When Romy and Backie are away...

...Schoggi plays! We came home from an overnight in Wattenwil with my dad and grandparents to find the shredded remnants of a roll of toilet paper liberally distributed around our apartment. Destroying toilet paper/tissues/paper towels is his favorite entertainment when we are not around to stop him.

In other news... the voters of Kanton Zurich passed an absolute ban on smoking in all restaurants and bars today at the polls! Wa-hooo!!! I was so excited to vote on this issue since I feel so strongly about it. No news yet about when it will take effect but the measure's been passed, so it's only a matter of time. I can't wait!

Far away, the sun is shining...

Currently Reading

My Life in France
By Julia Child, Alex Prud'Homme

Oh! It was Mountain Day today. Cloudy, cold, and grey here in Zurich but gorgeous in Massachusetts, I'm sure. Missing MHC...

Long Weekend to Austria

Currently Reading
Blessed Are the Cheesemakers
by Sarah-Kate Lynch


We left right after work on Thursday and drove the 2.5 hours to Schoppernau, a tiny village in the Vorarlberg region of western Austria, and arrived at Hotel Edelweiss with just enough time to eat a late dinner, then fall exhausted into bed.

The next morning when we woke up, we took one look out the window and dove back into bed. It was rainy, cold, and gray. Later on, after a hearty breakfast, we took a short walk into the village to explore. Schoppernau is one of the towns on the Käsestrasse Bregenzerwald (Bregenzerforest Cheeseroute) and Friday was the first day of the fall cheese festival, so our first stop was the dairy in town where we sampled local cheeses and saw the ripening cellar. I brought the above book with me to read, completely without knowing that we were going to a cheesemaking area! The story was about two old men who live on a farm in Ireland and make the best blue cheese in the world, and there were quite a few cheesemaking scenes and descriptions - it was the perfect book to be reading!

From left to right: cheese with herbs, cheese with a red-wine cured rind, and plain mountain cheese.

We also admired the beautiful gardens of the village houses. The cheery, colorful flowers were a good antidote to the weather.

On Saturday, despite continuing rain and cold, we drove to Bregenz, the capital city of the region. On the way to the city we had to keep stopping for cows to cross the road, since it was the day of the "Alpabzug", when farmers bring their decorated cows down from the mountains for the winter. This is a pretty big event (also in Switzerland). In the town of Mellau, lots of people had turned out to watch and drink steaming spiked coffee...

Once we reached Bregenz we met up with a guy from Couchsurfing, Ben, who volunteered to show us around his hometown for the afternoon. Ben is a radio announcer on the local station Antenne Vorarlberg and it was fun to tune in as we were driving towards the city and listen to him, knowing we were going to meet him in a few hours! He was very friendly and took us to all the main sites and also to his friend's coffee shop where we bought chai lattes to stay warm. Here's Backie and Ben by the gate to the old town.

Sunday morning we spent at the hotel relaxing and taking advantage of the indoor pool and sauna. We left around noon and once back in Switzerland, stopped in the city of St. Gallen for dinner. We also visited the Stiftsbibliothek, the gorgeous library of the huge immaculate abbey that is the main tourist site in St. Gallen. The floors are all inlaid with precious wood, so to avoid damage the library provides huge gray felt "slippers" to put on over your shoes. It's like walking into a movie set, with gigantic leather-bound tomes and special exhibits of the ciphers that monks used to playfully encode various Scriptures and poetry. They also have their very own Egyptian mummy! And it's still a functioning library open to scholars all over the world. Very cool. Sorry the picture isn't great, it's a scan from a postcard since you're not allowed to take photos inside.

It was a wonderful, much needed weekend!

Curried Chickpea & Currant Filo Pie

This will be the first of two posts today that I have been meaning to write and haven't gotten around to this week! First of all, I want to tell you about a delicious pie that I made a couple weeks ago. It was so yummy that I just have to share... it's from an awesome cookbook that my sister Melanie gave me a while back. I added some chopped sauteed zucchini and finely diced chicken breast as well for my carnivore husband, but I think it would be just as good without (or with the veggies of your choice). I served it with a simple side salad for a tasty late summer meal.

Curried Chickpea & Currant Filo Pie from 500 Pies and Tarts by Rebecca Baugniet

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground coriander
100 gr. (3.5 oz) basmati rice
285 ml (10 fl. oz) vegetable stock
70 gr. (2.5 oz) currants or raisins
400 gr (14 oz) can of chickpeas, drained
115 gr. (4 oz) unsalted butter, melted
10 sheets of filo pastry, thawed if frozen

Preheat the oven to 200*C (400*F). To make the filling, heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-based saucepan. Add the onion, reduce the heat and fry for 5 minutes, until soft. Add the spices and stir to combine. Add the rice and stir to coat evenly with oil. Add the vegetable stock, a little at a time, allowing the rice to absorb the liquid. Then add the currants. When the rice is cooked and the currants are plump, remove from the heat. Stir in the chickpeas and add the seasoning as necessary.

Brush a 23-cm (9 inch) pie dish with melted butter. Layer 6 sheets of file in the pie dish, brushing each one with melted butter, leaving the corners hanging over the edges. Spoon the filling into the pie dish. Fold the overhanging filo on top so the filling is completely covered. Brush the remaining 4 sheets of filo with butter and place over the top of the pie. Carefully lift the edges of the pie from the dish to fold the corners under. Bake for 25 minutes, until the filling is hot and pastry is golden. Refrigerate any remaining pie for up to 3 days.

Serves 4-6 (the leftovers are delicious!)

A Likely Excuse

The buzz this morning at both the middle and upper schools has been about the Large Hadron Collider that is starting up in a few hours in Geneva at the CERN (the world's largest particle physics laboratory) - see CNN article. Our physics teachers sent out an excited informational missive yesterday and were pessimistically countered with this youtube video portraying the CERN turning into one big black hole and sucking the earth up with it. Backie tells me, "Middle school students are running around expecting to die today." Upper School students are far less worried, maintaining the reason they're late for school is because they encountered black holes along the way. Also, that the black holes ate their homework.

Rivers for Dryness

Currently Listening
Crucible
By Sandra McCracken


This is Sandra's first release back in 1999. The more of her albums I listen to, the bigger a fan I become. I've already pre-ordered her newest one (Red Balloon) and I would LOVE to see her in concert someday. How can you help but love songs with lyrics like these?

Will there come a day
When our faces will not lift out of the dust
Can we then still say
That this mercy is our only trust

What was incurable, desperate blindness
has been bound up from all sides with lovingkindness
comfort for sorrow
rivers for dryness
come and drink you who have no money

It will rain all day
It will rain all day
It will rain all day
With the bounty of new wine

Schnaaggi Schaaggi

Every last Sunday of the month from April to October, the Zurcher Museumsbahn (Zurich Antique Train Association) designates one of their old steam engines for a few trips up and down the Sihl valley and is open to the public for rides. Ever since Backie saw the poster he's been wanting to go and finally this past Sunday we got our act together. This particular engine is called the Schnaaggi Schaaggi (don't ask me what it means!):

It was like something out of a story book, every little boy's dream! We rode the train up the valley and then got off before the final station and had lunch at a little restaurant. It was just enough time for the train to turn around then we caught it back home. Here's full steam ahead through the countryside:

The plaques on the train were pretty neat too... 1899!

We came home smelling like smoke and covered in coal dust from when we went through tunnels and the smoke had nowhere to go but into our carriage. Backie was thrilled to have finally ridden it and it was a great Sunday excursion!