Most religions start with some kind of revelation. Some guy while walking in the woods finds golden plates, next thing you know, two scmucks are knocking on your door asking strange questions. An old man walks to the top of the mountain, comes down with a couple of stone tablets, next thing you know I have to feel bad about eating bacon. A guy gets crucified, next thing you know….
I may be on to something too. Lately, I started noticing that Dove Chocolate Promises contain unlimited supply of chocolate wisdom and life directives. After eating several bags of chocolates I now have enough wrappers to cover most of life’s questions and daily matters.
The Promises can be divided into two categories: wisdom and directives.
Directives:
Go to your special place
Go against the grain
Send a love letter this week
Don’t think about it so much
Follow your instincts
Whisper in the dark
Live your dreams
Wink at someone driving past today
Smile. People will wonder what you’ve been up to
Love without rules
Discover yourself
Watch reruns, they replay your memories
Wisdom:
It’s definitely a bubble-bath day
There is a time for compromise…it’s called “later”
Sometimes one smile means more than a dozen roses
Age is nothing but a number
If they can do it, you know you can
When two hearts race both win
Temptation is fun…giving in is even better
These pearls can be combined in an infinite number of ways. Try it:
Don’t think about it so much+Go to your special place+Discover yourself
See, it’s like a higher power telling you what to do.
OK, I am back from my “special place” where I just “discovered myself” and I am “smiling” so “people will wonder what I’ve been up to”. Get it?
I am on my quest to eat more Dove Promises to finally discover the secret of life. I found out that I can actually order my own Promises with old stand-by’s like “don’t pee against the wind” or “don’t eat yellow snow”.
During the course of my (long) life I have tried many variations of the beet and cabbage soup otherwise known as borscht: hot and cold, with meat or vegetarian, chopped and shredded, home-made and not, but no one ever managed to make it better than my Mom. Now my daughter says that mine is even better than that, I guess this is just how life works. Borscht is delicious and good for you, but most importantly it’s cheap and easy to make. A word of caution: you can’t make a small amount of borscht, there will always be more than you expected.
First, assemble the ingredients: beets (I had 4 medium), 2 carrots, small or medium head of cabbage, 1 red pepper, some fresh parsley, 2 stalks of celery, 1 medium onion, 1 tablespoon of tomato paste, 3-4 potatoes and a can of V-8 or tomato juice.
Cut off the beet greens and discard them unless you have a pet goat or a vegetarian friend. Peel the beets.
Put the beets in a large pot half-full (half-empty?) with slightly salted water.
Cover, bring to a boil and simmer for about an hour until a knife can easily go through a cooked beet.
In the meantime, chop an onion and sauté it in a small amount of (olive) oil. While this is being done, shred carrots and chop parsley and celery.
Add all of this to the skillet with onions and continue to sauté.
Now you have time to slice the cabbage, red pepper (I used half) and cube potatoes (not too small).
When the beets are ready, remove them from the pot and set aside to cool down. Add all the vegetables and the contents of the skillet to the pot. Cook until potatoes can be cut with a spoon, about 20 minutes. When the beets are cool enough to handle, shred them and add to the pot. Bring to a boil. At this time add tomato paste and V-8. Bring to a boil and adjust the salt. You are done.
Since this borscht is virtually fat-free, a dollop of sour cream will add a bit of substance and contrast the sweetness of the beets. You can serve it cold, warm or hot and it will only get better the next day and even better after that, if you still have any left.
There are thousands of borscht recipes on the internet and every schmuck with a video camera posted one on Youtube; I have no idea and no desire to try what they taste like, most likely they are disgusting vinegar-tasting pots of overcooked cabbage and beets. The only recipe you’ll ever need is here. Enjoy it or else! Here is a video of the yesterday’s borscht-cooking session.
Borscht has only a few ingredients and some of them are on the American most hated foods list: beets, cabbage and V8 (or tomato juice). And yet it’s so delicious.
Once, while I was walking somewhere with my Father, we met one of his patients. The guy had a pronounced limp. “He damaged his leg parachuting into Hungary in 1956”, my Dad told me when the guy schlepped away. For a long time this was all I’ve ever heard about the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Hungarians tried to overthrow the communist regime years before a similar event happened in Czechoslovakia, and were just as brutally run over by the Soviet tanks. Over 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops were killed in the fighting.
