Schnee

We woke up to surprise snow on Wednesday morning. It wasn't much - no more than five centimeters - but it was enough to make everything more beautiful. Schönes Wochenende!

Going places I've never been

I am often not good at anticipating which things I will like or want to do and which I won't. For example, had you asked me a year and a half ago if I would ever want to live in Germany I would have said no. (I stand corrected.) Had you asked me two years ago if I was likely to get married I would have said no. (Ditto on being corrected.) And had you asked me three years ago if I wanted to try cabbage pie...well, you get the picture. But the good thing about thinking you won't like something is that it's all the more enjoyable when it turns out to be seriously good.


Cabbage pie is good. My sister learned the recipe from one of her college roommates and passed it on to me. Her roommate is one of those people who can make a pie crust by just dumping the ingredients in a bowl - no measuring required. While I would love to be this comfortable making pie crusts, it isn't necessary to make her cabbage pie. This pie isn't showy - it's not going to complain if the crust looks less than perfect. All you need aside from the crust is some fresh cabbage (I've used savoy and green, but I bet red would work), olive oil, salt and pepper. There are endless variations to what you can add to the cabbage - hard boiled eggs, potatoes, mushrooms, fresh herbs, or nothing at all. It's all good. My last variation had savoy cabbage, mushrooms and thyme, and it echoed the flavors of my mom's awesome meat pie. It was also more of a galette than a pie, as you can see from the photo, because I was feeling lazy and only wanted to make one crust. The only problem was that the bits of cabbage sticking out got quite brown. The crispy browned bits were tasty but they were edging rather close to burnt, so it's something to watch.

So - for those of you who think you won't like cabbage pie, I urge you to try it once. If you don't like it at least cabbage is cheap and healthy, and if you do - well, thank goodness for surprises (and college roommates).


Cabbage Pie

Pastry for a double-crusted pie (homemade, store-bought, whatever)

For the filling:
1/2 head savoy or green cabbage, thinly sliced (about 1 lb)
olive oil
salt
pepper

Preheat oven to 375 F/ 190 C. Make sure your crusts are prepped (rolled out, unwrapped, etc.), and put the bottom crust in a standard pie plate, letting the excess crust overhang the dish. (Sarah's roommate always did this in a 9x13" pan, but I don't know how much pastry that requires. Feel free to experiment.) Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat, and add a good splash of olive oil to the pan. Add the sliced cabbage, stirring to coat it all in oil and cook until it wilts. Season with salt and pepper and let cool slightly. Add the cabbage to the pie crust, then place the second round of dough on top. Crimp the edges of the crust to seal, and trim excess dough. Cut a few steam vents in the top and bake for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is nice and brown. Let cool for about 5 minutes before cutting.

Back to life

We are finally settled back into life in Hamburg after our trip, and I must say it's nice to be back. I was curious to see how we fared on our first foray back "home." I was afraid I would be so happy to be someplace familiar that I would dread returning to Hamburg where we don't know many people and which we're really only beginning to understand.

It's confusing, I tell you. Hamburg definitely started to feel like home this fall, at least for me. Zoli was on the boat longer than he was continuously in Hamburg, but even he started to settle in...right before we got on an airplane and *poof* were back in a country where we can understand the telemarketers and conversations on the subway, where the stores are open on Sundays and where I can buy real vanilla extract in any grocery store. I was worried that being back in the US would make me miss those things, and how easy everything is when you speak the language and understand how the system works.

On our flights to the states we were given some evidence of how far we've progressed in the few months we've been here. Since we were flying Swiss Air, all the announcements were in German, French and English and it was gratifying to realize how much German we understand now compared with when we left the US in September. We were also mysteriously upgraded to business class for the transatlantic portion of our flight, which made the trip back that much nicer.

The most confusing/amusing part of the trip was when one of the flight attendants decided that French was my preferred language, forcing me to resuscitate my very paltry French. It made my brain hurt.

One of the first things I noticed when we arrived in the US was how loud it was - not that Hamburg is quiet, but it's easy to tune out stray conversations when you only have a slight chance of understanding them. At the baggage claim in Logan I was silently fuming at a group of college students home from their year abroad in Italy because they were having an annoying conversation that I didn't want to hear. (Apparently being upgraded doesn't make me less testy after a long flight.)


As for the rest of our trip, we were lucky to get all the good parts of snow (gorgeousness) with none of the bad parts (travel delays). Given that we stayed in five different places up and down the eastern seaboard and we traveled over 1000 miles while in the US we were very lucky. Every place we visited involved excellent company, delicious food and lots of fun. I had Rouladen and Klöse for the first time at our Christmas Eve dinner (a German in attendance declared it the most traditional German Christmas meal she'd ever had). At other meals we had fabulous Boeuf Bourguignon and lobster hand-carried from Maine, as well as delicious Chinese dumplings, chocolate-dipped peanut butter balls, fondue (made with Appenzeller and Beaufort cheeses)...and I'm sure there's more that I can't remember. All in all it was a great trip.


But ultimately I was very happy, itching even, to come back to Hamburg. I wasn't sure it would feel like we were actually coming home since we were leaving so much that is more familiar, but it did and I was pleased.

Things are a little different now as last week I started in the lab full time, so I don't have as much time to wander around and explore the city or to plan dinner. (Nor do I have as much time to eat breakfast in my pajamas at 10 am while checking my email and reading the news.) We're still getting reacquainted with the two-people-working thing so there hasn't been much in the way of exciting cooking happening. We're back to reliable, easy meals for a little while. Tonight I think I'm going to make this, assuming I can find shrimp (Garnele) somewhere. Tomorrow we're both coming home early to watch the inauguration - we bought some little Wurst that we were instructed to cook in either Grünkohl or Sauerkraut, but only for 10 minutes because they don't have much fat in them (hah!). Who are we to disregard that? Zoli's buying the kale today.

Home again, home again

We are back in Hamburg after 2+ weeks in the US spent trekking around to see family and friends. It was a great trip, but I'm having a hard time describing everything we did at all coherently. I will keep trying, but for the moment suffice it to say that we were mainly in the general Boston area; we went as far north as Belfast, Me; as far South as Tafton, PA; and ate lots of tasty food.

We came back via Dublin and Düsseldorf for complicated and boring reasons, and then took the train from Düsseldorf to Hamburg. I don't recommend this when you are carrying four bags crammed full of books and woodworking tools and have been awake for almost 24 hours, but the train came in over the Elbe and we were able to see some of the ice that accumulated in the very cold weeks we were gone. Arriving back in Hamburg felt like coming home - in a more tentative way than when we lived in Seattle, but still home. Since we are able to stay in our current apartment until the end of May we have five months with no planned trips or moves, which sounds quite fabulous right now. Happy New Year!