Home-Made

There are a few other things that are different in Krakow. For example, it's almost impossible to find vanilla extract. While in the US I usually bring several bottles back with me, but this year I forgot. I use it all the time so this is a problem. Fortunately I came across a recipe for it in one of my cookbooks (100 Days Of Real Food if anyone is interested.) It never even dawned on me to make my own! And it's super easy. All you have to do is add a vanilla bean to vodka and wait two weeks. Okay, so it can't be a last-minute rush job, but mine has been sitting for over a week so when my next bottle runs out I'll see how this works. It's definitely not the same consistency, but it smells yummy so it will be an interesting experiment.

I also can never find fresh coriander, and I tend to use it a lot - in recipes but also juicing in the mornings because it's a great detoxing green. There are only two places I have ever seen it - one of the organic stores, and one of the vegetable stands that has the worst parking so I pretty much stopped going there last year. This year I decided to buy a lot (it goes bad so quickly) and freeze it in an ice cube tray with a little bit of filtered water. I'm not really sure how well this will work for my juicer (guess I would have to defrost it first?), but it should be okay to throw into soups or cooked dishes. We shall see.

Come to think of it, buying any kind of fresh herb is hard here - I like the bags or packets that are at the grocery stores, but they don't sell them here - instead you have to buy the actual plant, and I do not have the slightest green thumb so I end up killing them all the time. And for something like basil, I end up using the entire plant for one portion of my pumpkin seed pesto, and it takes too long for the plant to grow back with enough leaves for another recipe.  I do see coriander plants at Tesco, but they are impossible to keep alive. Asia our cleaning lady laughs at me because it seems that every week she is here she is throwing yet another herb plant in the trash. She said her friend has huge coriander (kolendra in Polish) plants so she will ask her what her secret is.

My last basil plant

The other thing I am making a lot is almond and pistachio nut milk. I gave up dairy last year, and I had seen a recipe for pistachio milk and have never seen it in a store (even in the US) so I made my own and it was really yummy. The annoying thing is that it takes about an hour to shell 1 cup of pistachios, so it's super time-consuming. I can find tiny bags of shelled pistachios at the organic store, but they are kind of expensive and I have to buy so many to make milk it just doesn't seem worth it. They sell almond milk in cartons here, but since I have been making my own, the boxed ones taste too gooey and fake to me. It's also really easy, just 1 cup of nuts (almonds need to be soaked beforehand) to 4 cups of filtered water, whiz in a blender and then strain through a nut milk bag (I bought mine at Whole Foods, but cheesecloth or a regular mesh strainer will work too). Mike and the kids won't drink it straight, but I always use it in their smoothies or if I am cooking/baking and the recipe calls for milk, they never notice the difference ; )