Damn Good!

Last night for dinner I fried up some potatoes, onions, and garlic,
then topped it with some brinza, the salty Moldovan cheese. I also
cracked open a new jar of manja - the Moldovan mixture of tomatoes,
eggplant, peppers, and onions - that Krista and I canned over the
summer. That was good.

But what was "damn good," was the jar of strawberry jam I popped open
for desert in order to anoint my ice cream with it. Strawberries are
hard to come by just about anywhere in the middle of January, but not
for me. [See Krista, all that hard work until the wee hours of the
morning washing fruit and vegetables, cutting them, cooking them for
hours, pouring steaming hot liquids into glass jars that had only
recently been sterilized in boiling water, and then grunting with the
strain of sealing the lids on top - it was all worth it! Oh wait,
you're in America and gave your share to me! Sucka!]

In other canning news, I finished my first of five 3-liter jars of
brinza. I'm a bit worried that I overdid it when i purchased 10kg,
or was it 20kg? Well, however much it was, I probably should have
purchased about half as much.

One really has to plan when to eat canned foods. I've got my little
section in the basement, and I'm trying to calculate how much I
should have of my remaining stockpile each week until the end of my
service. Eat too much too quickly, and they'll be nothing left for
later. Eat too slowly, and I'll have to fill my suitcase with jars
of fried peppers instead of presents for family and friends. Plus,
since I'm only one person, I have to time the opening of jars so that
I know I'll be around for a while - don't want the food to spoil.
The equation looks something like this:

Brad's hunger x cans / (time left in Moldova - vacation days) =
817.44

I haven't figured out what the 817.44 means yet. Best suggestion
gets a hunk of brinza...