What I've been buying and eating

Even in my tiny kitchen (which is deceptively spacious with floor to ceiling windows and the open floor plan), I can make delicious things to eat. Our grocery store is stocked with tons of amazing things that are easy to prepare/already prepared, and you don't have to know a lot of German. I really like going to grocery stores in other countries and seeing what they have. When we were in Italy last year I stumbled upon some shelf stable gelato that I packed away and stuck in the freezer when we got back home. It was SO good! We also got some chocolate biscuits that I have yet to find again.... but I will!

Using Google translate or just looking at the pictures on containers, you can get an idea of what to do. Yogurt is easy, and they're really good. Here are two of my favorites: one is banana with chocolate flakes, and the other is Greek (which isn't dense like in the US, it's light and airy) with some kind of crunchy topping.

It's obvious what this is, a chocolate roll/bread/croissant (oh yum).

And these make me laugh, because not only are they "Chicken Nuggets" but they are also "Western Style" which apparently means they are super spicy (and Germans have a skewed idea of spicy.... to them, it's more like our mild). I especially like the picture of the cowboy, in case you still weren't getting "Western" from this.

Silly. Hubby likes these granola bars, more chocolate obviously:

And these are really easy and yummy for lunch. Far and above better than any cup of noodles situation, their sauces and pasta are actually tasty, and the flavors are great. Here are broccoli and cheese sauce, and then mushroom cream sauce. I've also had the ham and cream sauce, and herb and cream sauce. Just add hot water, stir, and wait 5 minutes.

Some things, however, are not as easy to figure out.... like these, which are actually potato patties, and quite tasty. We had them last night for dinner with a little pasta sauce on the side. Mostly potato with onion and herbs. Just found the Wikipedia page too.

Tasty turkey meatballs. "Puten" is turkey.

Then we are also fans of these - chicken schnitzels, when you've just had enough of the pork version. We pair it with the sauce below (herb and cream sauce). Really easy and really tasty.

Finally, here is a shot of my first attempt at making spundekas. It didn't come out as pinky-red as you'd find in the restaurants, and I played with one of the (easier) recipes I found, but hubby said it was tasty and that he'd eat it again. That's good news, since we still have plenty of it!

So that's what the hubby and I have been munching on lately. Just wanted to let you all know that we're not really starving, and despite some of this stuff being not so great for you, we're also eating salad and fresh farm-grown veggies.

Alright - I'm off now to do some cleaning, maybe moving some boxes down to the garage, and continuing to work on our honeymoon itinerary. Oh and learning German. I found a cool YouTube channel with lessons which are a little more basic than Rosetta Stone (and actually teach you grammar rules). I also found some vocabulary worksheets I've been reading. I WILL learn this language!

Just a Domestic Monday.

I meant to post yesterday, truly I did. However, my domestic Monday got away from me - multiple loads of laundry, cleaning the kitchen, moving boxes around, spilling water on the floor, cleaning up said water, getting paint out of a certain husband's shorts for hours, vacuuming, you get the idea. I was also working on coordinating our honeymoon trip plans, and still am in the process of doing that. It's going to be AMAZING!

The weather here has been on the cool side, in the 50s and 60s and for the past few days been a tad rainy. Not that I mind - it was great having a few windows open at night with a cozy comforter. It also makes tea drinking more enjoyable.

Side note: I didn't realize I had so much tea until I unpacked everything. I have a lot to get through before I can buy more.

Anyway, here is my work station, complete with afternoon tea:

After I get myself together here I'll run over to Rewe (that's the grocery store around the corner) and get some food for the next few days... hopefully I'll have something more compelling to blog about tomorrow!

The new Star Trek movie is already out here...

And I got to see it in 3-D on Wednesday! I liked it a lot, I think better than the last movie. Hubby wasn't out of the room more than a few seconds before he started ripping it apart. Apparently, they got one too many things wrong with it as part of the Star Trek franchise. Although I can appreciate that, I found it to be entertaining. Hubby always finds something amiss.

I was pretty pleased with the German movie experience overall. I was a little worried when all the previews were in German, but was assured that this was a special original in-English viewing. The Germans laughed a lot, more than I thought they would, and I'm not sure if they were laughing because others were, or because they actually got the jokes...

The snack stand before was mostly popcorn, some candy, soda, and beer! I wanted cake but they weren't selling any. One of our friends wanted ice cream and lo and behold - between the previews and the movie, the lights came up and the ice cream man came around! We decided against the 5 Euro bars, though. (Note to the US: why don't we do that? It was very Baseball-stadium of them).

Anyway, the weather has been lovely here. This is from the balcony outside of our bedroom this morning:

I'm continuing to make progress inside and clear out some boxes and paper trash. Hopefully this weekend we'll be able to enjoy the balcony like Fiona here, after some additional cleaning:
































Happy Weekend, all!

How the Germans Stay Fit.

I did prepare a terribly clever video about this topic but for some reason Google wouldn't let me upload it. Sigh. I will have to type it out.

The short answer to how the Germans stay so fit? The kitchen.

I've been using mine for almost a week now and there are some shortcomings... 

1) We don't have a microwave. I don't totally miss it yet, but during the unpacking I found two of those Betty Crocker warm delights dessert things that you mix up and microwave for a warm chocolate treat. The Germans just don't have the temptation of instant food.

Warm chocolate desserts are useless for me now... if I want something hot, I have to crank on the oven.

2) Or the stove top, which is unbelievably slow at everything. I think the Germans give up at some point and just crack open a beer.

3) The size of my sink. If the Germans get past the cooking phase, the cleanup phase is most certainly irritating. The sink is the size of a bathroom sink, if that. I'm dreading the day when I have to clean my big oval pot after making chili! (Mmm, chili....). At least my Mom got me some sweet Crock Pot liners so I don't have to worry about that giant mess. I think the Germans purposely have small meals so they don't have to fight with large pots and pans in a small sink.

4) Lack of preservatives in foods. The fridges here are small for a reason: the food goes bad soon, so you don't have massive trips to the store to stock up on anything. Go to the store, cook, repeat a few days later.

On the plus side, the tomatoes we got this week are wonderful and remind me of my Dad's home-grown version. The milk is delicious as well. All the food is tasty, really, and so people don't need to eat two portions to enjoy it - one is plenty.

So there you have it. Germans are lean, mean, beer and wine drinking machines.

Weekend Update

Hubby and I had quite the busy weekend. It started on Friday night when we went to the Mainz Wine Fest down by the river to meetup with some of the English speakers and have some dinner. We shared a beef noodle bowl, a flammkuchen, a bratwurst, and then we each got a chocolate croissant. Oh, and had wine.

Saturday morning we got up really early in order to cook (cook!) breakfast - I made ham, egg and cheese burritos. The highlight was the Irish cheddar I found, mmm! Next, we were heading to Ikea, and it's best to get there right when they open so as to avoid a crushing crowd of home-improving Germans out to spend the entire day there.

We were successful in purchasing the following: a kitchen island, a bench for the main bathroom (to put next to the sauna, of course!), a rack for the main bathroom, the other light for the main bathroom, and a larger tower that looks best in the upstairs bathroom:

Hubby was on a roll with these, and that was after we went to the commissary and even made a frozen pizza for lunch. We had every intention of returning to the wine fest, but we were getting a little tired from the Ikea-filled day and the sheer volume of things still to do in the apartment.



Anyway, on Sunday, we got to pick back up our tradition of making blueberry muffins and watching an episode of Star Trek. After being lazy for a bit, we got dressed and went down to the wine fest again. We both wanted more of these noodle things - I cannot convey how delicious they were - they were made in a huge wok and then they put creamy garlic sauce on top, and they had hot pepper oil to drizzle. Oh my goodness.

Not a bad view, right?




























After this course we made our way over to another stand where we wanted to try this wine spritzer thing, which is essentially half a tall glass of wine filled the rest of the way with sparkling water. Hubby went for a drier wine while I went for the Riesling. The Riesling was the clear winner... I also eventually got some french fries.

Here's me next to the river! Perfect weather. I wasn't kidding about the large glass.

After enjoying the weather at the fest, we decided to go back home and hang out on the balcony. I enjoyed hanging out on the lounge while Hubby had a beer:

Later we went in to prepare dinner (beef tacos for Cinco de Mayo and margaritas!) and even met our neighbors next to us.

Hope everyone else had fun weekends too!

Material possessions everywhere!

Our stuff showed up yesterday! Incredibly exciting... I didn't realize how American and materialistic I was until they started bringing in boxes.

Three movers arrived at 8 am on the dot and were finished a little after 10 am, leaving the entire day for hubby and I to tear things open. We started with the bed, which we've been anxious to have back. It is a Temperpedic memory foam mattress, after all. (I haven't slept as well as last night in a looooong time!)  Here it is all setup. We'll be replacing that headboard as soon as we can, and of course go for some matching side tables and bringing down our lamps.

After that was setup and I washing sheets to put on the bed, hubby setup the computers and TV and all that technical stuff. All except for my computer which he managed to fry. (Didn't flip the voltage switch so it blew up. Argh). Oh well - that's why I'm typing this out on HIS computer. No big deal.

I got through a bunch of the boxes yesterday, but now the apartment is a war zone. This is where our dining room will be, but am super happy that we haven't ordered that yet:

While I am totally down with recycling, they take it to a whole other level here, and the separation of materials drives me crazy since we don't have separate trash bins for everything. (Plastic, glass, containers, actual trash, bio trash, bleh!). It's a little overwhelming when you're surrounded by packing material that you just want out of your space. I'm also fighting with less storage space, at least until we order the dining room set, which will include one or two buffet tables that will serve nicely to store and display wine and wine glasses (and miscellaneous wine accessories). So far that's sharing space in the living room with my beverage corner:

Please also note that Matt's socks have already made it to the floor next to the couch.



















Anyway, the beverage area actually has to go in this corner because when I setup my new and AWESOME cappuccino maker, I need to hook it up to a transformer, which is being shared with the TV. That's right - my cappuccino maker is so powerful that it needs the same transformer as a flat screen.

For our first real meal in the apartment, we decided to make spaghetti since we actually had all the ingredients for that. Hubby did run down to the grocery store for salad fixins though, and came back with a yummy bake-your-own cheesy garlic bread. We finally got to use our new flatware, bowls, plates, and placemats we got as wedding presents. We also put a bottle of wine (they all survived the trip!) in our new wine chiller. Hooked up to the transformer.

Now that everything is here, I'm definitely feeling more settled. It's really comforting to sit on your own couch and curl up with a cup of loose leaf tea in an American-sized mug.

Now I just need to get all that packing wrap out of here.

Deck chairs, curtains and more!

I flew home to Germany on Sunday evening, landing Monday morning, and it was one of the most delightful flights I've ever had. It was only half full so I was able to snag an entire row (three seats) all for myself for the 7.5 hour ride. I had the hubby's noise-canceling headphones with me as well as an eye mask. I totally took advantage of the entire row and got to sleep - way more comfortable than sitting up! The landing was also one of the best I've ever had.... almost made up for the whole canceled flight thing on the way out of the country.

The hubby and I were super busy today. We spent all morning painting the office room and master bathroom and they look just as good as the master bedroom which he took care of when I was in the U.S. We had planned to go to Ikea in the afternoon until we realized it's May Day, a national holiday. Oh well - we ended up getting curtain rods from base, and got to hang up the curtains I bought and brought back from Target! So excited to have these in our bedroom now!

We also bought these lovely lounge chairs!!

To celebrate our painting, we had a beer on the lounge chairs before dinner. Though everything is closed on holidays, we were lucky because today marks the first day of Mainz's wine festival down at the Rhine. So, we ventured down there to see tons and tons of wine and food stands. Yum and yum. We started with a bratwurst and curry wurst and then shared a ham, salami and cheese crepe, a big glass of wine each, and then got some glazed nuts on the way out. It runs for 5 days so we'll definitely be back.

We also put Maurice, who had previously been in Maryland, up above the fridge to oversee things.

Our stuff is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. We are SO excited to finally have all of our material possessions!