107. Keeping Busy

I skipped a couple days because 1) I didn't start this blog to be a current events diary and 2) I've been busy ("busy" by my standards, considering my health limitations).

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

50. 1983

For this next installment of my autobiography I've decided to quote directly from the human rights report I wrote up while living in Chicago... contrary to my father's belief, I did write it in English (not Russian). Since I wrote it about 15 years ago, it was much closer to the time these events occurred, so my memory would have been better. Besides, so much has happened since then that also would have contributed to blurring of the memory.

***

When I returned to [the city where I was studying], I began my living out of a suitcase experience. I remained strapped financially until the last 3 months when I was able to save a little because I was waitressing [rather than cooking at Pizza Hut] and had to pay minimal rent for a bedroom. I also began to feel estranged from my parents, lacking their moral support and understanding, even after they visited me and saw my difficult situation. ... [T]he then pastor of [our Seattle church] and his wife visited me also while in the area and for years commented even publicly or to my parents about the difficulty of my situation. This annoyed my dad. I got the impression it made him look like he should have done something to help out. (Later they said they hadn't known I was in such difficult straits). Well, they did help out - mom offered to send me $25 a month to have my hair cut. As a budgetary decision, I let my hair grow that year. I was pretty mad at this offer - which she carried out. I was living off $10 a week for food a good part of that year - which isn't much.

... In addition, I was also doubting more and more whether I wanted to work with [Slavic Gospel Association] or not. My doubts centered mostly around the management of the organization. Several times their personnel director, Jay Ter Louw, asked me when I was going to begin working full-time for them. I always hedged in answering him.

What bothered me was that the mission seemed to be run more like a business than a mission. For people (readers) who aren't Christians this might be difficult to understand. There was a kind of spiritual vacuum in the decision-making and management policies & practices.

One significant example of this was when "all of a sudden" 1/3 of the (all salaried) home office staff were let go. Since the mission was a non-profit organization none of these people were eligible to receive unemployment insurance and most were only given 2-3 days notice of dismissal.

I was appalled from the standpoint of financial irresponsibility (why did they just "suddenly" realize they were bad off financially?) They had not long before that acquired a new warehouse and computer system. I was also disturbed that a mission could treat its workers so. It seemed pretty unethical to me.

Not only that, but the mission began to call in workers from their European & South American mission fields who were all on faith support - not salary - from individuals and churches to cover the now vacant office positions. These people had gone into their work believing God had called them to that ministry. How could a mission take so many lives away from that? Several of the missionaries from South America (working with Russians and in short wave radio from HCJB in Quito, Ecuador) and spent many years (10-20) in their work.

Later, as I was forced into studying how secret services work as a matter of my own defense in the face of actions taken against me personally by E. Eur. missions, I realized that it is a common tactic to periodically re-shuffle staff so that the opponent can't make sense of who does what and knows what I what. I saw this also in Vienna.

Unfortunately, it wasn't until several years later that I realized the significance of a statement by SGA's Asst. Dir. in charge of accounting. In passing (alone) in the basement corridor at the head office between his office and the library, where I was working, he told me that SGA received money from the CIA for its radio work. It was kind of a strange thing to tell me and I guess it was a kind of a test. They were pretty sure they had me nabbed for work in the Soviet Union, either with them or with another organization. It probably didn't matter too much to them with whom since most of the big name E. Eur. missions practically have to have contact w/SGA.

This was a difficult year for me ('82-'83), and many would have given up trying to go to school, prepare for East European mission work, but I felt God's call for me and that I had to continue. I struggled with what God was trying to tell me or teach me through the difficulties, but even so I knew I couldn't give up.

In the spring of '83 I began getting more waitressing shifts at Pizza Hut and my living expenses were minimal, so I was able to save some money. That summer I went back to Europe - kind of as a last try to see if I would work with [SGA] long-term. I raised money from churches and individuals for this, which included my flight to and from Europe. With the money I saved I was able to eek out enough to study German two months in Berlin and work five weeks at [a research center specializing in religion in Eastern Europe]. Throughout this time I continued to live on a shoe string.

***

That's all I'm going to quote for now, but I do want to add a few comments.

You'll remember that my dad offered to pay off my school loans? My Bible school wasn't registered such that I could get a deferment while studying there, so I was paying on it during this time. I'll see if I still have (or can run down) when it was finally paid off, but it definitely was off my shoulders before I went to Vienna. I know my Grandmother's annual gifting helped me pay for my first Master's studies; it's even possible that that's how I paid off the undergraduate ones too, but I know I was still paying them while in Bible School, but I believe I got a deferment for while I was in Europe in 1983.

The incident where I was told that SGA got CIA money was out of sequence chronologically, and didn't occur until 1984 after my return from Europe, but the thought sequence fit where it is in the text.

Also, I should explain more the laying off of staff in Vienna. The staff that were laid off were all salaried from the organizational budget, but the people they brought in from the field were not paid out of the main budget. Instead their income came from supporters, although the organization took a percentage of that for support services and the like. So you can see how the mission was wrangling this financially for their favor. I got to know some of the people brought in from the field and they were some of the most wonderful people, really. Some of them took the move pretty badly too, being hurt by it, I mean, having to leave their mission like that.

One other thing about SGA. When I very first developed contact with the mission, in 1980 I heard Mr. Deneyka, Sr. speak, the one who founded the mission, and he was a very godly man. He was famous for the saying "much prayer, much power," and he lived it and believed it too. Later on in my contact with the mission he was failing and in a nursing home. I suppose he's passed on by now. My understanding is that the mission changed after he stepped down from the leadership, and I believe he had already stepped down by the time I came along. I didn't know the organization before, so I didn't know exactly how the change came about to where it was when I experienced it.

Regarding SGA's shuffling around of its workers, I'm not positive that that was purposely a ploy/tactic to confound detractors, but if they wanted to do that (confound detractors) what they did would have been one possible approach. What' harder to believe: that they were that financially inept? or that they did this intentionally? Personally, I'm torn between these two options and find either and/or both plausible.

Missions that had contact with me may well be angry that I put these things in my report that was given to the Russian government, who evidently translated it. My answer to them is that this kind of thing (their activities I report here) doesn't belong in Christian missions in the first place. Quit hiding behind the fabricated wall of secrecy and make yourself accountable for your actions. No one else seems to have the guts to say anything. And you're welcome to explain your actions to the world using the comment box at the bottom of the page.

I trust you understand that I wasn't literally "forced" (like at gunpoint, for example) to study these things, like the brainwashing which I've already written about, but I was driven to it to try to make sense of what was happening to me. I mean, if one can't make sense of the world around one it would be very easy to go crazy.

To give you a better idea of how I was living out of a suitcase, I'd like to briefly elaborate on that aspect of my life during the first half of 1983. I lived for one month on the sofa of a gal (I think it was someone else who worked with the Russian emigrants knew her and brought us together). So I slept in her living room, and it made it cramped for her, for sure, but also not the most conducive conditions for studying.

Then I spent about a month apartment sitting for a couple who were trying to adopt in South America and went down there to pick up their adoptee. Since I at least had the apartment to myself it was a little easier to spread out study, but I was still living out of a suitcase, or maybe 2 suitcases. I remember their cat Mozart wanting to sit on my book that was trying to study. He was a very nice cat, but a bit too persistent.

Then the last 3 months I rented a room from an older lady who needed the income. She was a very nice lady, and there were 3 of us together, and we really made a motley crew - I was the youngest coming in at 24, then next was a very strong Roman Catholic Polish lady probably in her 50s or 60s who hardly new any English (she was sort of a live-in nurse aide for the lady I rented from), and the owner who might have been in her 80s and was a very strict orthodox Jew, I think originally from Ukraine. She could communicate with the Polish lady through their Slavic languages, which were similar enough, but she also spoke fluent Yiddish. Sometimes I could make out a bit it when she used it visiting with a guest. One time I got chided (granted in a very gentle way) for listening to music on the Sabbath. I hadn't known about that rule, I guess. She taught me how to make Farfel Pudding... oh, and guess what? Here it is! What do you know... Surprise, surprise...

***

Mrs. Apple's Farfel Pudding

3 c. Manischewitz Matzo farfel
1 qt. boiling water
1 1/2 lemons, grated rind & juice
2 eggs
1/2 c. sugar
1 t. salt
3 T. chicken fat or butter (peanut oil)

Pour boiling water over farfel; let soak for 10 min., then drain off excess water. Add lemon juice & grated rind, beaten eggs, sugar, salt and fat. Mix well, put into greased baking dish & bake for 2 hours in moderate oven (325 degrees F). Serve with raisin sauce.

(apples, bananas & prunes are good in it) <- That's how I have it written on my 3x5 card. Mix these in before putting the pudding in the oven.

***

If you can't find Matzo farfel, you might have to wait till Passover time next year for it to appear on grocery store shelves. Sorry that my timing is off on that score, but I'm not waiting that long to write my autobiography.

~ Meg

4. Russian Apricot Torte

On the light side, I'd like to share with you a recipe translated from the cookbook "Vsyo Iz Muki" (Everything from Flour), Irkutsk University Press, 1990, p. 63.

Apricot Torte
1 1/4 cup flour
1 cup sugar
10 eggs

Filling
400 grams [14 oz.] apricots
1 cup sugar

Pour the mixed pastry batter in a round cake pan (or large fry pan). which has been prepared with butter and paper in the bottom, so that the batter comes about 3/4 up the sides of the pan.

Bake the cake at a temperature of 200 to 220 degrees [C. or 392 to 428 F.]. Check the doneness of the cake with a toothpick. Cut the cake in two horizontally, and pour [some of'] the prepared apricot puree over the bottom layer. Then put weights of 1 to 1.5 kg. [2.2 to 3.3 lbs.] on the cake [like for pressed sandwiches] and leave it like that for 2 to 3 hours.

After this time has passed pour the rest of the puree, now heated, carefully over the top of the cake, spreading it with a knife so that it will be smooth.

***

I made this cake in Russia and enjoyed it. The ingredients are simple and this is the time of year when fresh apricots should be available (at least in the northern hemisphere!). The parts in brackets are mine. I suppose this recipe might work with other fruits too, but I haven't tried that. The recipe doesn't specify how long to cook the cake, and I didn't write a notation about that, but I would suspect something less then or around half an hour at that temperature.

One memory I have of apricots in Russia is the wonderful, plump dried apricots I got at the market and often used to make apricot compote (a beverage, rather than dessert eaten with a spoon). Tree fruits didn't grow where I lived, though, because the growing season was too short. But there were lots and lots of berries... but that's another story.

~ Meg