Green Bean and Cherry Tomato salad

As I mentioned on Saturday, there were gorgeous cherry tomatoes at the market. We bought 1,5kg and wound up snacking on 1/2kg over the next several days. Thing2 was eating them like candy! I had seen this recipe over at Smitten Kitchen and it looked delicious, so we picked up green beans as well. It was very simple and fast. Only variation: I had no shallots, so I used garlic and I had no red wine vinegar so I used white wine vinegar and added a splsh of red wine.



Once again, everyone loved it (except Thing1, who had plain rice with soy sauce and plain green beans). Thing2 had so many tomatoes today I'm hoping that her digestion is okay!

Irish Beef Stew but Chilean wine...

This is a recipe for Irish Stew, but I made a few changes.
Since I don't keep Guiness around, I upped the red wine (which was Chilean). Since I didn't have any beef stock handy, I used chicken stock instead (and my goodnss I will be sad when I run out of my organic chicken stock from the States). No tomato paste, so I diced 6 tomatoes I had hanging around. I love mushrooms and had 200 grams left over from the Chicken Marsala so I threw those in as well. Served on a bed of rice and everyone but Thing1 (my non-eater) loved it.

Chicken Marsala (Cabernet)

As I start reading my cookbooks and writing down recipes, this Chicken Marsala recipe is one that I saw over at Smitten Kitchen some time ago and which I thought looked lovely. So when we set out for the market, mushrooms, onions and garlic were on my shopping list. Here I have already browned the cicken. I varied the recipe by cutting the chicken breasts into chunks as that would be 1.easier for the children to eat, and 2. I only had two chicken breasts left from the previous chicken recipe I made.

I also increased the amount of mushrooms by 50%- I really like mushrooms. And after tasting the onions in the midst of sauteeing, I added two more onions as well. Here you also see the Cabernet that we are not only drinking while cooking, but also using in cooking: I don't think I've ever actually had marsala, but I have a vagueish idea that it may be a slightly sweeter red wine. No matter, I like my Cabernet.
These aren't a bouquet, they are my dill (purchased for the refrigerator pickles I didn't get to yet) and my parsley.
It's amazing how mushrooms cook down, isn't it? The German and I agree with Alex of SK- this recipe is too good not to repeat.

Out by the (Winterfeld) Market

The Turkish market is not open on Saturday, which makes a lot of sense, if you think about it.

So instead we went to :
WinterfeldtmarktWinterfeldtplatz, Schöneberg; Wed 8 a.m.-2 p.m., Sat 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Nollendorfplatz

It was a very nice market, good looking produce (I bought champignons, beautiful cherry tomatoes on the vine, red onions and lovely garlic), nice cheese/dairy (some aged Gouda), a good looking herb table (mustard seed and sea salt- I couldn't figure out what turmeric was, so I'll go back for it), flowers, etc. Crowded market (so a bit difficult with a double stroller) and I will go back again without the children as it's just a few 100 feet down from The Nollendorfplatz U-Bahn and thus an easy trip. Ed Ward at Hungry in Berlin reviwed this some time ago. He recommends as well another market in Schoneberg that I may try to check Wednesday.



Didn't take pictures of the market (though I may add some in next time I go) but the meal you see to the left is from:

Habibi

Golzstr 24
Am Winterfeldplatz
10781 Berlin
2153332
So-Do 11.00-3.00, Fr+Sa 11.00-5.00
Yes, you read that right: open 7 days a week, between 16 and 18 hours a day. The service was non-existent (and you can't blame my Deutsche: the German did the ordering and asked the questions) but the food was really, really good. We had a felafel plate and the salad on the side had actually very, very good pepperoncini. You don't know how amazing that is: I have been trying for 6 months to get good hot peppers here. No matter where I have bought them, Greek places, Russian places, what appear to be Turkish places- the peppers have been blah. Not spicey enough, not crisp enough, not fresh enough. These were great. And I had mango sauce with the felafel and it was also very good: nicely hot and spicey. The children's chicken schwarma was delicious. I could eat there every day.

I had the German call to ask about where they get the peppers (the line was too long while we were there) but they were too busy to talk tonight and said to stop by. Man, it's almost worth trying it with a dictionary in hand: I may take a run back to the market on Wednesday and give it a try.
There is, as usual, a playground in the area. This one is very exciting, large, with beautiful flowering trees (lilacs now, looks like some others will be flowering later), a large baby area, another sand area, and a huge and exciting climbing apparatus. Whenever I see something like this I marvel at how this would never be possible in the states: it is quite dangerous in areas. There were at least two spots where Thing1 had to slide down because when dangling she could not reach the next level: if she had slid the wrong way, she might have dropped 10+ feet to the sand. Yes, the sand was deep, but still quite possible to injure oneself.





Thing1 loved it.
Thing2 did the (baby)slide over and over again after Thing1 came over and gave her confidence. For some reason, several children a few years older than she were congregating at the top of this (really, baby)slide and weren't getting out of the way to let Thing2 pass. After waiting a bit, I went to the bottom of the slide and called her and she came down.

I turned to one of the other moms, who was chatting on a handy while her 5 year old was standind/sitting/blocking the top and asked if she would mind asking her to either slide or move aside: she told me that because I was at thhe bottom of the slide, I was preventing her child from sliding. I said, "uh-huh", called Thing2 and caught her on the way down.

This seems to go to yet another of the cultural differences between Germans and Americans: they can be personally quite agressive to us (Put a hat on your daughter, how old are you. No, really. Are you going to have a child. Americans wear loud clothes and baseball hats. Americans are fat. Why doesn't your child x,y and z. You should do this with your child x,y, and z) but if we say "Would you ask your child to move, please, I find the fattiness of the butter hard to adjust to, I wish I could get peanut butter without sugar..." the answers are "No, it's your fault/problem if he doesn't move, American butter is terrible, all American products have sugar in them...." And then their feelings are hurt.

Small steps...

So, taking a leaf from Flylady and Mrs. Furious I've started to try to be a bit more coordinated in tidying, chores, and other life tasks.

In particular, I need to get used to (finally!) the fact that my refrigerator is too small, holds temperature poorly, that my freezer is tiny and clogs easily with ice, that I don't have a chest freezer, that my kitchen is smallish and overheats easily (so storing produce on the counter is short term) and that I have very little storage space and almost no counter space. The storage problem escalated this past weekend when we brought back the mini-vanload of boxes from my in-laws (almost all the rest of the food and drygoods products that came with our container last September) and started unpacking them.

Unlike Lynda, food delivery here seems to be generally terrible, starting with soup that is completely spilt by the time one receives it (lack of correct containers) and continuing through poorly spiced (compared to in restaurant) meals and scanty servings (compared to generous in restaurant portions) so I need to start making more meals and more "real" meals than I have been, or I will go insane.

To that effect, I have brought back many of my cookbooks and I am starting to make shopping lists and plan for meals because I need to recognizethat I will never have the things I need in house to make a specific recipe and I am just tired of one-pot sloppy meals.

So, yesterday I made Rosemary Chicken with Rice, an interesting recipe from The New Weight Watcher's Complete Cookbook which combines chicken, garlic, 1/4 c. of dijon mustard, carrots, 1 T of dried (or 2 of fresh) rosemary, carrots, pepper and 1/4 c. of orange marmalade (I only had grapefruit, so used that). It was very good and something I wouldn't have thrown together without using a cookbook. The girls had the left overs for dinner tonight.

Today I made baked macaroni and cheese with breadcrumb topping and it was great. Once again, I would never have thought to bake it withoout a friend mentioning his recipe for that in his apazine. And for dinner I made holishkes, or stuffed cabbage, from Marlena Spieler's The Jewish Heritage Cookbook . That was an interesting recipe, using cinnamon, white wine vinegar and sugar with the ingredients I am more familiar with from my family recipe. I prefer my mom's recipe though, which is more tomato-ey. This is the same book that I used for the charoseth recipe over Pesach.

Interestingly enough, a few days ago I made Knodel from a package and quite liked them and now I see that they are really a German variant on Kishke and Pierogies, a flour dumpling usually served with brisket. Luckily I won't need to use an actual animal casing these days if I want to try to make them myself.

Tomorrow I think I'm going to try Duisburg Bunny's homemade pickles (look in the comments)so I need to make a note as to what I want when we go to the Turkish Market (if it doesn't rain).

It's May, glorious May...

Started out with a rain shower but ended crisp, clear and lovely.

Went to another book club last night, to discuss the Tudors. Most of us had read The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory, which I greatly enjoyed.

I have always had a thing for that period, from reading through Shakspeare's histories (starting with Henry IV pt II (why, you ask- I have no idea why I started with part II!)) and I found the book fun but frothy, with a decent description of the court and how it worked. I did think that some of her theories of the history were wrong. In particular, her presentation of the relationship between Anne Boleyn and her brother George as being actually incest**us rather than charges laid solely to allow Henry VIII to actually go through with murdering her are really her own: no reputable historian considers that those charges are true .

But it was great to get out for an evening and I'm looking forward to the next meeting.

Today we slept in as much as the girls would let us (not very) then tidied up, played for a while, and had a late breakfast.

When I put Thing2 down for a nap, I went down with her and the German and Thing1 headed out to a market that would be open today (May Day is a legal holiday here in Germany and in most of Europe). We need to buy milk every other day here because 1. it is sold in liters and 2. our refrigerator is too small to stock enough liters to last longer and 3. I can't drag even more liters in my little trolley every other day. There were no chicken breasts available, but I had two in the fridge and made an interesting recipe that allowed me to stretch them through stir frying. I may add it later....

After the girls were in bed I made a marble cake: tomorrow Thing1 can frost it with me.

And now Desperate Housewives and, if we have time, Brothers and Sisters.

Geburtstag

This is the gloaming at the lake where my sister-in-law's Boat Club is and where she was having her birthday party. Her boyfriend, brother-in-law and uncle all have sailboats here. We got back from the Keukenhof lateish, met C, our former au pair and friend who very kindly agreed to babysit for us, and walked down to the lake.

It was a very nice party, the German was inveigled into playing his trumpet (I think only the second time I have ever seen him play) and it was fun to see him, his sister, and C (G's boyfriend) all playing together (with the rest of G's group).

Like Cinderella we had to run home at midnight to relieve C, but my in-laws didn't get home until after 0500: it amazes me the endurance German's have for parties!

Visiting the Keukenhof

So, we wound up going to the Keukenhof on Saturday (just too exhausted on Friday after arriving in the Sauerlands at 0200). We had stayed up chatting and drinking with F and G (my in-laws) past midnight on Friday and we wound up sleeping through our alarm at 0500 and not waking until 0700, so we didn't get out of the house until 0730. The trip should take a little over three hours, but this morning it wound up taking 5.5. The last two hours were in a stau (traffic jam) for the last two kilometers. We hadn't realized last week that this weekend, and in particular this Saturday, was the absolute height of the tourist season. Saturday was the Bloemencorso Bollenstreek, a flower parade that apparently attracts 100s of thousands of spectators.

Once we got in, the bulbs were absolutely magnificent. I'm including a few photos here but I hope to find a good slide show to embed so that I can put in more of the (many) photos I took. It was clear that this was a (fantastic) showcase for bulb sale promotion and I made certain that several of my photos contained the name tags for the bulbs so that when I am back in my yard in New York I will know what varieties to order: they are so magnificent in person that I never want to order by catalog photo again.

There was also a lilac (Syringa) exhibition as well. I'm a huge lilac lover and I was enthralled by the exhibit.

It was difficult being "out" in Germany and Holland during Passover: of course, most fast foods here are in some type of bread product. The waffles smelled so good! Luckily they were also selling beautiful strawberries in cups (with fresh whipped cream) and we each had a cup. Then we used those cups to get the home-made vanilla ice cream being sold by the wind-mill, which, with the bananas and apples we had packed, held us over through our visit.

The children spent the usual time at the playground (and I am so grateful that tourist parks here in Europe all seem to have them) and then as we continued walking through the gorgeous and brilliant beds we happened upon a path of rocks through the lake and Thing1 was excited to leap along it. I was grateful that she did not take a dunking because she wouldn't let me hold her hand.

We needed to leave by 1600 in an effort to get back for G's geburtstag party, the primary reason that we were here this weekend. Unfortunately, due to the afore mentioned Corso, the A4 was shut down. Luckily, when we stopped to buy some cut tulips, the women selling them were able to tell us that and which way we needed to go (which was through Den Haag) to get back to Germany. (And wow, were those cheap: 50 tight yellow buds for 5 Euros. G tells me that they are still looking beautiful three days later.)

We only got lost once and the return trip took us 3.5 hours, even with the roundabout of being redirected from the highway. We went by brilliant and beautiful fields of tulips all through the region.

The Keukenhof 2008

Family fun...

The German's sister has a spare bike that she is giving to us to bring back to Berlin because we are afraid that the bikes we brought from the States are too nice to leave about and will get stolen. F (his dad) has an old bike for him, so we should be all set. We got to visit the 'family' storage unit, in a gorgeous old stone barn, where everyone keeps their boats, trailers, tractors and miscellania. The Things got a real kick out of sitting on Uncle H's tractor.

Then F drove us about for a bit. We had hoped to stop and see Uncle H's lambies, but they were away in another uncle's fields (acting as portable lawn mowers) so we only got to see a few older sheep.

We visited a Bismarckturm (I can't find a good explanation- these are towers built for the 100th anniversary of Bismarck's birth?-there are many around Germany) and climbed the tower and looked out at the countryside. Here's a photo with an explanation: double click on it to expand it and read more closely if interested.