CSA Dinner

I'm Still here!!

I have not had much exciting knitting recently, mostly just slow steady progress on the same projects. Knit Night over the summer has been fun. We are taking turns hosting and it has been great to see friends houses, I even got to host a couple of times and that was really nice.

I have been excited by food! We are getting a CSA basket this summer for the first time and it is a fun challenge to come up with new ways to eat all the veggies.

Here is one night's dinner:Start with the veggies. Swiss Chard, Green Onions and Fresh English Peas. Add some supporting actors: Hand made pasta, chicken, lemon, butter, fresh ground black pepper and a dash of white balsamic vinegar. Start with the stems and onions,
Add the tops and the vinegar, meanwhile, toss some peas in the pasta water just as the pasta is al dante, drain and add butter...yum..
time it just right with the chicken that Gummibaer has grilled with lemon and pepper, and.....

Guten Appetit!

Traveling Tea Box

When I arrived home on Saturday I found a box I had been eagerly awaiting, the Traveling Tea Box!

I am part of a tea group on Ravelry that has traveling tea boxes. One person starts the box by filling it with teas and other tea or knitting related things and sending it to the first person on the list. When you receive the box you open it and take out some goodies and add some things from your local area then you send it on to the next person on the list. It is great fun! You get to taste teas from all over the world.

This is what was in the box when I received it. There was tea from Germany, Turkey, Japan, England, and all over the U.S.!

I added some VT Tea, Maple sugar, VT Cookies and some of my other favorite teas.

Here is the box ready to be sent on it's way, heads up, Momonator!

Happy Easter!

I hope everyone had a happy Easter!

I had a good time this year. I spent the day quietly. I went for a walk in the morning sunshine and then I made a lovely coffee cake for brunch to go with my orange juice and pineapple.

I spent the afternoon dying eggs and playing with color!
I never pass up the chance to play with dyes and this year I experimented with tape.

I enjoyed my play time and now I have plenty of eggs for my traditional curried eggs on toast! Yum!

Strawberries!!

I got my hot little hands on four flats (that's 48 pints) of Strawberries!

Friday after work I brought them home, I cleaned the kitchen and got all my canning supplies ready.

Bright and early Saturday morning I started washing, cutting, caning, and freezing.

By the evening I had 48 jars of jam and 3 1/2 gallons of frozen strawberries, ohhh yeah!

yum........ strawberries on ice cream, strawberry jam on biscuits, waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, strawberry rhubarb pie....... it tastes like spring!

Snowed in = lots of Knitting

Mushu Kitty likes the snow too!

I have been holed up in the snow here and that means knitting and lots of it!

I finished both the girlfriend swing coats

and I started my Birch! I love, love, love this project! The yarn is to die for, the pattern is perfect and I am enjoying the lace. Did I mention I can't wait to wear this shawl!??

I also started a hat for my brother using the Zeebee pattern. This is a fun knit. He picked the colors to go with his winter jacket. I think they look like cantaloupe and honeydew so I am calling this the melon hat.

I am teaching my sister to knit. She is making a simple hat. I think a hat is a great first project because it is small, simple, everyone likes them and not boring to knit. She is doing very well and learning fast! We might have a new knitter on our hands!

When I am not knitting I'm in the kitchen getting ready for Christmas!

These are my favorite Gingerbread cookies, we have made them every year since I was little.

Cookies!

We've been busy

baking cookies for mom's bakery. She likes to make sugar cookies all though the month of December as a service to her costumers. It takes a lot of extra time to make these but we have fun!

I'm a lucky girl!

Look what Gummibaer brought home for me.

Life is good.

I had an adventure today, I tried to make American chocolate chip cookies.

Now this sounds simple but it turned out to be more complicated than you might think.
First I took my standard recipe and converted it to grams, no big deal.

Then I went shopping. This can be an adventure because I only know a little German so there is a certain amount of guess work involved. I was not able to find shortening so I used all butter. The shortening in chocolate chip cookies is one of the reasons for the great texture that they have. Butter has better flavor but not as nice a texture that is why most recipes call for both. I could not find brown sugar so I used molasses and white sugar. Brown sugar these days is really a mix of white sugar and molasses so this is not a big change. There where no chocolate chips to be found so I substituted plain chocolate. Chocolate does not hold its shape the way chocolate chips do so I got a bit of a marbled effect. I also did not have the option of semi sweet so I picked milk which makes everything a bit sweeter. The vanilla I found is quite different than I am used to so I defiantly got a unique flavor.

So far so good. Now, I don’t have a scale so my measuring was mostly by eye. I used the grams on the packages to help me guess. Luckily I am very famliar with how the cookie dough should look and feel.

Next I had to pick a setting for the oven. The oven I have here is in Celsius of course, it has a fan and it is electric. So a big change from what I am used to. A little trial and error and I got some yummy cookies. They are not what I would call traditional chocolate chip cookies but they are good.
Now, I’m off to share with our German friends!!!

Saturday Morning in Munich

(picture heavy)

Let’s go for a stroll through the market!

How about some Meat



and vegetables.

for dinner with the family.

Wine



And Cheese

Go with Fruit



And Nuts



For a Picnic with your lover.

Meet an old friend for some Tea



in a kitchen


with plants on the window sill.

Treat yourself



to some flowers.

Food always speaks to me and when it is as fresh and colorful as this the story it tells is like a picture in my mind of the perfect day.

Austrian Friends and German Beer

This past weekend we had a friend form Austria come and stay with us! What better excuse to go out for some German beer and food?

We went to a beer garden in Duisburg to enjoy the fine weather and soak up the atmosphere.

Gummibaer is a beer aficionado so he took us to a place that has almost 200 types of beer, mostly from Germany. Of course we had to try a few!

We even found some beer I liked!

Yummm...... Raspberry Lambic.

The food was good too!

I had Gnocchi with mushrooms and cheese sauce.

The only difficulty was keeping Gummibaer from eating it all before I could!

Three hours later we finished our beers and headed home by train, bus and foot. Public transportation is very good in Germany. You don't need a DD as long as everyone can walk!

Enjoying life in Germany