Thanksgiving & Blessings

Why hello!

I remember you!

And upon looking at the date of my last post, I also realized that it hasn't been as long ago and far away as I thought that I'd last send a missive through the wavy waves of the interweb.

Cool.

I'm not as degenerate of a blogger as I thought.

Anyway. Back to the wild and wacky world of yours truly and all of the random shit that entails.

Welcome, I say.

What's been going on?

Well, loads and loads. I just happened through the pure coincidence which is my raging internet addiction to stumble across one of the best, most thorough horoscopes for my illustrious sign that I've seen in years (YEARS, MAN!). And basically, what it told me was 'November is your month, child. Now get your ass in gear.' Really, essentially that. With a few unmistakables such as a particular week being declared especially good for the submission of applications FORGRAD SCHOOL (I think they mentioned college, too...but that obviously doesn't concern me as much) and one week being singled out as especially good for le babymaking (unfortunately notmy pervue, although it DID cause me to fwd the link to another cancer friend).

ANYWAY, long story short, as a result I got my sht together and finally sent in my application for two law programs here in Berlin. And last Friday, I told my boss.

And you know...it really wasn't all that bad. She took it like the Real Woman of Class and Substance she is and told me that I had to go my own way and that there'd always be a dooropen for me in her little corner of the world. Cool, huh? Considering I'd been losing sleep/getting my panties in a ROYAL twist over this little sit down for...oh, MONTHS now, not half bad. I'm still waiting to hear what's missing from my application (I'm sure there'ssomething. Gotta love those German bureaucrats. Normal people cannot think as nitpicky as they are.) and I won't be getting any kind of definitive news for academic aeons, but the wheelsare moving. Just posting the damn thing was terrifying, but I'm working on that.

Otherwise, there's been the usual insane level of stress with school, clients, work and you know...the little social life I try to keep alive. But I think I sort of manage to keep things in balance...if by balance you mean some kind of death-defying, somewhat productive tailspin. But I'm not complaining. Tis not the season to complain. Tis the season to be thankful!

And thankful I am. Really. For what seem like a thousand blessings. Not the least of which is a good group of friends who humor my need to throw a fck-off dinner party in late November ever year. I make them cook in teams. They make great things. We reached culinary heights this year, in my opinion with the herbed dinner rolls. Those things were FANTASTIC. Despite afew unfortunate last-minute cancellations and a very unfortunate boxing match which kind of put a damper on the mood, it was a great time. This year, we didn't even need to borrow a table! We can seat twelve! It's great.

Other things to be thankful for include loyal clients, gainful employment, a nice warm place to call home...and (nearly) five years with the most supportive, funniest, beardiest human teddy bear known to man. And not leastly or lastly, a great family and great, loyal, supportive, wonderful friends in faraway places (yes, I mean you yanks).

Yous wonderful, alluvyas.

Thanks for being yourselves, thanks for being great (although since you ARE ALL GREAT, it comes out to one and the same. Whatever.)

Take care everyone.

X's&O's

Viva Italia

So some of you clever folks might have gotten the memo that the Schatz and I went to Italy for a week. Florence, to be precise. And the even trickier ones of you have already cruised through my selection of photos posted at a certain social-networking site.

Be that as it may, I would be remiss I suppose, if I didn't post my impressions and culinary exploits here. That's what this damn thing is for. Aaaand the german amazon hasn't quite gotten around to delivering my book to me here in Switzerland. Bastards.

So anyway, Italy.


Due to my inordinate and inexplicable love for italian food (my family is WASP through and through) and warm, sunny places, I have always imagined that Italy would be a happy place for me. You know, the kind of place you visit and it just clicks and you say "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE?!"

As you can see, I went with high expectations. Quite high.

I was not disappointed in the slightest.

I'll give you the less interesting things in a high-speed rundown:

Hotel: FANTASTIC. If you go, stay at the Hotel Cellai. The deskpeople are lovely, helpful and fluent in a variety of languages. Make sure you specify what kind of a room you want, because it's a boutique hotel, not Best Western. They have small rooms and pimp rooms. We asked and we received, if you know what I mean.

Shopping: Good enough to make a girl weak in the knees. They have (as apparently most European countries/cities do) annual sales in January/February and July/August. Really, really fantastic. Be prepared to hemorrhage money and be thankful for the opportunity.

Locals: Well, in the Summer, the city is overrun with Americans. Some of them look italian, some of them don't. The locals we encountered in retail and gastronomy were helpful and English-speaking. Bus/Tram drivers also very helpful, not so fluent in the foreign languages but verrry fluent in sign language. And you don't have the feeling that people are perpetually trying to snow you. Italy does somehow have that reputation and I can say that the worst thing that happened to us was that we got overcharged for one of the lemon sodas that the Schatz got addicted to during our stay. Really, coulda been a lot worse.

The City: Breathtaking. A little stinky in the summer because lots of the less fortunate like to pee in the sidestreets (do NOT assume that liquid on the ground is water, EVER.) but aside from that there is so much of the old architecture that's been preserved, so many goregous piazzas and cathedrals and duomos and old statues that you get the feeling you could change people's clothes and the stores and easily be in another century.
Funny related sidestory and the reason we have decent pictures of this escapade at all:
I actually set foot on this journey thinking that I'd be able to take all necessary photos with my phone. My old camera was broken in a drunken incident at the beginning of the year which I believe was also chronicled here, but bygones. Anyway I really did think that my lovely little BBbold would do Florence justice. We got in late and after dinner we went for a walk in the city. Just kind of meandering because that's what we do well and out of nowhere I saw this really breathtaking cathedral. The street ended in a huge central square and I'm staring at one of the most imposing churches I've ever seen (and as you know, I live on the old continent where they DO business churches). I looked at the Schatz, the Schatz looked at me and I said, "honey, we need a camera. NOW."
So we spent the first day asking around where the nearest, large electronics store was to be found. Successfully, might I add. Another testament to very helpful, English-speaking locals. So now we have a nice little sony. Nothing to write home about, but it got the job done.


That was the rundown. Now it's time for the grub.


The food we had was fantastic. We tried to do a good mix of everything--nice meals, street-food, take out, basic sit down meals so that we could get a real picture of what people eat there. Not just the tourists. I'm not going to write down everything we had, but I'll do a top 5. I'm not as good at food porn as Anthony Bordain, so I'm pretty sure a bite-by-bite chronicle of eight days worth of food might not be that entertaining.


(drumroll please.)

5. The mushroom strudel and the steak courses of our multi-course dinner. Divine.

4. Real buffalo mozarella in an insalata caprese. WHOAH. Real Mozarella TASTES like something!!!

3. Crazy things with rice. I in my ignorance, saw rice as the direct competition of pasta. This is not so.

2. These little fried soft salty chewy roll things we had the first night at dinner and never again.

1. PIADINE! Dear lord, find a place that serves them. Italian streetfood at it's finest. If you don't like it, you haven't had the right one yet.


I am now realizing that the things I liked the best and the things I took pictures of are two different kettles of fish. Probably because I was too busy stuffing my face with the deliciousness to commemorate the moment. Oh well. I do have what normal people would consider a ridiculous amount of food pictures. Most of which were taken before I realized that my camera had a specific setting for those types of pictures.







The motto of the story?

Go, try the shellfish and generally enjoy yourself. I highly recommend it.

Weihnachtszeit, Weihnachtszeit...

Merry Christmas to you and yours, lovelies. Hope Santa was good to you all and that you got to spend some quality time with your loved ones. I cooked up a storm and will detail the menu for you when I get back from our trip to the Czech Republic. The Germans have a practical name for the mountains we're going to visit, they call them the "Riesengebirge". In Czech, they're called "Karkonosze"--except with a few less vowels. I'm hoping for snow, since the temperatures here aren't really Christmas-y. I'm not expecting to have internet in our lovely village hamlet, so I'll update when I get back. Hopefully.

Have a great and healthy New Year, folks. Drive safe, take care of each other.

F'hain Thanksgiving Extravaganza

I'm going on a posting binge to make it up to those who care, but I had to separate these two posts. Thanksgiving in the F'hain grew out of a resolve from last year. Thanksgiving is the hardest holiday to spend outside of the states. My sister was so funny...I told her that on the phone and she was like "Why?! It's not like you miss anything here. Really." I'm sure it has a lot to do with expat-romanticism...the things we don't have, we tend to redschön. Thanksgiving has definitely become more important to me since I've taught it in a thousand lessons and explained it's history to tons of curious Germans. Last year was hard because we didn't celebrate, so I resolved to do it up this year in style, and Stephan had not choice but to go along for the ride. 

It was pretty cool if I do say so myself.

The battle plan was as follows...we had a team of  approximately 16 "guests" (if you can call them that while still expecting them to work for their dinner) who were then divided into three smaller groups who were then assigned to one of the three kitchens. The grou

ps were deliberately mixed so that people were with people they didn't know, and everyone had authentic recipes and ingredients distributed amongst them. They were then sent to said kitchens and told to produce said items. 

There were some stressful moments where I had something close to boiling over/burning on on the stove and was taking a phone call from Stephan complaining that they had too many sweet potatoes and what should they do about it, while desperately waiting for a refill on my wine glass...but it worked. My team was fantastic, we were done with our stuff in a jiff and could get to work on the decorations/beverage consumption/serious relaxation. 

I think all told, everything was ready and we sat down to eat shortly before seven pm. The cooking had started effectively at one. The last guest left at two am. It was a scene of mass carnage and destruction but everyone went home extremely full and at least a little tipsy if not roaring drunk. 

What amazes me is that almost a week later, people still haven't come to claim their chairs or KITCHEN TABLES?!?! How does one live without a kitchen table? Or chairs? I mean, yes one can eat on the couch, but really? I'm glad we live on the top floor...we've just put everything out on the landing in the stairwell. Noone comes up here who's not invited anyway, and there are only four apartments. 

However, if a photo is really worth a thousand words, I'll close with this picture of Vika and Stefan:

Guys, come get your effing table. 

Thanks.

Love,

Mia