Family News

EASTER IN ENGLAND / EATING IN ENGLAND, MARCH 24th - APRIL 1st, 2005

I always feel that England’s reputation for bad food is not really fair or at least it doesn’t tell the whole story. With a little planning it’s possible to eat very well and we even had some spontaneous meals that were very good. Personally I think it’s much more difficult to find a good meal (at a reasonable price) in Paris. But that may be entirely subjective paired with some bad luck. Let’s just say that I have on an average had better food over the years in England than in France. I know that probably marks me as something of a barbarian, but so be it.

For our first English meal the evening we arrived Angie and Jed took us out to eat along with some friends of theirs who live nearby and could rescue us if we locked ourselves out of the house or something similar. We went to a trendy new Japanese restaurant chain, Wagamama, which translates as “naughty child”. (No, I don’t know why they chose this name. Seems a little strange.) Or maybe I should say an English chain serving Japanese food. It was founded in 1992 and from England they have branched out to Australia, New Zealand, Dubai (!) and a few places in Europe, but none so far in Germany. Angie and Jed are very knowledgeable about Oriental food so we had a really good meal. We even managed to share a white chocolate and ginger cheesecake among the six of us. After our meal a few bites were all any of us could eat, but it was very good. I’d like to have made it back during the week for a whole piece but time ran out on us.

One of the nicest meals we had was at a vegetarian restaurant in Kingston, right on the Thames, Riverside Vegetaria. I had an eggplant and spinach dish that was delicious and we shared a bottle of organic cider. For dessert I had a smoothie (which made me very happy).

                                                                              
We were there early. It filled up quickly. That's the smoothie menu on the table in the forefront.

                                                                              
                                                                              

Doesn't that look yummy?

Grocery shopping in England is quite an adventure. We went to Sainbury’s to stock up on a few things and even Frank, who avoids grocery shopping when at all possible, was fascinated by the variety of pre-cooked meals offered. Aisle after aisle was full of exotic (at least to us) Indian or Oriental meals that only had to be heated in the microwave or oven. Angie left a full Indian meal for us for our first day and it was very good. I wonder if many people still cook themselves with so much convenience food available.

A number of years ago on a trip to Ireland I discovered carrot cake, which I had heard of before but never eaten. It seemed to be all the rage because every café we visited had it. I liked it so much that I often had a piece for lunch, or rather, instead of lunch, because we always had a big breakfast and then our main meal in the evening. (Frank isn’t a fan of carrot cake, which is the reason I have never baked one myself.) So one afternoon after having a look around Covent Garden we stopped at a little place for coffee.

                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
Doesn't that look inviting?


When I saw they had carrot cake I had to try it and it might have been the most wonderful piece of carrot cake I’ve ever had. Or maybe it’s just been so long since I had any I had forgotten the innate deliciousness of it.

                                                                              
                                                                              
It was moist but light, the icing was sweet but tart. Perfect!


One of the sights I wanted to see in London was Harrod’s food halls. I had been to Harrod’s before, but I don’t remember much about it. I find department stores in general boring and when I went upstairs for a few minutes to look around at the women’s clothes I felt an attack of the yawns coming on. All they had on display were the latest from the world’s top designers, of course at mind-boggling prices, but it was of no interest to me except perhaps as an oddity. Do real people actually wear these creations? The food halls were something else and I even bought some spices that I had looked for here and not yet found (saffron and cardamom capsules). I’m sure I would have found them eventually, but now I can serve the salad I want to make and tell everyone the spices are from Harrod’s. I enjoyed looking at everything, the variety is amazing. Just one example, they have what seems like an endless variety of eggs. I mean how many different kinds of eggs does your grocery store carry – other than big and little? They had hen’s eggs, bantam eggs, goose, duck, mallard, partridge, turkey, quail, ostrich, just to name a few! I wondered what the difference in taste is – but not enough to buy any!

                                                                              
Scrambled, fried or poached?

DINING IN STUTTGART - SEPTEMBER 4-5, 2004

This past weekend Frank and I drove to Stuttgart to visit Jenny and Ulf. It had been ages since we were there, well over a year for me – I was there in the Spring of 2003 to help Jenny find the best of all possible wedding dresses (which we found later that year in Wiesbaden) – and I think it was sometime in the summer of 2002 that the two of us visited them. One reason for this is that they are in our area quite often because they both still have so many friends here in the Rhine-Main region with a plethora of weddings and 30th birthdays. Actually I think Jenny’s was one of the last 30th birthdays, but most Germans like to celebrate every year, so there is no lack of parties for them to attend. And they often stay with us when they have something scheduled around these parts. Another reason is that they are so busy it was difficult to find a weekend we could share. I think we made plans for this past weekend back in May and it was the first free date we found. (Of course we were gone ourselves part of that time.)

Anyway we packed up everything we thought we would need and on Saturday right after lunch we headed south.

                                                                                                               
                                                                                                               
                                                                                                               
                                                                                                             
This was all only for one night!
                                                                                                               
                                                                                                               
                                                                                                               
It’s just over 200 km from our place to theirs and early Saturday afternoon is a good time to be on the road. There are no trucks on the Autobahn on the weekends in Germany and the weather was gorgeous so I guess most people were already where they wanted to be. At any rate we had none of the legendary traffic jams that can occur at any time on German roads and arrived in plenty of time for coffee and cake. (The cake it turned out was a bad idea because there were such good things to eat in our future.)

                         
                           
                                                                                                               
That's our car. The upper balcony belongs to their apartment.
                                                                                                               
                                                                                                               
One of the motivations for our trip this time was to see Jenny and Ulf’s new TV. The one Jenny had bought when she was in high school was dying a slow death, so they were forced to look for a new one. And given that a TV is expected to last for say 15 years or so, it made sense to select a new one that wouldn’t be outdated in a few years. Right?

                                                                                                            
                                                                                                             
                                                                                                             
It did make our TV seem midget sized after we returned home.


                                                                              
Here's the other half of the living room for those of you who haven't visited them recently.



That evening they cooked a delicious meal for us, bruschetta with Pfifferlingen (a kind of mushroom) and salad, then a fantastic risotto with mangos and leeks and other wonderful things which Jenny prepared and beef fillet very tender and tasty thanks to Ulf’s cooking skills, and for dessert homemade ice cream. Knowing Frank they decided to make Bailey’s ice cream which they concocted themselves and served with fresh blueberries and raspberries. Is it clear now why I said the cake was a bad idea (on my part)?

But the festivities were far from over. Frank and Ulf won a law case together not too long ago and Jenny and Ulf wanted to use part of the settlement to go to a really first class restaurant with us. Their choice fell on the Speisemeisterei in the Hohenheim castle not far from where they live.

                                                                              
                                                                              
                                                                              
Castle Hohenheim
                                                                              
                                                                              
                                                                              
When I say not far from where they live I mean within walking distance. We walked there in about half an hour through a lovely park that belongs to the university and has a rather strange monument on display. It was a rather hilly walk and the weather was hot but we wanted to store up all of the exercise calories we possibly could. We would need them!

                                                                                                               
                                                                                                               
                                                                                                               
It looks like the structure for the top layer of a wedding cake to me.
                                                                                                               
                                                                                                               
To be completely truthful we didn’t actually dine in the castle itself. In 1772 the Duke (Earl?? I’m not very savvy about royalty) of Württemberg gave this castle to his mistress, but it was so rundown that they soon built an addition to house her in style. In 1776 the castle became his summer residence and his mistress later became his wife (at least that was what we were told).

                           
                           
                           
                           
                                                                                                               
                                                                                                             
It was much too hot for jackets.

                                                                                                               
                                                                                                               
You have to book months in advance for a table here. In fact when Jenny tried to book Saturday evening at the beginning of the summer they were already booked out and we decided to go Sunday noon instead. Of course they only have ten tables in the main dining room.

                                                                              
                                                                              
Here we are trying to decide what to order.

                                                                                                               
                                                                                                               
                                                                                                               
Frank seems very thankful for that little cup of Gazpacho.

                                                                              
                                                                              
Jenny was pleased with everything. I think she always secretly wanted to be a princess.
                                                                              
                                                                              

                                                                              
So what did we have? Sorry, this is in German, but there is no way I can translate all this. One or more of us had:

Appetizer:
Törtchen vom Reh mit Aprikosen-Ingwerconfit, Salatsprösslingen und Nußstrudel
Gebeizte Freiland-Entenbrust „chinoise“

Fish course:
Steinbutt in Pinienkernbutter gebraten mit Algensprossen, Melone und
Joghurt-Zitronenmelissensoße
Bretonischer Seeteufel aus dem Ofen auf Salpikon von Gemüsen und Pulpo

Main course:
Kotelette und Rücken vom Salzwiesenlamm mit milder Knoblauchkruste, kleiner Mousaka und konfiteirtem Paprika
Lendenschnitte vom Black-Angus Rind auf Kräutercrème mit gefüllten Gemüsen

Dessert:
Feuilleté vom St. Maure (Ziegenkäse) mit gebackenem Ruccola
Überbackener Pfirsich auf Vanilleeis und Himbeersorbet
Dessert von Beerenfrüchten

Of course this wasn’t all we had because they brought us all sorts of things to eat in between. We had the house selection of wines to accompany each course. (I only had a sip of each since someone had to drive Frank and myself home.) The service was first class, the food was delicious and interesting and we all had a great time.

Do we look bigger now?

                                                                                                               
                                                                                                               
                                                                                                               
Why is Ulf hiding behind Jenny?

                            
                           
                           
                            
                         
                         
We certainly felt heavier.

THE TASTE OF SUMMER JULY 3, 2004

I went grocery shopping today and one of the things that I bought was a big piece of watermelon.  I never usually buy pieces rather than the whole melon, but I have had several severely deficient watermelons this summer in spite of all my knocking, feeling and sniffing before buying.  I admit it.  I'm no expert when it comes to picking a first-rate specimen, but I know one when I taste it.  When you buy a piece at least you can see that the fruit is ripe, but not mushy, has a nice red color with black seeds and a definite delineation between fruit and rind.  You can be fairly sure you are going to be satisfied by the taste.

There are many things that I could pig out on, but I almost always manage to control myself, to a point, in the face of chocolate, cookies, cake, ice cream et al.  At least, although I often eat too much of these things I don't reach the actual point of bingeing.  (Or is it binging?  My Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary doesn't even recognize this as a verb.  How out of date is that?)  With watermelon I really pig out, because I see no necessity in controlling my appetite.  I can easily eat an amount that would astound most people and not feel a bit guilty about it.  The only time I restrain myself at all is when Jenny is around, because I would feel guilty about eating it all myself when she feels much the same way about watermelon as I do.

And anyway, I'm not just eating.  I'm being transported back to my youth.  Watermelon means sultry, hot, humid days with no school for three months (which always seemed like a good idea in May, but not so much by the middle of July).  It means picnics and pool parties.  It means farmers' markets or roadside stands where you can buy them five for a dollar and they cut a "plug" into the melon to test for the perfect degree of ripeness.  It means seed spitting contests with my brother or planting the seeds in the hopes of having our own harvest the next year.  (Never happened of course.)  It means melons so huge that I can't carry them and that have to be eaten fairly quickly because they don't fit into the refrigerator.

There is also an art to eating watermelon that I learned from my father and have always implemented myself.  The inner "heart" of the melon where there are no seeds is the sweetest part and of course the most satisfying to eat because seeds are annoying.  Daddy always cuts the heart out of his piece and places it at the side of his plate.  When he has sufficiently scraped down and eaten until there is no more red to be seen (I don't go quite that far), then as "dessert" he reverently eats the heart.  Very early in our relationship Frank once snatched the heart from my plate and proceeded to eat it.  He was astonished at my outrage; allegedly he thought I had put it aside because I wasn't interested in it!  Oh, our future hung on a delicate thread and the prognosis wasn't good (to mix a few metaphors).  He has been able to rehabilitate himself slowly over the past 35 years by showing little or no interest in sharing my watermelon.  In return I am very gracious when he pigs out himself and eats all the cherries!

                                                                               

                                                

That's a very large dinner plate!