Tristano's log 2016:Things! (now Russian and Dutch)

[Ogrim]

I tried and failed with Russian cuisine hahahaha. But the taste was good even though what I produced it doesn't even resemble the real thing. Next time will be better I guess

What did you try to cook? I like cooking myself, but as for Russian cuisine I can only make a decent beef Stroganov, I haven't tried much else.

[Tristano]

Oh ok I'm a bit ashamed but I can provide the evidences
I tried Borsch and Tefteli. Problem is: I pureed the vegetables and I wasn't supposed to do it. If Russians are as sensitive as Italian I'm dead hahahhahha. My girlfriend tried to make the Tefteli but they fell apart so we basically ate rice with meat The taste was good anyway so I didn't have to recycle it
Beef stroganoff I made in the past and It was pretty decent : )

[shandra]

Google Images told me tefteli are basically meatballs. I guess you had the same problem I have with falafel: they fall apart and can't keep the shape
Borsch is a soup with beet, but in your photo looks like passata di pomodoro
But now I want to try them

[Tristano]

Google Images told me tefteli are basically meatballs. I guess you had the same problem I have with falafel: they fall apart and can't keep the shape
Borsch is a soup with beet, but in your photo looks like passata di pomodoro
But now I want to try them

Hahahaha inderdaad
For the soup I guess that I used a very bad recipe and I made the rest by not following it completely
For the meatballs I have no explanation. The recipe was correctly followed but to me all the ingredients are in the wrong proportions (but my girlfriend did it so maybe she also made some mistake).

[Tristano]

double

[Tristano]

My adventures with Russian kitchen continue. This time I made плов and I'm sure is closer to the real thing than what I did so far (but as always it has a nice taste).
My adventures with the language go slower than in the kitchen , but I'm getting exposure with music and cuisine and soon enough I will start to read the literature (not in Russian initially) so that I reinforce the bond. As long as I take care of the bond with the language I'm sure that I will learn it sooner or later. I'm on purpose avoiding to study it massively as in this period with a baby oncoming I run the risk of burning out. As soon as I have a general feeling for the language I can start to put more effort. I have a sideproject that I can afford to fail but... cough cough.

[Ogrim]

Your latest posts make me hungry . They are also inspiring, I think I must try to make some of these dishes.

Where do you go for recipes? I found a couple of interesting Russian websites dedicated to food, but I am not sure if my Russian is good enough to understand everything and I could risk a disaster if I misunderstand the quantities .

[Tristano]

Hahaha I don't take any responsibility over a possible overconsumption of Russian dishes
I have an Israeli colleague with a Russian wife. Sometimes we talk about food and I take notes then I find recipes in English and use those to make a shallow copy of the real deal

[Tristano]

I have to come out.
In the last month my Russian study time was something similar to 0. This is because the side project I mentioned in the previous post.
But hey, I want to make it clear that it is not my classic "I got bored and changed study language" or "I got frustrated and changed study language". Russian is my real language love in this moment. I'm continuing listening Russian music and cooking some Russian dish now and then and I am just patiently waiting the end of my side project.

So, the side project. I have an Israeli colleague that made the fatal mistake to say that Hebrew is very easy and a lot of foreigners arriving to Israel can learn it to B2 in 3 months because it has a very small vocabulary. And I made the fatal mistake to say "challenge accepted".
Funny enough, he also speaks a bit of Russian

So I made some considerations.
- how much time do I have after work? 0
- but hey, I travel alone with the car to work and that gives me a 40-60 minutes of study per day.
- so I need something I can use in the car. what does exist for Hebrew? Answer: Pimsleur and HebrewPod101
- HebrewPod is too complicated to just start with it. So I choose Pimsleur. It has 3 levels.

I'm at the lesson 27. Pimsleur is boring as hell. I never arrived so far. I will finish it, it is a good exercise for my self discipline. other 63 lessons to go

I had a very funny misunderstanding this morning. A new word was introduced in this lesson: "to leave". Problem is that I understood "to live" until almost the very end of the lesson. No wonder I found the content of this lesson very weird
- I want to live with you!
- I don't want to live. I want to stay.
- But I want to live!
- Then you live alone. I don't want to live!
- I want to live with you. Are you alone?
- No, I'm with my husband.
- In that case I go away.
- Why?
- Because I want to live!

LOL.

Anyway. Despite how boring Pimsleur actually is, I'm appreciating it much more than in the past, at the point that I don't exclude to go through the whole Pimsleur Russian and Michel Thomas Russian before RussianPod101 to have a headstart of the language. I see that I definitely abandoned my obsessive research to the perfect language method (spoiler alert: it doesn't exist).

[Tristano]

This is a review post of last year.
But first a fast review of my whole time with this community.
- first year: I wanted to learn Dutch and Icelandic. Failed with both.
- second year: I wanted to learn Dutch, Persian and Mandarin. Didn't progress much with the first, very soon abandoned the other two. I learned French though. And indulged in wanderlust compulsively with at least an half dozen other languages without going absolutely anywhere.
- third year: I wanted to learn Spanish and Dutch. I did well with Spanish, not fantastic with Dutch but hey! A step further! Then life happens and my time for languages reduces significantly.

- Fourth year: this year! I wanted to learn Dutch, Portuguese, Arabic and German. I finally learned Dutch and soon abandoned the others. But hey! I learned Dutch! I then very soon had a new desire for a new language and started two, Russian and Hebrew, with a catch: Russian is my big target, with Hebrew I'm content with a low level.

Other users would have learned at least five languages at high levels in for years. Not me. I reached a useful levels soon with very easy finance languages and needed for years go from sigh sob why Dutch is so difficult to b2. At the end it was just matter of stop complaining and just sticking with it without asking too much to myself. Yet people out of this forum think I'm some kind of genius who has a natural talent for languages. My only talent is to have enough discipline in ruining my chances to learn more and better by compulsively indulging in wanderlust. And now that life gives me (if everything goes well) a beautiful baby and deprives me of learning time, either I adapt by using my little time better or I stop learning new languages for a while. That wouldn't be so bad anyway: the world is teaching me Dutch and I will be busy enough teaching Italian to my Dutch baby. I can't complain after all, can I?