The Land of the Free

It's been a big cooking week in the Cooley house! Don is trying his hand in Serbian cuisine - first he made us Ćevapi and then short ribs. Of course to get all this meaty goodness, Don had to visit the meat store where he found all sorts of interesting bits...

Brains...

Hearts...

Other stuff...

Don's Ćevapi 

Ćevapi success!

Small cooking setback... accidentally put the pan on the stove, which resulted in dinner at 10:00pm.

Worth the wait - Don's short ribs!

Dinner in PJs!

Don went to a mall and it would appear it was a wee bit pro Russia...

Yup, that really is Putin on a bear

This weekend we went to a work football game (aka: soccer) at Voždovac Stadium a very cool stadium built on top of a shopping mall. The field is literally on the roof. What was not cool was that it was absolutely impossible to figure out how to get to the roof. We spent about 30 minutes in the garage, then in the mall, then back in the garage trying to find it. Finally we found the door and had to walk to the roof.

Here is the enormous mult-floor parking garage under the mall where we were told to search for passage to the roof...

And here is the one door in the entire garage that leads to the field. Pretty intuitive. Can't believe we couldn't find it. 

Success!! Time for some football!

Burke lost a tooth and was VERY excited about her 100 dinar. She insisted we take her picture (because she's rich). Poor thing has no idea that 100 dinar is worth about 87 cents, so actually Burke's tooth losing business took a hit with the move.

We had a nice day celebrating Mother's Day with some delicious burgers. Most "burgers" in Serbia are made with pork and therefore really don't resemble the burgers we know (and love!) in the U.S., but someone recommended Burger House for "real" burgers, so we went to check it out. It was really good! The burgers were great and the french fries were amazing. We'll definitely be heading back anytime we need a taste from home. Also, now that Burke is independently wealthy (from her tooth losing business), she asked Don to buy me a very special cake: chocolate cake with custard filling, red writing and hearts on it. I would say it was mostly a success...

Tons of sauces to pick from (if you can figure out what they are).

You can get your burger with an egg... heaven...

I wonder if Taralyn is still looking for her cake...

We also spent some time looking for houses, which is a little stressful because there are only a few homes available in the area we'd like to live (near the kids' school). Hopefully something will work out, but regardless, we won because we looked at a house next to the Russian Business Club... and they let us take a photo with the Russian flag and in a fun twist of fate, Don was wearing an ironic t-shirt. Success!!

This picture is entitled "The Land of the Free..."