Noisy Sunday

Our Romantic Balcony

A lovely Sunday at home with just the tranquil sounds of sirens, car alarms, heavy drilling equipment, construction noise and of course the constant singsong of Vietnamese.  This place would be so much better with air conditioning; that way we could drown out the clutter by keeping the windows closed. Of course if we had kept the door to our balcony closed, we wouldn’t have this photo.  Years ago when we lived in Germany it was illegal to make any noise on Sunday. You couldn’t mow the lawn, hammer a nail or do anything that would violate the quiet of a Sunday.  I’m sure that has also changed but it sure was nice while it lasted.

We did a lot of domestic things this morning.  I did some laundry while Cindy made six (small) loaves of her famous Chinese Lemon Bread from a secret recipe supplied by Barbara Romig, who I’m reasonably sure is not Chinese.  This is good stuff, dense lemony cake filled with golden raisins, walnuts and lots of eggs and butter. The house smells divine.

We took a little walk this afternoon just to get out of the house a bit, and enjoyed the flowers that are now everywhere.  We stopped at a local bakery/coffee house for some bread and two of the best cups of espresso this side of Trieste.  To think, it has been there since we arrived and we never tried it.  Not only was it fantastic, they gave us two glasses of water, FREE, which is a very big deal in Moscow.

Pasta Caprese

We didn’t think we would want any dinner last night but around seven thirty we were both a bit hungry so I did a quick look about the kitchen and came up with a nice Pasta Caprese served on a bed of arugula. I flash fried some quartered cherry tomatoes, garlic and coarse salt. I added the drained pasta and a half-cup of the pasta water and mixed it all up. I then turned the heat off and added the mozzarella and some pecorino and basil and stirred until things started to melt, and then transferred it to the plates of arugula.  It was just what we needed.

Hope you all enjoy your Sunday, Cindy and Wm.