Spring 2013

So spring has officially sprung in Abensberg.  Everything is blooming (finally) and the birds are up very early singing their hearts out.  We had the longest and darkest winter in recorded history.  Needless to say, it was long and gray!  Having grown up in New York, I don't have a feeling for when, what should be planted.  I buy my blooming plants each spring and plant them anew.  I have to date, killed every rose I've ever bought before the fall came or over winter.  I have, pat me on the back, managed to not kill a rose over this winter and am very proud to say that it's growing!  

My husband's mother is an avid gardner...  she's not interested in pretty or landscaped.  She wants produce!  She's into anything that will offer something to eat, make into a juice or jam, pickle, conserve, freeze etc.  You get the idea.  She has an inner clock that starts ticking very loud if the seeds and little baby plants don't get planted at the right time of the spring.  Yesterday, I spent the morning pulling out old tomato plants from last season, turning soil, and raking and weeding, and spending time with Oma and with nature.  Who has suggestions on what I should actually plant in my beautful vegetable beds?

It was nearing noon when I realized I didn't know what to cook...  after checking my stocks, I decided to make a cauliflower salad with avocado and oranges.

I gathered herbs from the garden and sweated them quickly with an onion and garlic in some olive oil.

 Added white balsamic and orange juice, salt and pepper and a touch of mustard.

Then I cut up a perfectly ripe avocado and two oranges.  Tossed it all together 

with half a head of cauliflower.

and this is what I got...

I've been crazy about these Chi Seeds lately...  I tossed a handful of those in the salad just for fun and for that extra kick of plant power, plant based protein and omega fatty acids.  It was absolutely delicious and my kids ate it too!  

Off to tennis and to my favorite organic farm to buy homemade tofu...  Her husband makes his own tofu; three different varieties...  natural, smoked and vegetable.  They also have seitan and tempeh (which I can't find anywhere else)!  

Of course my energy level was still up there, so I joined my friend for an hour of Zumba here... 

www.polesition.de

That"s not me...  She runs the the zumba studio and kicks it!  

I fell asleep with my boys at 8pm...

Corn Chowder! Saucey Style...

We are absolutely loving corn!  We can't get enough of it...  I had a couple of left over cobs and decided to make corn chowder with a pumpkin base.

Here's what I did:

Heat olive oil (maybe 2 tblsps) in a pot then add a chopped onion and 2 -3 cloves of garlic with about 2 tsp of honey.  Once they've sweated, add 1 large chopped and peeled potato and an apple, peeled and cored.  To that, add about 3 cups of cubed akaido squash (you don't have to peel it) and freshly cut kernels from a corn cob.
I have this awesome pumpkin spice packet that I bought in a local health food store.  I added about a tsp of that.  Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves would work too (you could even add a little curry, cumin etc.).  We're talking like 1/4 teaspoon each.  I would tread carefully...  you can always add more at the end for stronger flavor.  Then I ran to the garden and collected fresh thyme, sage, chives and parsley and made a bouquet garni.  You know...  fresh herbs tied together with a white thread so you can easily remove it when you're finished cooking.  This is what it looked like at this stage.

I added enough vegetable broth to cover the vegetables (about 3/4 of a liter), covered the pot and let it simmer for 15 minutes.  In the mean time, I cut the kernels off of another cob of corn and pan roasted them in butter and honey!  OMG it smelled soooooo good.  My boys were already bugging me about when we could eat.  You can play around here as well.  I would have happily caramelized chopped onions too.  The problem is my kids would complain.

When the 15 minutes is up, make sure that the potatoes are cooked through.  If not, let the soup simmer another 5 minutes or so.  So, when the potatoes are soft, pull out the bouquet garni and puree with your hand held mixer.  I added a 1/4 cup of white wine and shot of heavy cream at this point.  Lemon juice would do well here too and if you want to avoid the cream, add a chopped leek to the mix from the beginning.  They are so creamy!  Salt and pepper to taste and mix in your corn kernels.  If your soup is too thick, try adding apple juice or cider until you have the desired consistency.

It was really good!  The boys loved it too :-)

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.

Recipe of the day...

Today I'm going to cook Ribs with Whipped Garlic Potatoes and Bavarian Blaukraut...  YUM!!!

Ribs:
Buy 1lb for each person.  There's a lot of bones.
I buy flat pork ribs, but you can buy Baby Back Ribs too.

Salt and Pepper them, rub them with cayenne pepper and smear them with balsamic vinegar.  The vinegar helps to make the meat soft and caramelized.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
Place the ribs meaty side down on a baking sheet that's lined with wax paper (this way you don't have to clean so much).  Roast them for 40 min., then brush them with a Creme di Balsamico.  Turn them over and bake another 20 min.  They should be brown and caramelized on the meaty side and oooohhh so yummy.

Whipped Garlic Potatoes:
125g of Potatoes for each person...
Peel Potatoes and one clove of garlic.  Cut into smaller chunks and place in a pot with just enough water to cover them.  Add the garlic and a pinch of salt.
Cook about 25 min. until the potatoes are soft when pierced with a knife.
The trick is you have to mash them with a potato masher and then whip them with your hand blender.  Warning:  don't puree them, use the whipping attachment!
While you're whipping, add a pad of butter and heavy cream.  It is up to you how much you add.  Keep tasting them until you've found a consistency and flavor you like.  I like mine less creamy, but to each his own!  Add salt and pepper to taste, and Voila!  Whipped Garlic Potatoes.

Bavarian Blaukraut:
1/2 head of Red Cabbage
1 Large Onion
2 Apples, peeled and cored
2 Cups of dry white wine
1/4 Cup of Apple Cider Vinegar
Cinnamon
5 Cloves
1 large bay leaf
Salt and Pepper

The first and hardest thing to do is to grate the Red Cabbage, the Onion and the Apples, SEPARATELY.  I have a fantastic hand held grater thingy that comes with all sorts of different attachments and gadgets.  A food processor would certainly work.  Be careful, you want to grate it all, not hack it into unrecognizable pieces.

Sautee the onions in a bit of olive oil in a large sauce pot.  After about 3 minutes, add the red cabbage and cover the pot.  Stir this occasionally for about 10 minutes.  Add apples, one cup of white wine, half the vinegar, salt, cloves and bay leaf.  Braise the cabbage with the cover on for about 20 min.  When you see the pot is dry, add more wine.  Add the rest of the vinegar and the cinnamon.  Continue braising for another 20 min.  Salt and pepper to taste.  This dish is so famous here in Bavaria, tastes awesome and goes well with meat and fish dishes.

ENJOY!!!  and let me know how it turned out for you.

Romping Part 3: San Benedetto, Italy

Part 3

San Benedetto, Italy:

Sometimes theory can be put into practice. After unpacking and re-packing and organizing and eating and re-organizing and giving the kids a bath and getting them to bed, and doing 100 other things I can't remember right now, I crashed. The problem was, I crashed at 11:30 at night. I couldn't imagine that I could wake up at 2 am and drive to Italy. But I did. We met Tina and Maria downstairs and packed the car and piled in, all 5 of us, and drove. The kids slept and Tina and I talked and drank cappuccinos and talked about what had gone on in our lives over the past month of being separated. We talked and drove and drank and before we knew it the sun was coming up as we were driving out of the mountains in Bozen. We arrived at Susan's at 8:30 am happy, refreshed and HOT. The first thing I did was take off my Uggs and put on flip flops. It was stunning. The resort was even more beautiful than I had remembered, the sun was shining, the blue water of the olympic size pool was sparkling and the air was ripe with the scent of morning dew and fresh Cornettos (Croissants). The early birds were arriving at the pool and as we were checking everything out, I heard a familiar voice from somewhere up above greeting us. It was Susan. Anticipating our arrival, she was setting up breakfast on the terrace. It was soooo great to see her! She always looks great, but after 6 weeks in Italy, she looks even better. We spent most of our days in the same fashion. We would have breakfast on the terrace, already in our bikinis and swim trunks. Then Tina and I and the kids would go to the pool while Susan did her laps and yoga and all the other relaxing fabulous stuff that keeps her happy and looking 10 years younger than she is. One or the other of us would go back to the apartment at around 2 pm and prepare a big fresh, yummy lunch that usually consisted of healthy salads, local cheeses, fish, and something undeniably whole grain. We would then linger by the pool-side again or play water games with the kids until dinner time, which for the Italians isn't before 9 pm in the evening. After which, the kids would fall asleep and we would continue our drinking and eating festivities well into the night. We would, at some point go skinny dipping and then fall into a happy slumber, full and knowing that we could do it all over again tomorrow! Needless to say that after just 10 days of this routine, I firmly believe that Tina and I also looked at least 10 years younger than upon arrival. Well, even if we didn't look 10 years younger, we certainly felt it... We've already made plans to do it again.

Romping Part 2: New York City

Part 2

New York:

After a sad goodbye and a short 4 1/2 hour flight we landed in New York. I could hardly wait to see Josef and Helmut and of course all those special to me in the big apple. My parents picked us up at JFK. Unfortunately, Helmut and Josef were landing 2 hours later at Newark. My sister Tricia was picking them up. One of the perks of having a large family. It was a sweet reunion! and the best was that we got to stay in my sister's apartment, that was currently between rentors... totally cool. We immediately started having fun. One of our morning rituals is to be the first customers in the bagel store. We always order sesame bagels with tuna. We went for long walks in Riverside Park with Uncle Kaya, enjoyed sunset roof-top BBQ's and days at the beach with our girlfriend Theresa. We spent whole afternoons in Central Park at the Meadow. I showed the kids the bathrooms at Tavern on the Green and explained that you can always use the restrooms in restaurants even if you aren't a customer. I enjoyed working with long time colleagues of mine on several fabulous events while Helmut visited FAO Schwartz and the likes with the kids. We visited our friends Don and Michele on Long Island, swam in their pool and BBQ'd big American steaks. We went with Grandpa (my Dad) to his fitness studio and swam for hours in the roof-top pool. Afterwards, we would go home and cook gourmet meals together. The highlight had to be that Helmut and I celebrated 9 years of knowing each other. Our night out started at Quest, a fabulous American bistro, with $15 Grey Goose Martinis and plain green salads with some magical salad dressing that topped any other I had ever tasted. I moved on to home-made raviolis while Helmut reveled in heaven eating the thickest pork loin I'd ever seen over a pool of dark brown beer sauce that would make any German the happiest person alive. We couldn't actually leave without sharing the molten chocolate souffle, which was a good thing because I don't think my mouth had ever actually watered like that before when eating. I wanted to burst out laughing due to how happy my taste buds were. We then walked hand in hand through the East Village over to the West Village, through Washington Square Park and back over to Astor Place. A very comprehensive tour of my romping grounds in my 20's. I was happy. Helmut was happy. It was time to fly home. I decided to pack Helmut's bag separate so that I wouldn't have to do too much packing for Italy when I got home to Germany. The plan was that after returning home to Abensberg at around 3 pm, to rest and sleep a little and at some point in the very middle of the night, to drive to Italy with Tina and her 3 year old daughter Maria...