Randy Eggert

Interesting about the language difficulty one: Finno-Ugric languages are considered the most difficult. This tracks since they are non-Indo-European. I lived in Hungary during my early 20s, and it took me about a year to feel confident in the language, so my experience lines up with what the Foreign Service says.

Ra Kenworth wrote:Randy, are these the same as Hungarian wax peppers?

According to Wikipedia, yes. I'm honestly not sure. Long ago, I found seeds through a mail-order catalogue, but I only got a couple small peppers to grow (for some reason, I've never been able to grow any peppers). I've found reasonable substitutes for lecso peppers at farmers markets both in Chicago and Salt Lake, but they weren't exactly lecso peppers.

Our hiking guide in Jamaica made us the most wonderful vegan stew. Before the hike, we went to the market and bought fresh tomatoes, squash, sweet potatoes, onions, and peppers. Then we went to a kiosk and bought a can of coconut milk. He took us through a maze of unmarked trails to a spring, where he half-filled his pot with water, boiled the vegetables over a fire, and added the coconut milk at the end. My wife and I make this stew several times a year--the ingredients vary depending on what's fresh.

My favorite quick stew is a Hungarian lecso. The main ingredients are so simple and so delicious: fresh tomatoes, onions, peppers, lots of paprika, and salt. All of this sauteed together. In Hungary, they have peppers called lecso peppers, and they come in two varieties: spicy and sweet. You can't find those peppers in the US, so we make do with what we find (my Hungarian friends would tell me that it's not a lecso without lecso peppers). For protein, you can add sausage or scrambled eggs if you want. You can eat it plain, on rice, on pasta, or on fry bread. It takes a half hour to make beginning to end,  including the slicing.

j souther wrote:Sweet potato, onion, carrots, celery if I have it, sauteed. Homemade veggie broth and coconut milk, plenty of yellow curry powder. Big handful of chopped greens for last few minutes.

Coconut milk is great in a vegan stew!

Nancy Reading wrote:


Ooh - dumplings !


another recipe

Definitely dumplings!

Jane Mulberry wrote:It's the best thing I've found for removing limescale in the flush toilet.

Came here to say this!

Nancy Reading wrote:

Randy Eggert wrote: I envision a warm room where you're comfortable sitting naked, but not so hot that you sweat. Then you use a bucket of hot water with a rough cloth or sponge to soap and scrub your body, ending by pouring the bucket over your head. I suppose that it could double as a sauna, but most of the time it would just be used for cleansing at a much lower temperature-

This sounds a bit like a 'wet room' where the whole room is lined with waterproof materials - Usually there is a shower fitted - no shower tray as the whole floor is the tray - but no reason it couldn't have a seat and a basin. It would need to be heated for me too though!

Thanks, Nancy. I didn't know this term, but long ago I used one when visiting a friend in Denmark. Their room was larger than I want for my room and heated the same as the rest of the house. What I envision definitely needs to be lined with waterproof materials and have a drain in the floor, but also have a stove to heat the room. So maybe a cross between a wet room and a sauna?

A few people have mentioned saunas and sponge baths. Among the desiderata for my dream home would be something like a small Turkish bath (the scrub-room part, not the steam-room). I envision a warm room where you're comfortable sitting naked, but not so hot that you sweat. Then you use a bucket of hot water with a rough cloth or sponge to soap and scrub your body, ending by pouring the bucket over your head. I suppose that it could double as a sauna, but most of the time it would just be used for cleansing at a much lower temperature--when I take a sauna I feel the need to shower after.

I'm not aware of anything like this, but it seems like it would work well where water is scarce and winters are cold (in the summer, an outdoor, sun-heated shower is great). Does anybody use something similar?

Emery Brown wrote:Dig big hole with shovel in a wet winter, put pole in, backfill with clay that I've dug up from the ground, stomp down hard.
How naive am I being?

There are cedar fence posts (thin juniper logs) near our property in the Utah Desert that date to the Taylor Grazing Act (1934). The barb wire is gone, but the posts are solid.

Christopher Weeks wrote:It’s been a while…

Christopher, thanks for posting these. I always enjoy them, and I think this may be one of your most interesting sets. (I also like that your sets have no discernable theme, but I still try to puzzle out whether each set has a theme that I can't see.)