I see Paris, I see France...

We just got back from a wonderful tour of northern France. We spent 2 days in Paris, followed by a 2 day tour of the Normandy coast, followed by half a day at Mont St. Michel and another half day touring chateaus in the Loire Valley. I'll be covering our trip through a few different posts.

note the fine pollarding of the trees leading up to the tower

Most of my expectations of Paris came from movies such as French Kiss (a Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline classic), books such as Julia Child's My Life in France, and blogs such as DesignMom (an American family of 8 living in rural France). These sources--of varying accuracy--showed me what to expect in terms of culture and food, but not much in the way of historical context. Fortunately, I had a European history aficionado as my tour guide, so I saw all the major sights and learned a bunch about the city's history as well.

We stayed near the Eiffel Tower in an apartment that I found through AirBnb, and we spent our first day walking through the Tuileries and to the Louvre. Originally a palace for the king, the buildings we see today are only part of the original construction. It was incredible to imagine one man living in a house that large.

the palace bends in a U-shape, with the museum entrance through the glass pyramid
You walk under Napoleon's monument after exiting the garden

We got to the Louvre museum only an hour before closing, but it was still wonderful to see Winged Victory (she is so elegant and powerful-looking), the Venus de Milo (she is lovely) and the Mona Lisa (she is quite popular) in person.

that's Mona on the wall
this is also a 'Where's J?' photo - can you spot him? :)

Word of the Week: Spargelzeit!

Asparagus (der Spargel) is a big deal in Germany, sort of like cheese in Wisconsin, corn in Nebraska, or maple products in Vermont. The Germans get really pumped in late spring when the first asparagus hits the markets -- this is the beginning of Spargelzeit (asparagus time/season). We see special Spargel menus at restaurants, signs outside shops, and people walking away from the farmers' market loaded down with huge bags of it.

The favored asparagus is the white kind. Sometimes I see green Spargel at a market stall, but this is rare and it's usually just huge mounds of the white type. Turns out it's all the same plant, but the white kind is either buried or covered so that it can't photosynthesize. The German TV station, ZDF, has some great short videos about Germany's "white gold" (harvesting, eating, cooking), but there's also an good video in English here. (Asparagus icecream sounds gross, but I think I would try it if I found it!)



We are nearing the end of Spargel season. In April, it was selling for about 9 Euros a kilo ($5.50 a pound), and now it's 3-4 Euros a kilo ($2 a pound). J is not an asparagus fan, so I order it at restaurants or make it for lunch. It's most commonly served peeled and boiled, with a small pitcher of melted butter for pouring and perhaps some paper-thin Black Forest ham on the side. This is tasty, but my very favorite way to eat it is in this soup.

Cream of Asparagus Soup
2 T butter2 T flour
1/2 t salt, 1/8 t pepper
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups milk
~3/4 lb fresh asparagus, white or green - about 8 big white stalks or 14 skinny green ones      

1. If using white asparagus, peel it lightly. Then cut asparagus into half inch pieces, and cook in salted boiling water til tender (~5 minutes). Drain, reserving the cooking liquid. Mash or blend the asparagus til it's as smooth or chunky as you like. At home I use a food processor, here I use the hand blender.
2. Make the white sauce: Melt butter over medium-low in a sauce pan. Blend in flour, salt/pepper, and garlic. Add a bit of milk and stir until smooth. Add the remaining milk and cook, stirring constantly, til it thickens and begins to bubble.
3. Combine the pureed asparagus with the white sauce. Add reserved cooking liquid to make the soup as thick or thin as you like. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Makes about 4 big servings.

Enjoy!

Off to France!

Next week, J and I are heading to France for a brief visit and I can hardly wait! He has been to France several times, for vacation and research, but I have only been to one city, Strasbourg.


This is a really interesting bit of France since it has changed hands between France and Germany several times, and the official language has changed with it.

many signs are in both French and German

As we drove across the French border back in April, I was greeted by a hummed chorus of La Marseillaise which is one of my favorite memories from when J's parents and brother visited in April. We spent several hours in Strasbourg, touring the cathedral, buying crepes, and wandering around the old town.

Strausbourg has a lot of pretty canals, like in this and the previous picture

During our next visit to France (which nicely (almost) coincides with our 6th anniversary), we're heading to Paris, Rouen, the D-Day beaches in Normandy, Le Mont St. Michel, and the Loire Valley. I'm very curious to compare our trip to our brief visit to Strasbourg -- stay tuned!

Baking & the Art of Improvisation

We are very fortunate to have a lovely apartment with a balcony, a great view of the church, and cozy furnishings, but one of the things that really sold me on it is that the previous tenants left a really nice range of tools in the kitchen. There's the hand mixer, the rolling pin, 3 mixing bowls, and (my new favorite) the hand blender. However, the kitchen is not rich in pans beyond one white glass baking dish, the baking sheets in the oven, and pots for cooking on the stove. This is where the improvising comes in!

One of my favorite weeknight desserts is an easy, 5 ingredient chocolate cake. However, with limited bakeware (and a policy of not buying things for the apartment), I have found that a little stainless steel sauce pan perfectly holds half a recipe of chocolate cake and bakes up just fine.

Achtung! This particular improvisation requires an all metal pan--no plastic!

Other improvisation includes using mugs in place of small bowls and that sort of thing. I enjoy a fun kitchen gadget as much as the next person (if that person happens to like cooking and baking, I suppose), but it has been fun and interesting to see how much I can do with a small range of multi-function tools.

Enough soliloquizing about kitchen gadgets. Here's the recipe:

5-Ingredient Chocolate Cake
115 grams/1 stick of butter130 grams/4.5 oz dark chocolate (or 3/4 c semisweet chocolate chips)
3 eggs, room temperature*
3/4 c sugar
3/4 c flour

1. Melt chocolate with about 2 tablespoons of butter (good instructions here). Once it's melted, add in the rest of the butter and stir until the butter is melted.
2. Beat the sugar and eggs together for about 5 minutes til thick and pale yellow.
3. Gradually drizzle a stream of the melted chocolate/butter mix to the sugar/egg mix while beating. This prevents the chocolate from cooking the eggs -- chocolate scrambled eggs are not what we are going for.
4. Once the chocolate is fully combined with the egg/sugar mix, fold in the flour until it's just combined.
5. Pour the batter into a well buttered 8-9" pan (round, square, rectangular, 2 separate smaller pans -- doesn't really matter here. You're going for about 1.5" of batter in the pan(s)).
6. Bake at 350F for ~30 minutes or until the top is cracked and a toothpick comes out clean. Let it cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then dump it out on a plate and eat!
* If you are halving the recipe, just use 2 eggs. It will be fine :)

And that's it! I like to mix it up and have it baking while I make dinner.

Fun fact: Butter in Germany is sold in big blocks rather than sticks and eggs are sold in packs of 10, not 12.

Word of the Week: Kappen

This German word of the week is kappen, which is a verb meaning 'to pollard'. I didn't even know what the English word meant, but I have seen evidence of it in almost every city we have visited in Europe. I'll leaving the technical explanation to the guys at The Royal Horticultural Society, and just show a picture to demonstrate the meaning:

Strasbourg, France, in April

So, in English we would say, "Wow! Check out all those pollarded trees!" and the Germans would say, "Wow! Guck mal, an die gekappten Bäume!" (or something pretty close to that). I have seen them in rows along rivers or in courtyards, in clusters at a garden, and sometimes standing alone in front of a building.

Konstanz, Germany, in March

Berchtesgaden, Germany, in April

The amount of pruning varies (not all trees are cropped as severely as these), but the purpose is to prevent the trees from growing too big for the area that they are planted. It seems like it would make more sense to plant trees that just don't grow that large, but who can argue with centuries of happy tree trimmers?