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Operation Cake. Chocolate. Cake.
Normally when I’m presented with a problem I most likely go into engineering mode. Only after I have assessed the urgency of the problem do I analyze the psychology of the situation. I’m a little slow when someone needs some hand holding because I’m too absorbed in making the problem go away. I think Mrs. F needed a bit of both. Lucky my friend, Lisa, suggested that baking a cake is the next best thing to saying, “There, there. I’m sorry you’re a crab apple.” Well. I can do cake.
The balcony fiasco of the summer ended Tuesday between Mrs. F and I. It wasn’t easy. I took several tries at her door on different occasions before she peered out and let out another heave of horror, “It’s happened to me AGAIN!!” Of course by again she meant dirt and this time I admittedly was the direct cause. The previous rainy Saturday I scrubbed the balcony floor with all the domestic tools I could find: mop, cloth, even a spent toothbrush.
The balcony was indeed filthy with pollen and other fine particles that come with living in the city. By the time I was done the tiles were shining and grime free. It made sense that she would encounter a speck or two on her level. I can’t stop gravity. I told her that I also freed the rain gutter. Things should get better. Let’s all be happy and have cake.
She almost didn’t want to take my peace offering. She had to tell Alex and I about the good ol’ days when this stuff never happened to her. She invented stories of all the things we were doing wrong, each one we negated. She suggested we invite the owner of the building to have a look. Fine with us. We asked her to cut us some slack but she wasn’t budging. She finally puffed that it is forbidden to have plants on the window sill, Alex looked at her sternly and said, “Show us where that is written then we’ll take them down.”
All of this in my mind was totally reasonable to listen to from an old woman. But it would have been murder if she refused my chocolate cake. That has to be against old lady code. Already being a foreigner in Bavaria, I was way out of my territory. She needed to play along, dog so help me.
Luckily it didn’t come to this. Two days later she returned our plate and told me that my cake was gegönnt. I later learned that she meant it was a treat. She also did her own investigation during a rain storm. The rain gutter to our balcony system is the only one flowing. Who knew she had an engineering mode too. I think she believes me now.
So my chocolate cake recipe is gleaned from Seattle Bon Vivant. I’m feeling extraordinarily lazy so my version is the photograph above. Feel free to use it to ward off spirited old ladies.
Biergarten food: Obatzda revisited
Some how we ended up with a lot of cheese in our fridge. I think I wanted to make a cheese cake but all of a sudden it got too hot to bring the oven temperature above ambient. We also make weekly buys of Camembert by the mini-wheel and wait a month until they reach their ripe date. Lately I’ve been playing a kind of Tetris game with the fridge contents in order to find room for cold drinks and other whatnots. Stuff had to start disappearing.
That’s when I revisited the Obatzter recipe I posted almost four years ago. At the time I had never seen nor tasted this Bavarian cheese spread and I certainly wasn’t in the metric mode yet. To my surprise the old recipe calls for a tummy roll of butter. I needed the butter for another use so I looked into using the cream cheese I no longer needed. This is what I came up with and the group at the Biergarten was pleasantly gaga over the results.
Ingredients:
* 200 g young camembert
* 30 g very ripe camembert
* 300 g cream cheese
* 2 Tbs sweet paprika powder
optional:
* 1/2 tsp caraway seed powder
* 1 small red onion finely chopped
This is very simple to make with lots of wiggle room to be creative.
Scope out the cream cheese also known as frischer Käse into a medium sized bowl. I used two different kinds of cream cheese: about 250 g of plain, reduced calorie Philadelphia and 50 g of an Aldi brand with herbs.
Remove the rind from the Camembert (if you aren’t squeamish about the rind, do like me and chop it up finely and spoon it in after the soft cheeses are mixed). We had some very, very ripe Camembert Le Rustique and a small wedge added a lot of flavor to the Obatzda. Although the cheese stench can be overwhelming upon opening the fridge door, it really is worth waiting to use the Camembert until the date on the package.
So add the rind-less Camembert with the paprika to the cream cheese and combine throughly. You can stop there. I didn’t have any caraway seeds (called Kümmel) but it tasted fine without any. Once you’re ready to eat, sprinkle some chopped red onions over the Obatzda and serve it with a basket of soft pretzels (Brezel) and a Maß of Helles.
With so many Biergarten visits in the summer you can easily treat yourself to an extra liter of beer by bringing this appetite pleaser with you.
all I need is a Gartenzwerk
Sorry to have vented about my garden woes in my last post. Really though, it’s been a joy having a garden. I never realized all the wonderful sensations one experiences with gardens. Like the smell of spearmint, lavender or tomato leaves on my hands. Like the prickly feel of a pumpkin vine against my skin. Or like seeing a cute little ladybug pigging out on aphids. I never knew cilantro produces such delicate mini-flowers. Here are a few highlights:
in my city balcony garden
I’m not sure how other Müncheners are doing with their balcony gardens but mine has been a bit stressed with the crazy weather we’ve been having. The biggest snafu happened when a big gust of wind blew the petunias out of my petunias.
One of the plastic pots that hung over the railing shattered to the ground. The other bombed the corner of a flower box the floor below. The disadvantage of working/studying from home is witnessing your 20-year widowed neighborlein blow a blue hair fuse at your front door. I knew this day would come. It feels like being jettisoned to the front line against the German Hausfrau force with your pants down.
Now that several weeks have passed, I was recently invited to inspect the condition of her balcony, perhaps to revive our neighborly jive. If she had asked me to eat cookies with her from the balcony tile floor I wouldn’t have blinked an eye. That’s when she hit me with the latest laundry list of offensives: I’m now being blamed for every speck of dirty that dries on her immaculate balcony, especially the water stains on the metal frame above. Apparently where she lives it does not rain bus loads of water making the balcony a temporary water park.
I’m also blamed for spiders. (yes, spiders. I almost laughed. Instead I opted for ‘what’s wrong with god’s creatures?’ bit.) What she didn’t seem to mind was the remnants of my long dark hair caught on a high corner near the rain gutter. Even I thought, ew.
I’m told I must bake a cake to appease Mrs. F. This is doable but knowing me I’ll probably botch this gesture with a heza-ism. Best to quickly register with the Mieteverein in case things get too out of hand.
All the while my roma tomatoes are not fairing well this season. I don’t have too much time to research the cause of what I call tomato scurvy and tomato buggy rot. But maybe some green thumb out there could give me a hint how to prevent this for next years crop.
