lately, september

when you have too much to write about and get behind with recording life’s happenings that you just don’t even know where to start anymore so you don’t post. sound familiar?

well, it’s finally  time to talk about september & all recent life things here in south bohemia!

it’s clear to me now from my post earlier this month that i was hur-ting. still getting over a serious bout of homesickness involved with leaving washington, i was not over it. it took about two weeks or so but everything found itself back to normal here in budejovice. fortunately early september brings fun markets and happenings like the annual vltava

žije (vltava lives) event, which has now become a two-night festival. this year there were art installations involving light, music, dance, and theater all over the city for two nights and you could plan to visit them all – it was really perfect, and very reminiscent of prague’s signal fest but way more low-key as it was so easy to visit each performance instead of them being spread all over a big city.

in the kitchen

although september is “back to school”, it doesn’t mean the start of the school year for us (yet), so there has been some teaching, but most of my lessons (which involve many group lessons with children and young people) don’t ramp up until october, so i’ve been loving this extra time to get acclimated. to practice yoga every day, to take hikes to favorite spots (above, with koláč

), and cook & bake! once again, i’m not participating in the bake off bake along even though it was a fantastic challenge two years ago. mostly, i just want to concentrate on other projects and ideas outside of the program… and partially because victorian week remains the bane of my existence. (still, the fact that i ever made a marizpan covered fruit-cake with the wrong kind of butter that made fun of the NFL… and posted about it… astounds me)

one very new to me vegetable that came in my recent CSA share box was a big mystery to me, and the internet had barely anything to say about it! they are little pods (almost like little peppers) which are mostly hollow (sort of an okra situation) and taste of cucumber. what are they? finally we found the answer: achocha (at left, next to the pumpkin). it is also known as “lady slipper” and used very often in south american cooking, especially in bolivia and peru. i cooked up some stuffed achocha with a ricotta cheese that i made myself. cheese making: new venture this season. & don’t forget the annual kimchi fermentation! 

and the finished product with the above cheese – saag paneer!

this month’s adventures

fortunately, a bit of extra time this month allowed us to do some fun things on weekdays that we wouldn’t normally think to do. from checking out a cafe that we still haven’t been to (so many cafes & restaurants in budejovice!) to heading over to

český

krumlov last week for lunch, walks around the castle park in summer’s last gasp, and visiting with friends in the coolest little pop-up summer cafe in the brewery garden. i cannot stress enough how beautiful it was – on a warm day with just a hint of chill in the air, to sit in what feels like a friend’s garden and sip coffees under trees, barely holding onto their ripened apples… cozy knit sweaters and sun filtering in through the branches… it was the perfect afternoon and couldn’t have been a better way to spend the last good day of summer.

south bohemia is kind of a wonderland, in case you couldn’t tell.

this past weekend we happily attended our first czech wedding! well, the reception, as it seems more common to have the ceremony reserved for a few close friends and family members and more people attending the party. a bunch of us piled in two cards and headed towards the austrian border (so close that you get those ‘welcome to austria’ texts) to a lovely pension in a beautiful natural area. so fun to celebrate pepa & marketa’s big day! and wouldn’t you know it…for the third time this year… we danced to despacito at a wedding. i thought perhaps it hadn’t reached czechland… but oh, it has.

(note the largest wine pour i have ever seen in my life – we’ve dubbed them “czech pours”, so many delicious cakes, + the happy couple)

coming up

in other news, we are happily planning all sorts of adventures for the next year (even so far as next summer, as i hinted about in the last post). because autumn in central europe just screams “wine or beer related getaway” to me, we’ll be heading back to southern moravia next weekend but to a new area! i always update future travel plans on this page, if you want to take a peek where else we’ll be headed this season.

here’s where i ask you! what kinds of posts might you want to see here on adventurings in the near future? any topics of interest or curiosity? i’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments! i want to start writing more about any little thing or idea that pops up vs. waiting to write. i’ve realized how much i haven’t loved to capture the everyday, but the seemingly mundane things for me could turn out to be of interest to others – just let me know.

happy autumn, friends.