Köln

Jason and I took our first trip in Germany to Köln (English: Cologne, no umlaut: Koeln) over the holiday week.  Friends we met while living in Winston-Salem were in the Netherlands, so they hopped a train and joined us for a day while we were there!  It was wonderful to be around familiar faces!

First things first in Köln: the Dom.  Also known as the black cathedral, this building was 1000 years in the making (as in, the church started then, the construction on this building was not started until 1248).  As you can see, it's simply stunning!  The first day Jason and I both just wandered around slowly, blocking traffic, staring at the building.  

Forgive the blurry picture, but have you ever seen such a majestic looking church in front of a train station before?  (Tripod was left in the US for some crazy reason)

I haven't seen a whole lot of gothic churches, and certainly none on this scale before (tallest structure in the world from 1880-1884... Do you Americans know what replaced it?  The Washington Monument of course!)  Entering the church is free (a far cry from the churches in London), and when you look up, you have to keep looking!  It's one of the tallest vaulted ceilings in the world!  

We decided to pay the extra 4 euros to see the treasury, but for a building that was started in 1248, the treasury is quite small, mainly due to theft.  I saw a few too many reliquaries (way too many old bone bits for me), including one from the cross!  And, of course, the church was designed to hold the reliquary of the Three Wise Men.  Unfortunate placement of Christmas trees and gates prevented a great pictures of the golden shrine, so you can see a better one here.  The wooden box which housed the shrine originally is in the treasury (this piece here is in the main attraction at the front of the church) and etchings upon it depict the story of the Wise Men starting from when the angel appeared to them and ending when the shrine was presented to the Archbishop of Cologne in 1164 by the Holy Roman Emperor Fredrick Barbarossa.  

This nave organ was built in 1998.  Unfortunately, it was too dark to get a shot of the transept organ (1948).  I'm not certain I would want to sit under this one though (pews are directly underneath).  It's awfully high and looks quite heavy.  Though considering this church made it through WWII, I'm doing the architects a disservice (of course, the architects aren't the ones who installed this lovely organ either).

This cathedral contains so amazingly beautiful stuff not pictured, including a mosaic tile floor.  The Dom is a must see in Cologne! 

GWOTD

Hi Folks!  Jason and I are leaving for Cologne (Köln) in about an hour, and will be without internet access on a regular basis until the afternoon of December 31.  So, here are a few words to keep you occupied this holiday season.


December 27: Jahresabschlussbericht: end of the year meeting/report
December 28: Schornsteinfeger: chimney sweep
December 29:  Kölsch: the dialect spoken in and around Köln, as well as the local beer
December 30:  Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!: Happy Birthday!
December 31: Wunderkerze (sparklers) and Feuerwerk (fireworks)

GWOTD

German word of the day:

die Notaufnahme:  emergency room

GWOTD

Frohe Weihnachten!

GWOTD

German word of the day:

die Schlittenfahrt: sleigh ride or sledding

Wordless Wednesday and GWOTD

18 September 2009, Becky and David's Apartment, Jena, Germany

German Word of the Day:


Ironic to combine Wordless Wednesday with German Word of the Day, but it's time for me to post again, so here goes.  A couple weeks ago, I started posting a German Word of the Day on my Google Chat.  When I told my coworkers about it, they got excited and I asked for their help.  So, before they all left for the holidays, a couple of them got together and came up with a list of German words to last until they get back (Jan 4).  Since most of my readers are not on GChat, I've decided to post them here as well.  So, expect a word of the day for a while!  :)


die Schneeballschlacht: Snowball fight!  
(this one goes out to those in Winston-Salem where the snow is slowly melting away...)

Oh the weather outside is weather...

Snow!  Schnee!  

view from the kitchen

Jena is purportedly one of the warmest cities in all of Germany.  When it rains elsewhere, it's sunny in Jena.  Don't get me wrong... it gets cold here.  According to the weather reports, it won't go above freezing this week.  So the snow we got last night and today will stick around for a bit... however, as you can see, there isn't a ton of it.  But I'll enjoy it while it's here.  :)

view from the kitchen

This past week has been interesting.  I've now spent two weeks at work, and have already attended a department Christmas party.  We started out gathered in the kitchen in the department at three with sweets, coffee, tea, and most importantly, glühwein.  I say most importantly because that's what I was told.  Without the glühwein, the group wouldn't be willing to break out the guitar and sing carols.  Baked apples came out too.  Around six, the ham was brought out... along with potatoes, potato salad, a lettuce based salad, a vegetable salad, breads, and seasoned quark for the potatoes (yum!).

view from living room

On Wednesday, the younger crowd in my department is getting together for another holiday party.  On Friday, Jason's department is having it's Christmas party.  

view from living room

I love the trees here!  They are so pretty!

                                                      

view from living room

Foodie... Sunday?

On my way to work on Friday, I decided to do things a bit differently.  My normal routine (ya know, the one I established in the four previous days) was to take the tram or bus (whichever arrived first) to the city center, grab a Käsebrötchen (translates to cheese roll) from one of the bakeries, and then catch the bus to work.  Unfortunately, the bus generally arrived quickly... and no eating on the bus.  And when I got to work (too late in the morning to mention the time), I wanted to get to working immediately, but no eating at my desk.  Bummer.  So, if I were lucky enough to shove a few bites into my mouth before the bus arrived, that's what I did.  Otherwise my breakfast went untouched.


On Friday I decided things needed to change.  So instead of timing my exit from the apartment to meet with the bus and tram schedules, I decided to walk to the city center.  There are at least six bakeries between my apartment and the bus stop at the city center, so I decided to pop into one to grab breakfast, eat it while walking, catch the bus to work, and arrive at work ready to work with a fully belly.


I decided to pop into bakery number 3 from our apartment... it's about halfway between our apartment and the city center.  I had not been into this one before, but I'd heard it was good.  It looked just like any other bakery, but I saw something new that caught my eye.  Quarkini!

I had never heard of it before, but it looked like a small fried dough ball rolled in sugar, similar to the ones served at New China Town in Tucker before it closed.  I had loved those as a kid, so I was more than willing to try Quarkini.  I've also been on a bit of a quark kick... as in, I had just learned what it was (soft unaged cheese similar to paneer, check this out for a more detailed explanation and uses) and wanted to experience it for myself.  I bought the Quarkini.

Oh my yum!  It was exactly what I was looking for!  Soft light inside, surrounded by a slightly crunchy, sugary outside.  They would go wonderfully with coffee too, but I couldn't wait that long to eat them!


I'll be stopping by that bakery for Quarkini again!

Mhmm... English Breakfast...

During my 4 months of unemployment, I had plenty of time to delve into the blog-o-sphere.  I found one particular blog (not related to food... shocker!) that really fit my needs as an expat, Mid-Atlantic English.  Michelloui has been living in Britain now for 20 years and has all kinds of interesting tips on how to embrace the host culture.  I'm finding these tips incredibly useful these days because I just found out that candy canes and peppermint ice cream don't exist in Germany!  And I was shocked about the peppermint ice cream b/c there is an ice cream joint on every corner!  Almost as popular as kebap houses and bakeries!  I always look forward to the peppermint ice cream.  I can't eat a ton of it and don't necessarily eat some every year, but when I realized I couldn't have it, the cravings got out of control!

One thing I do love about Germany is the presence of tea.  Messmer makes a fabulous Earl Gray that I prefer over some British brands.  But I have yet to find a good Irish Breakfast or English Breakfast.  So when I saw this giveaway, I had to jump on it!  If you are interested, feel free to enter the contest too!

Thanksgiving Part II: Thursday and Friday

Thursday dawned with a very scared Melanie.  My boss had not gotten back in touch with me and I was terrified of going to the foreigners office by myself.  I was meeting with the same woman Jason and I had met with previously and while she isn't mean, she's very soft spoken and gave no indication of any English abilities.  So... I was scared.

Jason had suggested that I go down to meet with my future boss to see if someone from the department would be able to accompany me since he (Mr. Boss-Man... no, I can't call him that, Stan from WFUBMC is Mr. Boss-Man... we'll call him Dr. Boss) had not yet responded to my pleading email the day before.  And of course I was nervous about showing up unannounced to my new job.   I did not yet have a grasp on the way things work there.  I've ALWAYS had an appointment with Dr. Boss, and someone has usually been walking past the door around that time to let me into the lab space (the building is not locked, but the individual wings/floors are card access only.  If no one is near the door, I have to call the secretary, but generally people are on the look out because they know I have an appointment.  So this time I was definitely going to have to call the secretary, and try to explain to her that I was showing up unannounced.

She let me in with no problems; I just had to reiterate who I was since she was expecting someone to be speaking German and not English.  Anyway, since I was unannounced, I had to wait outside Mr. Boss's office until he got off the phone (maybe 20 minutes) before she let him know that I was there.  I was able to immediately go into his office and he asked me where things stood with the foreigners office.  It was obvious that he had not read my emails.

He immediately got someone to accompany me to the foreigners office.  It turned out the woman who was originally planning to go with me was so sick she couldn't get out of be and could barely speak.  Good reason to send me alone I say!  I didn't want to be in the same room as her!  I was with Dr. Boss for probably and hour and during the course of that time I went through an emotional rollercoaster: yes you can start Monday, no you don't need work visa since you already have a visa to be in the country, oh wait you do need a visa since your current one specifically states you cannot work, oh no the personnel office drew up the wrong contract, next week you will proofread my manuscript since no one who wrote it was a native English speaker, no you can't start Monday since I won't be here, can you sign this contract even though it's the wrong one?, the administration is out of town and not answering their phones to let us know, yes they called back you can sign the incorrect contract, but i don't want you to sign it since it's in German and you can't read it, just don't turn the contract back into the administration.  Did you get all that?  It was a crazy hour.

It turns out that I didn't need to sign the contract to go to the foreigners office (which I already knew since Jason wasn't allowed to sign his contract until after he had his work visa from the foreigners office).  A sweet Russian woman, Ms. Blonde (yes, this is a made up name), took me down to the foreigners office and we got through the paperwork for my work visa with limited issues.  Ms. Blonde and I had time to talk in the car on the way to the office.  Like others I've met from the region, she was very curious about my first name: Melanie.  It's a common name in Germany.  During one of my interviews, a current student started speaking to me in German because he saw my name tag and assumed I was German.  I had no idea.  I've always heard that Melanie comes from Greek origins, which seems true enough, but it's also commonly used in Germany.  Who knew?

I returned home Thursday afternoon with my work visa, but without a clue as to when I would actually start working.  Signs pointed to Monday week, 7 December.  Jason and I spent a wonderful evening talking to both sets of parents, Jason's Aunt Anne, Uncle Ben, and cousin Chuck.  Happy Thanksgiving to us indeed!

Friday I decided to risk it and head into see my future boss again.  But first I needed to get a tax card.  The tax card is something you have to register for at the city office in order to pay taxes.  I have learned that native citizens do not have to register this way, but that is neither here nor there.  I went into the building, got my ticket with a number, and sat down to wait.  The number last called was 43 and I was 45.  Not too shabby.  So I waited.  Twenty minutes later my number dinged and I went to desk number nine.  I patiently explained that I do not speak German and I needed a tax card.  I handed the woman at the desk my passport and we went about our business.  She needed my address.  Easy enough.  She needed my address in the US.  Well, I don't have one, but I've grown accustomed to this strange question and gave her my parents address.  Next, she asked if I were single.  No, married.  She asked for my husband's address.  Well, I pointed to our Jena address.  She called over the person sitting at the next desk... a slightly younger woman who had more English skills.  The younger woman asked me where my husband lives.  So I pointed to the Jena address again.  Seemed simple enough.  Obviously my husband lives here with me.  Why on earth did she bring over a translator?  And of course, I found out.  She was trying to tell me that since my husband lives in Jena, he had to come to the office with me to get the tax card.  WHAT?  I wasn't with Jason when he got his tax card.  Bewildered, I walked out of the building and took the bus down to see Dr. Boss.

I wanted to know when I would actually start.  The secretary begrudgingly let me in again without an appointment.  She's nice, but isn't terribly comfortable speaking English, which makes her seem more standoff-ish than she actually is.  I was able to speak with Dr. Boss rather immediately and got straight to asking him about my start date.  He quickly said 7 Dec, but by the time I left his office 40 minutes later, we had discovered that I had already, in fact, been hired and was able to have computer and building access immediately.  I did a little jig.  In my head that is.

So, today, 30 Nov, I started work.  :)  I'm surprising Jason with a steak dinner tomorrow night.

Thanksgiving Part I: Monday thru Wednesday

Most of this post is also on my FFF blog, but the more I thought about it, the more the post seemed to fit here better.  So I'm including it in both locations.  If you've already read it, thank you!  If not, enjoy!

This past week has been trying for both of us.  Monday dawned full of hope for a new job for me.  I had plans to go down to the foreigners office to obtain my work visa so I could start.  In the back of my head, I knew that things would not go smoothly, so I had prepared myself by thinking that I would start Thursday, on Thanksgiving with all the irony of me going to work whilst my family back in the States enjoyed the day off and a table full of turkey.  So, back to the point.  With Monday came an email.  The person who had to sign off on my hire was out sick.  Thus, the foreigners office could not be contacted and I could not get my visa on Monday.

I moped a bit, but made a fabulous prosciutto and green bean alfredo and called it a day.

Tuesday dawned.  I was hopeful.  The person yesterday said she hoped to email me that day with another update.  By 10 am I was feeling antsy, so I emailed her.  And her response?  She'd been calling the foreigners office since 9 am every five minutes, but alas, no answer.  (Apparently Mr. Boss-Dude was feeling better and had approved my hire)  She asked me to wait patiently, and if she hadn't heard anything by 11:00 am, we would assume we could not get an appointment for Tuesday and we'd have to go Wednesday.  She finally got in touch with them around 10:45 (yay!), but half the staff at the foreigners office was out sick so they were backed up and we could not get an appointment until Thursday.  Thursday... Turkey Day... my dare-not-to-hope-for-Tuesday-so-I'll-hope-for-Thursday-start-work-day (boo!).  Did I mention that Jena is swimming in swine flu?  Anyway, she told me that she'd contact me Wednesday with more information.  By the time I made it to the grocery store to pick out dinner, I was in a bad mood and picked up boxed Chicken Cordon Bleu (and upon closer inspection of the ingredients, found that the ham was made from turkey.  what?).  The one other American in Jena that we are acquainted with posted on his facebook status: thinks he'll miss having Thanksgiving dinner this year.  My response?  Me too.  Jason and I had talked about having a Thanksgiving dinner for our friends since we arrived in Jena, but finances and other things go in the way and we decided not to have a Thanksgiving meal.  So I said to myself Tuesday, "Self, fudge that!  I'm having Thanksgiving!" (thank you Miss Gail for teaching me to censor myself in a yummy fashion) and decided to surprise Jason with a Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday, my (hopefully) last day off.  Then I started thinking about American Friend and realized I had to invite him too.  Thus Jason needed to be told.  I planned out the menu and over dinner told Jason about my plan.  Jason whole-heartedly agreed, though cut down my menu a bit (we nixed the sweet potato casserole and stuffing... both of which don't rock my world).  


Wednesday started out with purpose.  Yummy feast that evening.  I learned the pros of making Thanksgiving dinner to be served at supper (ample time to make everything) and the pros of making Thanksgiving dinner in a foreign country (grocery stores are open and not packed).  But I also learned the cons of making Thanksgiving dinner in my oven (ONE rack only and it's tiny!).  One of the first things Jason and I noticed about our oven was that it wouldn't fit a big turkey.  The turkey would be too tall for our tiny oven.  And I'd also noticed that they only whole turkeys available were frozen... so no way to thaw them when I'd decided to make dinner less than 24 hours before serving time.  So Wednesday morning I went to the grocery to get the items to make The Best Cranberry-Tangerine Chutney, Yeast Rolls, and Holiday Mashed Potato Casserole.  Our local grocery store doesn't have the best poultry selection, so I wanted to go into town to Tegut for the chicken (Tegut is similar to Whole Foods).


I got the chutney on and reheated the leftovers from my butternut squash saag paneer, hold the paneer, lunch from the day before.  Ran the dishwasher, ate lunch, and prepared the Holiday Mashed Potato Casserole.  Off to Tegut.  I also knew that I need something to bake the yeast rolls on.  At the time, we owned two small pyrex dishes and one auflauf pan (auflauf is somewhat equivalent to casserole, but the pan is metal instead of glass or ceramic).  You can see a picture of it with my biscuits here.  So I went to Tegut and picked out my perfect chicken, wandered aimlessly through the isles and found corn starch!  If you've spent time with me, you've probably heard some of my ravings about corn and how its been forced upon Americans, but since I've mostly been cooking here (and not out of the box, minus the night before), we haven't had much corn so I was willing to give cornstarch a try since I've seen it in many recipes lately, just to link a couple.  And there it was sitting pretty on the shelf.  A whole box for 39 cents.  I bought it.  On the way home I stopped by Komma 10 and picked up a baking sheet.  Yay!


I arrived back home and spoke with Jason.  Dinner needed to be on the table at 8:30 since he had a conference call that might last until 7:30, so I had a bit of extra time to peruse the internet looking for roasted chicken recipes (believe it or not, I had never roasted a chicken before).  During that time, I got an email from the woman who was helping me out with my job.  She was sick.  Swine flu strikes again!  So she would not be able to help me out at the foreigners office (did I mention that the staff don't speak English and I speak little to no German?).  Fudge!  Though in real life, I didn't censor myself that time.  There was no way I could handle the foreigners office on my own.  So I emailed my (future) boss.  HELP!  No reply.  So I got to kneading the yeast rolls and immersing myself in cooking.  That helped... a lot!  By this point in time, American Friend had responded to the invited.  He was sick.  Darn swine flu.  (Disclaimer: I don't know that he actually has the swine flu, he just said he wasn't feeling well)


One of the recipes for roasting the chicken involved removing the backbone to so the chicken would be flat in the pan.  Perfect for my tiny oven!  I recognized the method from Martha Stewart Living via The Bitten Word, and they had even posted a how-to video on Saturday.  So, armed with a pair of scissors and knowledge from watching the video, I set out to spatchcock my chicken (the name brought a smile to my face, hence why I was willing to try it.  What can I say, sometimes I still act like a teenager!)  I found my recipe, and went to work spatchcocking and spicing.  I found a fabulous recipe for roasting a chicken, spatchcock style.  I did make some changes though... I only had hot paprika instead of sweet, and since we've always put bacon on our roast turkey, I bought bacon that morning so I had to put it on the chicken!  (I subbed the bacon for the truffle oil... there was no way I would spend 10 euros on a bottle of truffle oil only to use half a teaspoon!). 

Into the refrigerator the chicken went (before adding the bacon and bedding).  What you say?  Yes, it went into the fridge for a couple hours to help dry out the skin.  When it came out, I laid it on a bed of parsley, lemons, garlic, oranges, and thyme.  The recipe calls for fresh herbs of course, but today was one of those days I found the herbs looking pathetic and not worth the extra cost, so I went for dried (except the garlic... I went crazy at the grocery this morning and bought three gigantic heads of garlic b/c I assumed I would be stuffing a bird with garlic and lemons rather than spatchcocking it).  I have to admit, the spatchcocked bird looked awfully cute... a bit like a sunbather with it's arms behind it's... well, shoulders since it doesn't have a head.

Into and out of the oven with the bird!  It only took an hour with a relatively low temperature (check out the recipe for further details).  However, since I still haven't figured out my oven yet (it cooks HOT), I spent a bit of time playing with the temperature on the oven (I even turned it completely off for a thirty minute stretch), and the bacon burnt to a crisp.  I tasted a bit of the bacon after it came out of the oven and had to spit it out because all of the bacon flavor had been turned to ash.  But underneath the bacon was a beautiful, crispy skin covering a lucious, succulent breast.  And divine dark meat.  Yum!

(I apologize for the picture quality... after the bird comes out of the oven, things got hectic!)  And the wing tips were burnt just for our friend Brian who we got to spend Thanksgiving with in 2006 and 2008 and LOVES the burnt parts!  I was so sad that his wife Laura wasn't there to make the cranberry sauce this year!

The mashed potatoes were fabulous (plenty chunky just for Jason), the gravy silky, the chutney flavorful, the rolls good (but not as good as the ones I make with Jason's mom's recipe), the chicken juicy, and the company wonderful.  And if you are wondering, we did have a veggie too... I sauted up some green beans to round things out.

Overall, a satisfying impromptu Thanksgiving feast!  How was your week?

On the Job Front

Those who voted for lab tech won... and that's where my brain was going too!  So, on Monday, 23 Nov 2009, I will attempt to sign my contract so I may begin working as a lab tech (well, the term used by my boss is Biologist, so I'll go with that from there).  I decided not to risk leaving a PhD project unfinished.  I decided not to risk going into a new field and trying to focus and develop my own project.  So my goal is to get myself introduced to a new field: molecular biology.

I say attempt to sign my contract because of the bureaucracy and how long it took Jason to be able to sign his contract (3 or 4 days from start to finish).  So, I have to go down to the foreigners office to get a work visa since I currently only have a resident visa.  The personnel office at my new employer will have to call the foreigners office to let them know that the position they are offering me could not be filled by a citizen of the EU.  I have to take several things to the foreigners office: 60 euros, a passport photo, and proof of residence.  Currently I have all those items sitting and waiting to go, so I should be okay.  I'll also need to take care of getting a tax card (another 13 euros) and figure out how the health insurance will work since I will have to pay now instead of being provided for by Jason.  So, lots of little odds and ends to take care of.  Lots of ways for things to get messed up along the way, but I'm hopeful that it will all be able to be taken care of in one day.

So, hopefully I'll start working this week.  My boss leaves town for a week at the beginning of December, and then everyone is out of the office from Dec 24- Jan 4.  Jason and I hope to make it to Köln (Cologne) for New Year's, but nothing has been confirmed yet.  In the meantime, I'm looking forward to having a routine five days a week.  Let's hope it starts soon!

Foodie Friday!

I've decided to split my musings between two blogs.  I've spent a lot to time lately thinking about Fabulously Fun Food, but not writing about it because I don't want to bore my readers who are more interested about life in Jena.  So here's your opportunity!  If you'd like to see more recipes and photos of food, head on over to Fabulously Fun Food.  For the rest of you, I'll post more people and city pictures as soon as I get them!

I FOUND IT!!

Beautiful baking soda, how I love thee... let me count the ways: cookies, volcanoes, cookies, cleaning abilities, cookies, exfoliator, cookies.  Did I mention cookies?  Oh, and I'm serious about the exfoliator thing too... create a paste with a little bit of water and rub it on your skin before you shave... serious reduction in razor bumps!

Anyway, it turns out babel fish is not always my friend.  Babel fish translated baking soda literally: backensoda... and this translation made since to me because it got the baking powder (backpulver) translation right.  And, since I knew the chemical name of baking soda, I figured I was golden (sodium bicarbonate).  So there I was, looking at the baking section, finding TONS of backpulver, but no backensoda.  I even picked up things that looked like they might possibly be baking soda to see the ingredients, including the carton shown above.  Alas, the ingredients read: Natriumhydrogencarbonat.  At this point in time, I knew sodium and natrium were the same thing (hence why sodium's symbol is Na), but I was looking for bicarbonat rather than hydrogencarbonat

 

I found the name for backing soda (Natron or Hausnatron) (finally) because I stumbled across a forum for English-speakers in Germany.  Turns out sometimes typing in "What is baking soda called in Germany" to your google browser is much more efficient than using a translator.  Hah.  Anyway, I also found out that baking soda is rarely used in German baking, except for gingerbread cookies, which means in some cities in Germany baking soda is seasonal and only found at Christmas, thankfully though Jena is not one of those cities.  Baking powder is single action in Germany, and double action (usually) in the US, so I'm pretty pleased that my biscuits turned out so well.  (Which also means the rising does not occur until heat is applied, so there is no need for me to let my biscuits sit out for 20 minutes before baking)


The most surprising tidbit I learned from this forum pertained to cream of tartar.  I've seen lots of pie recipes lately that I've really wanted to try, but a lot of them have meringue, which means I need a strong whisking arm or hand mixer and cream of tartar.  By this point in time, I hadn't bothered to look up the translation for cream of tartar since I didn't think I could beat the egg whites properly by hand.  But now I've learned that it would pretty much be fruitless to look in the groceries for cream of tartar, except at Christmas time.  So if I looked tomorrow I might get lucky, but generally you have to go to the apothecary to find cream of tartar (Weinsteinpulver).  You learn something new everyday!

Foodie Friday!

I must be making up for those two weeks I didn't blog!


I've been suspecting something for a while now... Butter makes everything better!
And it's true (at least until we discuss a different fat next week).


I was that little kid who would sneak packets of butter and eat them plain.  Not a whole stick mind you (though I know people who did), but a pat of butter?  Oh yum.


Despite my love of butter, I also heavily relied on solid vegetable shortening for two things: cookies and biscuits. Since I have yet to find measuring spoons or cups here, I haven't ventured much into the baking realm, but since biscuits are about ratios, I figured I could handle that.  

Go-to biscuit recipe in Winston-Salem: see the back of the White Lily Self-Rising Flour bag (would you believe they don't have the basic recipe on their website? only fancy ones).  Once, when I was out of self rising flour and Jason wanted biscuits, I ran to Alton Brown for help.  Jason loved the biscuits, even more than the White Lily recipe, but since my grandmothers used White Lily flour, I generally stuck to that one.  Low and behold, we move to Germany... no White Lily Self-Rising Flour in site.  No self-rising flour in site for that matter!  Okay, so that's not exactly true, but the self-rising flours here have yeast in them, not baking powder or baking soda.  So I looked at Alton Brown's recipe again: 
All Purpose flour: Check
Baking Powder:   Check
Baking Soda:       Um, here's some sodium carbonate, but it's says "Cleaning Soda" and has got a big X on it, so maybe I shouldn't use it for food purposes, and isn't baking soda sodium BIcarbonate?
Salt:                    Check
Butter:                 Check
Shortening:          Um, zwiebelsmaltz? No, ingredients indicate pig.  I've got nothing.
Buttermilk:           Check!  (This stuff is everywhere!)


No baking soda?  Well, no Southern Biscuits for me.  So I let me fingers do the walking and I stumbled across a recipe from Paula Deen, the Butter Queen.  
AP Flour: Check
Salt:         Check
Sugar:      Check
Baking P: Check
Milk:        Check
Butter:      Check


Woohoo!  Biscuits I can make!  Though there was no way I was going to use regular milk when buttermilk was so easily available (seriously, people drink the stuff here... there's a larger selection of buttermilk than regular milk in one of the grocers... flavored and everything!).  


Viola!  Yummy biscuits... I did let them rest for 20 minutes before baking like others on the comments had suggested.  And I also burnt them, so no pictures of the first batch.  And the next batch, brown on top, gooey in the middle.  Okay, so this wasn't a recipe problem, this was a trying to figure out my oven problem.  By the next batch, I had read more on biscuits on Homesick Texan.  Lisa used a recipe very similar to Paula's, however, she had a different technique, and boy did it look fun!  

All you biscuit makers be surprised!  I got to beat the dough!  Literally, I took out the rolling pin (well, glass jar in my case) and gave it a whack!  And they were fluffy and rose higher than any biscuits I've ever made. :)
So here's my recipe, a combo from Paula and Lisa:


2 c all purpose flour
1 t sugar
1 t salt
1 T baking powder
8 T butter, cubed, VERY COLD
3/4 c buttermilk, COLD


In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.  Cut butter into flour mixture until it resembles cornmeal.  


Make a well in the flour mixture and slowly add buttermilk, incorporating gently with hands or a wooden spoon.  Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for one minute (dough should be smooth and not too sticky, add more flour to surface if needed).  


From here, I'm quoting Lisa of Homesick Texan because she describes the beating so well:
Take dough into a ball, and hit it with a rolling pin, turning it and folding it in half every few whacks. Do this for a couple of minutes.
Roll out dough until it’s 1/4 of an inch thick, and then fold it in half.
Using a round cutter (can use a glass or a cup if don’t have a biscuit cutter) cut out your biscuits from folded dough.
Place on a greased baking sheet close together (so they rise up not out), and bake for 15 minutes or until the tops are golden brown.
Makes 10-12 biscuits.


Back to me:  I don't cut my biscuits, I just form them into balls and place them on the baking pan.  I also use a nonstick pan and do not grease it.  I then let them sit on the pan for 20 minutes (while I prepare the chicken for frying) before sticking them in the oven.  I don't have a clock or timer in the kitchen so when I start smelling them, I check them every couple minutes.  Yummy biscuits.

Lisa suggests serving these with butter and honey.  My personal preference is just honey, but one of these days I'll get around to making sausage gravy to to with them and then have a new personal preference.  

Have you tried beating your biscuits?  What's your favorite way to eat them?


And the butter verdict?  I'll never make biscuits with shortening again (though that doesn't mean I won't eat them if someone makes them for me).


EDIT: For a description of the origins beating the dough, check out Lisa @ Homesick Texan's blog Everything's better with biscuits.

Wordless Wednesday

... but it needs some explaining anyway.  :)

This is the face of the clock on the Rathaus (town hall) in Jena.  It's considered one of the seven wonders of Jena (but I have no clue what the other six are... oh wait, I just found the rest of them here).  You can see the man in the middle just has a head.  The man (a pilgrim) to the left of him is holding a stick, and at the end of the stick is a shiny gold ball.  The gold ball represents a Kloß (plural: Klöße), which is a potato dumpling found throughout the state of Thuringia (Jason doesn't like them, I think they are okay, our friend Naomi loves them).  When the clock strikes the hour, the bells chime and the man on the left moves the Kloß towards the man in the middle, who obligingly opens his mouth to receive the Kloß.  I've recently, as in the last two minutes, learned that the man in the middle is named Hans, a typical German name since the middle ages, and he is fondly referred to as Schnapphans, or snapping Hans.  Rumor has it that if he catches the Kloß, the world will end.  If you're interested, feel free to read more. 


I may try to find the other wonders and take pictures for you... now I'm curious!  :)

Jena v. Winston-Salem

There is no clear winner.  But a lot of things are similar, and a lot of things are different.  Here are a few things that have stood out to me in my three months in Jena.

1. Beer:  Winston-Salem had a very diverse beer selection.  Jena has a small beer selection.  All the beer here is made well, but it just lacks the flavor I've come to expect from ales (after all, Jena only has lagers).  I've given up drinking beer when we go out and only drink it rarely at home now.
2. Bureaucracy: In Winston-Salem you write a check to your landlord every month.  Once we signed the lease in Jena, we had to take it to the bank.  The bank set up an automatic draft from our account to the landlords account on the first of the month.  Thus, no late payments... ever, that is, provided you have money in your account.  However, in order to pay a bill online, we have to have at least three numbers from the bank, and one of those numbers has to be replaced every time you use it.  Obnoxious.  
3. Grocery Stores.  In Winston-Salem, I frequented Harris Teeter once we moved downtown... and occasionally Whole Foods.  The grocers are small here in Jena, though not as small as I had feared.  My grocery store across the street from our apartment is about the size of Trader Joe's in the Forum in Atlanta.  So, not huge, but not tiny either.  Edeka carries a nice assortment food, but they frequently run out of fresh poultry on Monday (restock day is Tuesday).  Also, the butchers (found in every grocery store too, except Aldi) run out of ground meat by the end of the day.  I have had the fortune of having extra meat ground for me fresh, but my German isn't great, so if it's not on display, I don't ask for it.  Edeka has also surprised me on its selection: kidney beans, truffle oil, truffles (mushrooms and chocolate), peanut butter, honey of all kinds, tortillas, but no black beans, no vanilla extract, no baking soda, no crisco, no self rising flour.  So I've improvised and made vanilla sugar and hope to follow that up with vanilla extract if I can get my hands on some Mexican vanilla beans.  I now make my biscuits with butter and baking powder (and I won't go back... butter biscuits are wonderful!)
4. Drugs:  Over the counter has a very different meaning here.  Grocery stores do not sell drugs.  Herbal supplements are remedies are available at what we would consider drug stores (similar to CVS in products sold, but no pharmacy) and stores similar to Target (Mueller).  To get actual drugs, like ibuprofen or aspirin or acetaminophen, you have to go to an Apotheke (apothecary).  But even then the floor space is filled with herbal remedies and things like band aids and ace bandages (minus those particular brand names).  To get ibuprofen, you have to go up to the counter and ask for it.  And acetaminophen is called paracetamol in Europe and the UK, so that threw me for a loop.  But of course, you don't need a prescription for these drugs (unless the dosages are high), but you do have to have someone behind the counter get it for you.  Prescriptions aren't difficult to get, and it was actually a relatively pleasant experience, minus all the bureaucracy.  
5. Manners:  In Winston-Salem, it was customary to take a host/hostess gift (for us it was always wine or beer).  It's the same here!  Also, in a group of Germans, you wait until everyone has their meal before eating (not dissimilar from the US), and then, the "head of the table" whomever that may be, says "Guten Appetit" before people start eating.  Meals are eaten slowly, and no one leaves the table until everyone has finished, even at the university cafeteria.  Also, everyone eats with a knife and fork in hand, and I rarely see the knife put down... sometimes I even see people put both utensils in the same hand to pick up a beverage.  
6. The tipping process at a restaurant is very different.  A good tip is 10%, though normally you just round up... so if your tab is 18,50 you pay 20,00 euros.  Additionally, when the server brings you your tab, s/he tells you the price, you hand the server the money and give them a figure (so if you had a 50,00 euro bill and the tab was 18,50 euro, you tell the server 20,00 euro and s/he gives you 30,00 euros.  It's a very different mindset, but we've adjusted quickly.  With large groups of people, the servers are happy to split the check, and in a lot of restaurants, they do it by hand!  Winston-Salem was way too dependent on calculators for that to ever happen!
7. Transportation:  Yay for public transportation!  We have a bus and tram system, and both have stops within 20 meters of our apartment.  I pay 47,60 euro to get a monthly pass, which is the full price.  If I remember correctly, the full price for MARTA was more than that in 2001 when I was going to Georgia State.  Jason frequently walks to work, and so is trying out not getting a monthly pass, but I need it to get groceries in town if I don't go to the one across the street, and will definitely need it when I start working (it's 4.5km away, which is considered the other side of town here).  To give you and idea of distance, the bowling alley is 2.8km from our apartment and it takes half an hour of brisk walking to get there.  During the work day, the tram runs every 10 minutes, and more often during the morning rush.  On the weekends it's every 20 minutes, but if the weather is good, we'll just walk into town.  

Wordless Wednesday

Our apartment, 01 Oct 09

Longing for American food...

A few weeks after we moved to Jena, Jason and I were struck by the same craving... must have BURGER.  We didn't dare go to McDonalds because we don't even eat there in the US, but there is a sports bar here in Jena... an American sports bar at that: CHEERS!  (Hi Norm!)

We had vowed when we first saw the restaurant that we would never enter... but alas, our cravings got the better of us.  We ventured in, and in typical sports bar fashion, the walls were covered with sports memorabilia... including stuff for Auburn, UGA, and the Braves :).  My favorite newspaper clipping, of course, was the one of Greg Olsen and John Smoltz on 5 Oct 1991.

I was feeling good.  Jason and I both ordered burgers (I ordered swiss and added mushrooms, Jason ordered cheddar with bacon) and sat back and waited for our slice of home to arrive.  The first bite: magnificent!  Ground beef!  Cheese!  Fries!  Buns!  Lettuce!  Tomato!


I grabbed the red bottle and out came ketchup to adorn my fries, and then grabbed the yellow bottle and out came... well... mayonnaise.  Okay, I can handle this... my brothers frequently put mayo on their fries when they were younger.  So I mixed a small amount of the mayo in the with ketchup and it wasn't too bad.  Another bite of the burger... It's okay, not as glorious as I first thought, but still pretty good.  Halfway through the burger, I wanted to stop eating.  It wasn't a magnificent burger... it was yuck.


The burgers sat like lead on our stomaches for the next twelve hours.  We will not make the mistake of ordering burgers from Cheers again.  We may go back for beer though at some point in time since they actually carry a few hard to find ales, but no burgers!


So to satisfy our American cravings for burgers, I now head across the street to the grocery store and pick up ground beef from the butcher (provided I make it to the store before they run out) and make the burgers myself!  Tonight is one of those nights since I have leftover ground beef from this weekend when I made tacos (I may post that recipe later... it's a favorite around here) for a crowd.


Our favorite burger that doesn't have bacon in it is the Pressed Cuban-Style Burger from Bobby Flay.  Jason and I were watching Throwdown with Bobby Flay (one of the few cooking shows Jason was willing to watch with me), and we both decided we had to try it!  (I also stumbled across a great jerk chicken recipe this way.)


Pressed Cuban-Style Burgers

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground chuck
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup best quality mayonnaise
• 3 cloves roasted garlic, pureed
• 1/4 cup Dijon mustard
• 4 hamburger buns
• 4 slices thinly sliced smoked ham
• 8 slices thinly sliced Swiss cheese
• 2 dill pickles, sliced into 1/4-inch thick slices

Directions

Form the meat into 4 (1/4-inch thick) burgers. Season the meat with salt and pepper on both sides and cook in a saute pan over high heat to medium doneness, about 2 to 3 minutes per side.

Combine the mayonnaise and roasted garlic in a small bowl and season with salt and pepper, to taste. Spread both sides of each bun with mayonnaise and mustard.

Place a slice of cheese on the bottom portion of each bun, place the burger on top of the cheese, then top the burger (since I cooked them in the skillet, I blotted the burgers first) with a slice of ham then another slice of cheese then the pickle slices. 

Place the tops of the bun over the pickles and cook on a sandwich press or wrap the burgers in aluminum foil and cook in a hot skillet over high heat with a heavy skillet placed on top of the burger to press the sandwich. Cook until golden brown and cheese has melted.

I had to get creative here.  I don't have a cast iron skillet to press the burgers, so I filled a small pot with water (to add weight) and placed it in a big pot.

If you don't have time to roast the garlic, you can sub garlic powder, but it won't be as good!  Oh, and I never had a way to puree the garlic, so I've always just mushed it into the mayo.  :)  Don't leave the mayo out, especially if you use a low-fat meat.  These burgers can get a bit dry, and the mayo adds that extra bit of needed moisture (and if you've known me for a while, you know how unusual it is for me to insist on mayo... I hated the stuff growing up).


I tried something new with green beans today too.  I didn't want to have to watch the pot, so I threw them in the oven with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic: the same way I make asparagus...  Yum!

How do you like your burgers?