super sharp kitchen knife you can use any regular cutting knife, but be extra cautious

Shape up the lines

Carving Halloween pumpkin

Use flesh…

Georgian Parliament Building (Kutaisi)

| Tourism objects | 76 seen

That day finally come and I have finally photographed the legendary Georgian Parliament building in Kutaisi. After picking up my mom at Kutaisi International Airport and before heading towards to Tbilisi, we made a short excursions around Kutaisi and villages near Kutaisi.

It took me just a few seconds to capture this amazing landscape of futuristic parliament building.

The Georgian Parliament Building in Kutaisi has been the home of the Parliament of Georgia since its inauguration on May 26, 2012, replacing the Parliament building at 8 Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi.

Georgian Parliament building in Kutaisi

I have been dreaming of picture like this for some years already, since 2012 at least. Now, I feel very proud of myself and my photography skills.

The government, during the building's construction, promoted it as a symbol of Georgia's bright, democratic future. Its location in Kutaisi was touted as a boost for the regional economy there as well as a way to knit the country closer together. Critics state that the building is a waste of money, and that having Parliament…

Sorrel Soup With Hard-Boiled Eggs (Photo Recipe)

| Food blogger | 11 seen

Today we will prepare one of mine all times favorite soup - Sorrel soup.

The idea for this blog post come out of my 365 days photo project, when everyday I'm taking some picture in Manual mode and publish it to my Flickr account. Since the strong jury didn't enjoyed my entry photo with sliced onion for day 13 I was literally taken to the kitchen and all I has to do  - just to photograph. One image speaks thousands words! Enjoy!

Ingredients: Sorrels, carrots, smoked meat, potatoes, dills, parsley, some onion and some seasoning.

Start with grated carrots:

Grated carrot

Chop that meat

Dills and parley

Sliced potatoes

Now bring all the above ingredients to some pot (before you should boil some water in it)

Boiling sorrel soup

Scissors and sorrels

Now, you should add sorrel to your soup at the end. Take scissors and nicely slice your sorrels. You can of course use knife, but I prefer scissors

chopped sorrels

Hard boiled egg

Your sorrel soup…

Room One - Wall and Ceiling Painting with Water Based Paint

| Home Remodeling | 10 seen

It took us some time to figure out what do next with our recently inherited rural house which was not in her best shape. After I started my fight with grass, (Lawn moving with scythe and Lawn moving with trimmer)  I decided it's time to free up some space inside the house, so we actually have some room to stay for night, for example. Since our major tasks for this summer was actually to change that leaky roof, we were not ready to invest any serious money in building a perfect room, so I bought the cheapest water based paint, some brushes and started to paint.

We decided we will go for a white color, we will make one room completely white (except floor), so at least we have some space which looks decent enough to put in some mattress and probably stay overnight sometime.

It took us some few days actually clean up that room from junk

Room waiting to be painted

The walls was covered with some wallpapers and ceilings was blow out with a chalk. The last time those wallpapers were covered and chalk blown up was some 40 years ago.. Both under wallpapers and under chalk were cardboard plates. So all I had to do was prepare…

Café 'Staburadze' Review in Kuldīga (Latvia)

| Restaurant reviews | 21 seen

Cafe Staburadze is located on Liepajas street in Kuldiga. Here serves a traditional Latvian cuisine (pork chops and other stuff) and ... I just love this place.

 After I had tried almost all of the Kuldīga cafe's and restaurants I have concluded that exactly cafe Staburadze is among my favorite dining places in lovely Kuldīga town. 

And here are just a few reasons you will love Staburadze as well - it's centrally located in Kuldīga (on central Liepajas street) - it has a budget friendly prices, they serve traditional Latvian cuisine here (pork chops), staff is friendly but what's important - food is just excelent.

Cafe Staburadze building in Kuldiga

Menu at Cafe Staburadze

  • Salads, snacks, pork, chicken, beef, fish and desserts. 

Seems they have covered all spectrum of food here. 

Meat balls with boiled potatoes as side dish and cabbage salads

Guess what? I will prepare some of this in one of my next food blog posts.

Solyanka soup

Don't miss solyanka soup once in Latvia. I will definetly add a…

Diana Krall Concert Review in Tbilisi (Georgia)

| Living in Georgia | 11 seen

Diana Krall performed in Tbilisi in frames of Tbilisi Jazz Festival and her own Wallflower World Tour on October 23, 2015. 

We visited this show at Tbilisi Philharmonic hall (Previous time I was here was a concert of a Russian band Aquarium and Boris Grebenshchikov 2014).

During this show some older songs from Diana Krall repertoire, like Fly me to the moon were performed and  of course some new ones. But speaking of me, I most probably enjoyed the most song California Dreamin'. Amazing show, great animated visuals on screen.

The show was set to start at 20:00

Stage is ready for Diana Krall at Tbilisi Jazz Festival 2015

As it happens in such events, show didn't started at 20:00 but at 21:00, so the visitors had plenty time to take selfies and I had plenty time to master my DSLR photography (I took my camera with telephoto lens attached)

Girl with a Polaroid camera

I captured this lovely girl with her Polaroid camera (instant photos)

Tbilisi Philharmonic hall

Our seats were at the balcony and telephoto lens test for my…

Boiled Potatoes With Ground Meat Sauce Recipe

| Food blogger | 14 seen

Welcome everyone to just another food blogger post series - today we will prepare a very simple recipe - Boiled potatoes with ground meat sauce. 

It's just that time of the year when I found myself more in kitchen just eager to cook something, and after a visit to the local market I decided I want to prepare something simple, tasty and something I could photograph for my digital photography school project. As I believe a successful food blogger should take sharable and pinable pictures (share them now!)

This is one of the simplest foods I can actually name - I was like a 5 or something when my grandmother taught me how to prepare sauces, and I really love sauces. It took me more time to learn how to actually boil potatoes.

What ingredients will you need?

Potatoes, just obliviously, ground (minced) meat, carrots, onions, salt&pepper, a little bit milk (I prefer sour cream, but milk is just fine)

For how long should I cook?

About 25 minutes

Cooking directions

Peel the potatoes and place in a saucepan

Now add water and potatoes until they are soft

…

First Barbecue Festival in Our Newly Inherited House

| Home Remodeling | 7 seen

While there is a good reason to visit a barbecue festival in Armenia, in this post I will provide some details on the first barbecue festival (OK, it's actually a party) we held in our recently inherited country house, where some serious home remodeling tasks are performed.

Throwing up a barbecue party is a must have to fully enjoy all the good works and intentions you are doing while performing such a routine tasks, like fighting a grass (and I had fight with it all Summer along), figuring out how to change that leaky roof, or doing some paint job. This was a special party, there were not many people invited (just 3 and a dog) but it got us amazing feeling of happiness. Hey, we are on the right track.

Preparing table for a barbecue set

We did find some old table inside the house and covered it with a linen tablecloth and got a really lovely place to serve barbecue

Simplified grill 

Overgrown territory starts to look alike a lawn

I have used both a scythe and a trimmer, but latter I hired a trimmer guy who did all the hard work for us (expensive, but worth of cost). 

…

Hiking in Borjomi (Georgia)

| Outdoor Activities | 10 seen

A group of four Georgia Expat Photographer club members visited Borjomi on September 20, and we did a lovely hike here. I took my camera, Map My Ride app (great for recording trekking routes) and here is the result.

During this route which took us some 3 hours we visited 2 lovely monastery sites, discovered an open air sulphur pools, spent some time in Borjomi mineral water park and of course took that lovely Borjomi cable car

About route: In total this route was 8.25 km long, took about 3 hours to finish (we did have stops, and I paused app there) and burned 2707 Kcal.

Route map

We started our route by taking Borjomi cable car to get uphill. 

Borjomi Spring water Dome house (taken from cable car)

Our hike started here (well actually few meters bellow we entered that Borjomi cable car). 

  • Ticket price per ride - 3GEL

View to Borjomi

So the cable car got us up, and we took our chances to shot lovely photos like above

Acorns in Borjomi

Mountainous road in Borjomi

…

Lawn Mowing with a Trimmer

| Home Remodeling | 6 seen

Right, this post is like and extended version for my previous post in home remodeling series on lawn mowing with a scythe. After a tough fight with grass using old school tools like scythe it was enough for me. And I mean it - no more scythe for me.

Having a house in rural Latvia teaches a very important lesson, you have to own a trimmer, or it will be a very costly for you to fight the grass. Since some serious trimmers cost a lot and we hadn't actually planed to spend a money on it, we found an owner who could rent us out his trimmer for a six pack of beer.

Author of this blog captured in action fighting grass with a trimmer

Gosh, what an experience - during my first trimmering  I learnt I know nothing about trimmering grass - first of all - I was very afraid of this machine, second I had no idea how it is actually working - well I learnt that latter (I have a whole grass fighting story during our first year of home remodeling) 

Our fish pond completely overgrown in grass

I actually did something wrong with this trimmer, so I had to buy new details for it. So…

10 Popular Sony Vaio Laptop / Notebook Models To Choose From

| Laptop Reviews | 332 seen

I wouldn't call myself the biggest evangelist of Sony laptops, as I believe more popular are ASUS, DELL, HP and other brands, but that doesn't mean Sony doesn't have some powerful laptops to deliver for basically all consumer needs. 

VAIO was originally a brand of Sony Corporation, aka Sony VAIO . A couple of years Sony sold its PC business to the investment firm Japan Industrial as part of a restructuring effort to focus on mobile devices. Sony maintains a minority stake in the new, independent company, which currently sells computers in the United States, Japan, and Brazil as well as an exclusive marketing agreement. Sony still holds the copyright trademarks for the VAIO brand and logo.

In this article, you will find some of the latest and popular VAIO laptop models, alternatively see: Top 5 VAIO Laptops 2020

A quick note: This article contains affiliate links to Amazon.com, by clicking on links on this page and by making a purchase on Amazon site, I will earn an affiliate income at no cost to you. Prices for laptops listed on this page are retrieved using…

Borjomi Mineral Water Park in Georgia

| Tourism objects | 177 seen

Borjomi mineral park which is located in town on Borjomi, some 120 km from nations capital Tbilisi, is a lovely place to enjoy a lazy day, preferable for slow walking and enjoying beautiful aroma coming from pine cons.

This park (and Borjomi town) has been on my most favorite destination list in Georgia for many years already (well, I first visited this place in 2011). This park was in our Borjomi hiking route, during our recent hiking tour organized by Georgia Expat Photographer Club. If you are a solo traveler or group of indies - here is a tip how to get to Borjomi for cheap - Tbilisi - Borjomi Transfer by Marshrutka (Minibus)

As a rule of thumb there is some small entrance fee for entering Borjomi Mineral Water park (some 0.5 GEL or 1.00 GEL), but during our hiking trip we enter this park from the other side and save up that money. So the pictures I will post bellow are from the other side of park.

Borjomula river in park

Waterfall and a monument in Borjomi Mineral Water Park

The is another interesting angle you can see this waterfall from above, but then you should take Borjomi…

Lawn Mowing with a Scythe

| Home Remodeling | 23 seen

Welcome to the second post in home remodeling series, today I will write about thing called - lawn mowing (I prefer using word grass) with a tool called scythe. It has been a while before my first post about our new property - a house, a really bad managed house we inherited. The thing why it took us so long is - it took us some 2 months to decide - will we seriously do anything with this house or probably let's just leave as it is and come back to Georgia or any other destination in the World?

After 2 months of intensive thinking, arriving on site (our house) everyday, drinking coffee on it's so called porch - we finally get a grip and decided - yes, let's do this, let's build our dream house. Although our minds were busy figuring out how to change a roof for this place, there was another obstacle - the grass.

Home front overgrown with grass

Ahh, those 2 months of us trying to figure out what should we do next were excellent time for grass to grow and overgrown.

A scythe

All we had at that time was pretty old but in working condition…

How To Make Nadugi - Traditional Georgian Snack (Fresh Cheese With Mint)

| Food blogger | 462 seen

When I first arrived to Georgia back in 2011, I was immediately taken to one of the lovely Tbilisi restaurants. Since I had no clue what so ever special of Georgian Cuisine I asked my friend could he suggest me some common and typical Georgian food? We ordered Ojakhuri and Nadugi. 

When I first seen Nadugi I thought its form looks like cone of ice cream, and then my associative thinking turned on and I thought - strange they eat potatoes / meat stew together with ice cream? Then I tried that little snack and in next second I just felt in love with that small Georgian snack Nadugi. 

Now I know - Nadugi is nothing related to ice cream - it's actually some kind of fresh cheese blended with mint and wrapped in thin Sulguni cheese plates

Nadugi is a snack in the shape of sacks, made of thin sulguni cheese flat cakes with the filling of nadugi, light milk product with a delicate taste of cream, and mint.

It was my blog's second anniversary when I was offered to prepare some special dish to celebrate this major milestone and choice was made in favor for nadugi. All ingredients were bought on local Tbilisi…