How to Cook in a Bread Boxed-Sized Kitchen

Sooo I've decided to do a little post on some daily-life kind of things in Deutschland in addition to just writing about the week.

Food. I like to eat, MOM. Anyone who knows me well ought not to be surprised by that statement.

To begin: My eating habits here are completley different from those in Wooster. Back in Wooster I get a good portion of my meals in Lowry supplemented with Panera and El Camps (oh how I miss you). So whenever the mood strikes I head over there, swipe my card, and see what kind of processed larvae food they are serving. Sometimes I even try out the vegan slop fare in Kittredge. In and out. Fast. No-cleanup. I have no easy access to a kitchen so save for a couple of meals per year almost everything I eat in Wooster has NOT been prepared by me.

Typical of just about all students in Germany we are responsible for getting our own meals. There is no meal plan, at least not any provided by IES. For the first time in my college career I am shopping for groceries and cooking my own meals.

For the most part, I like it. I don't mind cooking and I sometimes even enjoy it. I am far from a master cook but I can follow a recipe and it usually comes out tasting the way it should even if it doesn't belong on the cover of Martha Stuart. I like having complete control over my diet and I am a much better cook than Lowry, thankyouverymuch. Cooking and buying ingredients for myself means that I end up with a pretty big stock of random ingredients. If anyone from IES should ever need white wine vinegar or cornstarch, you know where to find me.

This is what I made for this weeks meal:

Well well it looks like Firefox doesn't want to display this picture, so click here to see what I attempted to make.

What it actually looked like:


This was leftover day #3, so it's not looking as pretty as the day I made it, though it tasted just as good.

My sauces always turn out way too thin.

Here is our kitchen, in today's normal and completley unaltered state:

Can you tell today was a little overcast?

There are definitely days where I am tired, don't feel like cooking, etc. were it's a huge pain to spend an hour throwing together a meal. I am not so experienced of a cook that I can just quickly whip together a new recipe. Combine that with our "kitchen" and very small supply of kitchen equipment and making a meal can take several hours. Have you seen our hot plates, I mean stove? It takes a loooooong time to cook or heat up anything on those things. If a recipe says to cook something on high for 10 mins, it's probably going to take at least twice as long on our stove.

Ick

We have the very bare minimum of kitchen equipment, so Susie and I have definitely had to learn to improvise with what we have. As a result I have not even attempted to bake anything yet. I'm also a much better cook than baker, I've definitley had my fair-share of cake disasters. Remember that gigantic fail when my cake batter overflowed all over into the oven, MOM?

I hardly ever eat out, because it's expensive. Also, groceries here are much cheaper than back in the US.

I usually eat with other IES people who live here in Händel about 3 times a week. So for about 4 other meals I'm on my own, and then when it's my turn to cook for everyone I'm cooking for 5. It's a good system, all in all. My trick is to make super large portions of every meal that will last me as leftovers for much of the week.

Monday is my usual food shopping day and also when I cook my big meal for the week (food that I'm eating by myself). The whole process of shopping and cooking usually takes up the whole afternoon and a significant chunk of the evening. The goal is to make a meal that will stretchhhhhh. One week I made a huge pot of chicken tortilla soup (delicious, probably one of the best meals I ever made) that lasted until the Sunday after. After I'm done cooking my major weekly meal I wrap everything up and for the rest of the week I reheat 'n eat.

German universities do have a cafeteria, called the Mensa. So basically the Lowry-equivalent. Now that we have our Uni-cards Heather, Kevin, Chris and I went to try it out yesterday. Sitting in the Mensa is definitley were I have one of those moments like whoaaaaaa I'm in GERMANY surrounded by GERMANS. It was a decent meal all in all, for a decent price. Once Uni classes start in a few weeks we plan on making the Mensa more of a regular thing.

Here's my allotted little cupboard, because I know you're all so curious:

And most important of all:

The obligatory Cribs Fridge Pic. Most of my stuff is on the third shelf down,  with the eggs and cheese.

Well I think that wraps up today's obligatory posts, as always check back next week MOMMMMM.

Black Forest Adventures and Cuckoo Clocks

Soooooo. It's been a while since I've updated. Sorry to all of my diehard fans! What happened is that my computer decided to NOT upload my pictures from Prague and Dresden so I was never able to post about that. Instead of recounting the last few weeks lets turn over a new leaf....

The weather in Freiburg has been absolutely gorgeous the last few weeks, about 60-70 degrees. I couldn't be happier that spring is in full force.

Sitting right at the edge of the Black Forest, Freiburg is located in one of Germany's most scenic regions. I really want to make a point while I'm here of seeing as much of the area as possible. Our semester pass lets us a lot of the regional public transportation around here including trains, which just further urged me to explore a bit. As much as we love the city, Kevin, Heather and I decided it was high time we made a day trip into the woods. After scouring my Lonley Planet Germany guide we settled on Triberg.

Triberg has several things going for it. There you'll find the largest waterfall in Germany, which was the main draw for us. It's also where cuckoo clocks and Black Forest cake were invented.We showed up at the train station Saturday morning only to find out that we could NOT use our semester tickets to get to Triberg. Boooooooooo. In the end train tickets would cost us about 10 euros per person, which we thought was more than reasonable. Off we were!

It was a beautiful ride. Once we changed trains at Offenburg the scenery became breathtakingly gorgeous. I felt like I was in the middle of a fairytale world, as the train snaked through the lush, green valley. I tried to take a few pictures out of the window, not that they do the view any justice.

 

After about a 2 hour ride we disembarked in Triberg. 

Welcome to the thriving metropolis of Triberg

 Just kidding. We followed the road up the mountain and were soon in Triberg.

Triberg is a beautiful little town, if a little touristy on the cuckoo clocks. We headed up the road towards the waterfall, the main attraction.

The walk up to the waterfall was beautiful, and it was wonderful stand in the forest and be surrounded by trees and natural beauty. Some of the scenery really reminded me of the Redwood forest in CA. There were a bunch of people out hiking around the falls as well (though it definitely was not overly crowded), it was nice to know that other people were taking advantage of the area as well. Germans are certainly an outdoor folk....

After about an hour we reached the top and walked down the path along the waterfall. Niagara they ain't, but it was still a beautiful walk.

 

After the hike we headed back into town. We stopped at the renowned Cafe Shäfer, where Black Forest cake was practically invented. The cake certainly lived up to its reputation, as it was the best slice of Black Forest cake I have ever had (and I have had A LOT since being in Freiburg....) 

We walked back to the train station to catch the train back to Freiburg. Once we were home we immediately headed over to Feierling to meet up with Susie and her friends who were visiting from Berlin.

All in all it was a great little trip and I'm definitely looking forward to our next Black Forest excursion!