I still am having no luck overcoming my problem with adding images to my blog. So I thought I would talk a little about the Lithuanian language. It's in a separate language group from most European languages. It's in a group with only two other languages:Estonian and Finnish, I think. Most of the basic words are totally foreign to me. However, thanks to international communication and recent innovations, there are some words I recognize on signs: internetas, computeriai, autoservisas, and I saw an advertisement for something with a picture and the name Charlesas Dickensas. Can you guess who that was? Thank you is spelled something like aciu (with a scidilla or little curlique thing under the c) and is pronounced like you would sneeze achoo! To say a casual goodbye would be iki (like icky). So we're managing to pick up a few words despite not really knowing anything.
I mentioned that the milk tastes different. A major food item here is potatoes. They do things with potatoes I have never experienced before. They make a kind of dumpling with potato starch. I would have to see a cookbook with instructions to understand. Anyway, they use a lot of cream and real butter. In fact, at a restaurant I order a stuffed chicken breast thinking it would be safely mild. It consisted entirely of a chicken breast wrapped around a cube of butter, covered with a dough then deep-fried. Lots of FAT!! I think the relative poverty as well as the need to stay warm has had a lot of influence on what is considered traditional Lithuanian fare. Rye is used in most of the breads. Oh, and for something also very different, we went to a Chinese restaurant. I ordered egg-drop soup (by the English description on the Lithuanian menu) and was surprised at the flavor. The broth was basically sugar water with the expected egg and corn in it. I added some soy sauce to try to make it a little saltier but it didn't help much. I ate it anyway because I was hungry and it wasn't awful- just not what I expected. Cheeses and processed meat, especially pork, are common items. Cabbage and carrots are probably the most common vegetables. Mushrooms are grown throughout the countryside and are available at little roadside stands, along with apples. The bakery sections of the grocery stores have all kinds of wonderful looking treats. We haven't tried many of them but the ones we have tried often have sweetened sour cream and cheese in them.
We're going to continue working on this popups blocked problem because that seems to be the source of our inability to post pictures.