Let's end the week on a sweet note!

Here is the long-awaited shot of some amazing German pastries!


The one on the left was a moist cake topped with a cream layer and a gelatin layer studded with fresh raspberries. On the right is a classic cream puff. Both were amazing. The cream puff was hands down the best I have ever had (and I make a damn good cream puff). These came from a bakery on Rosegartenstrasse in the old town section of Konstanz. It was actually some sort of chain coffee shop. We went back several times during our short stay. Can you imagine having such spectacular treats available at your generic Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts? Don't get me wrong, they have their place, but these pastries left those from most specialty bakeries in the dust.

It's been a sweet-filled week here on the blog - first chocolate pretzel tart, then biscotti, and now these. I guess I have sugar on the brain, which is only fitting, I guess, since it's not in my tummy. I've been relying on flavored teas (including pomegranate, tropical fruit, and caffeine-free vanilla) to trick my taste buds and stay off the sweets. It's working so far.

We're having friends over for dinner on Sunday, so I'll post about that next week. In the meantime, have a sweet weekend!

Year in Review: Cooking in North Carolina, Part 2

At the beginning of the week, Dan, Rob, and I went to the closest grocery store in order to stock up on cereal and sandwich provisions and the like for breakfasts and lunches. This grocery store happened to be inside a Super Walmart. When I went to select some fruit for snacks, I was disappointed to see that the peaches were from California. It just didn't make sense to me. When you are in one of the best peach-producing states in the country, at the peak of peach season, why are you shipping peaches from three thousand miles away? Yes, peaches are delicate, and they don't travel well, but it seems like madness to me to waste all that gasoline trucking things across a continent when better-tasting ones are growing an hour away. Okay, rant over.


Since the market wasn't until later in the week, for the first few days we reluctantly snacked on the California peaches, which were firm enough to survive the cross-country trip but frankly not that exciting. When Wednesday finally came around and we could purchase local peaches, they did not disappoint. They were twice the size of the California peaches with one hundred times the flavor. I am not exaggerating. All the peaches I've ever eaten in my life, added up, would not have the impact of a single bite of one of these peaches. It was like eating the sun.


So it was with great reluctance that Dan and I sliced up all these peaches to make gallettes. We briefly debated not serving dessert and eating all the peaches ourselves - they were that good! - but decided that would not be in the spirit of the week. With such excellent main ingredients, I wanted to keep the preparation as simple as possible, so we tossed the peaches with a small amount of brown sugar and a generous dose of cinnamon and piled them on top of roll-out pie crusts, casually folding over the edges to hold in the juices. We baked them at around 400 for twenty-five minutes or so: until the smell was unbearably good and the crusts were golden. We went with gallettes instead of regular pies for a few reasons. One, the open face shows off the beautiful color of the peaches. Two, with peaches that good, who wants a double pie crust? This kept the fruit-to-crust ratio high. And three, there were no pie pans in the rental, so this was also a practical decision that allowed us to use the pans on hand.

The gallettes were served a la mode. Sorry for the lousy final picture: we were in a rush to serve and eat these. I'm sure you can understand.

Year in Review: Cooking in North Carolina, Part 1

Last summer, Dan and I had the pleasure of spending four days on the beach in North Carolina with his extended family. They've been renting a beach house on the same little island every summer for years, and this was the first time since Dan and I got together that we'd been able to attend. There are a lot of traditions associated with the Holden Beach week, and one is that each night, a different couple cooks dinner for the entire family. Dan's dad Rob teamed up with us, and the men agreed to follow my lead. Now, at this point, we were several weeks in to our first CSA experience, and so I was excited to find out what North Carolina had to offer in terms of fresh, local produce. I used this search tool to find a farmer's market in the Holden Beach area.

The nearest market turned out to be in Southport, a short drive from Holden Beach. Southport, you may remember, is where we enjoyed a wonderful meal over the water at Provision Co. It's an idyllic village on the coast, and the farmer's market is held on Wednesday mornings at a park overlooking the harbor. It was a small market but the produce selection was more than satisfactory and a bluegrass band on the steps of the town hall enthusiastically provided the soundtrack throughout our visit.

When deciding what to cook, I originally thought of ribs, but it turns out Uncle David and Aunt Maureen always make the ribs. So then I thought maybe fajitas. Well, Scott and Melanie do tacos. So then I decided to stop making plans and just see what was available at the market. The first thing we bought, and the best, I think, was the amazing peas pictured above. Mississippi red crowder peas, according to the farmer who sold them to us.

The farmer recommended shelling the purple (drier) ones, slicing the green ones like green beans, steaming both lightly, and tossing them with any kind of oil. She also said a bit of bacon would bring out a natural smoky flavor. I followed her directions almost exactly, but instead of just oil, I used Newman's Own Balsamic Vinaigrette. These peas were amazing. I never thought I would enjoy peas so much. For me, a big bowl of these would have made a satisfying dinner on their own. I'm drooling just thinking about them.

But just peas wouldn't cut it, I knew. Nevertheless, at least we had our one local dish. Looking around the market, I found great vegetables for grilling and decided we would do kebabs as a main dish. We picked up big, fat, Vidalia onions, red and green peppers, yellow squash, and zucchini. Later we got chicken, mushrooms, and grape tomatoes from the grocery store and spent the afternoon chopping almost everything into large (1-1.5") chunks (leaving the mushrooms and tomatoes whole) and threading them on skewers. Kebabs look prettier when you mix everything up, but the reality is a mushroom and a chunk of zucchini and a piece of chicken all cook at different rates, so for the best taste, we threaded like with like so everything could cook how long it needed to, no more and no less. When it was all done, we dumped it all on a huge platter. I had planned to make Thai peanut sauce but when we found out there were a couple of people with peanut allergies, we switched that to an apricot-mustard dipping sauce (recipe below).

Part two, which covers the dessert we made, will be published tomorrow.


APRICOT-MUSTARD SAUCE
*learned from Alexia in college

2 tablespoons apricot jelly
1 tablespoon stone-ground mustard
1 cup plain yogurt (fat-free, lowfat, or whole milk is fine)

Put everything together in a small saucepan and stir over low heat until warm and blended.

That's it. It couldn't be easier, and it's very yummy. Adjust the jelly and mustard amounts to your taste. Serve over poached chicken, or grilled chicken or shrimp, or with grilled veggie kebabs. Whatever you can think of, it will probably taste good with this sauce.

Bagel Time!

When Mom turned to me during the car ride down to the train station and declared, "I have to get a bagel before we leave the city!" she echoed my thoughts perfectly. Thursday morning we went to the deli across the street from Grace's apartment and got bagels, juice, and fruit salad. We watched all the New Yorkers rushing in and out to grab their breakfasts on the way to work and enjoyed quietly pointing out the particularly interesting ones: the man wearing a vicuna coat with a baseball cap, the Spanish woman with a very cool minidress with long belled sleeves and an agressive, full-length frontal zipper, the young Russian man behind us who was almost too pretty to be real. It was nice to sit and relax in the midst of all that hubbub. And there's really nothing like a New York City bagel. We both chose multigrain with cream cheese; Mom opted for scallions on hers while mine, pictured above, was slathered with strawberry-flavored spread. I don't eat bagels very often, but when there's a really good bagel to be had, I can be tempted. My favorite combo? Salt bagel with veggie cream cheese. Mmm....

Trip Wrap-up: Konstanz, Germany

Remember when we went to Germany in August for a wedding, and I promised to have some great food posts when we got back? Well, I failed. I got so caught up in visiting with dear friends that I haven't seen in years that I just forgot to take pictures most of the time. But it's okay; sometimes you just need to put down the camera and enjoy the moment.

I did get a lot of pictures of people, and some of places, and one decent food photo (German pastries! Hallelujah!), which deserves its own post later. So for now, here's a little photo essay to share our amazing trip with you.


We stayed in Konstanz, a beautiful old town on what the Swiss call Lake Konstanz and the Germans call the Bodensee. Konstanz also borders Switzerland and is about 45 minutes by train from the Zurich airport. We stayed at the Golden Tulip Halm, which was conveniently located across from the train station, in the Old Town, near the lake front, and a short walk from the wedding venue. The room was nicely decorated and comfortable, and the service was good, for the most part, although the concierge got snippy at check-out time when I pointed out that she had charged us for breakfast ($30 per person per day!) every day even though we hadn't eaten there at all.


We had a great time walking around the Old Town and gawking at buildings several centuries old yet integrated in to modern life. Bakeries, electronics stores, pharmacies, and even a Woolworth's are housed in and next to medieval buildings. Many of the buildings have signs like these carved in to the stucco that provide historical information (i.e. year of construction, name, and original purpose). Every sign is different and there are some really beautiful and creative designs.


Between wedding events and rambling around the Old Town, we took breaks in coffee shops like this one. This picture was taken at Aran, which is sort of the German equivalent of Starbucks. There were big, wooden tables spread with beautiful food and design books, and the coffee came steaming hot in huge, round bowls that you had to cup with your hands. I tried the German version of a bagel and schmear, which was a thick slice of dark, multigrain bread topped with three different spreads. There must have been thirty options, and since my German is not very strong, I couldn't understand many of the labels, so we picked the prettiest colors. We ended up with an avocado spread, an olive spread, and a pinkish-orange thing that turned out to be a mixture of onions and cheese. This was one of the instances when, caught up in conversation with friends who live thousands of miles away from me, I ate almost the whole thing before looking down at a few lousy bites and realizing I should have taken a picture. Oops! It was tasty, relatively cheap, and we had a good time.


The wedding took place at the Inselhotel, a former Dominican monastery on a small private island very close to the Old Town. They have done an incredible job with the conversion, preserving as many elements of the old monastery as possible while integrating modern design elements, creating beautiful, light-filled spaces that maintain a sense of history. The reception was held in what must have been the church sanctuary, given the placement of the soaring stone columns. Fragments of frescoes punctuate the crisp white walls. The cloister, seen above, has been glassed in to create a central courtyard with a corridor running around the edge.


The day after the wedding, we all went to the bride's parents' house on the island of Reichenau. We sat for hours at the long table on their patio, surrounded by greenery (including grapevines) with views of sailboats on the lake and Switzerland beyond. We ate pastries and warm fleishkase (literally, "meat cheese," a pate-like loaf) on seed-encrusted buns. Later we grilled various types of German sausages and drank wine. In between, some people took a dip in the lake, and most of us went for a walk around the island. There's a pathway that follows the coast, and it is peppered with views like the one above.


Here's another shot from the pathway: one of the three medieval churches on the island. I believe this one is the Abbey.

It's hard to believe we were only there for a few days. This was my second trip to the area and Dan's first; neither of us has been anywhere else in Germany. When I told my German client that I was going to the Bodensee for a wedding, she gasped and declared, "That's the prettiest part of Germany!" I, for one, am inclined to believe her.

blech

There's no denying it: I'm in a funk.

Our whirlwind trip to Germany was amazing and wonderful and all that, and I'll post about it as soon as I can figure out how to get the pictures off my broken camera.

See where the funk begins? The last night in Konstanz, I dropped my camera and now it doesn't work.

We left Germany on Sunday and were supposed to arrive in Boston that night, but when a mechanical error canceled the first flight, we missed our connection and had an unplanned stay in Paris.

This is where everyone goes, "Ooh! Paris! How nice!" Not exactly. Not even close. We didn't have enough time to go in to the city at all; we did manage a reasonable night's sleep at a lousy, institutional-style hostel masquerading as a chain hotel.

Between not getting enough sleep before the trip, not getting enough sleep during the trip, and the extra day of travel, I was exhausted. Add to that complete overindulgence (I don't think I ate anything in Germany other than meat products, pastries, and wine), and I look and feel like utter dog retch. My omnipresent purple eye circles have gotten darker. My lower lids are puffing out like a bullfrog's chest. I've got flaming blotches all over the left side of my face. I can barely drag my sorry carcass out of bed and when I do, I have a headache more often than not.

Yesterday I tried baking to cheer myself up and that completely failed. I made this applesauce spice cake with a cream cheese frosting. It smelled amazing, but what a disappointment! The cake was bland and was completely overwhelmed by the too-sweet frosting. I can't remember the last time I baked something and didn't like it. I blame the funk.

So what to do? I have a three-part plan for this weekend.

1. SLEEP. Loads of it. Early to bed and naps in the afternoon.

2. FRESH AIR. To counteract the sleep. I don't want to sleep myself into sluggishness, and I could probably use the shot of Vitamin D.

3. FRUITS & VEGGIES. The only fruit I got in Germany had either been pressed & fermented or baked in to decadence. I don't remember vegetables at all, except for french fries at the 24-hour McDonald's (thickly-cut wedges -- much better than the shoestring ones). Otherwise it was sausage, fleishkase, more sausage, trout, and ribs. I'm going to try to avoid meat, dairy, and grains, and just load my system full of veggies - a nutrient reboot.

We'll see if my plan works. Cross your fingers! I'll report back Monday.

Out to Eat: Provision Company

Provision Company
130 Yacht Basin Drive
Southport NC

We recently spent four days in Holden Beach, North Carolina (it was supposed to be five -- thanks, American Airlines!). While we were there, I wanted to check out a local farmer's market; since we live in a mountainous area of New Hampshire, I expected a very different assortment of produce, and I was not disappointed. I'll write more about what we found and what we did with it soon. In the meantime, I wanted to write about a wonderful little seafood shack on the waterfront in Southport.

Yacht Basin Provision Company (or Provision Co., for short) was an absolute delight. Upon entering, you find a cramped space with a chalkboard menu, a couple of self-serve beverage coolers, and a small counter in front of an open grill. Place your order, grab yourself a beer, and head out back to the deck - pay later on the honor system. The deck, which is about three times the size of the building itself, juts right out over the water and presents spectacular views.

As you might expect, the menu leans heavily toward seafood. Beyond the expected fried dishes, offerings include a grouper salad sandwich and a yellowfin tuna BLT. Between the three of us, we split a half pound of steamed shrimp, three crab cakes, an order of fries, and conch fritters. All of the food was excellent, but the fritters were definitely my favorite: they were perfectly crisp, not heavy, and pleasantly chewy without veering into rubber territory. With a cold Corona to wash it down, it was one of the finest lunches I've had in a long time.

The wait staff were fabulous - loud, friendly, and clearly having a good time, while quick to deliver the food and lend a hand. It seemed like a very fun place to work. They laughed and made fun of me when I whipped out my camera; when I told them why I was taking pictures, they said, "Don't forget to say how excellent we are!" And they really were.

If you are ever near the southern coast of North Carolina, I would highly recommend a trip to Southport and the Yacht Basin Provision Co. While it's a beautiful lunch spot, the fun-loving staff and the presence of a well-stocked bar on the deck suggest that this could be quite a great nighttime spot as well. I definitely intend to return.