Why I love Lübeck

Because a 10-minute walk to the grocery store affords views like this:

Followed a few minutes later by this (Buxtehude's church, btw...)

Because this is right around the corner from our house...

Because you come across things like this on a random walk to the park...

"This is the last place that the Mann family lived before moving to Munich. It is referred to as 'The Villa outside the gate' in the novel 'Buddenbrooks' by Thomas Mann."

Because this is our 'street'...

Because there are lovely parks like this to walk in...

And chestnut trees in bloom...

And lilacs...

Because this house was built in 1568...

And because Buxtehude! :-)

Bonus video shot by Stretch!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd51X9CJy50

Alles gute,
Slim

Willkommen in Lübeck

Greetings from Lübeck, Germany from Stretch and Slim, aka Jim and Sara. Thanks for visiting this dusty old blog again! I hope to keep it updated on a more regular basis now. 

Short recap of the trip: aside from a one-hour delay in Newark due to an equipment malfunction, it was a very smooth and uneventful trip. We had a 3-hour layover in Paris, then flew with Air France to Hamburg. 

Needless to say, we were overjoyed to see Deutschland again! The view of the Elbe River as we approached Hamburg was gorgeous, as were the glowing fields of rape, which are in full flower right now. Imagine a yellow that is brighter than sunflowers; that is the color of rape. On a cloudy day, it really does look like a field of sunshine.

We took the local train from the airport to the train station in Hamburg, and then the regional train from Hamburg to Lübeck, a trip of about 40 minutes. One of the stops was Bad Oldesloe, which is one of the places that scholars imagine Buxtehude might have been born. It is not known with certainty where or when he was born, not even the year.

We were met at the train station by our hostess Margret, whose sister owns the house we are renting. Margret very kindly drove us to our little Ganghaus, i.e. a house located in a courtyard which is only accessible on foot. Back when these houses were built (I'm guessing this one dates from the 17^th century, but I need to verify that), they were inhabited by the lower tradespeople.

The house is very charming, comfortable and a bit crooked! One of the windowsills in the living room looks to be at about a 5 degree angle. I'm sliding around on the uneven parquet floor in my socks. We're enjoying the rusticity of exposed beams, bricks and stonework. To access our bed, which is located in an attic loft, one climbs a ladder, rather like being on a ship. 

On clear nights we can see the stars through the skylights. Last night at around 11 PM, the Big Dipper was right overhead.

The evening we arrived we ate dinner at Lübeck's one and only vegetarian restaurant, the charmingly named 'Cafe Affenbrot' (Monkey bread!) Our excuse was that it was a holiday (May Day), and all the stores were closed. But in keeping with our vow to live like graduate students, it'll be simple dinners at home for the most part. Last night: Heinz beans in tomato sauce with brown rice and a salad! I'm perfectly happy to leave meal planning and elaborate cooking behind for awhile. As long as certain vital nutrients are consumed (don't ask), and I eat at least one green thing each day, I'm good. Jim doesn't care one iota either way. Ah, to have an iron-clad digestive tract... ;-)

Monday marks the beginning of the project about a certain influential person from Germany's musical history. Well, not really the beginning. I'm about 50 pages in already. They'll probably all end up on the cutting room floor eventually, but it feels better than starting from scratch. Anyway, by Monday the jet-lag should be utterly vanquished, and I'll head to the library after breakfast. Research in the morning; writing in two shifts in the afternoon and evening. That's the plan, at least.   

Tomorrow: Why I Love Lübeck (with pictures!) 

A to Z

Bread, that is!

There were two over-the-hill bananas in the fruit bowl this morning, and that just gave me a hankering for banana bread! My go-to recipe is called "A to Z Bread", which was given to me years ago by my friend Jackie in the Netherlands. I tweaked it a little bit here and there, mostly by reducing the amount of oil and sugar. Things have a tendency to taste too sweet to my palate these days, plus the overripe bananas add plenty of sweetness already!

I just googled A to Z bread, and found it here, if you're interested. I halved the recipe, and made the following changes:
1 cup all-purpose flour plus 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 large egg plus 3 TB egg whites
1/4 canola oil plus 1/4 cup applesauce
reduce sugar to 3/4 cup
I only baked it for about 45 minutes, until a knife inserted into the center came out clean.
The result: super moist banana nut bread! 

Just the thing with a nice cup of hot tea!

This-n-that

Remember Dieter? (shown here in a picture taken in February...)

Dieter began his day parked at one mechanic, and will end his day parked at another...
where do I start?! Well, without going into too much detail, Dieter is 11 years old, and things are breaking, as they are bound to do.

Last week we got the starting motor replaced, and he was running like a champ. Jim joked that the engine roared to life before you turned the key, and it almost seemed like that! However, the mechanic did not attach the "belly pan" (a plastic cover which protects the engine from the underside) properly, and on our ride to Huntsville over the weekend, it kept scraping the surface of the road. Not good.

This was the third instance of sloppy/negligent work on the part of this mechanic we'd been going to for 4-5 years, so we decided enough was enough, we're taking D. somewhere else. Enter mechanic #2 (recommended by someone on the neighborhood email list. This place also had many good online reviews.) They also charge $20 an hour less for labor.

They fixed the "belly pan", fixed the 2nd issue we asked them about, and found something new that the other place apparently missed (or which happened on our trip to H'ville over the weekend- who can tell...)

Everything was coming up roses, it seemed, until I got in to drive away after the repairs... I turned the key, and there was no sign of "roaring to life". More like a sort of feeble grinding noise, and then silence. @#$%&! What the...?! New starter, etc???

Apparently, the starter was faulty from the outset. Which doesn't explain why he started up so enthusiastically all those times. But, it was still covered under warranty. So, Dieter was towed from one repair joint to another, and will spend another night surrounded by his German brethren (BMWs , Mercerdes, Audis, other VWs) instead of in our garage where he belongs! And hopefully tomorrow will see him fitted with a new, non-faulty starter.

Today I exercised my freedom as someone who no longer has an on-air shift, and worked from home all day! Tomorrow I will brave the heat and ride my bike in.

In other news...

The yogurt pendulum has swung the other way!

 

Yep, that's me holding up one of my little containers of yogurt from the 2nd batch I made. Not quite what I was going for! It pretty much has the consistency of very thick custard.

I almost got the spoon to stay in while I was holding it upside down! But here it is just standing up in the upright container.

It tastes quite good- plenty of yogurty tang, and definitely not too sweet. But good lord, did that Agar powder bind or what?!

Next time I will experiment with 3/4 teaspoon Agar powder, instead of one whole teaspoon. In the meantime, anyone fancy some custardyogurt?

Not quite, but close!

To finish off the saga of my first batch of yogurt, I was about 50% successful.

I tested it after 9 hours, and it barely tasted tangy. Susan V.'s recipe did warn that it may take up to 12 hours to taste tangy if you used store-bought soy yogurt as a starter, so that didn't concern me.

So, I left it in the incubator for about 13.5 hours, and then it finally tasted tangy enough for me. But, it was still runny. So, I'm channeling my inner European and embracing the concept of drinkable yogurt.

Today I went to the General Store of Our Time, aka Amazon, and ordered up some Agar powder.

Next week will see me again crossing swords with L. Acidophilus, B. Bifidum, L. Bulgaricus and S. Thermophilus! :-D

Adventures in fermentation

No, not beer or wine... can you guess? Maybe pictures will help:

Yogurt! I wanted to try my hand at making my own soy yogurt. So, a yogurt maker was purchased (see Jim, there was still one piece of kitchen equipment we didn't have!) :-D

Of course, I knew nothing of making yogurt, so I needed a recipe. I decided to use one from the Fat Free Vegan Kitchen blog. (Scalding the materials beforehand was fun. So fun that I also scalded my right hand for good measure. Can't be too careful with bacteria, after all...) >-O

The only problem with using this recipe was this: I couldn't find Agar powder! Central Market used to have it in their bulk section, but apparently it's been hard to keep in stock lately. They have it in their Asian foods section, but it's not pure (it has sugar in it). I tried several other stores, to no avail. Of course, I could order it online, but I was sure hoping to make the first batch this weekend (see "patience, lack of " below). So, off I went in search of another thickening agent.

Eventually decided to use cornstarch. After all, the Whole Soy & Co. yogurt I used as a starter was thickened with cornstarch, so it must work, right? So I consulted Chef Internet to see how much to use, and went from there. Very nervous-making, all of this experimentation. I am a recipe-follower, after all. Just give me a recipe that works, and I'm golden. :-)

So, it's happily fermenting away as we speak. It's SO hard not to peek under the cover, not to mention waiting 9 whole hours before I test it. But I'm determined to wait until 5 PM before tasting it.

You'll hear all about it next time!

Jan Steen

OK, Brenda, here's the answer to your question! :-)

The painting in the background of the picture of me and Jim that you see at the top of the blog is by Jan Steen. It's called "Soo voer gesongen, soo na gepepen"

This is by no means a literal translation, but the closest thing we have in English to that Dutch saying is "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree". And you can see that youngsters are being 'led astray', especially the kid smoking the pipe on the right side!

This painting hangs in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, and that's where Jim and I are standing in the picture, outside the gates.

Jan Steen (pronounced Yahn Stain- like a stain on your shirt) is a very popular Dutch Golden Age artist. He is credited with the creation of several Dutch sayings, things that are still used in ordinary conversation today. Like "een huishouden van Jan Steen" means a chaotic and messy household. (The floor in the painting above is pretty tidy, but in other Steen paintings the floor is littered with objects, and little kids are shown getting into all kinds of mischief.)

When Jim and I posed for this picture (it was taken by our friend Carla- we were visiting her and her husband Baher in The Hague), we didn't even see this large reproduction of Steen's painting. Only afterwards, when we saw the picture, we smiled at the appropriateness (we both enjoy a nice glass of wine, and no one could accuse us of being, shall we say, overly fastidious housekeepers!) ;-)