Purple Cauliflower/Lila Blumenkohl

Apologies--this week has been full of last-minute errands and furious preparation for the beginning of the semester on Monday.  I have been taking pictures and doing things, but not necessarily fun things that I thought people might enjoy reading.

We made a new recipe from Essen und Trinken magazine (or should that be Magazin?) earlier this week.  Gropius couldn't refuse a pretty purple cauliflower in the grocery store and I found a tasty Rezept online for it.  It was delicious, easy to prepare (just involved multiple steps, but they were easy ones), and hit the spot!

puff pastry cut, par-baked, filled and ready for final baking....

purple cauliflower, creme fraiche, Gruyere, and thyme

The final dinner:  grilled pork chop, cauliflower, green salad

doesn't that look beautiful?

We also made a special meal with a recipe in honor of Julia Child's 100th birthday.  Not on the actual birthday, mind you (we aren't that organized), but we certainly stated our gratitude to her when we tasted our dinner!

buttering the pan for baking, béchamel sauce cooking on the stove

zucchini,  parboiled rice, parmesan cheese

Hellen came over for dinner that night because Derek was out of town and brought a tasty Provençal rosé that we enjoyed with dinner.  Everyone thought it tasted like a much heavier, calorific meal than it actually was.  I never would've thought to use the zucchini's expressed water as a base for the béchamel.  No photos of the final meal because we were too busy talking and having a good time.

Veggie Tart

simple ingredients:  olive oil tart crust, zucchini, tomato, onion, eggs, cheese. sunflower seeds.

amazingly tasty result:

Grilled Pizza

We've been enjoying a LOT of grilled pizza lately because the weather has been so HOT.  On Friday evening, I finally decided to take a few shots of the action.  We made a pretty simple grilled pizza--no tomato sauce, just pesto on ours and tomato paste on Lulu's.  We did have a beautiful roma tomato from the garden that we used on our pizza in lieu of sauce though.  I think after a couple more tries, we'll have this grilled pizza thing down flat.  (and on the plus side, the grilled flatbread makes a great transfer medium for hummus!)

first pizza of the night (for Lulu)

flipping it over in a thwack works better than sliding it off the peel

Lulu's pizza

the mise en place

such concentration....

our basil pesto pizza with mixed cheeses

adding a little smoky char to the roma tomato

Blueberries

The trouble with going to a greenhouse on the Fourth of July is buying the unexpected....we were there to pick up another Parrot's Beak to replace the one that died while we were gone (too hot, not enough water, outside on the patio, etc) when I came across the Pink Lemonade blueberry bushes.  My eyes lit up and Gropius hung his head and said, "Okay."

Resistance is futile.

acidic soil, sand, and vermiculite

Once we got it home, we had to decide where to put it (I hadn't gotten that far) and ultimately decided that it would be best to rip out the horrible bush/refuge for scary spiders next to the carport and put it there.

action shot with the roto-tiller (i.e., best birthday present ever!)

Then, Gropius did some additional research and discovered that blueberries do better when planted with another species of the same plant (even though they are self-pollinators).  So, we put in two:  a pink lemonade (with pink berries) and an O'Neal (with blue berries).  And we also picked up a star jasmine when we were at Home Depot getting the necessary soil amendments for the blueberries.

pink lemonade on the left, o'neal on the right

two (edible) bushes are better than one

And of course, we decided to do this unanticipated landscaping project on a day when the temperature topped out at 100 degrees F.  Luckily, we could escape into the shade of the carport to elude the sun, and I insisted that Gropius drink water every time I saw him pause, but that still meant he was pretty tired at the end of the day.  And dehydrated.

The finished product with star jasmine in the back corner

But the new plants look beautiful.  And I hope that we get to enjoy some of our own pink/blueberries next spring!

Strudel

So, I have dedicated myself to learning how to make strudel--the real thing with actual strudelteig that you pull until it's so thin you can almost see through it.  The idea of being able to use that strudel dough to make sweet and savory strudels makes my mouth water....

But, before then, this recipe for Apricot Baklava Strudel called out to me from Sunset magazine.  I bought a handful of pistachios earlier in the week and a friend gave me a bag of apricots from her backyard tree--I figured this recipe was kismet!

Once I started getting everything assembled though, I realized that I didn't have the ground cardamom after all.  I had green and black cardamom pods, so I ended up splitting the green pods and grinding the cardamom up myself.  As my friend Hellen told me when she sampled some that afternoon, "You bake with love."

my miss en place, ready to assemble

the ground nuts, sugar, and cardamom

the finished product

Then, because I had plenty of the honey/sugar mixture leftover from macerating the apricots and half a package of phyllo dough, I decided to make a small cherry strudel, too.  Rather than using pistachios, I chopped up some almonds instead.

a little cherry peeking out....

More photos of Hohenstein

Here are some more photos taken on Saturday after lunch in Hohenstein.

view from the terrace of our restaurant

to give you a little perspective

view back down toward the village along the climb upward....

thank you handrail!

Lulu exploring a bit with Daddy

the Burg with red/white shutters for Franken

additional perspective on how high up we were

view from behind as we walked to our car

And some sweet ones of Lulu and her Oma:

Kirwa or Kirchweih

When we arrived back in Rothaurach yesterday, the town's Kirwa celebrations had shut down the main street to get to Walter Hoffman's house.  Kirchweih, or Kirwa in the local dialect, is literally "the church's birth."  It is an annual summer festival to celebrate the "birth" of the local church which happens after Pentecost/Pfingsten, of course.  One of the traditional celebrations of Kirwa is the erection of a Kirwa Baum which resembles the Maibaums of southern Bavaria or the Schwarzwald/Black Forest region.  Traditionally, men from the neighboring villages are supposed to sneak over and steal the Kirwa Baum the night before, so the local boys have to stay up late "guarding" the tree with lots of drinking...  They had closed the street to erect the Kirwa Baum yesterday afternoon, complete with a small oompa band for accompaniment.  Unlike southern Bavaria or Austria, this festival is also one of the few occasions when you see everyday folks wearing traditional clothing or tracht.  (I learned from Elisabeth, Hoffman's friend, that they don't call them dirndls around here--they're tracht)

Once we got to Hoffman's house, I could resist walking down the street and taking a few snapshots of the Kirwa Baum's erection and even shot a short video to give you a feel for the celebration.  Once the tree is up, then everyone goes back across the street to the local Wirtshaus and drinks and eats some more!

the big picture

teams of local boys working with poles

the "crown" of the Kirwa Baum
blue/white = Bayern/Bavaria, red/white = Franken, red/yellow/black = Germany
not sure, but I think the green/white = Rothaurach?

the top of the Kirwa Baum

another perspective on events

the oompa band, with toddler accompaniment

And here is the promised video to give you a spectator's birds-eye view: