back to drinks

when i started writing about drinks i've met in lithuania, i did it, chronologically -- from the very first drink i met, and so on,...as i met them

i was going to continue, in that vein -- then i decided to...put a little more effort into it -- so i wrote down all the drinks i've met, and put them in groups -- came up with four categories -- juices, teas, alcoholic drinks, and unusual drinks

i'll start with the juices -- and there are a lot of 'em

they must love their juices, here

most restaurants have two categories of juices on the menu -- just plain "juices,"...which i guess means they're from bottles the restaurant bought, and freshly squeezed juices -- they call 'em sultys naturalis (i think that's how it's spelled) -- ones they squeeze, in-house -- the most popular fresh-juice combinations are orange-and-grapefruit and carrot-and-apple -- most restaurants have both

this one's not in lithuania, but...it's a juice -- fresh-squeezed apple juice -- moscow airport, in march

the grocery stores...are where the real action is -- juices galore -- and they're delicious -- even the "drinks" (not 100% fruit juice) are really good

in maxima, one of the four grocery-store chains, i was shocked to see a carton of prickly-pear juice – that was the morning i left here, in march -- now, surely, lithuania cannot be a great producer of cactus fruit -- i love prickly-pears, but i've never seen prickly-pear juice; that doesn't mean it doesn't exist elsewhere -- just that i haven't come across it

on the left is a bottle of fresh beet juice -- popular here -- that's a big bottle, though -- it comes in very small bottles -- not supposed to consume it, in large quantities -- stomach can't handle it or something

funny thing about that picture -- i took it, back in cleveland, the morning i arrived, some 30 hours after i bought the juices from maxima -- my friend maria would not be happy about that -- calls those fresh juices, after they've been sitting outside for a few hours, "wine" -- and they do start to get a little vinegary,...after a while -- a decent while

do you see the price on the beet juice -- 1.16 -- a euro and 16 cents -- that's about a buck-and-a-quarter -- the prices are great -- i get a bottle of carrot juice, almost every time i'm in a rimi, another of the chains -- 1.49 -- i got a bad one, last week -- maria sent me an e-mail address for them -- they were "right on it" -- credited her rimi shopping card


there are a lot of great berry juices

next to the carton of berry juice, that's a bag of loquats -- i couldn't believe it -- they were excellent -- bought some, both times i saw them -- i think, at rimi -- i haven't learned,...when and where

pomegranate seems to be popular here -- sometimes i find the fruit, at a decent price -- gobble 'em up -- and,...thanks to lithuania, now i know why they're called pomegranates -- they're called granata, here -- voila -- the candy bar on the lower-right corner,...i've fallen in love with that -- pergale makes a lot of chocolates

this granata wasn't cheap -- this was in march -- granatai must be a generic form of the word, or the plural -- the pomelo looks like it was cheap -- it wasn't sweet, though

an unusually tart green-apple juice -- yum -- maria says it's not 100% fruit juice

surprising color, for apple juice -- at the discount german chain lidl, which has just entered the market

those plastic bags are funny -- yogurt drink, that you squeeze,...out of the bag -- very good

i thought this was a children's drink -- on a shelf with a lot of other colorful bottles with cartoon characters and animals -- i liked the bottle -- yummy -- lot of banana juice, here

tea, alcohol, and the strange,...coming up

steamy felicie mushrooms

it's in the mid- to high-seventies, this afternoon -- according to the weather channel's web-site, it's 78 or 79 degrees now -- somewhat humid -- feels a lot hotter,...like it's in the nineties -- maybe that's because of how cold it has been -- in the mid-forties, and maybe even colder

yesterday,...walking around in the afternoon,...i got tired and sleepy -- was warm,...relatively speaking -- could have also been tired because of my...sleep patterns

back to felicie and mushrooms

i found a picture of the outside of felicia, from my visit in march

that's felicie, beyond the car -- their outdoor seating area -- to the right is the gateway leading to the church of the holy trinity -- on the left is ausros vartei gatvé (gate of dawn street -- pronounced awsh'ros -- i think i misspelled it, in the earlier post) -- we can see st. theresa church, there, in the distance, on the left -- to the right of that, the alley continues, leading to the gate of dawn, with its miracle-working painting of the virgin mary

the mushroom soup we had there featured the special lithuanian mushroom baravykai -- called boletus, in english -- umm-umm -- i'm gonna try getting some, and cook them,...even though they might only be available now, frozen or dried

 
 
 

in case i haven't mentioned it before, mushroom- and berry-picking are a big thing here

lithuanian drinks

i'm taking "anna moffo" on the road -- first time

i've been in vilnius, for more than a month -- will be here, another two months

i've enjoyed my time here, and i've shared a few things with people back home -- especially about food -- one person (you know who you are -- j-a-s-o-n) encouraged me to put my observations in a blog -- so, here goes

* * *
i've met a few drinks in lithuania

the first new drink to me was honey beer, which the man behind the bar at snekutis pub recommended to me -- this was when i was here for a week in march -- the name of the place is pronounced shne'koo'tis -- i don't like beer, so i'm always on the lookout for something sweet or fruity -- i didn't like it

more important than the beer were the beans -- when i saw the picture on the menu, i thought, tashreeb baa'gilleh, the iraqi dish of fava beans -- i had to order it -- the dish here is called pupas, which i think just means beans -- in tashreeb baa'gilleh, the beans are islands...in a sea of bread, soaked in the juice of the cooked beans -- i guess the beans and the bread are both islands -- well, the color and taste of the beans was the same -- even the taste of the herb/spice that it's topped with -- these beans, though, weren't peelable -- just ate the whole bean

when i went back to my hotel, i told rapoles (raphael) about it, and he said that they also eat it with bread soaked in the cooked juice -- unbelievable -- i'll have to find that -- at least confirm it

the next time i went back to snekutis (for the pupas), I got a cherry soda -- excellent -- refreshing -- not too sweet -- looking on-line for the drink, three months later, it looks like it might be a gira, the national low-alcohol drink made from rye bread (i think) -- more on giras,...anon

snekutis is across the street from the 13 and the sign for zemaitijos (pronounced zhé'my'tee'yos)-- its street, though, changes name, to st. nicholas, for the church that's across the street from snekutis -- pictured, on the left -- the church has a significant place in lithuanian history -- it's one of the oldest in the country (the last country in europe to become christian, by the way -- some parts of the country stayed pagan until the 19th century), and from 1901 to 1939, when russians and poles suppressed the lithuanian language, the services here were an exception -- and after antanas kmieliauskas made a sculpture in 1959 for the church's, of st. christopher carrying the baby jesus, it buoyed people's spirits -- the association of artists expelled him for it -- lithuanians seem to have a funny way of resisting,...and bouncing back -- last night, i was reading about the hill of crosses, outside siauliai, in north-central lithuania -- the communists kept tearing down the crosses -- thousands of them -- in '61, '73 and '75 -- and people kept putting crosses back up (dk eyewitness travel guide: estonia, latvia & lithuania) -- the rising of the baltic states against soviet rule from 1987 to 1990 is called 'the singing revolution' -- in my picture of the beans and cherry-drink, you can see the main entrance to st. nicholas

zemaitijos is a street of one of the two jewish ghettos -- pronounced jha'my'ti'yos

towards the left on siauliu (i think that's pronounced show(as in shower)-loo), is my hotel -- hey,...that's a shower and a loo -- here's the outer door to my room

and a look across the street from my room

more drinking,...to come