Italy Part 1: Emilia-Romagna Adventure

The day we found out that CF would be taking this year long assignment I saw Mr. PZ on GoogleTalk. "Hey, when are you guys going to Italy?" I knew they had been thinking about going. So that was how I told the Z's the big news about our big Z, Zürich. And basically right from the start it was decided that we would all spend some time in Italy together. They picked set their itinerary, and we decided we'd like to see Siena and since they were going to Florence/Firenze for mostly weekend days we decided to revisit one of our favorite cities. Somewhere along the way we realized if CF took one more vacation day off from work we could spend two straight weekends on this trip so he and I decided to see some of the region known as Emilia-Romagna. Returning to Italy was one of the best parts of moving here, the anticipation was killing me as the date grew nearer.

We booked our train tickets to stop in Parma. We figured we'd spend a few hours in the city of ham and cheese before moving on to Bologna, where we had a room booked for three nights. The difference between Switzerland and Italy was clear to me the moment we got off the train. Italy is much more chaotic and rough. It took me by surprise, I think I had started to lump all of Europe into one too closely related image. Living here really makes you recognize the variations, and appreciate what makes each place unique. My first mistake made itself known very quickly, it turns out the reason I could not find info on the lockers at the Parma train station is that there are no lockers at the Parma train station! We went through a range of gut reactions and considered just getting on the next train headed for Bologna. We decided to feel out the situation a bit better and resolved to haul our suitcases around with us for as long as we could bear, and figured we'd just move on a little earlier than planned. I double checked with a hotel right near the train station that we couldn't pay to leave our luggage. "No, because of September Eleven." Interesting. We saw signs directing people to the Tourism Office, some place we rarely ever go, and I decided to ask them if they knew where we might find a locker. "You can leave your bags here." they said, "They're not locked up but we do not charge you, just leave identification while you're gone." Since even after just 20 minutes of dragging our luggage around had put us in a bit of a bad mood we decided to take our chances on this. We kept the laptop and camera equipment, the most anyone was going to get by stealing from us was our cheap American clothing and maybe a Tiffany's necklace.

We were so proud of making the best of our situation in Parma, so it was all the more of a blow to the ego when it turned out that all the restaurants and cafes were closing down between lunch and dinner just as we were finally free to sit down and eat. Very disappointing to see this happening just as we were about to get a meal in the foodie capitol of this foodie nation. We wandered around and saw a good portion of this small city. I suppose we were easing into Italy slowly and gradually this way. The streets seemed so empty! It was sort of odd. Eventually we found a cafe that was staying open between meals so we went inside. We actually had a really nice meal of ravioli and two different salads. And for dessert we went to a gelato place we noticed while wandering, and even on this chilly day in Parma we decided it was time to dive back into one of our favorite Italian habits! Their gelato was absolutely amazing, I had salted caramel and CF had pistachio. Delicious. I'd say our stop in Parma was justified in one small cup of frozen milk! We collected our bags, thanked them profusely for watching them for us, and made our way back to the train station and bought tickets for our short ride to Bologna. As we walked to the station we noticed the shops that were closed before were reopening and the streets had about 5 times as many people in them. Our poor trip to Parma was unfortunately timed right during a very serious siesta.

Our train was delayed, another reminder that we were no longer in Switzerland. But we got to have a nice conversation with a lady waiting with her friend for the same train. CF gave them his space on the bench we were waiting on and she told him that he was a sweetheart. She ended up telling us all about her trip to the US. She had been to so many places I have never been! New Orleans, Boston, the Grand Canyon. I think coming back after a year will make us pay more attention to not taking these places for granted. Our train finally came and everyone hurried on board. It wasn't long before we arrived in Bologna.

We were arriving a little bit earlier than expected so we took care of that by starting off in the wrong direction for a minute or two, but we corrected quickly. After a 15 minute walk we found the door to Múa Bed and Breakfast and got checked in. Our evening was a bit rough, one of our usual "first night in a new city" types of experiences. I wanted to go to a certain restaurant just around the corner from us but we went in right as they opened at 8pm and were told we could not dine without a reservation. So we went down a few doors to the wine bar I noticed on our way to the B&B but CF said he didn't feel like munching on happy hour snacks in a crowded bar. By that point we were so cranky that we just decided to call it a night and start fresh the next day. Going to bed early during one of our adventures seemed quite appealing anyway.

I woke up early the next morning after turning in for the night so early. We were the first ones in our small, 5 room B&B out to breakfast. The woman putting out the food was not the woman who checked us in the evening earlier. We helped ourselves to some great food while she made us our first Italian cappuccini. The best part of breakfast that day, and every morning in Bologna, was the prosciutto and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. In Emilia-Romagna is should come as absolutely no surprise. Turns out our breakfast hostess was Danish, but some reason her accent sounded just like Catherine Zeta-Jones to me.

We spent a lazy Sunday wandering this new city, we knew very well that many places would be closed. However, we encounter plenty of good stuff. We stopped in at a coffee shop and enjoyed 1euro espresso, which after paying 4 or 5chf for crappy coffee in Zürich seemed like an amazing deal. They also had some very tasty cookies and some delicious looking gelato. Had the temperature been as scorching at 11am as it was during our first trip to Italy (in '05) we would have been ready, but we practiced a little restraint just this once. After wandering a bit more, through a park with rather strange statues and past a Spainish funeral procession, I noticed a good number of people going into an osteria. So we decided to grab some lunch. We were led downstairs and seated at a table for four. They were offering a few daily specials and then a wide variety of crostini and panini. We ordered a mixed crostini, a pasta dish and a meat dish. A full Italian meal split between the two of us. There was an interesting beer on the menu but he said it was finito. So CF order our first half liter of red wine. Ah, we're getting back into the swing of things now! I was a little embarrassed when it appeared that we were the first table in the room to get wine. But once our platter of yummy crostini showed up and the wine made them all the more enjoyable I didn't mind so much. The tables filled up, another couple was seated with us. The room was buzzing now! This was a great pick for lunch. By the time our pasta came I noticed most of the room was now drinking wine. We had to wait a bit for our meat dish, I think we got lost in the shuffle, but we made the most of it by ordering just a bit more wine.

After lunch we wandered in the direction of an award winning gelateria. Their dark chocolate gelato would make you weep! We were kind of frozen in our footsteps it was so good. We just stood outside and ate our dessert. CF went back in to use the restroom while I started to read some Bologna tips and recommendations contained in their news clippings posted outside their shop, "Could you grab me a business card while you're back inside?" I asked. I guess I sort of noticed when an alarm started going off, but I was lost in a fog of chocolate heaven. CF came back out of the door and walked right past me. I acted mildly offended, "Reaaaaally?" "Yes, really." He said. He sounded upset. Turns out he thought I was asking if he had set off that alarm I heard. And yes, he reaaaally had! He thought the toilet flushed when you pulled the cord. It turned out to be one of those emergency pulls that we had seen in every bathroom in Italy last time, but didn't think they really worked. Well, this one sure did. Hilariously, he had still grabbed me the business card even as he hung his head in shame and exited and quickly as possible.

We decided to head back for a bit of a siesta (and to shake off any lingering embarrassment). While we were relaxing in the room I heard music being played nearby and I leaned out the window to try to figure out where it was coming from. It turned out to be from the very small gang of musicians playing at the end of the alley where Múa is located. Somehow they spotted me almost right away and pretty soon they came down the alley, playing their 3 or 4 instruments and smiling up at me. CF threw down a coin and decided to take their picture. But right then they were stopped by our downstairs neighbors, it seems there was a baby napping and the music was much too loud. The buskers argued with the weary parents, while CF and I grinned down from above very amused at the scene playing out below.

We went back to a wine bar that we had gone past earlier in the day and enjoyed the happy hour culture. Basically as long as you're buying drinks you get to munch. This place had great jazz music playing and a huge wine list. For once we were just ordering the house red and the focus really was more on individual glasses of wine. I got to try a number of things I'd been curious about, like lambrusco (a fizzy red) and vin santo (somewhere between a dessert wine and port). They were cooking up little pizza bites and crostini to put out with potato chips and olives. We ordered a little extra antipasti plate and basically made a meal out of what we enjoyed there. Afterwards we went to another popular gelato place and had more amazing gelato. The girl behind the counted looked completely burnt out from a night serving rowdy University students. I selected a flavor that was a blend of white chocolate and cherries, I didn't know what flavor to combine with it (any other cream flavor would clash, but I wasn't sure it was quite right to put a fruit sorbet with it) so I asked for her recommendation. CF said that was the only time she smiled the whole time we were in there, and she picked out berry to put with my pick. Yum! Bologna is definitely a good time.

Monday morning we were the first to breakfast once again, this time because we had to get to class. I had signed us up for a one-day course in pasta making at La Vecchia Scuola Bolognese... Old School, baby! CF realized the code he thought he had assigned for our in-room safe was not working, and our train tickets from Florence to Zürich, as well as our passports, were inside. So along with a quick breakfast we got some assistance from the lady with the CZJ accent, she had the master key and we decided to leave the safe open for the rest of our stay. "It's too bad," I teased our breakfast hostess, "I thought we were just going to have to stay for good." She laughed.

We hurried off to class and found a very mixed group of people waiting in front of the school. It was in a mainly residential neighborhood, in a modest but charming little building. Everyone else was chatting in Italian, and I started to wonder if just because they said the class could be offered in English meant that they'd do it even if most of the students were Italian. From across the street we heard cries of "bongiorno!" and the fearless threesome that runs la Veccia Scuola made their grand entrance into our day. They were obviously forces to be reckoned with, beaming huge smiles and carrying armloads of cooking ingredients. This was going to be fun! We all filed inside and the youngest of the three teachers, Stefania, said hello to people and I let her know who I was. "Ah, it is you!" Turns out CF and I were her only students for the day. Her uncle was teaching the longer term but amateur course while her mother taught the regular professional students. We all worked in basically the same space, though the future professional chefs spent most of their time in the actual kitchen while we rolled out
sfoglia (pasta dough) in the prep room.

We measured out flour by weight and made it into a little bowl on our table, we cracked eggs straight into it and that was it, time to mix these two ingredients together. She showed us how to do it, first with a fork while it was sticky and then with our hands as it came together. I gently kneaded, hoping I was doing it right. But it was CF who made her gasp, "Oh NO!" He was smooshing it flat with every push of his palm. Doesn't know his own strength. Part of the appeal of fresh pasta is the little bubbles of air that remain in the dough and make it springy when you eat it. She gave each of our rounds of dough funny little taps trying to show us how mine "sang," as it was full of little holes. CF's? Not so much. We mixed filling that would later go into tortelloni while the dough rested and then it was time to role. She showed us how to get nice round flat sheets of sfoglia just waiting to be cut into any type of pasta. And for the most part we did pretty good at replicating her work. We made one sheet into bow-ties and another was folded over itself several times and then cut into tagliatelle. I liked unrolling the ribbons of pasta as CF did the slicing. Another sheet was cut into squares like the bow-ties started and then we used little gnocchi harps to roll the squares into penne like tubes. All the while the classroom buzzed with the sounds and smells of the kitchen. Stefania and her uncle would goof around while the students were focusing on a task. He'd pick her up and she'd yell for help. Every so often he'd bump into us on purpose and I would giggle. "Oh, sorry!" he'd throw up his hands and say, I couldn't quite tell how his English compared to his niece's.

The most fun we had all day was making the tortelloni and tortellini. We cut squares and piped ricotta and parsley filling into the centers. Apparently I was too modest with the filling, CF did a bit better filling them right. Pasta expands when it cooks at ultimately you want the tortelloni to be half pasta and half filling. At one point the uncle grabbed the pastry bag and went back over a few that I had done. He overloaded one and then playful scolded CF, "Is too much for tortelloni!" Without blinking CF pointed an accusing finger at me and the master pasta maker through his head laughing. He patted CF on the back. I think these two are rather like-minded. Just for the record, I had trouble folding these more filled squares!

The cooking class ended with most all of the students standing around one table filling tiny squares of thinly rolled sfoglia (Stefania rolled this one, we as beginners probably couldn't get it thin enough) and folding them into tortellini. The filling for these was a mix of pork and aged parmigiano. We had been on our feet for the couple of hours since breakfast and CF thought it smelled delicious, along with the scents of the food cooking in the kitchen. "Oh, it smells SO good." He whispered to me. The other students were whispering too, I tried to follow what they were asking Stefania but I just don't know enough Italian. I'm fairly sure I picked up that they wanted to know if we (CF and I) were only here for one day and were we already cooking students. CF said later that he got the overall feeling that they were generally impressed with us showing up and working so hard while we were on "vacation." The Italians don't realize the thrill of this for us!

Finally we all sat down to a huge meal together that we had made together. The pasta that we and the amateur students had made was the heart of the meal. The tagliatelle was served with a beefy ragú, the tortellini were in a broth so we ate them from a bowl with a soup spoon and the tortelloni were smothered in a fresh tomato sauce (the other pasta was dried so we could take it with us). The professional students had made the sauces as well as the braised beef and grilled vegetables that rounded out the meal. There was wine, there was water, there was bread that was barely touched because look at what we had to eat! Other members of Stefania's family had shown up to eat as well. It got to the point where we couldn't tell who was family, who was student, who was employee. This family style meal was just that, we were all family working together for the day and eating together was the perfect way to end this experience. Stefania's mother, who we had barely seen all day as she was ruling over the kitchen, sat across from me and teased CF that he "doesn't eat so much" after he filled his plate for the second or third time.

I left promising Stefania advice for her upcoming trip to Napa (which as I write this I realize has already happened, I hope she had an amazing time). We paid our bill once the class was over and felt that every euro cent was well spent. This class blew any class we've ever taken in the States out of the water. This is the kind of small business that you can't help but want to support. I wish nothing but the absolutely best for this amazing family.

After class we walked to the train station and bought train tickets for the next morning and then went and had a little down time after a long day of cooking. We finally met Uberto, our fabulous host, in person. I had spoken to him on the phone two weeks earlier and had managed to tell him that I spoke very little Italian but could understand a little more which he liked so he'd talk to me in Italian and then I'd respond in English. It worked well until the day's German lesson somehow slipped onto my tongue and a "Ja." came out of my mouth instead of yes or si. My poor scrambled brain!

After a rest we decided that we should take the opportunity to go see the indoor market that had been closed by the time we arrived on Saturday and was closed all day Sunday. Good thing we weren't hungry because the food there was incredible. It seemed like anything you could possibly think of to eat was in there, even imported produce for ethnic cooking. The large warehouse liking building was filled with food stalls, and along the sides were little shops where things like bread, salumi and fresh pasta were sold. It drives me a bit crazy to see stuff like this and not get to buy anything, but we were so glad to just know it's out there in the universe.

We wandered around and enjoyed the lovely evening. Eventually CF needed a restroom and I suggested stopping at a tiny little bar we happened to walk past. We ended up staying for well over an hour. They had the best happy hour spread we had seen, a huge quarter wheel of gorgonzola, little sandwiches, pizza, olives, crackers, and much, much more. They were playing even better music than the night before and the vibe there was so much fun. People were stopping in for a quick drink, a family was gathered around the high table next to ours, the father dancing a little to the music, one of the bartenders kept slipping away to flirt with a girl or two, while the older gentleman behind the counter just kept making drinks and snacks while looking impossibly cool. I could have stayed in that setting all night and been very happy. But all good things come to an end and happy hour must lead into dinner time. I tore myself away and when we left I noticed it was almost 8 and they'd want to be closing.

We wandered around looking for a place for dinner but nothing was going to compare to happy hour. How awesome is it that a tiny little no name bar can basically put Bologna way up high on my list of great cities? I'm sure Bologna was full of tourists, but they were Italian tourists, even the touristy restaurants are going to have good food. The city isn't perfectly clean, it beautiful portico covered walkways are covered in graffiti actually, but I felt safe everywhere we walked. I really got to feel la dolce vita here in this city just big enough to be exciting but small enough so that you could connect with the life in the people around you.

For the third morning in a row we were first to breakfast. This time because we a train to catch. We paid for our room and thanked Uberto's wife and our breakfast hostess (her face had even started resemble Catherine Zeta-Jones to me) for a wonderful stay. "I'm sorry about the tickets." Faux-CZJ teased me back for the joke I made the day before, "We should have kept you here forever." I quite agree.

You only live once! (Warning: Crazy tales of Intoxication)

We had been in Switzerland a month, though it felt like longer and what with the French and Italian we had encountered along with German and Swiss-German we felt like we had been more places as well. But after a month in this country it was finally time to see more of Europe... and what better place to start than Oktoberfest in Munich? The train ride wasn't too long but we had reserved seats just to be sure. We left early Thursday morning, and boy, could you tell we were on the Oktoberfest train! I felt like the only female in sight, and the few others I noticed departed long before Munich. Two guys are boarded with us, one of them in lederhosen, who were very excited about where we were headed. To celebrate they were drinking schnapps and taking pictures of the guy riding across from them who had fallen asleep, as well as with a slightly befuddled train conductor. I could tell this was going to be interesting.

We arrived in Munich, hit an ATM for our first euros, and hopped on a tram towards our hotel. Another very exciting thing about this trip was that we would be meeting up with friends from back home. They had already been planning this trip and we asked if we could join them. AR and ML had lodging booked already so we decided to stay at the same place. Hotel rates during Oktoberfest are so obscene it's best just not to think about it, but the worst part was they didn't have any double rooms left! So we ended up with two single rooms next door to each other. Together our rooms made up the size of one double room, and the narrow beds were really just separated by a wall. We didn't really think about who took which room, but I later realized that if you took away the wall I was still sleeping on "my" side of the bed! Too funny.

M&A were already in Munich, they had arrived the day before from Greece, they were on a bit of an extended vacation. They had already gone to the fest to look for seats in a beer hall, so we hustled as much as possible to meet up with them. We got a text message that they were in the Paulaner tent at table 15, so that's where we headed. Hmmm, no sign of them. CF called A's cellphone. It was hilarious when they realized they were not in the same Paulaner tent because the brass band in our tent stopped playing while the music continued over the phone. We quickly found them once we were in the right structure. What fun to have company from California, well, actually they live in Oregon now, but still... They were only about half way through their first beer, which is plenty of course because we're talking liters! We toasted being at Oktoberfest together and all shared stories of recent travels. Weisswurst, Knödeln, Sauerkraut and one gigantic Brezel were all ordered and enjoyed while the beer seemed to just flow and flow. The beer hall was quite a sight to see, with the band was on a raised stage in the middle of the hall and hundreds of people crowded into tables like ours all around. The kitchen had dozens, if not hundreds, of chickens roasting. The large massen (the glasses that hold a liter of beer) were carried with ease by the bulking biceps and forearms of the servers (both male and female). Everyone was having a great time, there was singing, a little dancing on the table and we were happy to be with friends. At one point our waiter told CF to put out his hand and he tapped out a little snuff which CF was instructed to snort. He did it without hesitation, no surprise there, but what happened next thought was hilarious. We all did it, each of us later expressing shock and a little bit of dismay. M&A were particularly creeped out by the thought of it and CF just wonders why anyone would ever think that following his example was a good idea.

Usually when we reach a new city we're a bit lost and unfocused and end up dining somewhere not up to our expectations which leads to total and utter crankiness in this duo. A few hours into Munich we were quite satisfied and quite tipsy. CF decided he was done and wanted to go take a nap at the hotel, I got up and started walking out with him. That was when I made the enormous mistake of deciding that I'd actually like to stay and I sent him off to the tram and I tried to get back to M&A. First they didn't want to let me back in the hall. As the day wears on it gets harder and eventually impossible to gain entrance unless you have a table reserved (something that is not easy to achieve unless you've been going for years). To make a long story short, I wandered around a while, eventually got in through the side door but my friends were gone, and then decided to walk the long way back to the hotel since I didn't want to waste money on another tram pass (CF had carried away our double pass, A&M had a group pass so I could have gone with them). Well, remember I had just arrived in Munich and had gone straight to the hall, I had never seen a map. I didn't realize there were actually two ways out of the festival area, I followed the tram tracks but just couldn't seem to make any progress. This was because I was going the completely wrong direction! I stubbornly stuck it out for much longer than was reasonable and eventually the sun was going down and it was starting to rain, I swallowed my pride and caught a 20 euro cab ride home. Oktoberfest seems to ignite a fair bit of traffic! Remember when CF almost lost me at the station while we changed trains on our way to Cologne last year? Hmmm, he always trys to ditch me in Germany! The funny thing is because of the early start at Oktoberfest there was time for all this mayhem to go down and still go out to an 8pm dinner!

We agreed on an early start in the morning, it was the German reunification holiday, getting seats would not be easy. We decided to get to the Wiesn well before the doors opened at 10am... or so we thought that's what we were doing. I'm pretty sure you had to be there around 8am, and perhaps the doors opened around 9, by the time we arrived the halls were filled to maximum capacity and we stood outside in the crowds wondering what to try next. Of course this was when the pouring rain began and our little band of soggy "late" comers tried to stick it out for a while but eventually decided to cut our losses and try a beer hall elsewhere in Munich. We scored a table in Augustiner's hall, had some beers and a great lunch. I had venison, which was hearty and tasty and also added another point to my Omnivore's One Hundred score. The hall filled up, the line backed up outside, we were pleased with our decision to hit this place up when we did! We dried out, warmed up and everyone was happy again. The rain had pretty much stopped so we wandered Munich for a bit and somehow came to the conclusion that we should try our luck back at Oktoberfest, hoping to catch a break between the afternoon and evening crowds somehow.

The crowds were huge, there was an amazing amount of people watching opportunities. Some of the best was watching the amusement park rides, I just can't imagine those are a good idea with a belly full of beer! It is slightly easier to find seats in the beer gardens surrounding the halls, you just lose out on a bit of the atmosphere and have much less protection from the elements. When we saw an empty table we decided to make the most of it and have some dessert... an a beer. The sweets were delicious, but damn it was cold. AR was freezing and the cold beverage didn't help. He fell behind the rest of us and when a waiter came to collect our empties he decided to give the straggler a hard time and pounded the empty massen on the table while A chugged as best he could. I tried not to laugh. And A, I'm sorry for telling the story! It was too cold to sit still so we came up with the idea to see how many different gardens we could have a beer in. We moved on to a nearby garden and were looking for seats when I felt the increasingly unfamiliar feeling of warmth start seeping into my blood. Space heaters over head! My eyes went to the people at the table next to me at the moment, there was room for us if they were willing to accept us. The guys I had pegged to share some elbow room with shrugged and I corralled my shivering friends. Our frozen fingers had a hard time holding up the number "four" to show the waiter how many beers to bring. Our table mates laughed a little. But this is Oktoberfest, it wasn't long before we were all chatting and that was how I met David, Phillip, Phil and Chris. All about twenty years old, from a town near Frankfurt, and here they were enjoying their first Oktoberfest as well. New found friends and delicious heating? We settled in for the night.

The conversations had at that table were great. They taught us how to toast properly and shared their thoughts on American politics. The Germans were extremely pro-Obama ever since he spoke in Berlin back in July. "McCain is an asshole!" one of them exclaimed to my surprised and they all cheered and clinked glasses and laughed. I think there was a bit of beer talking. Speaking of beer, this is where the evening becomes fuzzy. M and I took a couple of trips to the ladies room (after being lost alone in Munich the day before I was determined to not be alone for the rest of my time there), the shock of the cold as soon as we left the proximity of our heated haven was incredible, but the wait was amazingly never bad at the restroom. Oktoberfest is clearly dominated by men, and the women who participate are appreciated, and respected, for the most part. We were flirted with in many different languages throughout the night. I was shocked to hear my name being shouted at one point and laughed when it turned out to be Chris from our table who had wandered off for a while. And on another trip back from the restroom, when my brain was particularly foggy, M grabbed my arm and leaned in and said, "You only live once." And she pulled. Later I would piece together that she had somehow tagged along with someone into the tent. We were in! But our husbands were not. Oh dear. We stayed a while, boldly joining someone's table and standing on the benches with them, beers were somehow put in our hands, we tried to sing along with the songs being played. It was almost too crazy to accept it was actually happening, "I've lost my head and it's all because M only lives once!" I thought. Eventually I wimped out and dragged the party queen back outside into the cold with me and we rejoined our guys. I think I was a bit relieved to have the group reunited, and I celebrated with a little more beer. Which is just about where my clear recollection of the night ends!

The next morning I woke up in my silly single bedroom barely remembering how the heck I had even gotten back there. I picked up my camera and looked at the last photo taken. Suddenly I remembered seeing CF taking my picture, and I remembered wondering why he had moved to the next table over. Well, it turns out that it was I who had moved. I had decided to make even more new friends, the young ones were falling asleep at our original table, and I had joined a group of guys who today I could not tell you where they were from or what language they spoke. I couldn't even tell you what they looked like if I hadn't seen their photo on my camera, with me blowing kisses at CF in the middle. Oh my.

Eventually we all rallied and made it out the door. Mercifully, since I couldn't stomach the thought of beer, we decided to see more of Munich and not try to fight for seats on the last Saturday of the Fest. We saw Nymphenburg Castle, had some lunch, and wandered through Munich's fantastic outdoor market. One booth had intriguing bottles of schnapps of different kinds, each one displaying a picture of whatever fruit or plant gave the liquor its essence. CF fixated on one bottle, it had a picture of a bear. "Woah, what is it?" He said, like we would know. He was obviously curious but started to walk away. Then he asked if we could go back, he picked it up again, talked himself out of buying it again and then walked away dismayed, "I'm going to regret not buying that bear liquor for the rest of my life." Were more ridiculous words ever spoken? "Then go get it!" I instructed and realized that A and M were both saying the same thing with me. And so, the bottle was purchased and was carried for the rest of the day. We huddled into a stand selling some tasty cappuccinos and cookies and then took a little subway ride out to the huge and beautiful English Gardens. We had a lovely stroll through the park. At one point the sun was starting to set and the autumn colors were lit gorgeously and a group of ducks had somehow decided to march single file over to the stream and go for a single file swim. So cute! We were all very happy to have covered some great ground in Munich. And now, what to do for our last night? No one could even pretend that they thought we could get in to a beer hall, but we decided to go back over there and check out the food stands that we had mostly been ignoring since arriving.

We ended up having a great meal patched together at different stands. I enjoyed some of my favorite tastes from traveling last year: frites with mayo and apple slices dipped in batter and fried. We all agreed that Oktoberfest was an amazing event. It could never happen like this in the US. Everyone would be drinking out of tiny plastic cups, there would be fights and yet also police force everywhere. I'm not saying that craziness wasn't the overarching impression here, but it somehow was all happening without much of anyone getting hurt and/or angry. A&M's flight home to the States was quite early the next morning so we headed back to the hotel. CF and I had a great time with them in Munich, we hadn't traveled with them before and we definitely found them to be kindred travel spirits. We said our goodbyes that night, by the time we woke up in the morning they were gone.

We packed up our suitcase and headed to the train station. We wanted to do something with our last couple of hours in Munich but didn't want to have to return to the hotel so we left our stuff in a locker. CF was torn between returning to the Wiesn for one last shot at a moment in the halls or going back to the market we had seen the day before. I said I thought I had done Oktoberfest right (in large part due to Ms. M) and didn't need to go back but I was up for anything. Would you believe he actually picked the market? And would you believe we actually didn't think about the fact that it would probably be closed? We wandered a bit more through Old Town Munich and realized it just might be time to visit the Hofbräuhaus. It's packed with tourists, it's what Sudwerk could have been like before the booted everything German from their menu, but everyone knows it and we had been told it was worth seeing. We went in the door around 11 and sat right down at a table. The room smelled like stale beer and the guys at the table across from us had maybe been there all night, one of them was still asleep. We decided to move further into the restaurant and the crowd quickly filled in around us. We were joined by a mixed group of Germans and Americans, one of the German guys had been an exchange student with one of the Americans (also, one of the Germans confirmed my suspicion about the "bear liquor" that CF was cradling in his backpack with a disgusted face after being shown the bottle). There was a band playing songs herd at the tents, spirits were high, I wondered if the waitresses were relieved that Oktoberfest was coming to an end. Our meal was actually very tasty and one of the cheapest we had in Munich. I got into the setting enough to even have part of another beer (my first since Friday). CF had a great time and stated that this experience was great closure to his time here. And when I let him finish my beer he said it now could not be more complete. That sounds like our cue to go get on a train!

The train was absolutely packed, thank goodness we had those seats reserved. People looked tired, a long weekend in Munich had worn us all out. At one point during the ride home a man came down the aisle selling Heineken, the gruff looking German across from me looked and laughed a little, like the mere sight of it hurt him. Further down the car there were English speakers watching little movies taken on digital cameras and the familiar sounds of Oktoberfest filled the air one last time.

Going back to Lucerne...

"Going back" because it happened over a month ago, and also because I had been there before...

Around the time of my distant-but-most-recent post I went to meet the spouses for coffee at Manora, the cafeteria in one of the department stores on Bahnhofstrasse. That was when I made a friend from the States, who blew me away by coming out on this cold day with her 11 day old baby! We were chatting and figured out that we were in the same neighborhood and decided to try to have dinner sometime. The very next morning she emailed me saying they had a babysitter (for their older two kids) lined up and could we go out that night! So that was how we ended up going out on a Friday night for some surprisingly good Italian food just a block and a half down from our apartment. Turns out her husband and CF had sort of known each other back in California before they moved to Switzerland. We had a nice time talking to them about their time living in Zürich and their advice to us was travel, travel, travel. "On the weekend you'll think it's time to sit back and relax, no! Get your butt to the train station early, Friday if possible and GO!" We shared some stories of our trip to Fribourg and Gruyeres and assured him that we had lots of trips planned. They were impressed with what we had planned! We were all booked to go to Oktoberfest in Munich, so the subject turned to beer. And that led to me going out with the two guys (mom had to go home when the babysitter was due to leave) to two interesting pubs. CF's pick was a place that makes their own beer. It was up the hill from us, closer to the University, and while the beer didn't blow me away it was at least more interesting than the Swiss brews I'd sampled before this. Then MM took us back down the hill to the Bonny Prince Pub. It's a long, skinny, smoky place boasting a jukebox full of heavy metal tunes and more Scottish beers than you've ever heard of. We were here to try Old Engine Oil. Dark and licoricey, I think it surprised MM that I liked it so much. Eventually we all stumbled back up our hill, and as I went to sleep I wondered what this late night would do to our weekend plans... wait, what were our plans again?

Oh, that's right... I wanted to take CF to Lucerne. You might recall I took a day trip here last fall but I thought CF should see it. When I visited alone it was a cold, misty and downright moody day. I thought it suited the setting, especially for viewing the Lion Monument, Löwendenkmal, which was the most moving part of my day. This time the sun was shining, the sky was blue, there was a wedding getting out of the church, the market looked splendid (okay fine, they were packing up around the time we got there, the late night led to a later train than planned)... and about a million other people had also decided it was a good day to visit Lucerne! Ugh. The streets were packed so wandering through the Medieval old town didn't have the same appeal. So we wandered over to the old city wall. You know, the one I climbed last year and was then scared out of my mind while trying to climb down? Well somehow I found myself up that stupid wall again, AND climbed that tower I avoided last time. Yes, the view was very nice, but I was practically shaking by the time I had slowly descended back down all those stupid stairs!

We had a nice lunch at a great place called Wirtshaus Taube. The main dish I ordered actually reminded me a lot of my lunch in the same city a year earlier. I remember being pleased with the appearance of vegetables at the time but then when we decided to come here for the year I remember thinking that if that tiny serving of starchy veggies was worth getting happy over that I was in for disaster. It certainly has been easier to eat healthy in this country while mainly shopping and cooking for myself. After lunch we took a nice stroll by the Lake; we saw plenty of boats out on the water, men playing bocce ball, locals encountering friends out enjoying a lovely Saturday. Lucerne is quite the living, breathing city, and I could barely tell last year. This visit was very different than the last! Eventually I made CF go up to the Lion Monument with me. The pond in front of it was drained for some repair work, gobs of people (most of them one large tour group) swarmed around the park... and I had already blown it and told him how this work of art had moved me to tears before so there were expectations in place. It just wasn't the same! (However, armed with my new telephoto lens I got some better shots of the haunting lion.)

I was mildly frustrated with the decision to come to Lucerne. It's close to Zürich so it will make a good day trip when we have visitors, but I myself would like to leave it misty and moody in my memories from last year. At the same time this is when I told myself that a lot of stuff is going to happen this year, and it can't all be perfect. I decided to be a little more mindful of planning weekends in the future but that this one was all right for now.

We wandered a bit longer, crossed the lovely wooden bridges and even did a little watch pricing for a friend. Eventually we called it a day and decided to catch a train home. We had to scramble a bit to find seats, and accidentally ended up in seats that were reserved for riders boarding in Bern. We rode a little ways not quite sure of what to do. Across the aisle from us two Spanish speaking girls were counting to ten in English for their father, over, and over, and over again. I think this was karma seeing how CF loves to count in languages he's learning and I'm sure he's inflicted native speakers with this annoyance at one point or another. Passengers started to prepare to exit as we approached Bern. We quickly swiped some forward-facing, un-reserved seats and the rest of the trip home was rather uneventful.

At this point I can't seem to remember what we did the next day. It was Sunday so everything around the city would have been pretty much closed. Hmmm. Well, anyway, I hope we rested up while we could, it was the last weekend day we would spend in Zürich for quite some time!

How do you say "foodie" in Swiss-German?

Hooray! Our air freight finally arrived yesterday. CF sent a stern email on Sunday evening and suddenly they were ready to deliver. Hmmmm. Well, we're just going to appreciate that we have more of our stuff here now. Including our hiking shoes and my trenchcoat and great rain jacket that sort of matches CF's. Ummm, I'm ready for my cheese hike now! Drat!

We also got some of our kitchen stuff. A fully stocked kitchen was left in place by our gracious hosts from whom we are subletting, but we still brought plenty of our stuff so we can use familiar tools and also spare their belongings some of a year's worth of wear. It's going to be a bit tricky to figure out where everything goes and I almost don't want to deal with it until the bigger shipment arrives, which may or may not be next week. I'm not getting my hopes up again!

I have to say, I haven't quite gotten the hang of our kitchen. The fridge is small, the foods less processed... you can't buy too much or it's just going to go bad. But at the same time I feel like I am constantly buying groceries. I think I will learn to balance this better as time goes on. This awkward stage, along with the fact that the foods we've been eating are just different from the routine things I tended to buy at home, has led me to have some weird moments of not feeling satisfied by anything I eat. It's weird, I can't explain it. Maybe it's again related to not feeling like I'm traveling but not feeling like I'm at home either? It's starting to get better though.

I've been cooking up a storm lately. We've been enjoying plenty of fresh produce, much of it is Swiss but there are also items from Italy and Spain. There's basil growing on our balcony. The cheese is all fantastic whether it comes from the market or the cheese counter or the plain cheese section of the grocery store. Dried and cured meats are very popular, prosciutto everywhere, I love it. I've been trying to use the ingredients left behind, as well as experimenting with items rounded up from my many grocery shopping trips. Last week I faked my way through stuff pasta, I found the tubes in our pantry. I cooked up ground beef, stirred in ricotta, stuffed it in the tubes, drenched it all in sauce and covered it in shredded mozzarella... didn't know what I was doing but how could I really go wrong? This week I faked my way through lasagna, which was a tiny bit more tricky. I browned the meat, I broiled eggplant that needed using, I sauteed shallots and spinach in another pan, decided to combine the spinach and meat as well as the ricotta, then needed to season the crushed tomatoes I was using as sauce so washed the little pan I had cooked the beef in and got that going, didn't really have the right spices so that was frustrating (I've since purchased crushed red pepper, garlic powder and onion powder), then realized I couldn't read the pasta box and wasn't sure these were no-boil but took a chance (whew, they were!), settled on putting down a thin layer of sauce, a layer of noodles, the eggplant, the meat/cheese/veggie mixture, a second layer of noodles, the rest of the sauce and then shredded mozzarella, I baked it about as long as the stuffed pasta (that box had included English so I knew I could stuff the dried tubes)... and somehow after all this madness I actually got a pretty good lasagna, it just had a little too much black pepper in the sauce. Whew!

Also in the same kitchen and sort of at the same time, I made a dessert to bake. I got the idea over at Geeks in Zürich. Italian Prune Plums had seemed sort of familiar, turns out we used to have a tree when I was little, and they're all over the place right now. Zwetschgen, as they are known here, are smaller than other plums and pit very easily. I followed the same recipe as Mama Geek, although I had no measuring cups and I didn't know if what I had in the pantry was brown sugar or something else but it tasted pretty close. You just cut up the plums and sugar them a little. Mix ground walnuts, flour, sugar and cinnamon (it asked for cardamom but I don't have any here) with some melted butter, and blend it with a fork. Pour the mix on top of the fruit and bake it for most of an hour. I think I used too much of the dry ingredients and therefore not quite enough butter, the topping didn't look as pretty as it could have. But man, was it delicious! CF has maybe never been more impressed with something I've cooked. We happened to have a little vanilla ice cream to have with it. Cooking by the seat of my pants seems to be working out just fine.

Where's the Cheese?

Whoops. So much for "not much else." The breakfast buffet proved too much for us to resist and we ate a bit more than we had intended. There were cheeses, pastries, salami and dried fruits. Delicious! Washed down with a good dose of coffee and I was much fuller then intended but quite a happy girl. We packed up and checked out, leaving our suitcase at the front desk. "Do you need an umbrella?" the concierge asked. We assured him we had two small ones and would be fine. "Sorry, you didn't get lucky with the weather but... it's Switzerland." "Well, we're leaving in Zürich for the year, so..." "Ahh, so you understand."

Today's adventure: Cheese. Gruyere to be exact. We took a half-hour bus ride to Bulle, and a cute little train took us to Pringy where we visited the La Maison du Gruyère. If we had our hiking shoes we could have done a two hour or so walk to chalets in the area where we could have probably had some amazing cheese. But in our less-than-suficient city shoes we couldn't quite make the hike, so we settled for this popular spot that was right across from the train statin. CF observed that we were at a tourist destination, but we were rather in the middle of nowhere and it wasn't exactly straight forward how to get there. The cheese making demonstration was in process so we paid our 7chf admission fees and hurried upstairs. It was quite exciting to see the huge vat of milk emptying while the cheese molds were filling and the liquids streamed out the bottom. Lots of action - the windows steamed up with a cheesy fog. We snacked on the cheese samples that came with admission, three pieces of Gruyere, each aged a different length of time. 6, 8, 10 months is all well and good, but I had purchased 12 month or older from the market at the train station last week. Still, it was a tasty little cheese snack. The vat was empty, the liquids all drained out, the two cheese makers went to work labeling the wheels, pulling the extra frame out of the way now that only solids remained, and putting equipment in place for the pressurizing stage. The cheese spends 16 hours like this and then 20 hours in a salt bath before it goes to the aging cellar.

CF likes to fantasize that one day he'll become an artisanal cheese maker. He loved seeing this process, I could just see the thoughts set in motion by this demonstration. I asked him if he'll be selling his cheese at a card table at a little farmers market. He liked the idea. We went and looked at the cellar and watched their high-tech robot take wheels out of their place, flip them and slide them back in. Sooooo much cheese in this place. How nice to have a little robotic help in taking care of it.

Afterwards we headed up the hill to the actual town of Gruyéres. The views were ridiculously fantastic. as we climbed higher and higher. CF hasn't been in much of Switzerland outside of Zürich, so he was really blown away. It was about 11am and the town was quiet besides a few other wanderers and shop keepers just setting up for the day. We went to one edge of town and looked out over the countryside. It was here that I realized we were surrounded by the soft sound of cowbells. Livestock in every direction couldn't help but disclose their location. You might not think of cowbell ringing as peaceful but at this volumn it was the perfect soundtrack to the sights.

We climbed up around the back side of Gruyéres to the castle, or Chateau as the case may be. It felt vaguely like some of the places we visited in Ireland but with fewer people around. We decided against paying to go inside but enjoyed the highest vantage on the area yet. We soon walked past a creepy looking sculpture and I realized we were walking past the HR Giger Museum and the creature depicted was some sort of alien. Giger won the Best Visual Effects Oscar for Alien and is quite the sci-fi designer. Across the walkway from the museum I saw people going into a bar, and when I looked in the window I saw the entire interior was Giger-esque. Super creepy... and slightly cheesy (no pun intended), "I kind of want to go in!" CF admitted. I had noticed their sign out front advertising their coffee and meringues which were things I wanted to be sure to have here so I agreed to go. Inside it seemed there were a couple of locals (even this tiny little town has its locals) at the bar and two friendly bartenders. We settled in, hanging jackets on the bones of our throne like chairs (the ones at the bar rotated but not ours). I ordered coffee with the famous Gruyéres double cream and CF asked for something similar. But then we observed "Alien Coffee" on the front of the meny and he decided to be silly and bold and went to the bar to change his order. The platter that was brought to him was quite impressive. A huge cup of very good coffee, two shots of the delicious double cream, 3 perfect little Gruyéres meringues, a glass of a Gruyéres liqueur (which was optional but he went for it), and a tea bisquit (just to push it over the top). He shared very nicely, lucky for me. The double cream was amazing; it made for some of the best coffee I've had since arriving in Switzerland. A fantastic treat/snack, in a very unusual setting. I was rather amused when it sunk in that this spine-decor bar was playing punk music. "I am the antichrist! I am the antichrist!" The Sex Pistols proclaimed making this experience all the weirder. CF said, "You have to take some pictures, no one will understand this if we just try to tell them about it." I agreed and got out the big camera, which I had tucked away when the mist had turned a little too much to rain outside. I don't think we'd have been so amused by this place if we were at an amusement park like it almost felt... but here it seemed so bizarre that we just laughed and enjoyed warming up for a while. Through the windows I noticed that more people were starting to stream through the tiny street, it appears we were just ahead of the "rush."

There wasn't too much more of the town to see. We did a little window shopping and considered, just for a second, buying a Heidi costume for The Niece. Now, when I had told Ms. D where we were going to end up for the weekend the first thing she mentioned was onion soup. Of course, Gruyere is the cheese melted on top! I swear I could smell it as lunchtime came around. Gruyéres is little more than one long town square, we zigzagged back and forth checking each restaurants' menu for the soup... no luck! Couldn't believe it. Maybe it's a winter thing like fondue? Well, here they were serving fondue year round. We settled for a fresh made ham and cheese crepe. I was surprised they offered Gruyere or Chevre, Chevre was tempting but I couldn't see ordering that in this very town! We purchased some meringues to take home and decided to head back down the hill.

CF noticed there was onion soup on the menu at the restaurant inside La Maison (we'd gone inside so I could borrow the restroom), and there wouldn't be a train for half an hour. When the steaming bowls were brought to our table we couldn't believe our eyes. A mere few shreds of the cheese they were making in this very building were sprinkled on the squares of bread floating on top! "Hey, where's the cheese?!?!" CF gave his homage to Clara Peller. Obviously we weren't going to get the experience we were after. But again: cold day, warm food, good thing. We hurried our server a bit to pay our bill and scrambled off to the train station. I made the lame comment that everything had worked out so well with our weekend despite little to no planning. So it shouldn't come as any surprise that once again my smugness got shoved back in my face... the hourly train skipped this hour on Sundays. Ugh. We wandered around a bit but then just settled in at the station and played with our iPhones. Eventually we got a cute little train back to Bulle and the bus back to Fribourg.

If we had hustled we could have gotten our bags from the hotel and made the next direct train to Zürich. However, since the weather was much better than the previous day and I was armed and ready with my better camera I asked if we could go for another walk in Old Town. We had covered most of the streets already but noticed some interesting details which we had missed from under umbrellas the day before. The city was pretty empty, most of the businesses closed. I forgot to mention in my previous post that I had seen a family emerging from one of the great Medieval buildings, inside I could briefly see a foyer and stairs leading off to divvied up spaces. How incredible to live in a building with such history! Even the Thai restaurant where we had dined was up a narrow and twisted flight of stairs with the bar that seemed practically not related to it at the entrance level.The restrooms had been placed into the odd, almost cave-like spaces between the two levels. Very cool modern uses of historical structures and spaces.

We collected our bags after our walk and head once again to the train station. There were a lot of people waiting with us and it was a mad dash to get a seat. After we pulled away from Fribourg I realized we were in seats that were reserved for someone from Bern to Zürich. The train was packed with families. Sunday is a popular day for travel since businesses are closed. It's nice to see families out and about together but it made for quite a lot of noise and chaos. Across the aisle two Spanish speaking young girls were having their father teach them to count from 1 to 10 in English. They did it over and over again. I thought of CF learning to count in French, something he liked to do while in Belgium last year, and wondered if any French speakers ever had to listen to him practicing. A mild sort of karma. When the train was about to reach Bern we quickly snagged seats that were emptied by people departing there so we got to ride the rest of the way home facing forward and didn't have to change trains at all.

The train station was almost as packed as the train. We found the Marinello in the HB was open and had fresh bread so we selected a pretty loaf. We are sampling our way through different breads. Turned out this one is basically pretzel bread. A funny discovery but it was good. We sauteed up some of the massive amounts of spinach CF had bought at the farmers market having confused one kilo for one pound, and had a little cheese and salami, also from the market. I melted some chocolate and coated some of the meringues with it (a way of serving them that some of the restaurants might have done but we didn't end up dining in Gruyéres besides the bar). CF dubbed them "sugar bombs." We curled up on the couch and purchased and watched another episode of No Reservations. The Berlin episode! Germany got us thinking about going to Munich next month, one of the first things we planned once we knew we'd be here. And I think we were both feeling much more geared up for that adventure now that we had completed such a successful last minute getaway weekend.

Sorry for rambling... it takes me a while to go through all the memories but it's actually faster than trying to edit them down! I probably won't manage to journal everything we do this year, but I thought I could start out with a strong effort! Thanks for reading!

The storm is brewing...

The other night we made a lovely meal of veggies with a few chili flakes and shredded Parmesan, along with cannellini beans cooked up with some turkey bacon, sun-dried tomatoes and fresh parsley. Delicious and simply, only made better by opening a bottle of the Prime Cabernet that our friend TH made!

I suppose you could call this the calm before the storm. It's not exactly calm but it probably could be considered such compared to the way things will soon be. CF talked to the relocation company today and it sounds like someone will be out on Friday to start to make a plan for our stuff and our shipping container might be packed in as little as a week from now! Yikes! Right now I am itching to throw all our kitchen stuff in there to save room/weight in the air freight for clothes so I don't have to take a bunch of checked luggage with me and have to get it from the airport to the city when arriving. But then we'd have to live here for a month without kitchen stuff. Hmmmm...

I'm too distracted to be too disappointed but there's just about zero television shows I am watching right now. We have a new one though, No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain. I had thought it was a show about eating crazy stuff, and yeah, he does brave a number of things I don't know if I'd be able to stomach. But please note, this is a show on the Travel Channel, not the Food Network. It's about the travel, it's about the place. Watching many episodes so closely together (they're rerunning past seasons as the new one begins) it is easy to notice his repeated themes. One of them I just love, that the quickest way to the heart of a place is in its markets. Yeah, baby! I highly recommend his Paris episode which features some amusing editing while he fights of an absinthe trip in the hotel room where Oscar Wilde died. I was also amused when he pinned a sign over his head while he took a little power nap on an Italian airport floor that read: "Be a traveler, not a tourist." Naive little me, I thought I had improvised the distinction when I protested to KZ somewhere in last fall's adventure that I didn't want to do touristy things. "But you ARE a tourist!" "No... I'm a... traveler!" Oh well, I guess I'm not as brilliant as I thought.

I've made a decision that I will leave the country weighing less than 200 pounds. I've been hanging out just above for far too long. So I'm focusing on portion control and stepping up the running. I ran 5.5mph for my whole half an hour today! That's my best speed yet and I hadn't even managed to do a full 5.3mph before this. Last Friday when I bought jeans at Nordstrom's huge Anniversary Sale I got them from the regular sizes... sure they're 16's and a generously cut brand, and stretch... but hey, it's a mission accomplished. Earlier that day I dropped my platinum engagement ring to finally be resized by a jeweler recommended by Ms. KS. I was shocked to hear I had lost another ring size since resizing my white gold band last year. My ring is going from a 9.25 to a 7.

Jeans were the first purchase I made that day, but it sure wasn't the last. I proceeded to lose my mind at this damn sale. I bought the shoppingsmycardio.com recommended 8ft of cashmere for $65, the black crystal necklace that goes with the earrings I bought at the end of last year, tights, a sweater, a raincoat and a gorgeous handbag. I'd say it's my first respectable purse, but Ms. SMC would probably disagree, but she' d do it nicely. Still, it's nice, soft leather and the perfect size for schlepping an understandable amount of stuff around the city, including my camera when I want to make it disappear more discreetly than a camera case can be. Plus it has nice handles that can go over an arm or shoulder AND a nice long strap for looping around a whole shoulder. Love it. I bought all this thinking I'd take some of it back once the buyer's remorse set in. But it didn't happen. I can't argue against any of this stuff and CF agrees. Thank goodness for relocation bonuses! I ended up getting yet another coat this weekend when we went to another store and CF was taking advantage of the sale in the men's department. This one is wool and super cute. Hopefully this California girl is set to become a Swiss Miss now!

Salty Sweet Gal

Those of you who also keep an eye on my Flickr photostream probably saw this coming...

I believe I discovered the deliciousness of sweet and salty combined in a large bag of kettle korn at the Davis Farmers Market, many years ago. The next big step was the olive oil gelato at Otto in NYC. Drizzled with a little more olive oil and sprinkled with just a touch of sea salt, it was so good that it led me to the awful habit of doing the same with almost any flavor of ice cream at home. But I think the ultimate sweet and salty dessert is the classic French decadence, salted butter caramel. I can't quite remember when I first tried it, but it's a favorite of mine to order at specialty chocolate shops like CocoaBella at the San Francisco Shopping Center, and I tried a number of things with this flavor while in France last fall. I'm not sure if I could pick a favorite between the macaroon at Pierre Hermé and the ice cream Berthillon.

Much like the scones, I've had it in the back of my mind for a while to try to make some caramels of my own. So when I went out for scone ingredients I also picked up caramel supplies, including a candy thermometer. It was actually while searching for caramel recipes that I discovered smittenkitchen.com, my new favorite food blog that also inspired me to take photos while cooking. I decided to try Deb's chocolate salted caramels recipe from her "salty and sublime" post, as well as epicurious.com's more classic fleur de sel caramels. So one night when CF was out late with a friend, I decided to make some candy.

The process was easy enough. Basically you prep the cream in one way or another, either melting and mixing the chocolate into it or just butter and sea salt. Then you get sugar, light corn syrup and a tiny bit of water boiling. The sugar starts to caramelize and turn a deep golden color, and then you add the cream. The reaction of bringing the two together is quite impressive, it bubbles and steams wildly! Then you keep it on the heat until it reaches a certain temperature. Aha, there's the problem. Getting the temp right was very tricky. The tip of the thermometer has to be in the mixture far enough, but not too close to the bottom of the pot. And then you want to be stirring it but the thermometer is in the way. And if you stir too much, the temp will never climb to where you need it to be. Add to this the fact that I had my burner on much lower than I would eventually realize works best, well, the first batch didn't come out so good. I think I was overcompensating for the warnings from Deb at smittenkitchen.com. Her first batch came out too soft because she didn't heat it to high enough a temp. I made sure mine hit the right temperature, but uh oh, was it actually still climbing? Once I got it poured into a pan I figured out pretty quickly that it was solidifying, I managed to cut it up into little pieces, but I ended up with candy that reminded me of those Sees Candy chocolate pops. Boo!

I also burnt my hand on the tip of the candy thermometer when I put it down, oddly enough, metal objects that were in boiling liquids end up very hot! And my response to the burn splashed a little of the hot stick chocolate on my hand as well Ouch! I wasn't quite sure how I felt about candy making at that point. I had wasted the chocolate, but I had supplies to try the other recipe. I reread the recipes and figured out that I had cooked the first batch way too long, and decided to try it at a higher temperature than suggested. This batch went much better! It still went a little on the solid side, but I was feeling all right about my abilities at that point.

CF still wasn't home, and thanks to the wonders of his wireless internet card (it's like a cellphone connection for your laptop) I had a little chat with him while he rode home on BART. I decided with the remaining cream I had I would try one more batch of the plain caramels. I turned up the heat even higher, cooked it all even faster... and they came out just right. Yes!

After a trip to the store to replenish supplies I was able to try the chocolate caramel recipe once again (a day or two later). It's a little trickier than the other recipe still, but I put what I had learned to use and things went rather smoothly. In this recipe the butter and sea salt are added at the last minute. The first time I tried it my hard candies ended up sort of greasy, I thought the butter didn't get incorporated because I had solidified the mixture too much already. But it turns out it's just hard to get it stirred in no matter what. So I stirred that pot with all my might and managed to get it to come together. I think I was a little overanxious on the temp though, I didn't get these quite hot enough, so they're a little soft. The chocolate recipe is extremely decadent. It's sugar, cream, chocolate, butter and salt... so what did I expect? I did heed another one of Deb's warning and did not put the salt on the outside of the caramel. The salt getting added right as the end led to flakes of salt crunching as you eat the caramels. Salt lovers will enjoy it, for some people it might just be too much of a good thing.

Cutting my 8"x8" pans of caramels down into bite sized pieces and wrapping each one individually (otherwise they tried to reattach themselves to one another) took a good amount of time as well. One of the most annoying things was trying to get nice squares of waxed paper off the roll, I'm guessing there are pre-cut wrappers out there somewhere, I'll track those down before I try this again. I ended up taking three batches of salted caramels on our annual camping trip. Thank goodness I had twenty friends or so to help eat all these candies! Thanks guinea pigs!

Just what I wanted.

Life has been nothing if not interesting lately, the initial shock and excitement of our future European adventure has led to tantalizing thoughts but frustration with so much to plan and figure out. I gave notice at work but I think the end of the month feels so far away that nothing too much changed. I felt stuck between the instinct to not take on anything new, and knowing that there was still plenty of time for most projects. I gave myself a week to just sort of "be" without expecting too much from myself.

Oddly enough, this week of just being led right up to my birthday. I have to say, I have never managed to think so little about my birthday. This year though, I was a little distracted. Yet, late last week the birthday wishes started pouring in. Cards, text messages, phone calls, emails, and Facebook wall posts all found their way to me. It was nice to have other people remind me for once. CF and I hadn't had a day at home together in, well, a month or more. So all I wanted for my birthday was to spend a day together, doing as little as possible. Considering it was our one free day together, we had unfortunately planned to work on remodeling our downstairs bathroom, yet due to the fact that I was almost done with my job CF announced that his birthday gift to me was that we didn't have to do that! So we slept in a bit, and then got ready for the Farmers' Market. We decided to get breakfast from our favorite bakery, Brioche, we had always wanted to get more than just our one loaf of wheat bread and now we had the perfect excuse!

This bakery always has a crowd and a wait, so we headed straight there. The line was longer than ever, we were getting there later in the morning and the weather was lovely. As we waited a rather posh looking older woman walked by, presumably heading towards the end of the line. "Ohhh, I don't want to be in this line!" she protested and then turned around and walked away. I waited a second but then said pretty loudly, "Uhh, yeah, you do!" but I don't think she heard me. Brioche is totally worth waiting for, even if it's just for a loaf of wheat bread. Besides, hadn't she ever heard to follow the crowds at farmers markets? They had never let me down. Soon enough it was our turn to order, a slice of quiche and a croissant, please! "Un crossiant?" The man behind the bread asked us. You can tell we've been together a long time because later we both admitted the same snarky thought went through our heads, we thought the man was being snooty with his French pronunciation. But once he counted our change back to us in French we realized that actually we had just purchased a pastry from a real Frenchman. We headed over to the other side of the market, we needed some coffee to complete our breakfast. Along the way I suddenly bubbled over with giddiness: "Think of all the markets we'll go to next year!!!" We had a little bit of trouble finding a good place to eat, we ended up crouching on a curb a little bit out of the way, but it didn't make this birthday breakfast any less perfect. I think that was the best croissant I've ever had in the States. We took home lots of great looking produce. For lunch we had our first caprese salad of the year, and grilled prosciutto wrapped asparagus. Delicious! We did very little else the rest of the day.