Onion

Garlic

Potatoes

Zucchini

Mushrooms

Beats (make everything red)

Pointy Cabbage

Hot peppers

Hot Hot Curry Sauce

Cumin

Zaziki

Basmati

OK so it’s not so pretty, but I had to post this just so I won’t forget to make it in the future.  This breakfast was so lecker that as soon as I finished it, I made another.

Simple steps to yummy:
Bulgur porridge!  Add

egg with runny yellow yummy

sauteed onions

lox

chèvre 

dried red chili pepper

Thanks to Borg for the guest post!

2 packages jiffy cornbread mix
4 jumbo eggs
1 stick salted butter
1 cup small curd cottage cheese
1/2 sweet onion, diced and sauteed
1 bunch broccoli, steamed and chopped (i put it in a bowl and attacked it with scissors)

instructions: mix that shit and bake it at 375F but i don’t know for how long because i hovered until it looked like this and i ate it and burned many body parts but it sure was worth it

No cornbread mix?  Substitute!

Corn Muffin Mix
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

——~~~——
To make muffins add
1 egg
1/3 cup milk
——~~~——
1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese (optional)
2 ounces canned chilies (optional)
1/4 cup drained chopped pimiento (optional)
1/2 cup chopped onion (optional)


http://www.food.com/recipe/jiffy-corn-muffin-mix-copycat-345502

In Magazine Page Food Barrier Guy’s defense, he introduced me to bulgur, a delightful grain that cooks faster than many rices, and tastes great, as well as this amazing bucket of yogurt, that goes for just €1,69/kg (conversion required for USA).  I also picked up this great spice blend, that instantly turns this yogurt into tzatziki sauce.  I’ve been using these ingredients in about everything lately.  

It was good.  So good.  Of course when I tried to reproduce it to serve to all of my coworkers, the result was the gimpy brother of this beautiful stew.

Das Star Wars Kochbuch!

Featuring Wookie Cookies ‘ö’

I was somewhat surprised to walk out of my room to find this…

One of my old floormates always used magazine cutouts in the kitchen, as sort of a buffer between his food and the lid of his pot.  It always seemed a bit weird to me, but I kind of shrugged it off.  Still, Sandwich-on-paper-on-shoes crosses a line.

I know that its hard to imagine why someone would leave their friends and family to go live in Germany.. well it wasn’t easy, but aside from the professional benefits, here is Germany’s real draw: 

This was at Hannover’s Weihnachtsmarkt (huge Christmas market).  Just imagine salmon steaks simultaneously grilling and smoking over a fire.  These filets were so big, it took a brawny Bavarian (probably false) to carry them off of the planks

(german dude and fish shown to scale)

The salmon was taken directly off of the fire and put onto delicious Brötchen (rolls) with sauce and LECKER!!!!!!!!

So the pizza map didn’t REALLY happen so much — but I DID get my fill while I was home.  Here was a great slice from Artichoke Pizza in the village (plug! artichokepizza.com‎)   Yummyyyyyyy

Clearly I’m excited.

So this knish and a blintz walk into a bar…….

I was hoping more for a blintz, but it came out a bit of a hybrid.. not sure how to get the dough thin and still strong enough to work with.  That would also help a lot in the pizza game.  Anyway, I just threw the dough together by mixing an egg with some salt, oil, and milk, and just adding enough flour to make it the right amount of flour.  The filling is overboiled potatoes and broccoli (to make mush) mashed together with some milk, cheese and spices.  I wanted to use cheddar, but it was easier to get fromage des vosges.. probably because France is right over there.  After some practice, they actually came out really good.  !

Here’s my pizza map, compiled of my favorite places, as well as those listed by Jon Stewart in his awesome rant (search “Pizza” in my blog to find it).  I’m hoping to visit all of these places before going back to Germany.  Hint: Zoom out

Even in the US, we’re accustomed to seeing this wholesome snack

but imagine the horror on the American consumer’s face when presented with the true meaning of this candy

This time: cooking, not eating (that’s binge-ing by the way, not bing-ing.. seems like there should be some other way to write that).

Whenever I’m feeling a lot of stress building up, I always unwittingly lead myself into some extended cooking session, involving preparing and cooking several dishes at once.  Its like I subconsciously know that by giving myself all this crazy work to do in the kitchen, I’m working through the stress of the things in life that are actually stressful.  Its like the FOOD is a microcosm of my PROBLEMS and blah blah balh ok you get it.. Anyway, its really nice because even if the food turns out shitty, it all ends up fine anyway, so I can kind of internalize it.f.da fzkdafdkoapf OK here are the results:!

1: POTATOES!

Simple.  Besides sausage and beer, Germany is all potatoes and cabbage.  So, I’ve been following suit.  I’ve been making these wedges a lot lately, and this is actually probably my worst batch.  I blame the lack of cheese and Sriracha (duH).   It’s OK, there’s still time to add both.

2: TORTELLINI 

Simple.  I started with a garlic-butter-oil base, and just added fresh tomatoes, mushrooms, and two types of tortellini.  Spices and *mwah*

3: CHICKEN AND BROCCOLI AND RED CABBAGE AND MUSHROOMS WITH PEANUT BUTTER, ZAZIKI, AND JALAPEÑOS….

by any other name would still taste this…?  It’s good, but an unsatisfactory follow-up to my last thrilling post.  I’ve been doing very simple dishes involving my special concoction of PB, Zazik, and Jalapeños, mainly just adding the mixture to noodles or chicken, with amazing results.  It’s really great!  But I guess I wasn’t quite ready to step it up to the big times with other strange stuff… I’m still hopeful.  As I eat it over the coming days, it will be progressively tweaked to perfection.  

4: COLESLAW 

I just threw some vinegars and sugar into a bunch of red cabbage.  No photo, I’ll find out in a couple of days if it worked. 

So that’s it.  I’m sweaty, covered in unrecognizable food remnants, and starting to remember all that shit that was stressing me out in the first place.  The funny thing is that because I was tasting everything as I made it, by the time I was done, all I wanted was an orange or something.  

KEEP IRONY OUT OF THE KITCHEN

Jalapeños and peanut butter.

So here’s a selection of the many sandwichy encounters that I’ve had in EU and Israel, dating back to last January when I started travelling with Birthright.  Lets start with this guy:

He was amazing.  He had this little imbiss in the old city of Tzfat (Safed), Israel.  check out his awesome setup.

Not only did he make us the most delicious grilled multi-cheesy flatbread sandwiches ever, but he gave us an impromptu lesson on the true meaning of Judaism.  Just off the cuff, in under five minutes, he brought more light and wisdom to the topic than our whole group combined could do the night before, after over an hour of debating.  He was so passionate and warm.  His sandwiches were awesome (and just cost a few shekels).  

While we’re in Israel, let me take you to The Shuk (Mahane Yehuda Market) in Jerusalem, a giant, wonderful, outdoor market. 

This fantastical place had too many awesome vendors to name, so here’s just a few:

Yummy dried food!

MEAT!

Fish heads, fish heads doo doo doo!

Did someone say halva? No? oh. well, there was a lot of blurry halva here anyway…

So as you may imagine, this place was pretty overwhelming.  I couldn’t buy something from every place, but I wanted a good sampling.  And I was hungry.  So I constructed a sandwich with goods from a few places…  First I bought a flatbread from a bakery merchant.  Then, I needed to fill it.  Any ideas?

CHEESE?

CHEEEEEEEEEESE?

I brought my bread to this guy and I told him I just wanted some cheese for my sandwich.  He looked straight at me and asked for my bread.  There was something so sincere and knowing in his look, that I didn’t ask any questions.  He cheesed the fuck out of it.   

Such care

Such attention to detail.  This was cheese.

I then went to a place with olives and the like, and bought some olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and marinated roasted garlic and mushrooms, and my sandwich was complete.

yeah.. that’s the best pic I managed to take while I shoved the entire thing whole down my throat.  I also met this guy:

He’s a professional doctor.  He made aliyah some time ago.  He keeps a dead bee on his forehead, do you see it?

OK, out of the Shuk and into the city for some typical Mediterranean cuisine: the kebab.

.

You see variations on this food all over the place.  In Germany, it is usually the Turkish Döner kebab, in Israel, it is Shawarma, and in Greece, it is gyro.  They are all more or less the same food, big round meat spinning vertically on a large skewer, like so:

(photo taken in Munich).  This stuff in Europe is like Pizza in the US.  You can’t go more than a couple of blocks without seeing somebody selling it.. and then you eat it. every time.  Later, I’ll get to some more of this stuff, as it so important here in Deutschland.  

So if you’re a vegan thinking about heading to Israel, you might just now be looking like this:

But fear not.  Falafel!

It’s almost making the same expression you were!  So much for not eating anything with a face.

Just as our group was about to depart, some of us went off to a little restaurant and got some other yummsies.  I got this flatbread with ground lamb, onion, parsley, and whatever else?

Yummy yum yum yummy yum.  This was so good.  Dessert not so much..

After Birthright split up, Mollyrose and I stuck around in Tel Aviv for a while.  Here she is displaying our wonderful olive selection:

oops.. Here she is:

We got some olives and of course

cheese from this guy, and made ourselves some sammiches.

Sehr lecker!  Ok, looks like I’m not getting past Israel with this post.  Come back soon for part two of sammiches and burgurz!  Follow your cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese!