Adventure 38: The Adventure of Cooking in Switzerland

November 13, 2011

I learned the second month I was here that cooking in Switzerland was different. I tried to make a key lime pie, that turned out to be key lime soup. Once again I tried my hand at baking this weekend.

On Nov 26 I will have some people over for Thanksgiving dinner. Yes I am working on the "real" Thanksgiving, but I still wanted a meal and a turkey. This time, instead of being embarrassed by pumpkin pie soup, I decide to practice. I quickly came to realize as I searched the store shelves that I couldn't find shortening for the pie crust. I search the internet to determine that I could substitute butter for shortening, 1 to 1. I also new from previous experience that the Swiss do not have brown sugar as we know it in the US. A previous internet search had yeilded that I should combine white sugar and molasses. I can also not find pumpkin in a can, so this pie was going to be 100% from scratch since I was cutting my own pumpkin.

After mixing and rolling and mixing, I put the pie in the oven after converting my recipe to degree Celcius. Surprisingly the pumpkin pie turned out much better than the key lime pie. It was not soup! However, after eating it there was this after taste. I'm blaming it on the molasses, so I'm going to back next weeks pie without the molasses and hope for the best. As a backup, I'm also making apple pie. I think it is really hard to screw up an appel pie. Although, ya never know.

I also wanted to make no-bake cookies. Again this was a like a word search puzzle. I couldn't find cocoa powder. After a lengthy discussion with my friend, I bought chocolate powder instead just to end the conversation. He could not understand why I didn't just melt a chocolate bar to put in the cookies. This man can cook with the best of them, but don't ask him to bake. I came home and did another internet search and found that they do have cocoa powder here. Another trip to a different store and I found it. Then it came to the oats. I chose the oats that said "wenig" for cooking time. Wenig means few or little. After making the cookie, I decide that these were the 5 minute oats instead of the 1 minute oats. Never the less, they were delicious even if I did chip a tooth on the semi-hard - semi-soft oats.

An that folks, is a lesson in Swiss cooking. It's just not the same as in America.

Adventure 37: Wanderweg zum Funflanderblick

November 6, 2011

I started in Rheineck. In town there was a festival, so I stopped in to take a look. One vendor was selling US and Canadian licences plate for 30 Swiss Francs a piece. Seems a bit pricey to me. I wonder if they were stolen?

 Only in Switzerland do all the farmers leave

there goods outside with a tin money box.

 This is the views from Funflanderblick ~ Roughly translate: 5 land view

Apparently at one point in time you could see 5 countries from here.

Now there are only 4 countries you can see:

Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and Leichtenstein

I don't know what this creature is.

Anyone have a guess?

Adventure 36: Berlin

October 25-30, 2011

The final trip with my mom was to Berlin and we took Spatzl with us.

 The first stop was the Brandenburg Gate and then the Parliment.

 The cross walk lights are quite unique in Berlin. I even bought a shirt with the cross walk lights on it.

 Check Point Charlie, the point of entering or leaving the US segment of Germany. Below a piece of wall, and the guard station at Check Point Charlie with fake Americans. I'm guessing they didn't even speak Englinsh.

 A chocolate ship with chocolate covered buildings from the town of Berlin.

This church was bombed during WWII

 The Berlin Dom. A giganitc church in town. We were able to walk to the top of the dome with an inside and outside walk way. This had a great view. Below is the very creepy krypt.

 The largest section of the wall in Germany. One sight was painted in the early 2000's and the other side is original graffiti. I even tried to climbl the wall. It wasn't happening - my legs are too short.

  A walk around the Reichtag or Parliment Dom at the top of the parliment. The Berlin Bears are everyway, painted in different ways.

 These 'cleaners' were actually cleaning Berlin in some sort of demonstration. It was quite interesting. Then we went to a Berlin fleemarket spontaneously. It is always interesting to look at other peoples junk.

Finally we went to a super cute town south west of Berlin to check out a few castles and have a home brewed German beer.

Adventure 35: Wien with Mom

October 16-18, 2011

Aftering leaving Salsburg, we drove to Wien. Mom was happy to get there as I had tried to kill us 3 times with my bad driving skills. First I did an illegal U-turn, almost hitting a guy on a motorcycle while almost getting hit by oncoming traffic. Next, I drove down the trolley lane and had to back up in an intersection to get in the car lane. Finally, I drove the wrong way down a one way street. Once getting to our hotel, we went to dinner at Burger King. Still poor mom couldn't get a good cup of coffee.

The first stop was Shonebrunn Castle. This was a palace build for the famous queen of Austria - Elizabeth. Here we also went to see a Marionette show - Mozarts "Magic Flute".

The next day we headed headed to the Prata. This is a giant Ferris Wheel. We had heard that we just had to go ride it. However, neither one of use was overly impresses by this.The most interesting thing here was the Pig MAC Machine.

We stopped by a church, where they had dead priest all through the place. This was quite unnerving. Can you imagine sitting with dead people every Sunday for service? Is this meant to scare people into being Christ-like? Creepy!

Next was the royal china collection. This was massive. Everything from gold to silver to glasses of all kinds and made all other the world. The upstairs of this musuem was the old living quarters from Elizabeth. This told of her depression in life, her distaste for being forced to marry royalty, the morning the loss of several children, and her dead by murder. After hearing all of this, it is a wander she never killed himself. On the way back to the hotel we went past the Bellvadere. This, we think, was an art museum. We didn't go in. However, we did see my dad there. Really, my dad would totally where red pants and a green jacket.

 On the third day, we left early and headed to Europes biggest water fall.