Wednesday, August 24- Karanac to Zagreb

 

At breakfast we chopped vegetables and made fried bread.  (Don’t tell my cardiologist.)  The cheese we'd made the night before was perfect.  I had some that we’d made with spicy paprika (which I resolved to buy somewhere and bring home) and some plain cheese.  It turned out to be a challenge, even with Google Translate;  the two varieties I found later at a grocery store, according to Google Translate, were "angry" or "lazy".  I chose the "angry" version.  My guide told me that was the correct one!

 After breakfast we visited with the cousin of the husband of the owner, who is a potter.  We were given a chance to make molded structures (without the potter’s wheel); a few of us made unimaginative candy-dish types but others were more fanciful.  Mine is on the left, third from the top.  It did not win any prizes.

Lunch was goulash made from beans that had been soaked overnight and then cooked in a clay pot over a fire in the outside kitchen, combined with onions and garlic, chopped ham and the tomatoes stewed the night before.

Peppers drying in outdoor kitchen.

Lunch cooking.

Some of the owner's large collection of stenciling tools.

  Her designs were on walls, on cloth, wherever they would fit.  She does this in her "spare time" when she's not cooking, making soap or cheese, doing traditional embroidery or tending to the farm.

Stencilled table

This visit was yet another reminder of happy, productive lives so different from my own path- not focused on commuting, computer screens and answering e-mails.

Supporting the local economy:  necklace and small bird critter made by the potter; soaps made from whey, which is a by-product of their cheese-making. 

After lunch we departed for the 3-hour drive to Zagreb. Our hotel was the Sheraton, where Ron and I had stayed in 2009.  I think they did a lot of renovation since then- I barely recognized it.