Wilde Pferde

It was a rainy Fridaynight and a wet Saturday as we gathered ourselves up to go see the wild horse round up in Duehlman. It was soggy and gray but we got
there about 9 am and walked around looking at the horses that had already been coralled prior to what would be a cutting out of the first year stallions for sale.


The girls had a lot of fun walking and looking and petting the many already tamed horses that were waiting to compete in the "rodeo" that would take place after the cutting. There
were many Wildepfereden there in individual rope enclosures with signs showing when they had been purchased at prior sales and who the owners were: an awful lot of horse crazy girls and horse clubs. In addition we watched the Frieians being unloaded (there would also be a Friesian show). Then we wandered the area, picked up some pikante strudeln (there's not an awful lot of non-schweine food here in Deutscheland) and sat on the bank of the stream for a bit (we had brought a blanket and some drinks).
Here you see a horse-drawn bus bringing people in from the far parking lots.
Around 12:30, or about 30 minutes before the gates would open and an hour before the actual show would start, the kids just became too tired, so we bundled them up, the younger on the German's shoulder and Thing1 in the stroller and took them back to the car. We were able to sell our tickets at the gate for the price that we had paid;-), so we got to walk around for free rather than pay the (lower) price for grounds tickets, so we were pretty happy. I bought a DVD of the round up and next year we will buy sitzplatz and get there at 12:30 which should leave us fresh for the show!

Afterwards, since both girls fell asleep in the car, we drove the half hour to Muenster and took a quick drive through, as I'd never been there. Both the German's parents had gone to University there (it was where they met) and his sister had done her University work there as well and liked it. It was a cute (and very small) town and I could see why it has the title of Bicycle Capital of Germany--- I have never seen so many bicycles in my life. There were huge herds of them, like passenger pigeons, resting everywhere.

Asparagus Potato Salad (Cold)

I had a bunch of asparagus in der Kuhlschrank (note that it is green, as all good tasting asparagus should be), some potatoes starting to shrivel and I wanted something light for dinner: voila.

By the way, note the purple potatoes? I had read about them and when I passed through the Markthalle at Alt Tegel and saw them, I bought some. They taste fabulous. They have a nutty, almost smokey flavor and I will definitely buy them again, for the flavor not just the purtiness of the color (and it took me three washes to return my hands to their normal color).

Asparagus and Potato Salad
1 bunch green asparagus
7-10 small potatoes

Blanch the asparagus for 4-6 minutes in salted boiling water until tender/crisp. Cool immediately with water. Peel the potatoes and cook in boiling salted water (before or at the same time) until fork done. Also cool immediately with cold water (to stop the cooking)

Cut the asparagus into two inch pieces, cut the potatoes into edible sized chunks or slice. Place them into a bowl, add vinaigrette (see below,only when ready to eat) and toss lightly. If you aren't going to eat immediately, add vinaigrette to portions you will eat as you prepare them

Vinaigrette
A few glugs of white wine vinegar
the same number glugs of evoo (although many use a 1:3 ratio, I love vinegar)
Salt and pepper, fresh ground, to taste
a teaspoon (or more) Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon thyme (got some super fresh dried thyme last week at the markt)

Whisk all ingredients together well.

Lentil Soup

I was wandering around Julia's Here be Hippogriffs today when I noted her lentil soup recipe. It had several ingredients I either didn't have or wouldn't use (such as andouille sausage), but it made me think of making one myself. I did, we liked it, here's the recipe:
Lentil Soup/Stew
1 1/2 cups lentils
5 c chicken stock (which I happen to still have from the States, next time I might try either water or my frozen, a bit concentrated, chicken soup)
1/2 cup chopped carrots (I used 1 cup)
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup diced onion (didn't use)
2 t thyme- wouldn't have thought of it, liked it very much
quite a bit of Cajun seasoning, which is mainly garlic, paprika, onion, salt. and a bit of Cayenne
salt to taste
In a saucepan, place the stock and lentils. Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer for 20 minutes. Add other ingredients, simmer for 20-30 minutes.

A very easy and tasty recipe, as well as healthy and fast. Made enough for lots.

Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler

Hmm, picked up some more rhubarb (I love rhubarb season) and a kilo of strawberries and needed to decide what to do with them. Very important to decide quickly, because I find that strawberries here go bad within 24 hours of purchase. So I "cobbled" together a recipe.

My Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler

About 1 kilo rhubarb

About 600g strawberries

1/2 c sugar

Cut rhubarb in 1" slices. Hull and slice strawberries. Put them in large, nonreactive bowl in 3:1 proportions. Add 1/2 c. granulated sugar and 2-3 T lemon juice (and lemon zest if you have a zester), stir and let sit for 30 minutes to macerate.
Then I scrambled together a cobbler based loosely on Pioneer Woman's wonderful Blackberry Cobbler.

2 cups flour (+ a bit)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 T baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup butter

Now, her recipe uses shortening and involves some finicky mixing, but mine: just put it all together and mix. If it's too sticky, add a bit more flour while you mix it together. The spray Pam on your 9x13 glass pan (or butter it), lay the fruit mixture out, and drop the cobbler mixture on top. As you can see, there really wasn't enough cobbler mix to cover the amount of fruit I wanted to use, next time I would probably make half again as much.
Pre-heat the oven to 425F, or to 200C heissluft (I can't figure how to turn the convection off) and cook for 30 minutes. Let it cool a bit, then enjoy. (Some recipes add 2 T of tapioca to stiffen it up but I didn't have any around, and I don't mind it being drippy).

Gray's Anatomy season closer

and a makeshift chili which was pretty good. Since the girls had a warm lunch I made them plain pasta for dinner and for the German and myself I threw together a chili-type meal.

Left Over Chili
4 onions, sliced and diced
6 cloves garlic, sliced
4 carrots, sliced into thin rings
3 ribs celery, sliced lengthwise then diced
2 cans drained and rinsed kidney beans
500g sieved tomatoes
Cajun spices, granulated garlic, cayenne pepper and chili powder, sea salt and black pepper
500+g ground beef (Rinderhackfleisch)

Put them in a saucepan with olive oil and start sauteeing. I threw a bunch of sea salt and ground pepper on there as well. After about 10 minutes I poured in the tomatoes and kidney beans, stirred, added a lot of spice and stirred it again.

In the meantime, brown the ground beef in a large stockpot/soupkettle. I didn't need to use any oil, because I brought up the heat slowly and the beef gave off fat. When done browning, strain the meat and discard fat.

Then add the saucepan of vegetables to the meat, stir, add salt, pepper and more of all spices to taste. remember that hot spices get hotter as they cook, so if you spice to taste, it will be much hotter after it's done cooking.



After a few hours (putting the girls to bed) I made myself a bowl. Then, for the German, I added another 500 g of tomatoes. He's come a long way, but not quite far enough for the amount of cayenne pepper I enjoy. These are, of course, spices I brought with me from the States. I'm not certain how the spices would be here, because when I bought fierig scharf crushed red peppers here, they were absolutely bland.

Ah, the season ender of Gray's? A few surprises here and there, but what a nice, satisfying, great ending.

Sick again....

Well, I'd been hoping that we could avoid being ill for a while... Thing1 actually was ill on Monday- she got off the bus and made it to our front door (on the street that is, 5 floors down) before she told me how sick she was and then proceeded to vomit. So, there I was, with Thing 2 and the car seat and the rucksacks behind me, holding Thing1's long hair and her shoulders as she vomited on a major street in Berlin, with the tourists walking by and the people eating at the cafe next door (on the street, weather has been great) watching. One gentleman who needed to enter past us (we have businesses on most floors) kindly gave us tissue so that I could help Thing1 wipe her mouth. Then I carried each one of them and the car seat up the stairs, onto the lift, out of the lift and up the next half landing and down the corridor into the apartment.

Thing1 said that she was ill because A, a little boy in her class, had hit her. I am actually sure that he had (he is a behavior problem that I understand, because he is very young and very large: my nephew had the same problem) but I don't think that was why she was sick. She had no fever, wasn't ill again, and ate dinner without being sick so she went to school on Tuesday. We called her teacher and there was no real problem at school (Thing1 is good at telling others "Stop touching/hitting me", we have practiced it) so all was well.

But Wednesday night, Thing2 started vomiting. After the third time ( and not small vomits either), when we finally got her to sleep at after 11 pm (and after stripping and changing sheets and pillowcases on two beds- see why I couldn't live without a washer and dryer?) I knew that she needed to stay home from school.

So Thursday was a home day and the second missed German class day for me. I called my teacher and asked if one of the other students (who lives by me) could drop off the homework that I missed and she kindly brought it over herself: she's so nice! She stayed for a few minutes to explain it to me and I will try to catch up this weekend.

In any case, things are currently difficult with Thing2 anyway. It seems that 4 of her teeth are all coming in at once and she's having trouble getting to sleep, she has developed a terrible fear of the bath (which I guess is developmental because Thing2 went through it as well at around this age) which is wreaking havoc on our generally happy play/bath time and making Thing1 sad as she has to play alone, and she is starting to think about toilet training, although she is only sitting on the potty with her diaper on, rather than without. Lots of changes and stress.

Class trip: Rawums(:) Ausflug ins Wunderland der Schwerkraft

Today I went along on Thing1's class trip to a children's theatre (as an extra adult to herd the cats). The brochure calls it a "PuppenFigurenObjekte", although I didn't see any dolls...?

It was put on by Schaubude Berlin, an experimental theatre sposored by the Berlin Senate. There were about 40 of us and it was very mausing as we went along like ducklings, taking two light changes to make it across the street..., we took a bus to the S-Bahn and then

walked to the theatre. The children loved it and the actors let them explore the stage afterward. The theme was gravity, I think, and changing (as from an egg to a bird).

What's for Dinner?

Chicken Marsala, Candied Carrots, and Mom's cucumber salad.

All with a side order of pizza- Thing1 had wanted pizza for linch but got grilled putenwurst instead, so we picked up a mini-cheese and both the girls had a slice, with a bit of chicken and a few carrots. Luckily, the German chowed down. otherwise it is just depressing doing all this cooking.

Mom's Cucumber Salad:

3 good sized cucumbers

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup white vinegar

sugar to taste

Peel cucumbers, then slice thinly. Sprinkle slices with salt, allow to sit for 35 minutes. Squeeze well! Place in non-reactive bowl, add water/vinegar/sugar (already mixed to taste). Add fresh dill, ground pepper, very thinly sliced onion, either red or white. Sprinkle freshly minced Italian parsley, if desired.

I didn't have any white vinegar, so I used white wine vinegar. I added 4 onions (equivalent to one good sized onion), because I like onion. No parsley, even though I have it on hand (in a vase in the kitchen) because I prefer it without. I love this recipe.

The carrots were made to take care of an old package that was starting to get a bit whiskery and I wish that we had made more. A very simple recipe that I jiggered to gether based on the glazed sweet potatoes I made last week:

Candied Carrots: As many carrots as you like, sliced. Add some water, brown sugar to taste, a T of butter, a turn of the salt mill. Cook in a saucepan on the stovetop until as done as you like them. With 7 carrots I used about 1/4 cup brown sugar and the same water.

What I haven't been blogging about...

(With all due credit to Diane, from whom I stole the idea)

• I started another German class two weeks ago. I had thought that I would take some time off, but no, I signed up for another. I really like my teacher, K, and the location (walking distance) really can't be beat, but I'm already a little fatigued by it: the weather has been gorgeous and it's just depressing that I am inside most of the day. I have 90 minutes after class before the girls come home and that seems to give me just enough time to make a run to the supermarket. I am definitely going to be taking days off here and there. I had also hoped that my friend Y would take this next class and that we would get a chance to see each other, but I think she is taking the summer off as a vacation.


• We are spending far too much time apartment hunting. Ah, Germany, the land where real estate brokers still make a monopolistic, non-transparent market commission, where they don't work most weekends, and where they don't bother to return calls. Reminds me a bit of Manhattan in 2000, before the dot-com crash. And yet prices are quite low here.


• Berlin is also the land of the insane property owner, who thinks that one can rent apartments without kitchens or appliances, or apartments with an estimated 3 months of renovations (with costs to be borne by tenant) or where a landlord offered to have us pay for his kitchen, while he would retain ownership!


• We didn't go to Amsterdam (or the originally planned Venice) this weekend. The German's work interfered: a crisis/deliverable timeline change cancelled our plans. So instead, we will be going to see the wild horse round up in the Duelmen area, which is held the last Saturday in May outside Muenster. This is only about a 90 minute drive from my in-laws, but the German has never seen it. It's quite famous and I think that a lot of the extended family will join us, so it should be great fun. In a funny bit of serendipity, I read about this last week in class (the theme for the week was little known but interesting attractions in Germany and the area) and I was so excited that I went home to google it and to ensure that we could actually still make it, then we rebooked a visit from my sister-in-law and her friend so that we could go. This link is to a Flickr slideshow from the round up.


• We went to a concert on May 10th, on the third anniversary of the opening of the memorial at the Holocaust Denkmal. (This is a stock photo, I haven't downloaded mine yet). It was fascinating and I may try to add more. It was performance art in music and it was indeed very moving. There was also a poetry reading, which of course I could only understand the smallest amount of, of work by a Holocaust victim. The concert itself was held by musicians scattered throughout the memorial, which is composed of stones varying in size and orientation laid out in a pattern. The "stelae" made the sound waver in and out, be audible and inaudible, loud and soft, as we moved between them while the musicians were playing from their stations in the memorial. It was haunting and evocative.

Happy Birthday, Dad

We all love you and miss you.