The devil made me do it

So I have to admit, as much as I like to think all this blogging business is about me writing for me, it's definitely a slight demotivating factor in the publication department to have the little "comment" function be outright kaput. Feel free to offer wisdom of the ages if you know how to fix it ...

In the meantime, I've been eating peanut butter. Lots of peanut butter. As in finish-a-jar-every-three-days, lots of peanut butter. Diet? Who said diet?

Actually, the woman at the Pakistani store did. That's right, I'm selective choosing only the highest quality peanut butter, which means bypassing the peanut flavored margarine they like to call PB at the chain stores, and going straight to the source ... Dutch peanut butter from the neighborhood Pakistani store.

Another thing to be thankful for? It's not the easiest stuff to find. In fact, they don't carry it at all unless I specifically ask for them to order it in. Picture forlorn American dejectedly leaving said Pakistani store, mumbling about why they never carry the only peanut butter I really like, only to have the owner quickly say "You want peanut butter? We have it here for you next week!" I return next week, and am greeted at the door by some other woman I swear I've never seen shouting "Ah! You came! We have your peanut butter for you! It is very, very good, but maaaannny, maaannnny calories!" ...

That's right. 30 whole JARS of calorie-filled peanut butter goodness.

Pumpkin, spice and all things nice

Aside from seeing them all lit up with flickering candles inside, pumpkins have never been my thing. Never liked the smell of cutting into them for carving; hated pumpkin pie. Had a love-hate relationship with that cold, slimy sensation as you stuck your hand in to rip its guts out; roasted seeds were only ever so-so.

Then I got old. (Or something like that).

I started to like pumpkin soup. Or perhaps more accurately, I started to love pumpkin soup. In my opinion, all blame goes to the chef at the good ol' Geneva lakeside hangout, Bains de Paquis ... no fair throwing in tons of fresh ginger ... I just can't turn it down.

Now, though, I can also (lovingly) blame my littlest sis and Co. thanks to the recent bestowment of an entire cookbook with nothing but PUMPKIN recipes. We're talking Southwest chicken and pumpkin soup, pumpkin chutney, sage-pumpkin risotto, pumpkin-filled ravioli with fried sage, meatloaf with pumpkin glaze, pumpkin cookies ... you name it, it's pumpkin.

I'll have to admit, I was a bit daunted by the prospect of all this pumpkin, but in a spontaneous Saturday moment of bravery (and cleaning frenzy), it was decided that the pumpkin so demurely decorating our coffee table was destined for the pot. Add a bit o'pear, a bit o'onion and ginger .... and, well, just between you and me, we'll soon be giving the Bains de Paqui chef a run for his money.

Roasted ginger-pumpkin pear soup
1. Heat 1TBS olive oil and 1TBS butter in a large saucepan. Add 1/2 C chopped onion and 2TBS minced shallots and cook for 5 mins. Add 1tsp ginger, pinch of salt and 3C mashed fresh pumpkin.

2. Add 2 ripe pears, peeled and cut in chunks and 4C homemade chicken broth. Cook for 20 mins or until pear is soft. Add in 2+tsp ginger.

3. Puree soup until smooth and creamy ... then eat, eat, eat away!

Note to self: All blenders are not equal

Meet ProMix 474.

A frequent perk (?) to living in a city where people move in and away as quickly as the seasons change, I have by now inherited quite a sizeable collection of useful items. Like blenders.

Of course they are "gently used" items, though, and as the ProMix 474's last owners kindly noted as they lovingly gave her away, they were "not so sure how well it worked anymore".

Fast forward to tonight's tomato soup making. Of course, it SEEMED like the perfect chance to give the good ol' ProMix 474 a debut run, I mean, it had to be easier than getting my fingers all cramped up around my usual hand held puree "gun".
Dump chunky soup concotion in, slap lid on, give 'er some power (low!) and .... holy *@&#&^%#.

Let's just say that Old Faithful doesn't stand a chance against ProMix 474. And yes, Jojo and Robert, it most definitely works.

So well, in fact, that even my superwoman muscles couldn't hold the lid on ... when it was on low. You get the picture: Old Faithful geyser spewing chunky tomatoe and carrot puree up to the ceiling and on everything between there and the floor. This would include everything from my head down to my toes, ALL of the kitchen cabinets, ALL of the clean dishes sitting in the drying rack, two out of four sides of the refrigerator ... EVERYTHING covered in dripping chunkies that look suspiciously like "chuckies".

And those of you (like me) for whom "hyperactive gag reflex" is an understatement, I leave it to your imagination just how fun the cleaning up acidic chunky tomatoe carrot puree process entailed.

Note to self: ProMix 474 is a professional food puker.

You know it's going to be a great summer when ...

... it's only the middle of May and your last two consecutive weekends have already been fully blessed with...

tent-worthy sunshine...

oodles of food ...

cold beer on tap...

authentic "campside" Irish song and dance...

great company...

... and seven hours of free wine in picturesque countryside.
(OK, this pic is from last year, but I had my hands full of other things this time 'round).

Add in a fab birthday party, delish Nepali food, horrendous allergies, lazy days in the lakeside parks and some Italian-style gelatto and, well, you could just about say summer's already here.

PS Cheers to Charles (or whatever your name is) for all the great pics.

For the record

This ...

... is NOT a corndog.

But it sure as heck tasted like one. Next time will be the charm.

La grande bouffe

Ever seen the French film "La grande bouffe"? You know, the one where four gourmet food-loving men decide to lock themselves away in a countryside villa and eat themselves to death on amazing food? True, we are only two, but between birthday celebrations, Easter and time at home to cook together, we just about managed to do the same this weekend ...

It all started on Wednesday, with wine and a gourmet cheese fondue, homemade by Marcel's childhood sidekick and best friend now-turned cheese maker at Kaeserei Au bei Fischingen...

With the excuse of old-man birthdays, however, Thursday started to get serious with garlic prime rib, roasted dill green beans and garlic mashed potatoes, with wine. Never mind I haven't quite figured out how to say prime rib in French and the guy at the butcher's had no idea what I was talking about ... in fact, I don't think we actually had prime rib at all, but whatever the heck it was, it's worth making again and again and again and again ... and again.

Of course, we couldn't let Mom's timely import delivery of creme of tartar go to waste, so a birthday + springtime (read strawberries) seemed an appropriate excuse to attempt my first-ever angelfood cake from scratch. Unless you consider a denser-than-heck pound cake angelfood, however, this experiment was a terribly tragedy, a dishonor to the name "angel food". That said, the lack of angel-ness certainly hasn't stopped us from eating the entire thing ...

Friday, unexpected visions of Costco corndogs began dancing in my head. Seeing as I haven't had one in about five years, I guess they're allowed to make a demand for consumption from time to time. And so it was that we ambitiously tackled an online recipe for homemade corndogs... in front of unsuspecting dinner guests who had never heard of a corndog in their lives. In this case, probably a good thing ... flavour was not bad, but the dang dogs would have been entirely unrecognizable to an American.

This, of course, turned into an American cultural night with the further introduction of homemade snickerdoodles (again, thank you Mom/creme of tartar). "Snickers noodles?" "Nickers oodles?" ... "What do you mean 'snickerdoodle' doesn't mean anything?" (Is this really American culture??)

Saturday followed with cod with crispy potato crust and balsalmic sauce and green beans and sundried tomatoes and wine for lunch, and steak with whiskey and garlic marinade ... and wine. And Sunday with feasts of Easter baskets (read chocolate bunnies the size of cats, coloured eggs and jelly beans) and apricot-glazed smoked ham with the fixings ... and wine. (Feeling full yet?)

LAST BUT NOT LEAST, (before I begin my new-found diet), however, we also enjoyed a fabulous meal of lentil soup prepared with love and sent to us by my little-ist sis as part of her Operation Rice Bowl collections/Easter preparations with a note that read:

A part of dinner / We share with you / So that you can share / With others too.

All at one table / A family we are / The Rice Bowl family / Both near and far.

Today I ran/walked 19 kilometres; tomorrow the regular running schedule starts ... all the energy in this great food we've been blessed with has got be to good for something, right?

The things women crave

OK, so maybe I can't really pass the buck and get away with saying "The things women crave", as opposed to the more realistic "The things me, myself and I crave", but somehow the latter just doesn't sound quite so poetic. It's not all that often that I get killer cravings, but blame it on the rainy-reminds-me-of-home day today or an outright painfully boring end-of-the-day FRIDAY meeting that got my mind and stomach wandering something like this ...

(Figure this is my brain talking ...)

"Mmmm. Girl Scout cookies. Chewy tagalogs. Or those peanut butter ones .... mmm. Wonder if the PB ones have been recalled this year with all the peanut butter salmonella hoopla. It's probably about Girl Scout Cookie season; maybe I should call mom and see if she'll send me a box of two. Then again, they probably cost an arm and TWO legs these days ..."

"Or muddy buddies! Gosh, those would be good right about now. Meant to make those when I was home over Christmas, but ate too much and then forgot about it/didn't feel like them anymore. Wonder if I could ever find the cereals to make them here ..."

"Actually, chex mix sounds even better. I saw worcestershire sauce at the grocery store this morning ... same problem as the muddy buddies with finding cereals, though. And don't have a microwave ... making them in the oven sounds like far too much work."

"SNICKERDOODLES!!! Those were always my sister's favorite - she makes them perfectly every time. Gosh, I haven't had those for ages. Yes, that's definitely what needs to be made tonight. Wonder where the heck I'll ever find creme of tartar. My boss in is NY right now, maybe I can get him to bring a bottle back for me. Doesn't solve my immediate problem though - I can't really make them without it ... "

(Never mind that I'm sitting through a three hour meeting about needs assessments, accountability prioritising funding for UN refugee programming. My needs assessment and initial evaluation according to the stakeholders and beneficiaries tells be that about the only thing I'm accountable to at this point is a priority search-and-find mission for creme of tartar.)

Following a frantic search through not one, not two, but FIVE grocery stores, including the fancy-schmancy find-anything-you-can-imagine-and-pay-out-your-nose one without having seen even a granule of the stuff, I finally surrender to my best senses and trudge over to the American store. You think they'd carry creme of tartar, but noooo.

But instead, I see a bag of marshmallows. Hmm, those could translate into rice crispy treats - not an altogether bad alternative. Except that they freakin' box of Rice Krispies costs $10.50. Thank goodness it was the one cereal they were out of stock with, or at this desperate stage I probably would have bought it, just about blowing my food budget for the week.

Totally defeated, I pay $3 for an itsy bitsy Reeces Peanut Butter cup and head home, semi-relieved that there are just some potentially waist damaging cravings that just can't be satisfied from the other side of the world ....

While visions of gluwein danced in their heads

OK, so this is my THIRD attempt at this blog ... it started with an entirely too cheesy description of the weekend put to the lyrics of "the Twelve Days of Christmas", then got converted into a haiku collection of random words describing the trip that no one but us would surely ever understand ... and now all my creative energy is spent. Why is it that the truly exciting life moments are far more difficult to blog about than the mundane sillies?

I guess we'll just have to put it this way ... after more than three and a half years together and averaging, between the two of us, nearly 100 flights per year, we FINALLY checked-in, went through customs and immigration and boarded a plane TOGETHER for a birthday/Christmas weekend away in Hamburg, Germany. What a concept.

As proud new owners of two hilarious books - The Xenophobe's Guide to the Americans and The Xenophobe's Guide to the Swiss (HIGHLY recommended to anyone with a good sense of humour and a decent sense of potentially self-critical reality ... and/or anyone considering getting into a bi-national relationship ...), we cracked them open as soon as the aircraft doors were closed and did nothing but laugh at each other til landing ...

Checked into a super cool art deco hotel with different color rooms and wall mounted toilet plungers (as coat hangers) and rodent traps (magazine holders), we quickly scuttled out into the cold to attack the Christmas markets ... doing little other than be carried along by the crowds through stall after stall of good food and handicrafts. Four curry wursts, twenty plus gluwein with rum/amaretto, BBQ meat sticks, flamenkuchen and half a dozen delicious delicacies later, we oohed and ahhed over the truly amazing carved wood nativity scenes, pouted that we couldn't afford the one we wanted (600CHF!!) and settled on a really beautiful Christmas tree ornament instead before sneaking over for just one more gluwein (after all, we had to complete our set of Santa boot mugs!)

Finish the weekend out with an early Sunday morning rise to meander through the infamous 300 year-old Hamburg fish market with the other 70,000 morning marketeers, a mid-morning harbour tour, a night out to see the broadway musical of The Lion King from some killer seats (an AMAZING show if you ever get the chance to see it ...) and a last minute visit to the excellent Emigration City migration museum... and the return to "reality" couldn't be less appealing.

Any way you slice it

If ever there were something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, it would most definitely be Marcel getting home from his most recent job in Hong Kong a full week earlier than expected ... in the name of his own health perhaps as much as anything else.

In a nutshell, he was blessed with the experience of sucking on more parts of poultry over the course of the last month than most people would care to suck on over a life time, including, for example, the chicken feet (see above), which, in his words, you simply ate by going "scchhlllooooooooooopp" ... delicate toe by delicate toe (though it seems they were kind enough to remove the claws beforehand).

Having thus overcome any potential poultry fears, the "let us give thanks that you've made it home with all your inner gastric tracks in order" celebration was necessarily carried out in accordance with traditional American Thanksgiving requirements, namely a bird - a very large bird. Having succeeded in Thanksgiving challenge #1: locating a turkey in Switzerland and being the gourmet chefs that we are, we successfully roasted up the best 7lb rosemary, basil and thyme bird you ever done had ... (don't mind the bite taken out of the top, that would be courtesy of the western-food-starved traveler).

There were, of course, the obligatory side dish mashed potatoes and stuffing as well, but we threw all apple and pumpkin pie traditions out the window ... all we were really concerned about were the not-so-traditional chewy American chocolate chip cookies -perfectly done ... a real rarity seeing as American brown sugar is not an easy bit to come by and without it they just don't turn out quite the same. Three cheers for a great boss who was generous enough to think to bring some back from his latest trip Stateside.

The real essence of the annual American gorge-and-give-thanks-you-only-have-to-eat-this-much-once-a-year-fest, however, is most certainly in the leftovers. While it took searching in no less than four grocery stores to find the one and only turkey available (meaning we wouldn't have cared WHAT size the thing was ... all in the name of Thanksgiving tradition!!), we really didn't mind that it happened to be a 7 pound beast for the two of us. I mean, really, we all know that Thanksgiving is hardly worth it without the turkey-swiss sandwiches for days on end afterwards. And thus, along with several packs of ever-so-meltable raclette cheese for open-faced sandwiches, we also made one of our all-time fav recipes, Thai pull-apart stirfry ... the only recipe that is distinctly better when made with leftovers.

Chicken feet, roasted bird, stirfried mix-mash ... any way you slice it, give thanks!

Rootbeer, mac'n'cheese and the chemicals we crave

It must go with the territory that among the top ten questions heard by "those crazy people living abroad" comes the "what foods do you miss most from home" ... a question which always makes me smirk, considering I live in Switzerland and not, I dunno, someplace in Asia where the food might actually be substantially different and/or "American" products hard to find. Despite the fact that I haven't yet found a genuine, "American" burger around these parts (they try, but really, they're just setting you up for disappointment), quite frankly, I rarely, rarely find that I miss foods from home, except perhaps if you count the sentimental touch of having that food cooked for you by gourmet momma or BBQ pops. Every once in awhile, though - about every six months, in fact - a craving or two hits ... the sort where you sit there and think "how can I possibly crave this junk, if it doesn't even fall into the category of the top 10 foods I ate when I lived in the States?"

Here are a few examples:

1. Neon orange Kraft mac'n'cheese

2. Rootbeer

3. Gooey, doughy cinnamon rolls

4. Out-of-the-box cupcakes, with out-of-a-jar frosting and sprinkles on top

5. Rocky road icecream

6. S'mores

7. American hamburgers

8. Sourdough bread

10. Cold lemonade ... with pulp

Yup, see what I mean? About the junkiest cravings possible. Seeing as the last time I was home was in January, the six month cravings have kicked in right on time and, combined with the fact that I discovered Marcel had never heard of a rootbeer float, I finally decided a trip to the American Market was in store this weekend. One box of mac'n'cheese, three cans of (Barq's!!) rootbeer, one bag of soon to-be-roasted marshmallows and 20 bucks later (alas, couldn't afford the 15 dollar - no joke!- box of graham crackers to make them into true s'mores ...), I ever-so-ecstatically endulged in my mac'n'cheese + rootbeer while Marcel said little (smart man) and swallowed his down as well...

Of course, the indulgence was subsequently followed by a swollen, aching belly, but the annual cravings have now been satisfied for another six months. Really, though, what chemicals do they put in that stuff that gets you hooked for life??

Ms. Not-So-Domesticate plays what's for dinna' ...

Seeing as my sister has been asking for recommendations on cheap, easy and deliciously satisfying recipes, I figure I might as well share my latest discoveries with anyone else who's looking for something new to try. I realise it's not exactly soup season, per say, but I got this recipe out of a soup book that Marcel brought back for me from Japan (although the recipes have nothing to do with Japanese food ...) and it's super cheap, super easy and downright tasty any time of the year! Let me know what you think if you try it ...

PEANUT and POTATO SOUP

Ingredients:

4TBS oil

1 onion, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 red bell pepper, chopped

9oz potatoes, peeled and diced

2 fresh red chillies, seeded (or a pinch of crushed red peppers)

7oz chopped tomatoes

1 1/4 C unsalted peanuts (or peanut butter)

6 1/2 C beef stock (or beef bouillon water)

Fresh chopped coriander to garnish

1. Heat the oil over low heat. Stir in onion and cook for 5 minutes, until beginning to soften. Add the garlic, pepper, potatos, chillies and tomatoes. Stir well to coat the vegetables evenly in the oil, cover and cook for 5 minutes, until softened.

2. Meanwhile, toast the peanuts (ignore this part if you're using peanut butter) by gently cooking them in a large dry frying pan over medium heat until they are evenly golden.

3. Set 2TBS of the peanuts aside to use as garnish. Transfer the remaining peanuts to a food processor and process until finely ground. Add the vegetable and process again until smooth.

4. Garnish with coriander and remaining peanuts and ... VOILA! Bon appetit!

Wine for whiners

[slideshow id=432345564257209798&w=426&h=320] Apparently Geneva is the third largest wine producing state in Switzerland ... a little known fact we had to put to the test this weekend with the annual "Caves Ouverts" (free) wine tasting extravaganza. We jammed into the little shuttle train (which obviously doesn't see so many riders but for one time a year), not quite sure if we were awake enough to begin drinking the toxins of fermented grapes, but we paid tribute to our youth :-) and held up in good fashion ... first to the true working farm cave with amazing wines, then to the cute posh cave with not so good wine, but full sampler glasses and good (cheap!) food, then on to the open air cave with THE most charismatic wine server. After watching our oddball group intently for a bit to figure out just who speaks what language (apparently it's not normal to switch back and forth between four different languages within one group of friends? Who knew??) he quickly stepped up to the challenge, guessing who was from where and impressing us with perfect English, perfect Spanish, perfect French and, of all things, perfect Swiss German (German is easy enough to come by, but Swiss German is a true oddity). Next up, Alanna orders a taster of the "Evolution" wine, which, thanks to the fact that I was sporting a somewhat military-ish hat, was creatively interprested by the server with a whooping "THE WOMAN WANTS A REVOLUTION!" and an outburst of laughter across the bar ... and the "Evolution" wine was thereafter re-christened as "Revolution" by the rest of the servers for the remainder of the afternoon. "Revolution? You said you'd like to try the Revolution? THE MAN WANTS A REVOLUTION!!" Que viva el vino!

American candyland in the world of expats

Geneva is the epitome of an expat town.  You could easily - very easily - live the perfect anglo life here, speaking only English, eating only American foods, seeing American movies in English and, in fact, easily buying all "American" foods. This is a 360 degree shift from Spain, where the only time the opportunity arose to speak English was when calling home, movies were all terribly dubbed in Spanish, American foods were outrageously expensive if found at all and, in 6 years, I never met another American aside from the seasonal tourists. 

Today's spontaneous visit to a little store ever-so-creatively named "American Market", however, has taken Geneva to a whole 'nother lever on the expat ladder of severity.  Cheesily painted in red, white and blue and with stars and stripes to boot, I had passed the place several times and, while the overall feeling was one of "big cringe, how aweful" the little voice of curiousity in the back of my head won the best of me and I had to know, just what might one find in an "American Market"? 

In the spirit of good 'ol American consumerism the store was right on the ball - you never know you're missing anything until someone sticks it in your face and sells it to you.  Aside from the occassional twinge of a craving for rootbeer or, ironically enough, a bowl of mac'n'cheese, very rarely do I ever crave "American" food.  This is not to say that I do not thoroughly enjoy it when I'm back in the States, nor that I don't absolutely love getting "Mom's best" carepackages with a few of the favorite nummies, but I really truly don't miss the food.  And yet, walking into the American Market was an experience in and of itself. 

Wall-to-wall shelves crammed with "stuff" - much of which you don't even realize you haven't seen in the stores around town until you see it here.  Lucky Charms, Cheerios, rootbeer and Dr. Pepper. Doritos, Betty Crocker cake mixes, brownies, peanut butter cookies, junior mints, York peppermint patties, Reeses peanut butter cups, BBQ sauce ... Campbell's soups. Marshmallows, halloween peeps, Pez, oatmeal, Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn, Gushers, cinnamon gum and, of course, Aunt Jemima's maple syrup.  Mac'n'Cheese - not just one variety, but all of them, Shrek, Scooby, you name it, they got it. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is how the good 'ol U.S. of A. is seen in the rest of the world ... everything microwaveable or easily prepared in 5 minutes or less and stocked with sugar.  Seeing as we somehow have the reputation for all being filthy rich as well, I guess the prices shouldn't have surprised me ... almost $9 for the smallest size JIF peanut butter. 

With all this American "stuff" - and seeing that the common language is English anywhere else in town - one might logically expect the owner to be American and the store language to be English.  And yet, in good ol' international Geneve fashion, my York peppermint patty, Shrek mac'n'cheese and peanut butter (not the $9 one, I might add) were cheerily checked out by an appropriately American-sized French man, politely smiling "bon soiree" as he handed me my bag ... and suggested that next time I might place my order on-line.

Oh, so American, indeed.          

www.americanmarket.ch