What a Wreck

The kitchen was super clean and I just saw a recipie for cherry vanilla cupcakes and frosting today so I thought I would try my hand at making a cake from scratch. Up until now I'd only ever made cakes from packages and used frosting from the can (or whatever you want to call the plastic thing that frosting comes in) so this seemed like as good a time as any to try to bake a cake from scratch. I alreadz planned to bring my nice fluffy cake to work tomorrow and share with my colleagues. Well, as you may have guessed it didn't turn out as I was expecting...or really anything like I could ever imagine. I decided to make a chocolate cherry cake insead of vanilla because, really who does not like chocolate!? I also added a drop of red food coloring since the cherry juice made the frosting look a dirtyish pale pink but none of this mattered becasue the cake looks like this. That leaf looking thing is what I saw when I flipped the cake out of my spring form pan. I know the point of a spring form is so you don't have to flip but I wanted to see what the underside looked like. When I put in the toothpick to test if it was done I suspected the middle to be hallow. I never tried to make it hallow, all I wanted was light and fluffy. This is the most dense cake I have ever made. Oh and the frosting, don't bother. However, I will share my new found frosting knowledge that is is all butter and sugar, eww! So, I had a couple of problems and I think the main reason is that I don't own a mixer so this "cake" was completely mixed by hand with a whisk and aparently I suck at whisking. I should also admit that the frosting was looking more like a cake sauce than frosting at one point after I gave up and added lots of cherry juice so I threw in some flouer to get it back to that icing consisenct. Clearly my colleagues are not getting cake tomorrow but maybe I'll show them what they could have had haha. Betty Crocker is my new best friend. *Edit: I forgot to mention that I broke a bowl (one of my favorites) and spilled half a bag of sugar in the process of making this wreck.

Prague Pub Crawl

On our last night in Prague, we decided it was time to create our own pub crawl/beer tour. There are several of these geared at tourists which range from 3 hours (including dinner) to a full night of clubs. However, it was Sunday night, we already had a favorite restaurant where we intended to eat our last dinner (except it was closed so we didn't) and we knew which local beers we wanted to try so we went rogue on this one with incredible success. There were some ground rules, we could not drink the same beer twice, we each had a must have, we would drink no more than 6 half liters each and a photo must be taken of each beer. The night was about to start off with dinner at our favorite restaurant, Geronimo. This was our favorite restaurant because it was right next door to our hotel, already served us 2 delicious dinners and was super cheap. Besides, they had Patrick's choice beer on tap so we could knock that one out early. I should mention that the Czech Republic, like Germany, is a beer country. That being said, we were surprised to find that each bar/restaurant only had one or two beers on tap. Sometimes one restaurant would have the same beer offered at 2 or 3 different levels of potency (10, 11 or 12 with the price reflecting the increase in alcohol %). Moving forward, we found the Music Cafe where we decided to have dinner and our first beer of the night. The appetizers and atmosphere were up to par (funky but not touristy) but neither of us were satisfied with out main dish. Gambrinus was on tap and we had out half liter but it was not our favorite, it was by no means a bad beer but it didn't leave a lasting impression but I would go back to this restaurant and have the schafkase appetizer with a non-local main dish, I can't handle those dumplings! We were off and looking for Budweiser since it managed to elude us all trip. I observed a sign earlier so we headed to what we thought was a pub. Upon entering, we were told they would close at 9p,. Unaware of the time due to a dead battery in my cell phone, I mentioned that we just wanted a beer and asked if we would have time for a Budvar (the local word for the brand). This is where everything unraveled. The woman who greeted us told me they only had one type of beer, Pilsner Urquell in bottles. Disappointed, we walked out and reread the menu posted outside. It appeared that what used to be a restaurant was now more of a cafe serving cake, ice cream and coffee but instead of removing the light up Budweiser sign, old menu and name of the former restaurant they simply added another (smaller and unlit) sign proclaiming Lamborghini Cafe - only Italians would find this acceptable! After taking the strassenbahn back and forth between the same two stops for 10 minutes, we found another bar very close to our hotel advertising AND serving Budweiser. From the outside this place looked impressive, large light up signs with multiple logos, a fresh coat of paint and a side street location reassuring us it is not a tourist destination. Don't judge a book by its cover. When we walked inside, this is what we saw. It looked like it may have been decorated by the owner of a Greek restaurant complete with pastel walls, random decoration, and blue carpet on the floors. There was also a sectional sofa in one corner and a DJ set up in the middle of it all complete with a keyboard and light setup. But the entire place was empty except for a handful of locals hanging out in a small side room who said something to us in Czech when we entered. I quickly ordered our 2 Budvars and took in the atmosphere...
I'll leave you in a bit of suspense as you will never guess what was about to happen. We were so surprised, we broke one of our own rules and had 2 of the same beers in the same location.

The Grinch Stole Christmas

...and Patrick ate Easter. While we are on the topic of food, I need to put this out there. At a recent business dinner, Patrick consumed the following; goose liver (the forced fed kind), what he describes as "some rabbit dish that tasted good" (I have no idea what was done to this poor bunny) and milk lamb (the lamb was killed before it weaned from its mother). He came home delighted with his dinner and excited to describe the ingredients, not at all disturbed until I freaked out a little. I think each course is on PETA's list of tourtured animals. I'm usually not one for animal rights but I'm also not one to eat odd animals, I stick to pig, turkey, cow and chicken. Next time Patrick talks aout how important it is to get free range eggs, I'll have to remind him of his milk lamb. ;)

Mmmmm...sushi

Twice in February Patrick and I made sushi and it was delicious. For Christmas, I bought him a book called "Easy Sushi" and it was easy and really delicious and fun. The first time we made sushi was on Valentine's day. For fillers we used, tuna, cuccumber and crab stick. We had enough sea weed "wrapping papers" left so we decided to do it again the following Saturday with avacodo and since the tuna was not avaliable that day, we substituted avacado and omlet. From an asthetics perspective, the first attempt looked nicer due to the colors and the tuna was amazing. These pictures are from attempt #2 because my camera was in the office the first time so you can notice the lack of color but the taste was not lacking. Look how nice our living room looks as a sushi shop, like the pillows belong on the rug...

Catching up

It's been quite some time since my last entry but I guess you shuld expect the irregular blogging by now. It's not that I haven't wanted towrite or that I didn't have anything to write, it's more that I didn't have the time but enough with excuses, I'm making time to mostly post some photos. At the begining of the month, the weekend after I returned from the US, I went skiing in Austria but more excidely, I saw the Alps from the ground for the first time. Here are a few views:

The snowman family Barbra and I built. (note: the neon colors are what highlighters look like when you use them on snow.)

This is the village in which we stayed.

The mountain we skiied on day 1 (that's the gondola you can see, the actual skiing portion is above the fog.

A view from the gondola.

Waiting for the ski bus -my helmet is on my head but looks like it's too high because of the hat, trust me Niki shook it to make sure I was safe!
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The Economic Crash

This whole economic downfall has always seemed to be at arms length. Clearly, I am working in the world of academia and Universities are possibly the only institutions to benefit from an economic downfall. Even in Germany, with tuition, enrollment is up and all openings in our department are currently filled. However, yesterday I learned that Circuit City is going out of business. This one really schocked me both because of their history and reputation but also because of how it is presented on their website. There is a letter explaining the situation and attempting to answer FAQs. In the aforementioned letter, it outlines that Circuit City employs 34,000 people in the US and all will eventually lose their jobs with 60 days pay but some will stay on during the liquidation process which began January 17th and is estimated to end in March, a period of about 60 days give or take. In less than 3 months, the company will no longer exist in the US (they will continue to operate in Canada where they have 3,200 employees and several hundred stores according to the website) and 34,000 people will be added to the unemployment roster. This is a huge hit on the economy and the unemployment pool. I can't imagine unemployment will have the funds to continue paying everyone looking for benefits in such a time. Which leaves me with many questions; What is the next step? Where is the bottom? What can I do to protect myself? In a time like this, even a savings account is not immune to the anticipated deflation of currency. Speaking of currency, the once powerful British Pound is currently valued at 1.10 EUR, I've never seen these two curriencies so close since the introduction of the euro (I'm not saying it hasen't happened before but not since I started paying attention circa 2002). The world's economy is seriously depressing me today.

Over Caffeinated and Under Focused

I know I shouldn't be over caffeinated and currently drinking a cappuccino but, you must understand the circumstances. First of all it is COLD, and I'm not exaggerating, the temperature has been below zero (Celsius) for over a week solid as evidenced by the snow that fell last Monday morning (welcome back from Christmas vacation) and still covers the ground 9 days later with no sign of melting. So warm drinks are eagerly welcomed by my body. Secondly, my boss has been home sick since late last week and I'm impatiently awaiting her feedback to a paper I wrote (my first) for submission to an international conference. The submission deadline is TODAY. I also have loads of PowerPoint slides to make before I can visit my family (recall that I spent Christmas in Germany) the last week in January as they need to be completed by Feb. 2nd and I arrive in Germany the morning of. Needless to say my finger nails have no chance of survival under such circumstances so I've turned to caffeine (not healthy) and sport (better) to relieve some of my tension and stress. Either way, I can't concentrate on my slides until this paper is officially submitted correctly so I impatiently await the feedback and try to plan out my slides with as little distraction as possible. Clearly it's not working as I'm blogging is not part of the slide making process.