Like talking to a wall...

Determined to show you the Belgrade you will not find in guidebooks, I started from its best-known jolie laide - the Autokomanda interchange.

The dome in the centre of the shot is Saint Sava's Temple. 

To mention it in this post is almost a sacrilege. Sorry for the non-sequitur.

 A better photographer would have a hard time capturing the whole width and breadth of Autokomanda, let alone yours truly and her shaky Canon, 
so please go to this wiki entry to get the idea: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autokomanda

 The proximity of two football stadiums, one that of FC Partisan, the other one Marakana of the FC Red Star (two perennial arch enemies of Serbian football) makes this already ugly spot highly susceptible to littering and angry grafitti outbursts. Here are some...

 Another football inspired grafitti, though it took me a while to discern that it glorified PFC (Partisan FC). 

Why stop there? 

Despite the meaning, I found this one rather cute.

 I think this one says TRUE BLUE. It was impossible to take a good shot as it was 
surrounded by more concrete nightmare with passageways and overpasses blocking my view. 

Don't know what this one is about but the colors are amazing.

What is a SUHOKULT anyway? 

 And my personal favorite...

Oh, I looked ghetto all right.
 This one was taken at my school's loo...

 That's where the country's leaders are made. 

The Political Science School, that is, not the loo.

Well, at least I hope not.

All that concrete was bringing me down so I took a walk in the intriguing Banjica Forest...

...before heading back home. 

The motto of my 'hood is "Crazy Forever"?! Hm, good to know.

Powered by... my new Diesels:)))  

 

I give you... HRH Pad Thai!!!

The other day I once again set out on the well-trodden path of trying to find the perfect Pad Thai.

Many times I’ve tried, and failed just as many. The taste was there, more or less. After all it’s the balance of sour (tamarind), sweet (sugar or honey) and tangy (fish sauce) that you are striving to achieve. If something's lacking, you keep tweaking it until you get it right. The tricky part is the texture! Texture of rice noodles, to be precise. Once overdone, there is not much you can do about it. Oh yes, many a soggy noodle was served to my friends in the past and I apologize for every plate that did not quite live up to the expectations. 

Never the one to give up in the face of adversity, this time I opted for thaitable.com’s recipe and followed it to a T. You can find it here: 
http://www.thaitable.com/thai/recipe/pad-thai

It just so happened that I had all the ingredients at home so I did not even have to make an emergency trip to the grocery store. With the exception of banana flower I even had all those marked as Optional and, oh boy, do they make a difference! The preserved turnip was something I had picked up, along with a bunch of other mysterious foodstuffs, at the Chinese Block 70 the last time I ventured there but forgot to ask the shop owner how to use it. Got home, opened one tiny packet (they sell 5 for 100 dinars) and, arghhh…. I called it yet another shopping mistake and relegated it to the back of the spice rack, or the spice fridge, in my case (yup, I have a fridge that houses nothing but a huge variety of spices and a wine rack). So, you can imagine how giddy I got having realized this recipe calls for the very preserved turnip. 

Still looking a bit anaemic before the addition of ground sweet paprika and roasted peanuts. 

The recipe prides itself to be THE ORIGINAL pad thai recipe which I took with a lot of reserve until I tasted the resulting dish. 

 Taste-wise, it was all there - the tangy, the sweet, the sour, the spicy… But the best part was the TEXTURE!!! Finally, the perfect combination of still toothsome rice noodles (I just pre-soaked them in cold water so they were still almost firm when I added them to the pan and perfectly al dente when the dish was done), soft tofu, crunchy vegetables. Truth be told, I did deviate from the original recipe towards the end and jazzed the dish up with some more Chinese greens. 

 As God intended it!

So.... after a long search I have finally found the Holy Grail of Asian cooking.
Too bad none of my friends I had used as guinea-pigs in my past Pad Thai endeavors was around to share my joy… and a wok full of pad thai. 

A dress a day.....

...keeps boredom away. 

As you can see, shoes and celebrities was not all I was after this Sunday in the Boulevard.

Whoever knows me knows full well how crazy I am about dresses....

...and that I never tire of looking for another perfect combination of color, cut, fabric and shape...

...so, if you are not just as crazy...

...please leave and never look back...

...because this is just the first of many installments to follow.

But before I go, this final tidbit of zebra print... 

 ...made me search high and low in my laptop for these two wild ladies.

The United Colors of the Boulevard...

There are some really cool people out there...

I've recently realized that, other than yours truly, the FFFF has been completely barren of people.

Such a shame, especially with so many cool people out there. See for yourself:

BTW, that umbrella is a brooch, not a tie print. It floored me.

If he is willing to match his scarf to your purse, he is definitely a keeper.

His crisp shirt and sneakers were perfectly offset by the burek he inhaled then washed down with a bottle of yoghurt, the two most timeless and ubiquitous fashion accessories in Belgrade...

She was just georgeous. And so was her puppy.

Perfection embodied, she flew by so fast I had no time to ask her to stop to take a proper pic ...

But the coolest one of them all was...PRLJAVI INSPEKTOR BLAŽA!!!

I realized is was him as I was going through the discout rack with his wife.

A good day, all in all... complete with a celebrity sighting!