Monday, August 31, 2009

Essen, Bier und Katze

Jean-Luc die Katze


Hello everybody,

Everything is going according to plan, the bier is in storage, the katze is fattin’ up, and I'm ramping up the cooking.
The winter bandito has arrived to town a week early and started to scare off the ducks that hang out in the pond and summer sure is in a hurry to make its exit. I do hear around these parts that winter starts early September.
And I believe it, because it's starting to get colder in the mornings and the evenings are no longer humid.
With that said, the sunsets have been gorgeous these last couple of days, but are suspiciously looking like Indian Summer Nights.
I dare say I put these German sunsets right up there with the skies of Texas, Oregon and Shelton. I’ll try to take pictures this evening.

We headed for Munich this past weekend to the King Tutankhamen Exhibit…quite the sight. I did not take my camera or I would have had pictures to share. I figure cameras would not be allowed, but to my surprise people had their cameras and, can you believe, were using their flashes. I was shocked. I was standing in front of King Tut’s funeral mask and couldn’t really have a good look because all the camera flashes were reflecting of the mask and blinding me. Camera flashes...what the crap.

The immensity of the whole thing was quite a surprise and only 40% of the artifacts were recovered upon discovery, the rest was looted. I really enjoyed looking at his daily use chairs and his coffin. His coffin was enclosed within two other coffins which were made of 296 pounds of gold. Then they were encased in five other larger golden boxes/coffins, the last box covering the all the boxes, something like 18ft tall, 25ft long, and 16 ft wide and it was considered small.
His coffins were set up kind of like the way Russian dolls work, a small doll within a larger one, with in a larger one and so on and these gold leaf boxes are huge (I’m calling them boxes because at the moment what they are really called escapes my mind, as silly as I might be, it might be coffins).
I highly recommend visiting the exhibit when it hits town again. It went through Portland a year ago and we didn’t get a chance to go.

THE FOOD:




This is an Arugula, Ricotta, and Bulgur Wheat pie. This is my first attempt at a winter dish. The other little meat things are of my own creation borrowed from a local dish called, Rouladen. I marinated what I believe was thin cut skirt steak with red wine, garlic, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper for about two-three hours or longer if you like. I then wrapped them around slices of orange bell pepper with mustard and cooked the whole thing in the oven at 325 degrees until they looked ready, probably removed from oven slightly under cooked, because you don’t want to be eating beef jerky.
If I had the time I would brown them on a pan, then cook them in the oven and make a brown sauce to pour over the meat to help with dryness . . . next time.






THE TREAT:
The cantaloupe is from Italy and it is so good!!! I didn’t think I can save any in the freezer, because it just won’t taste the same. Unless I make ice cream out of it…hmmmm...Eis





THE BEER:



Kapuziner Weissbier

So far one of my favorite Weissen biers. Mir Lieblings-Bier ist Kapuziner. No lemon for this guy, it would just ruin the beer. As one can see from the picture, I have learned to pour a Weissbier to Germland standards I so proud...now, if I could only drum as good as these beers.

Oh yeah, I am walking with out a brace now and I played my drums for the first time last week...I mean really played them. I also got to take a ten mile bike ride last week. Ankle is doing okay and that's all I'll say, don't want to jinks myself.

until next time,
M&L

1 comment:

Martin said...

what no one likes Jean-Luc?