I still have the swollen face and my jaw, neck and upper back have been giving me a lot of pain. I suspect it's the fibromyalgia reacting to this new health condition, whatever it is. I tried a few different things and I was surprised to find out that the most effective treatment for this new pain was wearing this halter-like contraption that pulls your shoulders back gently (for good posture). So I've been wearing that pretty much all the time I'm up and about (except for in the shower or using the stimulator). I wish all ailments had such simple remedies, although this isn't exactly a remedy because it doesn't cure anything.
Anyway, as is my habit, in the face of adversity I try to find something constructive to keep me busy. So I've been busy, in a self-imposed way.
Saturday was my usual laundry day (I have to religiously keep to this for my dust mite control efforts). I often add extra things to my laundry regime, such as last week washing the shower curtain. This week it was cleaning all the dust mite control covers over my pillow cases and mattress (I don't have one for the box springs, although I should).
This was a major undertaking for me, especially the mattress part, and I have a memory foam topper too. So I had the matterss and the topper off the box springs and did my vacuum and spray routine on as much of their surfaces as I could do (I didn't take the box springs off to do the underside of it). How that works is you vacuum a surface and then spray it with a dust mite spray (either one that kills the dust mites or one that their particles cling to which aids in vacuuming them up). After spraying you have to wait for the surface to dry and then vacuum it again. Considering I couldn't do all the surfaces at once, this took a lot of time, not to mention the drain on my strength and energy. I was up too late doing this and so I didn't make it to church the next morning.
Yesterday and today I've been busy cooking, although yesterday I also ironed and I need to take care of some business things today too. Yesterday I baked a corn pie and also made canteloupe gelato, that I think is actually more like canteloupe sorbet, but it's very good in either case. The corn pie also came out well, and allowed me to use some dill from my garden too. I started on the cake part for the cake balls too.
Today I baked the cake and also made the plum filling for the cake balls. I only needed half of the plum filling, though, so I froze the rest for some other use later on. Right now the cake balls are mostly in the freezer, although some couldn't fit on the tray and are in the fridge. I still need to coat them in candy coating. But I also made a mushroom pirog, which I want to share with you here.
The bottom picture is from the cover of the recipe book. According to the title page and the page facing it, this is book 1 of a 6 book set titled "Encyclopedia of Home Economics". This book is titled "Potatoes and Mushrooms: 1000 Culinary Recipes". I don't have the other 5 books, and I don't know what they are.
The last 2 or 3 years I was in Russia I did a fair amount of mushroom picking, and I'll talk about that more when I get to that period of my life in the chronology, so mushrooms have a bit of significance to me. But even growing up we picked shaggy manes in British Columbia when we visited my mom's family.
The beginning of the mushroom part of this book gives a listing of several different mushroom types. One time I went mushroom picking there was a lady with us who seemed to know every single mushroom we came across, including some I'd never seen before, so this list is very incomplete. The ones we mostly found, though were "beliye gribi" (a prized type), "maslyata", "volnushki" and "gruzdi". The maslyata were best in soups or sauteed with mushrooms.
Now here in the States it seems like we're impoverished regarding mushroom selection (and also berries too). I just used regular button mushrooms for my pirog, but I'm sure beliye gribi would have ramped up the yum factor quite a bit. Nevertheless, given my mushroom disadvantage, I think I came out with a pretty decent pirog that my Russian friends would approve of.
Here's the recipe in English (the Russian version is in the picture above):
Pirog with Fresh Mushrooms
Mix the yeast dough, letting it rise twice. Then roll it out no thicker than 1 cm. In the center put the fresh mushroom filling, which has been fried with onion and seasoned with salt and pepper. Fold one end of the dough over and seal it. Brush the dough with an egg wash, put it in a warm place [to rise] and then bake in the preheated oven.
For the filling:
300 g. fresh mushrooms
1 to 2 onions
3 to 4 tablespoons of vegetable oil or butter
salt and pepper, to taste
For the dough:
1/2 cup warm milk
15 to 20 g. yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 to 2 eggs
100 to 200 g. margarine
2 to 3 cups flour
Here's my version of the instructions:
I used 1 large onion and somewhat more mushrooms than called for, and I ground them together in a meat grinder. I used some excess liquid created in this process to mix with powdered milk and used that to mix with the yeast instead of the plain warm milk.
I did not saute the mushroom filling, but I did drain it from excess liquid. I wanted it moist, but not too wet. I probably used about 1 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper.
For the dough, I mixed the warm (ca. 110 degrees F) mushroom liquid/dry milk with the yeast (1 packet) and the salt, along with about 1 teaspoon sugar (to help activate the yeast) and let them sit for about 15 minutes to begin the yeast activation process. I also added a bit of thyme and oregano from my garden to the batter after the yeast fermented.
Then I mixed in 1 egg and 1/3 cup olive oil with the whisk attachment to my electric hand mixer. I continued to use the whisk while adding the flour until the dough became too thick, at which time I switched to using a wooden spoon. I used about 2 1/2 cups of flour altogether.
I started kneading it a bit, but it didn't seem to need it. I ended with a fairly soft, but not sticky, dough. I divided the dough in 2 and rolled them both out. The first one I put on a 10 1/2" by 15" rimmed pan and I covered them both with clean clothes and let them rise for about 40 minutes. The dough was pretty easy to work with, and I would just spread it with my fingers to reach to the edges and even out the thickness. This size pan seems to be about right.
After letting the dough rise I spread the filling up to within about an inch of the edges and then laid the other piece of rolled out dough on top. I pinched the edges to seal them, and they stayed sealed pretty easily (which is more than can be said for a lot of doughs!).
I baked the pirog at 375 degrees F for 20 minutes and it came out just perfect!
One thing I will say about the pan is that the pan I chose has a sort of ridged bottom which allows for better baking of bottom crusts in this kind of situation.
I've found that Russian cook books leave a lot of steps to the user, assuming that they have knowledge of how to do the details. So I guess Russian cooks are more astute, considering the great detail in American cookbooks.
Anyway, this came out very well and if you want to try it, this is for sure a genuine Russian recipe. One of my Russian friends made one like this but with a freshwater salmon from Lake Baikal (I lived about an hour or so flight north of Lake Baikal). She just put salmon pieces and slices of onion in it. She may have seasoned it, though, but that was it. It didn't need anything else, though, as it was very yummy as it was. So this would be another adaptation you could make with this recipe.
***
That's all for now. I have a lot of dishes to do, I'd like to finish the cake balls, I need to freeze some of this food I'm making, and I need to look at some business things (bills and the like). My finances are not very good. After I pay my car insurance, I have $30 dollars to carry me through the month and I still have other bills. It's really discouraging, but I try not to think about it too much because that's the kind of thing that could give me a fibro flare. I just do what I can, which ends out being just sort of surviving, hanging on by a thread. But I am surviving and if nothing else, I'm going to eat well.
I'm sure your Labor Day weekend was more interesting than mine, but I've learned to take pleasure in the little things as well as the more momentous ones.
~ Meg
