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?