Introducing Breadblogging and Treatblogging

This here is a loaf of incredibly delicious altdeutsches Roggenbrot (old German rye bread.) (Plus chopped sage and goat cheese to accompany chickpea soup.) We were kind of gobsmacked by the deliciousness of this beautiful loaf - kinda sour, with wonderful toasted malty flavor, and really complex. That it's organic and whole grain is pleasingly beside the point.

And the thing is, bread like this is just normal here! These Germans are spoiled by this embarrassment of riches and probably take it for granted - and at the same time, the rest of the world doesn't know that German bread is arguably the best in the world! Did you know German bread is incredible, varied, and very different from French and Italian bread? I didn't until I got here, and I'm kind of obsessed with food.

So in a bit of much-needed German culinary promotion, I'm starting a new regular feature: Breadblogging.

I'm far from an expert on German breads - and it may well be that when I talk about "German breads" I really mean Rhineland breads - but from what I can tell, German breads are often moister, darker, and a bit more sour than the breads you find in the US. They're often made with whole grains, and not just wheat: rye and spelt are both really common, and we've had breads made with the "lost" ancient grain emmer. More on breads in later posts!

And what about Treatblogging? Germany has marvelous sweet baked goods, too, quite different from American treats. German goodies are mostly eaten as a snack with coffee or tea in the afternoon (Kaffee und Kuchen), so they tend to be less sweet. Instead of sugar, German treats get their flavor from nuts and marzipan, spices, and fruits. Sometimes the techniques are really different than those used to make American treats; for example, Zimtsterne (Cinnamon Stars), a Christmas favorite here, look like a pretty typical rolled cookie, but the recipe is based on ground almonds and calls for no flour and no butter or other fat! They're super yummy.

There are a bunch of such standard treats here that I'd never heard of before: Nussecke, Bienenstich, Mandel Hörnchen.... I absolutely love them - I feel like they're the baked goods I've always wanted to enjoy but never knew existed. And they taste like real recipes that have been around for many years, not goofy de-sugared versions of treats that are meant to be fatty and supersweet. Hopefully I'll get to blog a great many before we have to leave Germany!

So here's this week's Treatblogging: a giant Lebkuchen man that we hand-carried to NJ for Christmas.
Pure gingerbread deliciousness, replete with candied orange and lemon peel, anise and fennel seed! Keeps (really well) for weeks and weeks, too!

Friday Catblogging: Convalescence Edition

B's been sick with a stomach bug most of this week, but he's all better now. Here's Oscar providing a healthy dose of Vitamin Cat.

Chapolines* in Burnt Caramel

Tosci's is in the news again.... So is this what they've been doing with their new lease on life? Blucky!

*=Mexican grasshoppers

for joe

e-a-g-l-e-s iggles! your 1988 philadelphia eagles:

and congrats on the new kitty!

belated friday catblogging: leaping edition

sorry for the belated catblogging -- blogger was down last night. anyway, here's some of oscar at his most ideal!

rosenmontag, part 2

in my opinion, the coolest part of rosenmontag was all the incredible floats in the parade! here's a sampling of photos we took. i don't understand most of them at all, but that's probably just as well.


the next two go together.



the next one is about cologne's famous cathedral: last year a major new stained glass window was completed, only instead of what you'd normally expect from a stained glass window in a world-famous gothic cathedral, this one was a grid of 11,500 randomly colored (by a computer) square panes of glass. i don't know that it went over too well with the archbishop.



the next one is supposed to make fun of typical germans on vacation.
the next one is our favorite -- it's supposed to carry an anti-drug message, with the government official in the front holding up red and yellow cards to the punks behind her (like in a soccer match!), but doesn't the whole thing just make all the stoners, junkies, and freaks look cool? i mean, seriously, which side would you choose?
and finally, another two-parter. don't ask me -- ah, europe....

rosenmontag, part 1

alas, we've fallen way behind on our blogging: rosenmontag, or rose monday, the biggest day of karneval, was over two weeks ago! we spent the day in cologne for the incredible rosenmontagszug, or rose monday parade. cologne is a city of about 1 million people, and i believe that typically at least that many attend the parade every year. we had really cold crappy weather (it was right before everything turned gorgeous here), but it was still an awesome day.

here's the platform at the train station in bonn, about 10:30 am, as we (and everyone else pictured) were waiting to go to cologne. we'd been told in advance that we might not make it on to the train because it would be too packed. thankfully it didn't come to that, but things were definitely snug.
at this point we were in cologne, waiting for the parade to begin. aside from the handsome bugger on the left, check out the guys downing shots on the right.
remember how we mentioned that the parade is really a candy delivery system? this was an honest-to-goodness candy canon, which actually shot bursts of candy into the crowd.
and on the same note, how exactly do you supply enough candy to last throughout a 4 1/2 hour parade? this is how: a candy arsenal. there were actually several of these in the parade -- couriers were constantly running up to them, grabbing fresh stores of candy, and then making deliveries to marchers further back in the parade.
soldiers and clowns seem to be the most typical karneval costumes in the rhineland, but in southern germany, ghouls and ghosts are more common. this was a marching band from bavaria.cute!these enterprising folks, who i guess were watching the parade from above the street in their apartment, dangled an umbrella out the window in hopes of catching some candy that was thrown. and it actually worked! (though they collected a lot of rainwater too.)and finally the prince brought up the end of the parade! just like in bonn, he was the head dude of the whole shebang (and he also wore incredible feathers in his crown).here's our loot -- that bag was full.after the parade -- which p held up marvelously through -- we went out for dinner and drinks with corinna and her friends. just a lovely evening. here's one of cologne's finer establishments that we passed by.this was the scene in the student quarter at the end of our night, about 12:30 am. yup, things were still totally rocking. everyone was out in the middle of the street, which the city wisely decided to close to traffic for the evening.
and believe it or not, there's still more to come in a later post!

why you should always take your camera when you go out in germany

today, 2:22 pm, at a convenience/drugstore in the altstadt.

magpies

on the rooftop across the street.
(photo credit: p)

karneval in bonn, part 3

and now, finally, for the spectacle that is karneval sunday in bonn! the scene began with a variety of city officials and prominent citizens assembled at the old city hall, or rathaus. the sign with the white background reads Dreimal "Bonn Alaaf", which translates as something like three times "long live bonn".after a few remarks from the mayor, a parade began! i don't think i completely understand it, but i think it was supposed to be a procession of fools and clowns and karneval revelers.here's the prince and princess, the leaders of the fools, who came in with the parade. check out the fabulous feathers!at this point, there was a lot of trash talking back and forth between the prince and the mayor; the prince wanted her to hand over control of the city, but she told him to take a hike. and there were also a variety of performances, as sampled previously in the latter two clips in part two.

after the mayor refused to give up the city, the fools left, but only to be soon replaced by the prince's troops! here's a short clip of them marching in.

here are the troops lining up in front of the rathaus.
and then all hell broke loose! the smoke was from these cannons the troops were "firing", and you can kinda see that people in the rathaus were throwing lots of balloons out the windows. such excitement!
here are the troops storming the rathaus (= climbing ladders they propped up).and then bonn fell to the prince!i think at this point, the fools had reign over the city until the following wednesday (= ash wednesday). kind of incredible, huh?

and a final parting shot (read it out loud):

Friday Catblogging: Rollabout Edition

job!

oh my god, i got a job offer today! it's from the university of toronto. it's too soon to know if i'll take it, and i have a couple weeks to decide, but right now i'm just so relieved that i get to keep doing math! and let me share this little horror with you: all i can hear in my head is that wilson phillips song "the dream is still alive". but it's not my fault! why, mom, why did you raise us on that crap? and i was going to try to be strong and not even link to it, but here. at least i didn't embed the p.o.s.

karneval in bonn, part 2

one of the most characteristic aspects of karneval is its music. i think it's a bit like christmas -- the same songs get played every year, most are quite simple and easy to sing, many have a high cheese factor, but everyone loves them all the same. in bonn and cologne, people traditionally "dance" to the music by swaying back and forth, often with interlocked arms. it can get kinda intense -- check it out.

here's a little more.

and what the hell, here's a different song from later in the day. note how everyone is singing along. it seems that germans simply love to sing together in public.

and finally, check out this super-schmaltzy song with accompanying interpretative dance. how can this be popular?

believe it or not, the song started prog-rocking out right after the video cut off!

spring has sprung, continued

strange, but the weather here has turned absolutely incredible! winter in bonn is warm but full of gray. but these past few days, it's been like someone turned on a light switch all of a sudden -- gorgeous sunshine, beautiful blue skies, hardly a cloud in sight. and the forecast is calling for nothing but more of the same! (apologies to those enviously reading this from more wintry climes -- i know at my parents', spring doesn't usually arrive till april.)

karneval in bonn, part 1

last sunday we ventured into the altstadt here in bonn to partake in the day's karneval festivities. karneval lasts thursday-monday, but sunday seems to be the big day here (more on why later). here's a sampling of what we saw upon arriving.

this greeted us in the street as we were walking in (about 1:30 pm).
a big part of karneval is that everyone is supposed to get dressed up in costumes -- sorta like halloween for adults, only people seem to take it really seriously. here's a man dressed up as a kangaroo with a koala in his pouch.
here's a little stand selling these karneval medallion thingies people wear around their necks.a reibekuchen (= delicious fried potato pancake) stand.another food vendor. the sign translates to "the greatest fire tongs punch in the world?", but i have no idea what that's supposed to mean!

belated friday catblogging: hellbeast edition

this catblogging is about flowers.in addition to candy, there were lots of flowers handed out at the parade in cologne on monday, and we sure ended up with our fair share of them. so we brought them home and put them in some water, and it all was just looking rather nice, you know? and then p had to go out for the afternoon, and i was already away at the office, so, for safety, p put the flowers on top of our shelves in the bedroom.

that didn't turn out so well.while p was gone, the little hellion wended his way up the shelves to the unoccupied one in the upper right, did a pull-up to get to topmost level, and then knocked off three of the four flower arrangements p had put up there, smashing one of our glasses in the process! (though, amazingly, another of our glass jars survived.) (and we know that's how it went down because we've subsequently seen him do it again -- it's kinda terrifying.) what a menace....

kamelle

good golly we had us quite the karneval weekend! it's gonna take a while to blog our way through everything, but let's get started with... candy, or kamelle, as it's called in the local cologne dialect. we went to the big parade in cologne yesterday with corinna (many many pictures will be forthcoming), but parade isn't quite the right word -- it's really a candy delivery system. i sure remember getting candy at my fair share of parades when i was a kid, but i've never seen anything on a scale like this before. here's our haul.that's about 4 1/2 hours worth of parade work, and we weren't even trying that hard -- there were lots of people (adults, no less) around us who were being super aggressive, lunging after every last piece on the ground or working over the marchers to get them to cough up yet one more treat. you can see from the picture that there was some serious stuff given out -- lots of proper-sized chocolate bars, for example. we even saw someone get measuring spoons(!?), but alas, we weren't quite so fortunate. and i'll have you know that p held up quite well physically!

riesling

one of the best things about living in germany is riesling -- probably my favorite wine grape, and some of the finest examples in the world are produced in the nearby mosel-saar-ruwer region. p and i cracked open this especially tasty bottle the other night.
we essentially never buy really expensive wine. and before christmas, we'd even limited ourselves to wines under 5€. but one of our big christmas presents was a bit of money to be able to travel around some and enjoy a variety of epicurean delights, so now we only buy wine over 5€. what a huge bump in quality of life!

in rainbows

i gotta say, p and i have been really getting into the new radiohead album. too early to compare it to other stuff -- i just love the feeling right now, the obsessiveness, the bits of songs stuck in my head all day when i'm out, then finally getting to listen again when i come home at night. so good to be excited about new music. if only we had a proper stereo here....

scalps

besides just being the first day of karneval, weiberfastnacht has the special feature of being the day when "women rule". one of the most prominent customs is that women get to go about chopping off any tie hanging from a man's neck! check out what i found taped to the door at mpi when i arrived yesterday -- just like scalps on display!
(it's a glass door, in case the image seems confusing.)

weiberfastnacht

yesterday was weiberfastnacht, the first day of karneval, a massive pre-lenten bacchanal on a scale (at least as practiced in cologne) to rival mardi gras in new orleans. my buddy tasho tells me that by about 10 am on weiberfastnacht, everyone in cologne is typically out on the streets dressed in fabulous costumes and partying away! and the scene here in bonn is nothing to turn your nose up at, either. sadly, p's back has taken a big turn for the worse this past week, so we were unable to partake in any of the revelry yesterday (though there's still the whole weekend ahead -- let's hope she's fast on the mend). here's a little rundown of what i saw on the streets yesterday.

11:00 -- i headed into mpi and the streets had kind of an eerie feel to them -- not a lot of people about and many businesses were closed, like on a sunday. but of the people who were out, a good portion were costumed and obviously excited for action.

1:00 -- first notable public drunkenness sighting: a young-ish guy stumbling along the sidewalk, jabbering on a cell phone and careening into various cars parked on the curb.

3:00 -- a line of revelers waiting to get into a party at one of bonn's restaurants.it's not really clear in the picture, but most of the people in line were middle-aged! i love that about this place -- it seems like in the u.s., things like this are only for the young, but everyone gets in on the act here.

6:00 -- while walking from the university back to mpi, two 8-ish-year-old girls boldly stopped me in the street and asked me something (i have no idea what -- it was in german, right), so i told them that regrettably i don't speak any german and continued on my way. only after a few paces i heard them muttering "aynglish" amongst themselves, and then a third girl yelled out to ask if i speak english, so i turned around and said i did. we had the following conversation.
girl: where are you from?
me: i'm american.
girl (who was wearing these fabulous movie star glasses, no less): i live in hollywood.
me: oh wow, i've never been there.
girl: do you bekannte justin timberlake? (at least i think that's what she said -- this is supposed to be amusing because "bekannte" is the german word for acquaintance.)
me: no, i've never met him.
girl: my dad is 50 cent.
me: you must be very proud.
girl flashes a look at her friends indicating she doesn't know what this means, then gives me a big grin to make like she's in on the joke.

7:30 -- i headed home from mpi. still not a ton of people out, but more than earlier in the day. still, the city had this weird anarchic, post-apocalyptic feel to it. and the place was trashed! garbage, broken bottles, you name it, littered all over the streets. (but amazingly, everything seemed to be cleaned up this morning.) the costumes were out in full force now -- soldiers, dinosaurs, angels, random pink glittery things. i passed by a big drum circle on the way -- everyone was wearing these crazy coordinated shiny green costumes and, you guessed it, there wasn't a soul over 35. we sure hope to get some pictures later this weekend!

sunset tonight

(photo credit: p)