Quinoa Pancakes

Quinoa Pancakes

1 1/2 cups Quinoa Flour (Ancient Harvest)
3/4 cup Potato Flour (Ener-G)
1.5 tablespoons Baking Powder (Hain Featherweight)
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda

1 cup Coconut Milk (Thai Kitchen)
1 cup Water
1.5 tablespoons Coconut Oil
2 tablespoons raw honey (or Maple Syrup)

Mix all the dry ingredients together well and then mix in the wet ones. After ensuring there are no lumps, make sure to let the batter sits for at least five minutes. It'll ensure that the batter thickens due to the starch, making sure the pancakes sticks together properly.

To cook, heat a few tablespoons of oil in a pan; you'll need a decent amount of oil to make sure it won't stick to the pan. Cook it like a normal pancake otherwise, flipping when each side is brown and the bubbles are showing before the initial flip.

Enjoy!

Riga, Latvia

A Brief History
Riga, like it’s northern cousin Tallinn, is a fairly old city. It dates back to the 12th century and if I recollect correctly, was founded (in a significant way) by a group of merchants at the behest of the Archdiocese of the region. The actual city area has been a living area for centuries before that time, however. While Latvia was not conquered by the Danes at any point, the Teutonic Order and the Principality of Novgorod (Novgorod is actually Russia’s oldest city) both controlled and fought over it’s land. Alexander Nevsky’s defeat of the Order at the Battle of Lake Peipus in 1242 happened in Latvia and halted Teutonic expansion to the north for a full century; it also had a Russian militia defeat heavily armored and well trained Western knights, which is impressive to say the least. Later the Swedes and Polish(as part of the Polish-Lithuanian state) would both fight over the land until the Russians finally annexed it at the same time it took Estonia in the 18th century. Latvia, like Estonia and Lithuania, declared independence from Russia in 1918 during the revolution. In the same trend, they lost it again after WWII and the German then Soviet occupations. In 1991, they regained their independence from the USSR.
Riga is a fairly large city, with a population of over 700,000 people(which comprises near 30% the country’s total population). The Old Town itself is much larger than in Tallinn; it contains more businesses and residences then the latter does, however. In such, it follows the more Western European trend of having an old town that still functions as a fairly regular part of the city, though admittedly with more touristy things than normal.

The Architecture and City Feel
Interestingly enough, Riga is one of the best examples in the world of extensive German Art Nouveau architecture. Nearly the entirety of the old town and significant swathes of the city outside of what is considered “old town” are in the style as well. UNESCO considers it unparalleled anywhere else in the world. Riga seems to have suffered significantly less damage in WWII than Tallinn did, though the neglect to this style of building during the Soviet era(and their architectural style) are both quite present.
Overall, the city has a much more Western, especially German, slant to it then Tallinn did. Considering the history of the city and it’s interaction with the Teutonic Order(which is Germanic), this isn’t very surprising. The lack of significant Russian influence was more so, though.

Culture
Now not only was I only in Riga for two days but the weather during them was dreadful. Whilst it didn’t outright rain, it was overcast, windy, and chilly for the entire time barring the first night there. The first night I didn’t see much of the city, as I didn’t arrive until six in the evening from Tallinn. I did discover, however, that happy hour starts at one in the morning on a Friday night; this seems a bit ludicrous to me, but I’m not their demographic as well.
All I can truly say about the city is that it had a distinct Western and Catholic influence. It was beautifully blended with the Slavic influence from the East and their own unique Baltic culture. The Churches and more official buildings were often in a Germanic style, not Russian or Swedish. They are quite accepting of the Russians though, or at least most have accepted they must have at least some Basic Russian skills to be able to function easily in society (a large segment of the population is Russian) though the youth seems less keen on learning Russian, preferring only Lithuanian or English for foreigners.

Food & Cuisine
I didn’t go out to eat at all in Riga, surprisingly enough. The reason was partly trying to save a bit of money but more so because Riga hosts the largest open-air market in all of the Baltics. It’s absolutely massive(Eastern Market kind of massive, for you Detroiters) and features just about anything you’d want within their cuisine. There were massive open produce areas, plentiful cheese markets, butchers, and pickled items plentiful (freshly made sauerkraut is always delightful). So naturally, I vouched for getting fresh produce and making Dill Lentil soup amongst other things.
The Hare Krishnas have a restaurant in the city though; you can always go to them to eat ☺. The woman who ran the hostel seemed fairly aware of veganism as well, so I’m sure one can find some pretty good eating establishments in the city.

Tallinn, Estonia

A Brief History
Tallinn is a city that first gained a significant size in the 11th century; in the 13th century it was conquered by Danish forces and put under their domain. They sold it to the Teutonic Knights* along with other lands in the 1300’s. In 1561 it was conquered by the Swedish Crown and put under its administration, along with Finland, for centuries to come. The most recent and significant occupations were those by the Russians. Imperial Russia gained control of Estonia and Finland in the Northern War against Sweden(1710) during the Napoleonic Era. They gained their independence in 1918 during the Bolshevik uprising and maintained it until the German Occupation from 1941 to 1944 and the subsequent Soviet governance. Tallinn was heavily damaged by Soviet bombing March of 1944; some of the scars of this are still visible in the city. The Estonians regained independence in 1991 from the USSR.

While being the largest city in Estonia, Tallinn is of fairly small size when it comes to land area. The growth was heavily restricted by both Imperial Russia favoring it being a military stronghold and the Soviets heavily favoring industry over residential development. The suburbs are growing at a good rate; however, they aren’t what I got to see or have great interest in. Tallinn’s old town is primarily contained within the old fortress walls, with the majority of them still there and in quite good condition. The old town has even been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site and in my mind, rightly so.

The Architecture and City Feel
Tallinn really shows a mixture of Russian, Finnish, and Swedish influence in its buildings. While they are not nearly as pompous in their buildings as the Swedes or as utilitarian as the average Finnish structure, they often resemble them in the basic ideas of the buildings and windows. If I’m not mistaken, the person who designed the center of Helsinki also designed parts of Tallinn’s old town. The Russian influence is most evident in their governmental buildings and churches; onions and bulbous spires are frequent in the city. The often straight line and practical approach of the non-orthodox churches gives the strong impression of Finnish and Swedish designs. Overall, the city looks like a Russified version of Helsinki, though more compact and containing all of its older buildings in a relatively small area.

Culture
Now I can’t really speak much of Estonian culture, I was only there for around 36 hours. By the knick-knacks they sell, much of the traditional things are much like what an American would think the Russians are like, though more Pagan, for the lack of a better word. The Robes, the herbs, and archers practicing their skills within the castle wall all give the feeling of being less steeped in Christian tradition and having held onto the Pagan ones a bit stronger. Now I wouldn’t be horribly surprised if the Pagan traditions were still more prominent in the Baltics, as they are in some respects in the Scandinavian countries and the Christianization of the land came later than most of Europe.
As an anecdote though, I did meet quite an interesting man. He was a member of the Estonian military(military service is mandatory for all males for either 9 or 11 months, giving you the rank of private or corporal, respectively) who had served in Afghanistan with, I believe, the 2nd US Marine Battalion. He seemed to have been invigorated by his experience there and was going on another tour in 5 months; he was also hoping to join the US Marines and get a Green card and eventually move to NYC (unsurprising choice, but it really does have a bit of everything). I just found it to be another one of those chance encounters to meet and Estonian who had served with the US Marines in Afghanistan; I can’t imagine there are actually that many of them. With him was a Russian-Estonian** who was still in his studies; he said he was training to become a medic and would go on tour when his schooling was complete.

Food & Cuisine
Possibly the most pleasant surprise in Tallinn was the prevalence of world cuisine that was well done. There were, of course, Estonian restaurants but there were also Russian, German, Indian, Chinese, Thai, African, Polish, and Italian restaurants (their may have been others I did not notice or go by). Now I’m aware this is somewhat common in larger cities, especially in the United States but to find such a thing in Baltic States in city of only 600,000 was quite surprising. Belgrade and Sofia were significantly larger cities but I found no such restaurants and had a much harder time getting by. For my fellow vegans and vegetarians out there, I can whole-heartedly recommend these two restaurants:

Elevant – An eclectic Indian restaurant, with a variety of dishes. There were quite a few curries on the menu as well as Masalas. It was a bit on the pricier side but the serving was very large and the food was excellent. Price range €8-10 per meal, with only water(they charge you for it, apparently).

African Kitchen (Uus 32/34, Tallinn 10111 Estonia) – A restaurant that seems to draw its inspirations from a variety of African cuisines, though it did seem to lack in Ethiopian food (I can’t imagine Teff is easy to find in Estonia though, I couldn’t find it in Sweden either). I had Ebe, which was potatoes and black eyed peas in a tomato coconut sauce, quite tasty. There are 7 or 8 vegetarian meals, half of which are fully vegan(the others have whipped cream in the sauce). The waitress at this restaurant even asked me if I was a vegan when I asked about butter in the dish! I’ve never actually gotten that before, there must be fair number of vegans frequenting Tallinn apparently :). Meals are around €5-7, with drinks often being €2-3. First good Rosé wine I’ve had in Europe since Bulgaria as well.

* – The Teutonic influence and the forced Christianization of Europe still has a few relics there; occasionally I saw Teutonic figurines and their influence in the Catholic churches. It’s an absolutely fascinating history.
** – Russians are a very large minority in Estonia; around a quarter of the population is ethnically Russian and an even larger amount can still speak and understand it, especially those old enough to have been present for the Soviet years.

The Nations! (And Fika!)

Hmm, I am terrible at updating. As if that's a surprise. But that's not very interesting, what is interesting is:

Student Nations!
There are thirteen student nations at Uppsala University, each one representing a different district of Sweden(Stockholms nation, Uplands for the province of Uppsala, etc..). As a side note, there are more than 13 districts in Sweden; just not all the nations were created at the same time and some have merged together to form one larger nation. If you want a list of them, go here. They were originally created as a method of controlling the unruly student populace; as was the norm in the Renaissance, all the students at university were very wealthy(and therefore often petulant) people. Therefore, the city and university made nations and forced people to join the nation of their respective hometown as a way of ensuring that the information got back there whenever they did a misdeed. I think it's a pretty clever way of controlling the students, to be honest. People no longer are forced to join any nation now, however; they choose which one they want off what the different nations offer.

I joined Uplands nation, the local nation of Uppsala and the surrounding region. It has around 2600 members, making it a medium sized nation; the largest has over 5000 and the smallest around 800. The only person that I can think of that is of international renown that was part of the nation is Arrhenius, the chemist & physicist. But I digress; Uplands nation has various clubs within it such as movie club and a game club which are pretty awesome. They also jazz night and a kashmiri restaurant, both of which I've heard good things about. All the nations have their own pub, almost all have a nightclub, different hobby clubs(almost all have a band and some sort of theater group), offer housing to their members(housing is very difficult to come by in Uppsala because it is a highly regulated market), and often will give out scholarships as well. Overall, the nations are the backbone of socialization in Uppsala; their really isn't much to do in the city outside of the nations.

Fika
Most simply, Fika is coffee with a sweet pastry. It's a social event which all the swedes participate in with great regularity(which is something because in the winter they aren't even vaguely sociable). At Fika, one will have coffee, eat pastries, and socialize with friends usually by candlelight; it creates a very nice and relaxing atmosphere. Fika is also practiced in the summer, merely minus the candlelight(as it's no longer necessary due to the long days). It doesn't seem overly unique of an action to me, just the devotion to it is more of a Swedish thing than elsewhere.

An Introduction to Uppsala!

From now until June 6th, I will be student at Uppsala Universitet! It's one of the premier universities in Scandinavia, as well as the oldest, having been founded in 1477 by the Catholic Church, though it has long since broken from those roots. It's now associated with the Church Of Sweden, a Lutheran denomination. It's had quite the storied history, with scholars such as Celsius and Linnaeus(he created the dual name system used for naming plants that is still in use). I'm not going to really ramble on about the history, but you can read more here(it's quite interesting, to be honest).

Uppsala

I'm going to skip talking about traveling here, as it was a wholly unexciting experience. Instead, Uppsala is worthy of conversation! It's a city much like Ann Arbor, MI but much calmer because people always ride bikes instead of insisting on attempting to drive everywhere. It's a fairly lively city, though the college students are usually fairly contained by the Nations, which I will explain in more detail later. Since the university itself exists from 1477, one can correctly presume that the city itself dates much older than the university itself; it was once one of the main centers of paganism in Sweden, as can be seen in Burial mounds north of the city. A Catholic Bishop was installed here in 1164, and the Cathedral was built in the 1400's. The cathedral is magnificent:



Some say it's not as nice as other Cathedrals because it's built of local stone instead of imported quarry stone; I think such a concept is absurd. It's of amazing style and I think the brick makes it more unique looking, it's the only cathedral I've ever seen in that style and the brick colors give a textured look.

The other thing of note in the city is how colorful it is: large volumes of the buildings are colored in pink, yellow, or green. It's not the occasional building either, it's the majority. I'm not sure why, though I would guess it's because you get somewhat desperate for color in the middle of the winter, as it's more often cloudy here than not and at the current moment there is right around five hours of light. And that's a month after the winter solstice, mind you. So I can't really blame them in that respect.



The Swedes have different ways of dealing with the dark, which I'll explain in my next post with the Nations :)

Rice & Tomato Dish

Being a poor college student is catching up to me; I haven't been able to go grocery shopping in the two weeks since my parents came out due to a lack of funds. Unfortunate as this is, it does give me the opportunity to be more creative in my cooking skills(lest I be eating white rice plain). Furthermore, since my mother was kind enough to bring me some home-canned tomatoes when she came out to visit, I decided that a nice rice & tomato dish sounded nice, despite the fact that I had no idea how to cook such a thing. This leads to the natural conclusion: mix alot of stuff in a bowl and see if it turns out well. Thankfully, it did.

Rice & Tomato Bake

1 cup long grain rice, any variety(wild rice would actually be very nice)
2 tbsp Olive Oil
1 large Onion, chopped
5-6 cloves Garlic, minced

1 tbsp Spanish Paprika
2 tsp Cilantro
3/4 tsp Thyme
3/4 tsp Black Pepper
1 tsp Sea Salt

1 pint jar of tomatoes(canned tomatoes are unsafe; if you don't can tomatoes yourself use about 2-3 large tomatoes instead, cutting them up and stewing them beforehand)
1 1/2 2 cups water

Mix everything in a large metal bowl, making sure the spices are stirred in very well. Start on the lesser side of the water, you can add in more later. Put it in a baking pan and bake at 350˚ for around 1 hour, 15 minutes, checking on it every 25 minutes or so to make sure it hasn't dried out. If the water level seems too low, just pour more water on and mix it all up well; after it bakes for another five minutes nobody will be able to tell that you ever did this anyway. It's finished when the rice is nice and soft.

As for the spices, the amounts of each can be increased or decreased as to preference; I didn't actually measure anything that was going into the dish besides the rice. Oregano and rosemary would both be fairly nice, and hot pepper could be added if an extra kick was desired.

Happy Cooking :)

Herbal Remedies Three

My herb collection just keeps growing, yes. A man does need a hobby after all. My tinctures are done as well, so I can testify towards the effectiveness of some of these herbs in that form. The others I've only used externally so I can give them a thumbs up in that respect(as can over a thousand years of herbal lore).

Pokeroot - This is probably the most dangerous herb I'll mention, so take note of that. You are to take a single drop of the tincture per day to help overcome colds, chest infections, etc.. as it works as cleanser of the lymphatic system among other things. Do not use for more than two weeks and dear lord, do not overdose(I've heard stories of people becoming lightheaded and ill from 2-3 drops a day). From my experience it's quite effective though.

Pleurisy Root - It is an herb for the affliction within it's very name, "Pleurisy"(known to me as "The Royal Clusterf*ck", but that's another discussion). Pleurisy is when the pleura, a membrane between your lungs and chest wall become inflamed to a viral or fungal infection(rarely the latter). It's insufferably painful, causes severe, unexplainable weight loss, and basically makes you meaner than a rabid wolverine on cocaine. So basically, anything that can help with it's pain is a godsend(the hospital just gives you tylenol or vicodin and tells you to duke it out). It's an expectorant, a diuretic, a cathartic, and an anti-spasmodic. As well as helping with the inflammation a bit. The only thing to worry about is the diuretic part, as it could cause a potassium or calcium deficiency if used in the long term.

Devil's Claw Root - This is probably one of the more popular up-and-coming herbs used today. It's an anti-inflammatory and a pain killer used for chronic issues such as arthritis and cancer(I've heard first hand about it being a supplement for cancer patients from doctors). It's also sometimes used as a digestive aid, though that is up in the air. This is easily found in Europe in Standardized extracts, especially in Germany(Germany has a regulated medicinal market of herbs, unlike the US). It needs to be used continuously to be most effective, but it has been shown to be effective.

Yarrow - This is a perennial herb of ancient renown. It was known as herbal militaris because the fresh or re-hydrated leaves can be applied to wounds to help staunch the blood flow and as an antiseptic. It is also used internally for the treatment of severe bruises and inflammation, both useful after battles. Yarrow is also said to help induce sweating, lower fever, help digestion, and aid in menstruation. It's a must have in the cabinet of just about anyone.

Myrrh - Yes, Myrrh. As in "Frankincense, Myrrh, and Gold" kind of Myrrh. This tree resin, likely originating in what is present day Somalia/Yemen Region, used to be worth it's weight in gold to the people of the biblical times. This is because it's a potent anti-septic, often used today to ensure oral sanitation and hygiene. Myrrh is also a component in some perfumes/incense and liqueurs. I use it to make a toothpaste along with a few other things.