Inspiration

So I'm reading Julie Julia...  the book they based that movie on about a woman, Julie, who decides to cook all the recipes in Julia Child's cookbook, The Art of French Cooking....  in one year.  There are 524 recipes that she has to get through and she blogs about her efforts.  Well, the book, and the fact that it's Thanksgiving tomorrow, have inspired me.  Today I started with graham cracker crusts sprinkled with dark chocolate for my pumpkin pies.  Except I can't find graham crackers here in Germany.  So I used butter cookies and it seems fine...  On friday I'll cut the absolutely HUGE pumpkin that Oma grew in her garden this summer and on Saturday the pie crusts will be filled.

I had left over crumble.  What's a cook to do?  I made these adorable mini apple-pear tarts in ramekins and topped them with the remaining crumble.  My kids are going to be in heaven!  So  I melted butter and honey in a pot with the juice from one lemon.  Then I peeled and cored 2 apples and a large pear.  I sprinkled them with cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger and tossed them in the yummy buttery, lemony, honey juice.  All got divided up into three ramekins and topped with the remaining crumbly pie crust.  Don't tell my husband that there wasn't enough for a fourth...  They look and smell to die for.  I'll let you know how they tasted.  We're eating them after lunch for dessert.

My mom would be proud of me.  I'm making open faced turkey sandwiches with gravy.  When we were kids, my mom didn't throw anything away.  She still doesn't.  So on about the fourth day after Thanksgiving, we would always have these open faced sandwiches.  It was basically a piece of toasted bread topped with warmed turkey and left over gravy.  It tasted great to me...  We'll see what my boys think of this simple dish.  I don't know why, but yesterday I roasted a turkey breast.  Today we'll have the leftovers in the form of these tasty blasts from my past.

The last effort of the morning was the cranberry cherry compote.  I've read that this can be made up to two weeks in advance and stored in the fridge in an airtight container.  I didn't have shallots or pearl onions, but I did have pearl onions in a glass that I bought in Italy.  They tasted great, so what the hell.  I sauteed them in butter, then added a cup of sugar and a teaspoon of vinegar.  After letting that  caramelize for about 15 minutes, I added a cup of dry white wine, half a cup of vinegar and a cup of dried cherries.  Another glitch.  I had some dried cherries, but not a cup.  I had some dried cranberries, but not a cup.  I had some raisins, but not a cup.  I tossed them all in.  A pinch of salt and 45 minutes later I added a cup of water and 1 lb of cranberries.  The cranberries popped after about 10-minutes.  One should let this cool and then store.  The only problem was it didn't taste right to me.  The smell alone summoned up thoughts of an experiment gone terribly wrong.  Maybe all of my substitutions made for a funky combination.  I'll let Helmut be the taster later and see what he thinks (without saying anything beforehand). It looked beautiful, as if that's any consolation.  If I get a no from Helmut, I'll buy all the ingredients and make it again tomorrow, following the recipe...  Even if I get a "oh, that tastes good" from Helmut, I'm cooking it again tomorrow.  I can't imagine that my sense of smell has somehow gone awry and Helmut, in an effort to boost my ego, would try to trick me into serving a funky cranberry compote to a bunch of germans that have never eaten cranberries.  If they eat my funky cranberry compote, they might be turned off forever!  We certainly wouldn't want that.

Tomorrow I'll be making a turkey stock, the Hummus and choosing the red and white wine...  Oh, and of course the second round on the cranberries...  'Til then.

CONTACT

What do you think of when you hear the word "CONTACT"?  I used to think of contact with beings from outer space or about the internet, contact with new people on the internet.  How about contact with everyone you know when ever you want through our cell phones.  My son, Josef, thinks of making contact with new friends, exchanging phone numbers and making a play date.  My husband, Helmut, thinks of making connections with people or contact fighting, a form of boxing.  My sister Bobbie thinks of touching someone or sending an email, a contact lens maybe?  My mom thinks of contact paper, a paper that has a sticky side and you line your drawers or shelves with it.

I have recently re-evaluated my views on the word "contact".  The last 8 years of my life have been spent living in a small town in Bavaria with my husband and now two children, next door to my in-laws.  We share a garden, we have very separate entrances, but the houses are connected.  I've often heard them make a comment about how they could hear me fighting with the kids in the morning, or worse, when Helmut and I have come home late at night after being out together.  How much do you think they can actually hear?  How good can their hearing actually be at the age of 78?  Helmut's brother lives in our town as well.  He lives across the train tracks with his wife and three teenage boys.  Forget running to the store in your sweats with big sunglasses and Uggs on, hoping not to be noticed.  I've tried it and it doesn't work.  "Frau Mages, what can I get you?" is the first sentence out of everyone's mouth.  They all know me, and knew me from the first week I was here.  It took me years to get to know all of them!  There I am walking home from the bar at 12 mid-night, happy and a little drunk.  Someone is walking towards me with a wool hat pulled down low.  "Hello Stephanie" says the man....  Oh, it's Helmut's brother walking home from the theater!  Now I know that his parents will know that I was out, that I was out without my husband, that I was drinking and they'll probably receive a full account of what I was wearing!  I so didn't grow up in a small town.  I grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.  Besides our direct neighbors, we could pretty much go anywhere incognito.
It also means that when I don't rake the leaves on our side of the house once a week, the neighbors talk.  Or when my neighbor lets her two girls play in the street in November, BAREFOOT, then I talk.
Well, recently my husband's father died.  I've lost two of my grandparents, but for reasons I'm about to explain, it didn't affect me so much.  You see, growing up in a big city, even though everything might seem so jam packed and close together, it's actually harder to visit with people unless they're your neighbors.  There is so much traffic, and it takes so long to get any where.  My grandfather lived until he was 91.  I was 31 at the time of his death.  But throughout the years, I never lived that close to him.  I never spent a lot of quality time with him.  Living next door to Helmut's father, we spent a lot of time together.  Token holiday parties aside, we spent time in the garden together.  We went shopping together.  The kids play in the garden and then go over to Oma and Opa's house.  I have to find them...  Opa loved to work with wood and was always teaching us something about creating instead of buying.  He was a bee keeper and over the years I've gone with him and learned how to care for the bees in the hopes of becoming as good as him one day.  It was a day in, day out relationship with an older couple.  A relationship, that until this point in my life, I had never had.  I miss him, and the kids miss him.  Of course my husband grieves his father dearly.  Oma, over every one else, who has spent the last 60 years of her life with Opa, misses him the most.  I can see the pain drawn on her face, the empty hole that is now a part of her every day life.  We look at pictures of Opa all the time, and talk about him a lot.  So now you understand how my idea of contact has morphed into a new meaning, a positive one.  Close contact with other people, people who are older and in many ways wiser than I, is a totally new experience for me.  I look forward to deepening these contacts in this small town and smiling when my neighbors complain that my side walk isn't clean.