Tuesday, March 17, 2009

The Munching of the Green!

It's Saint Patrick's Day, a holiday that will be celebrated in many cities around the world where there's a considerable number of Irish. In Belgrade there's an Irish Pub, and I've heard they've planned festivities for the beer-drinking crowd, though few Serbs know who Saint Patrick was. Spring still hasn't shown us much green, so I decided to go out and buy myself some. Pictured above are two kinds of greens I like a lot. The long, thin ones are called zelje (ZELL-yeh) and are often used to wrap around seasoned meat and rice, then covered with a broth and baked. Serve with thick yogurt! The smaller leaves will actually grow much larger (not these; I ate them), and are usually cooked/steamed and served with sour cream and garlic. They're called blitve (BLEET-veh). I think they're called collards in English, and I honestly don't know what zelje are. I've Googled, but nothing looks quite right. Help?

CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK....OF ICE

 Nippy this morning on my dog walk!  Our nearby park has several sources of water and are frozen solid. Except of course for one place. I im...