twinga

My grandmother's wedding day

It is my grandmother's 87th birthday today. A few months back, I got her a book that's called "Oma erzähl mal" - basically "Tell me your story, grandma". It contains questions about family, life lessons, and simple things about daily life back then, and you are actually supposed to fill them out by hand.

Now, as I said, she's 87, and she gets very tired when she has to write these days. So today I took the book and started asking her some random questions, filling it out myself.

For better understanding: My grandma grew up in the German part of the Czech Republic before World War II, so she was German, but actually didn't live in Germany. She wasn't on the Nazi's side of the story either ... which at some point almost got her in trouble. But that's another story. So when the War was over, she, her parents and her grandma got kicked out of the Czech Republic by the Czechs and they were taken to a small village in Bavaria, with nothing but their suitcase and the clothes they wore. For a few years, her and her husband (my grandfather, who is a full blood Czech, he died more than ten years back) lived in a 10 square meter room on a farm.

They could only get married after they had left the Czech Republic and finally got married in Bavaria. Their wedding day: Mass in the morning and their only wedding gift: Flour, eggs and some meat from the farmer lady they were staying at. When I asked her about her honeymoon she laughed and said: One walk around the cow stables! :)

What a different world we live in today, preparing for weddings as if a life depended on the color of the table decoration. Ridiculous in comparison!

A few other highlights:

• I always knew that my grandfather had lots of siblings, but I never knew that there were 3 real brothers and another 10 (!) half-siblings. Wow! I was trying to imagine my great-grandmother preparing dinner everyday...

• She said it was love at first sight when she saw my grandfather. He came to her house as he and another Czech guy were checking for animals who might have been left behind by Germans who had already had to leave the Czech Republic, and so he knocked on her door. She wore a red dress and was ironing clothes! :) Cute!

• Her advise for life: Always listen to your heart :)

Soon all the contemporary witnesses of the time around World War II will be no longer with us... Time to ask more questions!

Tadka Dhal and Chicken Vindaloo OR A whole day of cooking

I'm no passionate cook. At most, I cook one dish a week, the rest of the week T has to cook or we go out. A bad habit that I nurtured in San Francisco. Actually, I guess the amount of times you cook doesn't correlate to how much you like it. For me, cooking is an art, it's creative. And as much as I don't feel like taking photographs every day, I don't feel like cooking every day. I guess cooking is also a necessity most of the times  - but today was only fun. I thoroughly enjoyed what felt (and kind of was) a whole day of cooking. It's almost 10 p.m. now and we just finished this great Indian meal with - guess what - some tasty chai. We started the whole thing by thinking about what Indian dish to cook, then making a list, going shopping, and then started marinating and soaking and preparing what needed to be preapared before you could actually heat the many pots and pans we needed.

Without going in to too much detail, let me just say that these two videos here should be followed exactly as instructed and you'll get the most amazing Tadka Dhal (Manu, what does Tadka mean?) and Chicken Vindaloo. Really, I mean it. The way it turned out, we could have served it in an Indian restaurant in India. And I know what I'm saying! We could officially be an Indian cooking help now, he he. :)

So here are the videos, and this is the link to the chai recipe.

Dhal Tadka:

Chicken Vindaloo:

Chicken: How To Make Chicken Vindaloo

And this is how ours turned out:

In memorial of Michael Jackson, The King of Pop

I have to say I am so glad I got to see one of Michael's concerts. I will never forget having waited for hours to get a spot that was still about 100m from the stage. I was 17 back then. It was the best concert I've been to - ever. The show and his performance was just amazing. RIP Michael. Here is my favorite song, the one that ALWAYS got me dancing as some of my friends will remember. :-) The video is from the History Tour concert in Munich, 1997. Maybe you can spot me ;)?

Fingerfood

Last night we were invited to a housewarming party and were asked to bring fingerfood. The reason I'm posting this is mainly because I found the preparation very appealing from a design point of view. Well, it also tasted good of course :) So here goes ... our mini hot dogs in flaky pastry and spinach-goat cheese-garlic in flaky pastry.

Maybe next time we'll try Empanadas de Pollo, a recipe from our favorite cooking blog, kochbanausen.de :)

Bon Appetit!