Soup blog

This weekend I am visiting Marta and Sergiu in Lille, in the short French Easter break.
We spent today visiting the city, through the rain, so that our visit degenerated into shopping at one point: sweets, iPod (yeeey, I got a Shuffle), music, films...

One of the planned things for this weekend was to cook a 'ciorbă rădăuţeană' (Rădăuţi soup) with Sergiu and maybe, Marta, but with some restrictions: use french ingredients, don't use meat, use fish instead (not that bad though) so we came up with a new one (we ALL contributed to it), which I share with you – remember that it's derivated from the great "ciorbă rădăuţeană":

XWiki Geek Soup Lilloise

Ingredients (for 4 portions):
- 2 medium carrots
- 1 medium to large parsnip
- 1 medium celery root
- 1 medium onion
- 1 kg salmon
- 2 eggs
- 0.25 l sour cream
- vinegar
- salt, chervil, dill, garlic
- 3 hungry geeks

Preparation:

Husk the carrots, parsnip, celery and onion, cut them in large pieces, and boil them in a pot in approx 2.5 litres of water. DO NOT put salt at this point ("Patientia est mater sapientia"). When the veggies are half boiled, add the skinless salmon cut in large pieces (you should have the 1 kg in 3-4 pieces).
When all these are boiled, remove from heat, take the salmon out, remove the bones and cut it into smaller pieces (about the size of a nut). In the mean time, blend (or mash through any other method) the veggies in the hot water. You can choose the quantity of veggies to use for this operation dependent of the final aimed consistency of the soup. Put the minced salmon back in the pot and place it back over low heat.
Add salt as you consider suited. Add between 4 and 8 table spoons of vinegar, depending on the desired sourness and stir them well into the soup. You can also add some garlic too, preferably pieces (3) but if you don't have, powder is good as well, or you can leave it to the choice of the user.
Personal advice for the brave adventurers who will attempt to reproduce the Easter Lille miracle: TASTE the soup all through this spicing process, don't just follow my instructions, use your own better judgement and taste (remember Ratatouille? Anyone can cook!)
Stop heat and let it cool for the time you execute the next and final step: whisk eggs with a little bit of salt together with the cream and then stir it into the soup. Scatter chervil and / or dill on top of it, and let it cool to eatable temperature.

Your masterpiece is now done, bon appétit!

This recipe is available under Creative Commons.

Blogged with Flock

@ Strasbourg II

Finally, no more Romulus blogging, McDonalds dinners and hanging out on the schools hallways: I am connected with the world wide web from my room but that means that now I'm working all day and don't have time to blog anymore...


In the mean time, I took some more pictures of the city, walked around, did some more papers and even got to school (the thing that looks like a UFO) in the Parc d'Innovation d'Illkirch. The stuff look simple for now, I understand something around 50% of what my teachers say and realize that I already knew that stuff (maybe the new things are in the parts I don't understand). My classmates are ok but we're very few girls in classes, of course (I should have expected that when I left home but I forgot to)


So it's vacantion right now (fr school rules, we just started and we're already in vacation) and I take advantage of this to code a little, then go visit the XWiki office in Paris and then go to FOSDEM next weekend.


So, overall, besides feeling a little lonely and lost sometimes, it is all ok (I have internet hence I have all my friends with me) and I only expect better!

3, 2, 1... GO!

My Christmas break has just started this morning, when I woke up at 5:00 AM to leave to the country side to spend Christmas.
I hope you all have been good kids so that Santa will drop by with nice gifts and lots, lots of sweets!

Meeeeeeeeery Christmas!

XWiki Iaşi team @ Durău

The last weekend we gathered 'all' the XWiki Iaşi team to go to the mountains, as some sort of goodbye party for JV who left Iaşi this week. Well, 'all' the XWiki team meant, after all, without Marius (who had some school assignments he had to finish until monday) and without Evelina & Cristi who also had some school deadline changed to monday without notice. Finally, the XWiki team was: me, Raluca, Jerome and Jean-Vincent (JV for short) and Petru (who is a xwikier only 'by association').
Friday afternoon was shopping afternoon ('Let's go to the mall, today!'): after a tough negotiation for boots (J and JV wanted the same shoes and are the same size but there weren't 2 pairs available in the shop), and a 'girlie-girl' shopping style from me (3-4-5-6 shops but no boots for me to like :D) we deviced the next day's wake-up plan and went home.
Saturday morning we left Iaşi at 6:00 am and, after a 'niiiiice' 3 hours trip and some sleep (only for some of us) we arrived in Durău: nice fresh air smell and some snow here-and-there. We checked in at the hotel, grabbed something fast to eat and then left for the trip to Fântânele.

From XWiki @ Durău

Once we got there, we had a cup of hot wine, took some pictures with the nice view and, despite the original plan to get to Fântânele, drink, and then return to Durău, decided to go further until we can see the "Izvorul Muntelui" lake and then return.

From XWiki @ Durau

A kind caban dog lead the way towards Dochia caban: he went on and, when we stopped it stopped and returned to see if we all are OK. At 'La morminte' (around 1300m altitude), the path started to be snowy: it was not dangerous (yet) but still, it was a sign that we cannot go further without proper equipment. We went a little further to see the lake, took pictures (to testify that we indeed were there), Raluca gave her share of food to the dog (who was clearly planning to continue the path to Dochia) and then returned to 'La Morminte'. There we had a nice picnic below 0 degrees Celsius with bread and french camembert. We continued our trip back to Durău through Fântânele and then through 'Poiana Viezuri'. In Durău, we had a romanian dinner with 'Tochitura Moldoveneasca' and red wine at the hotel and a very 'personal' interpretation of some famous international songs from the guy at the keyboard in the hotel restaurant.
Although some of us were very sleepy, the night continued with a delightful cards game, romanian Whist and, upon Raluca's request -- who was tempted by the music she heard from outside, with a visit to the 'disco'. And when I say visit, I mean visit, i.e. 30 minutes. The 'disco' was actually a lame 'village club' (you know the kind of club I'm talking about), which made the visit 2 times more fun!

From XWiki @ Durau

The next day, we were supposed to wake up at 6 o'clock so that we can go to 'Duruitoarea' waterfall too. Of course, I only woke up to make a couple of calls to the others and agree that it is better to sleep on and see more about it later, when everybody was up. At 10, we talked about staying some more and leaving Durău in the evening but the unavailability of the bus seats in the evening ruined our plans. The trip ended with a walk around Durău, a visit to the monastery and some more pictures of the surroundings.

From XWiki @ Durau

The trip back was 'spectacular', as usual in Romanian buses (I really need to buy a car!): a lot of people going in and out of the bus, the driver's stops for each one of them, loud conversations, people crushing into each other to fit the size of the bus, and the eternal travelers that know that the bus might be too crowded but never, ever make reservations, etc, etc.
All in all it was a successful outing, and until the next one, we will enjoy the pictures:

The Bicaz Gorge

As I mentioned in the previous post, the past weekend we took a trip to Sighişoara. We left Iaşi Friday evening at about 18:15, all happy and joyful (except for Cati who was a little nervous). According to Cati's calculae, it was a 345 km trip, which meant about 5-6 hours and yes, we were supposed to do the last part of it in complete darkness but we all fully trusted the superdriver Cati, although she had never been to Sighişoara before and didn't know the places. We equipped ourselves with all the things necessary for camping (because we didn't expect to find any rooms in a hotel on Friday night, at the end of the first day of the festival).

The main attraction of the trip towards Sighişoara was the Bicaz Gorge, at the midpoint, which we would reach somewhere around 21:00 (maybe I forgot to mention that I love mountains :) ).

From Trip to Sighişoara

We divided the tasks: Cati drove and watched the road, Edy was the guy with the map and, together with us, watched the side of road for signs to guide us: since we had never been there before, we were cautious not to get lost, especially inside the towns where we had to watch out for the right turn.
In Roman, Edy was the guide since he grew up there;

From Trip to Sighişoara

in Piatra Neamţ, although we missed the road we had the chance to realize it in time and turned around,

From Trip to Sighişoara

and in Bicaz the road was properly marked (you could not miss the signs even if you tried).

Suddenly, as we were approaching the gorge, Cati noticed that her car makes a strange noise... She lowered her window and we all heard well the concerning noise... We had no idea what it was, but we realized that it wouldn't be wise to continue the trip, as it was getting darker and darker... We returned in Bicaz (when this happened we had only passed it for 3 km or such) looking for a car service. We found one as we (re)entered Bicaz, but it was closed and we had to call the guy and finally go at his house for him to take a look at the car. Unfortunately, he couldn't tell what it was and his suspicions were not restful. Since it got very late (22:00), the smartest thing to do was to spend the night in Bicaz and contact the official car service in Piatra Neamţ the next day. We found some sort of pension there where we ate the sandwiches we brought from home, played some cards, saw the medieval festival on TV (some piece of news showed how happy was everybody visiting Sighişoara) and took a nice sleep.

From Trip to Sighisoara

For the next day, we planned to split: me and Petru would stay in Bicaz and somehow visit the gorge we were so anxious to see and the rest would join Cati to the service, and if the car was fixed in the right time, they would continue the trip and pick us on their way (no, this wasn't the case).

The next day, we found some bus to take us to the entrance in the gorge and then took a 7 km walk to Lacul Roşu, in the middle of the gorge, and back. I'll shut up now, because the pictures are worth a thousand words (each):

From Trip to Sighişoara

All in all, I can declare this a successful weekend: even if we didn't get to the festival we saw some very beautiful places – if you ever get the chance to go to the Bicaz Gorge, don't use a car to pass it, it's not even a long walk and it's really impressive.

The Danube Delta

As I announced in the previous post, the past weekend we took a trip to the Danube Delta (Synygy's team building, again). We have never been there before (shame on us, a natural monument in our country and we waited more than 20 years to visit it) so it was a nice experience and a lot of new and fine places to see. Since I was refrained from taking the laptop with me (it's a vacation!!!) I only had the 512MB on the card for pictures. I also realized that my camera is pretty lame: 3x optical zoom is not enough to capture the details of the wonderful nature and it can not take pictures when the sun goes straight at it (it produced some completely white images).

We left Iasi at about 8 o'clock in the morning, had an 8 hour trip until Murighiol

From Danube Delta

then took the boat to Uzlina

From Danube Delta

where some of us visited the pool first, even against their will

From Danube Delta

We checked in on "Cristofor, the floating hotel"

From Danube Delta

had our fish-based dinner (actually, we ate fish the whole 3 days)

From Danube Delta

and then ended the first day with a nice sleep.

The next day we took a trip on the canals with the boat and saw some wonderful places (seeing the clear blue sky from land to land -- as opposed to "from building to building" -- always makes me feel good):

From Danube Delta

This whole days, team-building polo was everybody's favourite activity:

From Danube Delta

In the night, we also did some classic team-building treasure-hunt game

From Danube Delta

which eventually required a swimming contest to decide the winner (my team lost)

From Danube Delta

The next day we left Uzlina and returned to Iasi with a new 8 hours trip

From Danube Delta

In the mean time (this week) I became a proud M.Sc. student in Distributed Systems at FCS (classes starting in october).

This weekend, thanks to a great idea from Cati, we are going to Sighisoara, at the medieval festival (actually leaving in a couple of hours so I must hurry). I'll be back with pictures, as usual.

On vacation

No, I haven't quit blogging (though I haven't posted anything in the last month). It is partially because I'm enjoying myself and take (some) advantage of the summer vacation:

• first, in the country side:

  
  

  From Brusturi, june 23

  
  



• second, visiting Bucharest, with its nights:

  
  

  From Visiting Bucharest (day 1)

  
  

  its museums: Grigore Antipa

  
  
  

  From Visiting Bucharest (day 2, part 1)

  
  
  

  and the Village Museum,

  
  

  From Visiting Bucharest (day 2, part 2)

  
  

  its parks:

  
  
  

  From Visiting Bucharest (day 2, part 3)

  
  

  its Palace of the Parliament:

  
  
  

  From Visiting Bucharest (day 3)

  
  




• and third...

  
  
  

Fourth will be coming this weekend: I'm going to the Danube Delta and I will be back with pictures.

• Fourth and a half, I've recently become a happy listener of Mika and Leonard Cohen (which I have rediscovered through the wonderful soundtrack of NBK).