Beschäftigt in der Küche

It has been a while - but 'tis the season and I've been busy in the kitchen....

As proof/justification for my lack of writing, I offer a few images:

Thanksgiving pies waiting to be picked up (I can accept the fact that I had to import pie pans (though you do have to pity a culture that doesn't even know about, let alone appreciate (worship?) pie), but the fact that I was forced to house them in pizza boxes (which work OK for pumpkin, but are seriously too shallow for a proper apple) because this supposedly cosmopolitan city doesn't have a single store selling baking supplies (a la New York Cake Supplies). You must be able to order them from somewhere, but still....

Christmas Linzer Cookies (particularly delicious delicious with my foraged plum jam). Thanks to Martha Stewart for the Christmas tree cut-out idea (and the recipe, which I highly recommend as the dough is surprisingly workable and the finished product even better than I had expected: after sampling a single cookie, one customer immediately ordered a kilo.)

And a marshmallow snowman awaiting his perch atop a chocolate cupcake. This guy and his cohorts were sold at a Christmas Bazaar at an international school here (part of my attempt to teach myself marketing/self-promotion). I really can't tell you how defenseless small children are in the face of these guys. I felt almost guilty. (Again, I have to give some credit to Martha (the woman (or her staff) does have good ideas), but not all that much as hers look a lot more like birds than snowmen. And I couldn't get behind the beret look...).


Finally, on a totally unrelated note, a shot from the cemetery down the street. While I'm not a cemetery person, I have to admit the Germans do this better than we do. Each plot is almost a little garden with loved ones regularly tending to the plants, making cemeteries feel less desolate, which I think is a nice thing. Who wants to spend eternity in desolate sterility? One of the cemeteries in my old neighborhood had an actual and frequented playground within its walls. And a different cemetery in my new neighborhood (where the brothers Grimm are supposedly buried) includes a cafe. But, of course they are still German cemeteries so the plots are neatly arranged (no wild flowers growing into the neighbor's plot now!). And in this photo, you can see that the various people who come to tend to the mini gardens keep their personal watering cans on-site and they are all Germanically locked up so that nobody can steal them!

Berlin: eine angsteinflößende Stadt

Not a new expat sentiment, but holidays outside of the US (or wherever it is you call home) are not the easiest of times. Especially holidays that are totally ignored (or worse, incorrectly celebrated) by the rest of world. I will say that my neighborhood threw a pumpkin/squash festival (in German Kürbis is the word for both). It was fairly tame and not all that pumpkin- or squash-focused, although they were selling over-priced pumpkins and squash. My absolute favorite part was the kids running around in giant plastic bubbles. Alas, I didn't have my camera with me, but of course somebody else documented this bizarre activity at some other festival. I guess they are sort of pumpkin-shaped?

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday (after my birthday, which Germany has also yet to do justice to). So this year, I decided to take matters into my own hands and we threw a Halloween party (costumes mandatory). I have to say, I was really pleasantly shocked that almost all of our guests wore costumes (maybe the Germans take "mandatory" literally?). We had cowboys and indians, pirates and angels, Cruella DeVille, Karate Kids, James Bond, and some generally creepy-looking Krauts. And, to our great surprise, we even had a group of trick-or-treaters! They say Halloween is taking off here (and if you were a German kid, isn't it the holiday you'd want to copy?) - the costume store down the street had a line out the door for three days solid. Still, living in an apartment (as opposed to a freestanding house with a welcoming front porch light) a ways from the areas of Berlin known for high numbers of expats, we were were not prepared. We lamely offered them our bowl of unwrapped candy (gummy rats, bats, and cats) from our party buffet (it seemed like a safer choice than finger pretzels or lychee eyeballs). I think the American paranoia regarding tainted candy hasn't made it here yet and they seemed pretty excited that some fairly unimpressive costumes merits free candy.

ps. For those keeping count, my New York Times columnists in Berlin sightings count is up to three!

Himmel und Erde (mit Bäume)

We are still working our way through those Jüterbog apples (the pears having been mostly dealt with thanks to Susan's vanilla pear jam recipe and a somewhat disappointing pear & chocolate torte). If I were in possession of a freezer, I'd no doubt freeze a bunch of applesauce for applesauce cake and muffins in the coming months, but as I am not and the pantry is jam-packed (no pun intended! Could this be where this phrase comes from?!) with jars of jam already.... I decided to take advantage of the sale on Blutwurst (blood sausage) and have another go at traditional German food (which as previously mentioned, I seldom cook or even eat strange as it may sound, but I have important work to do here, like converting mein Mann to pimento cheese, which I made today for lunch).

Himmel und Erde or "Heaven and Earth" is, according to Wikipedia, a typical west German dish with a bunch of regional variations. Basically, it's mashed potatoes with applesauce or cooked apples mixed in. In some parts of Germany, potatoes are called Erdäpfel (earth apples) and thus the source of the dish's name: Heaven (from the tree apples) and Earth (from the earth apples). I associate it with Blutwurst (perhaps because the recipe in my mother-in-law's German cookbook says to serve them together), but after a bit of internet research, it turns out that this combination is the Cologner/Dusseldorfer way, whereas other towns pair it with regular old Bratwurst or the German equivalent of fried bologna. I'm sure other porky things have been known to make an appearance. Caramelized onions are a common topping.

Himmel and Erde was, if I do say so myself, delicious (if not particularly photogenic - sorry). I was a bit worried about the combination of cooked apples and potatoes ... it seemed a bit like a baby food experiment gone wrong, but it was creamy and tangy and we ate it all. I've had the good fortune of living in several blood sausage-loving countries so far and today's version is giving Spain a run for its money. I think if you ordered Himmel und Erde at a restaurant, you would be hard pressed to find anything green on your plate, but while I can put away blood sausage with the best of them, I do like a bit of veg to round out my plate. So the version of Himmel und Erde typical of my apartment has trees (Bäume), which seems like an obvious addition to heaven and earth if you ask me....

Büffel-Besuch + Plünderung

We certainly ate our share of fresh mozzarella while we were in Campania, but somehow we didn't manage to hang out with any water buffaloes. Who knew that our chance would come in the 1,002-year-old town of Jüterbog (whose name is very fun), just south of Berlin? It wasn't the nicest of days, but we had wanted to visit Bobalis since returning from Italy and it's only open one Saturday a month. (Somehow, I who have plenty of days off, always ended up having to work on these Saturdays.) So we weren't going to let a bit of gray sky keep us away. The Buffaloes were extremely cute - there were lots of calves (waiting in line at the milk trough with the same patience found in human toddlers). I was a little disappointed that they weren't actually making cheese during the visiting hours and were only selling mozzarella that was already two days old. Am I wrong? Isn't "the fresher the better" the whole deal behind fresh mozzarella (although I will say that Provolone is pretty hard to find in the Fatherland). The cheese has a nice buffalo tang and I'm all for supporting a herd of happy German water buffalo, but ... it (along with the grey sky) does make a girl long for those days in Campania. Bobalis also butchers some of their buffalos and the sausages and liverwurst we brought home are delicious. I suppose it's not all that surprising that Germans would make better Wurst than delicate Italian cheese.

The town of Jüterbog is a collection of some really amazing very old buildings with the fairly depressing, shut-down vibe often found in Bradenburg/former East Germany as a backdrop. A rinky dink carnival set up in the lovely town square supposedly in honor of Oktoberfest didn't help matters. For some very unknown reason, Fläming, the region surrounding/including Jüterbog also boasts "Europe's first and largest skating path." I have no idea if or why in-line/rollerskating (skateboarding?) would be especially popular in this fairly out-of-the-way spot, but we biked around part of the 200-and-some-kilometer route and it is really very nice. To our delight, it's also full of fruit trees and once again we came home with saddlebags full of plums, pears, and apples (mein Mann has just discovered his love of scavenging/gathering and couldn't bear to leave any fruit behind). Our pantry is already very, very full of jam and chutney now and we are eating our weight in apple cake/tart on a daily basis. We're also developing somewhat of a reputation among our friends for being weird people who spend every weekend in the country in search of abandoned fruit trees.

Die (Aus)Wahl von Keks

As has been widely pointed out, the recent German election was a bit on the dry side. (Barely related side story: I hung out (briefly) with Roger Cohen at the reception following a foreign policy panel discussion I attended this week (making him my second New York Times columnist sighting in Berlin! He was next to me in the buffet line and asked me what I did for a living. I think I was the only non-politics person in the room (if you don't count that silly bachelor's degree or my brief stint saving children) and he seemed rather amused to talk about something besides the boring election). In any case, there was an election going on here. I suppose it wasn't all that different from elections at home, except that we didn't get phone calls during dinner from Bill Clinton (or Merkel for that matter) and because we don't have a television we were't subject to nonstop political ads (though I hear they are not so pervasive here). There were a lot of posters up around town for the various parties. Mostly they serve to illustrate that German politicians do not use stylists (or it would seem, professional photographers). One poster in particular illustrates the ability of the German people to take some things more lightly than Americans. This poster displays the cleavage of Chancellor Angela Merkel and another politician from her CDU party, claiming: we have more to offer. While I can't say that I find this poster particularly convincing, remember what a fuss they made about Michelle Obama showing her arms?! (In the end, she lost.)


For the most part, I leave the German politicking to mein Mann, but I did see fit to make one (fairly neutral) contribution to the election. We went to a little election party to watch the results come in (Germany only has one time zone (and only tiny scandals) so you can actually find out the results and then go have dinner!). I brought along some election-themed cookies - the different sprinkles represent the colors associated with the four main parties. Freakily enough, most of the red (red being the color of the SPD, which lost badly) cookies turned out really poorly (weird holes in the centers and melting around the edges) and yellow (of the co-winning FDP) turned out perfectly. Hmmmmmmmmmm....

Julia auf Deutsch

Julia Child and I go back a long way. I haven't cooked my way through any of her books (or anyone else's for that matter, though I sometimes wish I had that kind of patience and didn't always feel the need to make something with whatever I think I need to use up in my fridge), but she was on my Sesame Street-Mr. Rogers rotation, and I continued to watch her shows long after Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers had faded from my television screen. Thanks to a roommate/friend who worked at the American History Museum, I was able to visit her kitchen before the exhibit opened in DC and I got to hold her balloon whisk. It's true: I have photographic proof and a witness.

I moped around for weeks because I was sure "Julie & Julia" wouldn't be playing in Germany -- nobody in Europe has any idea who she is. Of course, they are familiar with Meryl Streep so, to my delight, the movie is showing in Berlin after all. I moved here with my DVD of "The French Chef" in tow (naturally) so mein Mann had already been persuaded of her charms and did not even need to be begged or bribed to come along. So there we were last week, sitting in the theater and waiting for the movie to start when it occurred to me I hadn't double checked that the movie was in English (for reasons I have yet to fathom, most movies here are shown dubbed and only a few theaters show the original version). I had stupidly assumed the film would be in English because who would want to hear a dubbed version of Meryl Streep's spot-on imitation of Julia's voice? A small handful of Germans who have no idea what Julia sounded like anyway (or Meryl Streep for that matter because these people always go to see the dubbed version) that's who. I panicked. For about 2 seconds I thought maybe I could sit through it in German...the story is the same right? And it would be good German practice, no? Much to the bewilderment and irritation of mein Mann I announced that I had to leave. He could stay, but I could simply not bring myself to see Julia in German. Much to my satisfaction, after we finally saw Julie & Julia this week in the lovely English language, mein Mann pronounced that we could never have seen it auf Deutsch. Ha!


In other news, I have a new bike so last weekend we took it out to the country for a spin. It was one of the last (sigh) really nice days of the year and it was a lovely bike ride other than the fact that it was waaaaaaaaaaaaaay to long for someone who had only ridden a bike once in the last two decades or so. I am now fully recovered, though, and can say that it was totally worth it because along the way we discovered countless plum trees (the sort my family calls Italian prune plums, but I understand are also known as damsons and in these parts, Zwetschen), as well as an apple orchard at the Cloister in Chorin (actually we knew this was there, having stumbled upon it last year - you may recall my adventures in making 100 or so tiny jars of jam?). The bike was even less fun to ride with saddle bags full of fruit, but the apple cake I made last Sunday and the particularly delicious plum jam I made yesterday (plum chutney, brandied apple butter, and a sour cream apple pie to come) have a way of helping me forget that part

Moin Moin Meppen Meppen

When I first heard of Meppen (mein Mann's hometown) my only thought was that it sounded like the name of a particularly zany muppet, but over the past few years, I've had the opportunity to explore (or at least drive by) it's many charms....um....the New Jersey Nightclub, for example...and Jumpy's American Pizza (I am fairly sure nobody from Jumpy on down has ever been anywhere in the vicinity of America (or Italy for that matter)), and the Hotel Pöker (sounds like Puker) come to mind. OK, so I have at times struggled to really see Meppen's charming side, although the natural setting is quite nice and behind the family home there are some work horses - the really giant ones with lots of hair/fur in the winter that I really like, along with many duck couples that hang out on the main square....I really do try to like Meppen.

We went up to Meppen this month to collect a load of furniture for our new apartment and managed to squeeze in a few day trips so mein Mann could show me Emsland (the region where Meppen is situated). When we met, mein Mann told me he was from "the Iowa of Germany." Perhaps: there's a lot of farmland -- very pretty in the German way (all very precisely groomed, nary a grain out of Ordnung and to my own personal horror and dismay: not a single farmstand).

First, he showed me a bunch of piles of rocks aka megalithic graves (apparently his ancestors were very strong):

Also, a lovely mill (what's not to like about a place that has Mills listed at the top (I kid you not) of their list of tourist attractions?):


And a few nice Schlosses and (after sneaking sans passport across the Dutch border, where, by the way, we immediately encountered an adorable farm stand) to see a very nice fort.

Along with rocks and mills,

Along with rocks and mills, Emsland is also known for Schnapps production. I was particularly taken with this bottle of Hasetaler Korn, which promises a "guarantee of origin" and actually lists the names of the farmers whose wheat was used in the Schnapps' production along with the specific location of the farm!