La vida lenta

The debate on whether to purchase a ticket for the Chilean food and wine demo started out like so many others: Is it really worth spending $45.

As the week went on, work took a toll on my energy, the weather turned crappy and my friends all decided they couldn't make it. By the time Friday rolled around, all I wanted to do was curl up on the couch in my comphies with some nice vino. There were so many reasons to just not go. Was it too late to get a refund?

But when the woman from Castillo de Molina vineyards stepped to the front of the Apron's Cooking School classroom and started speaking, I knew I ended up there for a reason. If nothing else, this evening was meant to renew my perspective on living.

"You all probably heard that in my home today there was an earthquake," Carolina Rivera started, referring to the 7.2 magnitude aftershock that hit Chile that morning.

As she continued, she didn't dwell on mass destruction, death or devastation. She talked something much simpler: wine cellars.

"A lot of people had wine cellars with years worth of wine stored away that got destroyed," she said. "They were all saving it for some special occasion. Now it's gone. They will never be able to enjoy it."

Call me all zen and metaphorical, but her words struck a chord. Her story of the wine cellars may seem superficial, but it's really about something so much more. Something everyone can relate to and learn from.

How many times do we put off doing things we enjoy, let work or a standard of practicality keep us from happiness. Instead, we save our money, make our plans, keep climbing to the top. But where are we really climbing?

And what if something beyond our control - health, natural disaster, an accident - keeps us from ever making it? Maybe it's not making it to the top of the pyramid that matters. Maybe just the fact that we got to climb it at all is what's important.

The story of the wine cellars reminded me of a story I heard in Israel. Our tour guides told us how many people in the country are buried in credit card debt. In a country where terrorist attacks have taken thousands of lives, people live in the moment, even if that means being somewhat indulgent. They may not be around when the bill comes.

Sure, that is probably a little extreme. But the point is to live for the day. On a small scale, enjoy that bottle of wine if you have it. Sign up for that cooking class. Go after that bigger thing you always wanted. You may not always have a chance to do it.

She called it the slow life.

"The slow life is the best life," she said.

That was the start of a lovely two hours where the team of Publix chefs paraded out a four course meal complete with salmon, a Chilean sea bass dish to die for, empanadas, tamales, and merlot poached pear. Of course there were four types of vino. I even made a new local foodie friend.

Chile has become a new fascination for me, largely because I've taken to the rich red wines they produce there. I had started making plans to visit at some point this year, but put them off.

Maybe it's time I reconsider ...

A little repacking ...

It happens to all of us. Especially during those really long trips. We start collecting things. Lots of things, many of which we don't need. Our suitcase gets full and we can't fit in the things we really need for our journey.

I'm a little bit of a neat freak. Clutter gets to me. I like order.

So I was starting to feel a little bit like this blog was getting too far off track. Anyone coming to it to find international recipes had to sort through all of my other random food musings.

I figured the best way to solve the problem was to make a new home for all of those non-global food postings. It's called Foodie in Florida.

You may notice a lot of the older posts on this blog are gone. I transferred them over to the new one so this space could be exclusively for my global culinary adventures. I'll just be updating this one now with stories and recipes from around the world. Everything else you can find on the new blog. I'll post a note on Foodie in Florida when I update this one. Hopefully you will visit them both! And I'm actually starting to hatch plans for a third blog in the near future ... Stay tuned!

So now that we've cleaned things out a bit, let's get back on the road again.

One last thing ... a souvenir, if you will

OK. One last thing about Spain. But this one has been in the cue since my mimosa breakfast.

Two of my favorite things about Spain were the gorgeous, colorful tiles everywhere and the orange blossoms. I remember standing and looking over valleys and gardens and seeing the rows of orange trees that seemed to go on for miles. They smelled incredible.

As far as the tiles go, I managed to score a lot of cheap pottery with designs reminiscent of the traditional tiles. My favorite piece was this teal and white bowl with little pink and yellow accents.

Well I've broken it twice, both times because I was being an idiot. I managed to get it home from Spain in one piece, but did not pack it securely when I moved to Florida. It shattered, but I could not stand to get rid of it. So my dad fixed it. It then seemed like a good idea to display it on a shelf below a heavy drawer of a bookcase I put together myself. Yeah you can guess what happened. Drawer fell. Bowl shattered. Dad fixed it, which really speaks volumes about his craftsmanship. Now, I think the cracks give it character, just like the old tiles.

At some point I put some fake white flowers in it and it became the centerpiece on my kitchen table.

But then when I had the mimosa brunch, I bought one of those crates full of clementines and was trying to figure out what to serve them in. It was perfect!

It looked so nice one of my friends later told me she thought it was just for decoration.

Spain, El Primer Viaje

There's a lot to be said for a country where people spend much of the day lingering over coffee in the cafe, and then unwind in the evening with a nice glass of vino.

I had no idea Spain was so cut out for me when I went there. I had no way of knowing.

I ended up in Spain during my six-month semester abroad in college. There were two things I really wanted to do when I set my little heart on going to Syracuse for college: 1) Be the editor of the college paper and 2) Study abroad. But when I got to campus I realized I probably couldn't do both. Most people spent their entire college career working their way to the editor's office.

The universe, however, always has a strange way of orchestrating events in my favor. I ended up stepping up earlier than most people, giving me the opportunity to still study abroad if I wanted.

At that point, I wasn't sure. I flirted with the idea of extending my reign as editor. At least until it burned me out. I never expected the politics, drama, stress and tension that came with running a little 10,000 circulation paper with a bunch of extremely passionate, driven and in some cases certifiably crazy people.

I was barely halfway through my term when I realized I was ready for a siesta.

Originally, I figured I would go to London. That's where all the journalism majors went, and some of my friends would be there.

But being one for goal setting and planning ahead, I already knew at this point in my life I wanted to go to Florida. Given that, an editor I worked for during one of my internships raised a good point.

"If you want to go to Florida, don't you think it would be a good idea to learn Spanish," he asked.

Touche. SU also had a program in Madrid (I know, different dialect and all that ... but still better than English) and I started looking into it.

The photos of tiled arches, gothic churches, miles of orange groves and beautiful beaches lured me to the country. And after a few years running on three hours of sleep a night, I really liked this whole siesta prospect.

The reality was, in many ways, nothing what I expected.

I arrived in the country with a group of probably about 100 other college students, many of them from the Greek system and many of them not huge fans of the college paper (I had actually written up arrest reports on some of them). I didn't know anybody, and quite frankly didn't like most of them. I was lonely.

I was still feeling jet lagged when the culture shock started to sink in. I'm one for order. I like to know where I'm going. When my friends and I went on spring break in Chicago, I made up a schedule with a to do list for every day. In Spain, the group spent the first two weeks touring the country. I don't think I ever got an itinerary. I never had any idea where we were going. It drove me crazy.

They would just tell you to get on the bus at a certain time. I would always be there early, only to sometimes wait more than an hour for one of the Spanish tour guides to finish his coffee.

And the whole sleepytime thing was a myth. Turns out, Spanish people sleep less than I was at that point. They stay up into the wee hours of the morning (they don't even eat dinner until 10 p.m.) and then get up at like 6 in the morning. Siesta hardly makes up for it.

My mom kept telling me to just come home.

But eventually, I made a friend who was just as lonely and frustrated as I was. I remembered this semester was supposed to be fun and dropped my course load down to the bare minimum 12 credits I needed to be a full time student.

(This was actually really brilliant and strategic on my part. I needed one more science class for my degree, so I took the ecology of Spain, which involved learning about how Americans are destroying the earth and trips kayaking and horseback riding... I don't remember going to class after a while, but still got an A. Much better than physics or chemistry. I also knocked out a required foreign language credit and filled in the rest of the schedule with two literature classes that regularly met at the taverna to discuss writing over vino: Don Quixote and Hemingway in Spain... I cheated on Don Quixote and took the English version. I liked college better Spanish style.)

The rest of my days I spent in at the cafes. Mornings, I sat in the coffee shops reading for class or just people watching. In the evenings, I met up with friends (I did make some eventually) for tapas or vino. I'd go home at night and have dinner with my host family. Sometimes I just walked around the city taking it all in and thinking. I traveled. I found comfort in Harry Potter.

I went to Spain with a to do list of all the things I wanted to see and places I wanted to go in Madrid, but ended up putting it all off until the last week I was there. I quickly picked up the phrase "manana." I'll just get to it later. Just enjoying the simplicity of everyday Spanish life became more important.

Don't get me wrong. Six months hardly changes a person. It's still hard not to get caught up in the "where is my life going" and "am I on the right path." A few years ago when we finished a big project I started to stress about what life was going to bring me next. A co-worker quoted that cheesy line from the Matrix, something like "Don't worry where the path is going. Just walk to path."

But when I think about it now, I realize I learned that lesson a long time ago. I learned it from the Spanish. The hard part, sometimes, is honoring it.

One note on the photo, or lack thereof. All my travel photos are in Buffalo. At one point I scanned a bunch in so I could use them on the blog, but apparently forgot to include any from Spain. So I'll just get to it later : )

The joy of a well-stocked spice cabinet

Some of my friends and I recently had a conversation about the cost effectiveness of cooking. There is a prevalent belief out there that cooking at home saves you oodles of money. Yes and no.

The major expense comes in the upstart costs of stocking your kitchen cabinets, especially when you have a palette for exotic dishes from dozens of different ethnic styles.

There is a distinct satisfaction, however, when you start accumulating so many of these ingredients - namely spices - that you have them on hand and don't have to be buying new ones with every recipe. That's when your grocery bills really start to plummet.

Even just two months into this little game, I am finding that I have built myself a sturdy arsenal of spices and am getting to the point I don't need to buy any. Take, for example, the pho I made this week. I had most of the spices I needed, along with the onions, garlic and some other veggies. I ended up spending just $25 at the grocery store - most of that on meat - and will likely get five days worth of dinners.

Now that's what I call cost efficient.

Appreciation

One of the things about cooking is that it really helps you appreciate the art of coming up with a good recipe.

Take, for example, cooking something out of From Emeril's Kitchen, which features recipes from his restaurants. Most of the recipes are extremely nuanced and complex. Not difficult, per say. Just extremely detailed, right down to making a veal stock for the Creole Meuniere Base that goes with a number of recipes.

Same goes for Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill cookbook. One recipe for a habanero duck pancake requires three different sauces, at least one of which requires you to make a completely different sauce. Oh. And the duck recipe also calls for chicken stock. But no worries. The recipes for all of these sauces and stocks are in the cookbook.

To think these guys have people doing this every day at their restaurants.

I have had several moments of zen appreciation preparing some of the recipes for this blog, particularly when it comes to the detail that goes into working with certain ingredients. The pho was definitely an example of this.

I mean, come on. Simmering a broth for 10 hours? Who ever thought of that?

There were a few things with the pho recipe I found suspect, so while I was waiting for the broth to finish I did some research. It seemed as far as basic technique goes, and ingredients for the most part, Emeril was right on.

The big thing that kept tripping me up was the accumulation of what seemed to be copious amounts of fat in the broth, especially after I put it in the fridge. A thick, jelly-like substance layered across the top of it.

It seemed like my takeout from Vietnamese restaurants had done the same thing, but it still bothered me. I thought maybe using the short ribs was a bad idea. Other recipes I found suggested ox tail, which might have been leaner. I had also skipped draining the broth through the cheese clothe the first night, so I reheated it to do this and that did seem to skim some of the stuff out of it.

Some more research indicated that there might not be anything wrong with my broth. Apparently the gelatin-like substance is not actually fat, but collagen from the bones you boil. That made sense. Some Vietnamese people will let their pho broth sit over night and then scrape the layer off the top before serving. Others apparently keep some of it on hand to add in extra for flavor.

Either way, at some point there was clearly a lot of thought put into this issue, which I can appreciate.

Coming to terms with reality ...

I've made the executive decision this week to officially change the name of the blog to reflect the reality I won't get through all of the countries in 80 days. You may notice it now says "80-Some."

The whole Jules Verne thing was clever and all, but just not realistic. The characters in the book must not have had full-time jobs or friends to hang out with. Who knows. I never read it.

Either way, the point of the project was to be fun, not stressful. Besides, don't we all have enough deadlines anyway? And, being in a deadline driven industry, I know exactly how you really handle one that can't be met. You push it.

So who knows when this will all wrap up. I'm hoping I'll still finish within a year of when I started. But you just never know what will happen ...

A day without a recipe

If you're one of those people constantly glued to the Weather Channel, you probably know that it's been really freaking hot in Florida. Hot and humid. The kind of heat that makes you sweat as soon as you step out of your apartment. The kind of humidity that just weighs down your body and soul, making you feel worn out and tired.

The kind of weather that you can put up with for a few months, but that you're ready to see break around the time everyone else in the country is out looking for pumpkins.

Well, thank God for FINALLY sending some relief to Florida.

This weekend we're experiencing what we Floridians call a "cold front." I don't think the temperature dropped below 70 all day, but that's cold after months enduring temperatures upward of 90. (Although not cold enough that I couldn't go for a little swim ... quite lovely because I was the only one there. Apparently the children who usually inhabit the pool on the weekend aren't so hardy).

Either way, I was having such a lovely time drinking my morning coffee on the patio, looking out over my little retention pond without breaking a sweat I thought "Wouldn't it be great to just spend the whole day like this?"

So I did. Well minus some time for the workout and the swim.

Maybe it was also the universe's way of getting me to slow down a little. As I sat on the patio, I thought back on the past few months and realized not a weekend day has passed that I didn't spend much of my time in the kitchen, quite often much of the day pursuing ambitious recipes under a tight deadline of expecting company.

So today I relished in the art of just laying low, catching up on some magazines and chilling on the patio. Besides, it was also a good opportunity to finish off one of the backlog of dishes in my freezer - the Comoros chicken from a few weeks ago.

Ode to my favorite wine, ever ...

... or at least for now.

If you haven't familiarized yourself with Chilean wines stop whatever you are doing immediately, call the nearest wine store you think will be open and steer yourself in that direction. I don't think it's even fair to call Chile an "up and coming" wine region anymore. For those of us that really enjoy our vino, it's here!

Chile is getting a lot of mainstream attention for its cabernet sauvignons and even sauvignon blancs. While these are both great wines coming out of the country, I challenge the real aficionados to get a little more adventurous. Pick up a carmenere.

Carmenere is a bold, full-bodied wine that is usually spicy, and sometimes smoky. These wines are tougher to come by. For example, for such a great wine, the local Total Wine only has about a half dozen of them.

The problem with carmenere - or at least selling it - is that the flavors in the wine are so bold only really seasoned palettes can appreciate it. Maybe in a few years though these Chilean wines will gain the same popularity of some Spanish wines on liquor store shelves.

In the meantime, look for my favorite label of the moment Santa Alicia. I've had a number of different wines - chardonnay, shiraz, malbec ... - from this Chilean winery and they've all been fantastic. Get an $8 bottle of carmenere and it will hold it's own at any tasting against $20 California bottle.

If you are in Sarasota, you're in luck. Whole Foods has had an ample supply of Santa Alicia carmeneres, malbecs and chardonnays for $8. If you buy six bottles, you get 10 percent off, and if you like bold and flavorful wines you'll drink that no problem.

The pleasure of a one pot meal, especially when recovering from too much fun lately

It's been a long week. Or rather, it's been a long three or four of them.

Let me start by saying that I'm the kind of girl who likes a lot of down time. I like to be able to squirrel away every few weekends all by myself with a few bottles of wine and new recipes. Just me, all by myself, doing whatever it is I feel like at any given moment in my little apartment with all of my things close by me. Too much fun, too much excitement will drive a girl like me to temporary seclusion. Call it lame. Call me old, or a loser. That's just me.

I've been running toward this hermit status for so long I don't even know how long it's been.

All I know is it really started when my parents decided to fly down to help me replace the carpet in my apartment.

My family has been bugging me since the day I moved in more than six years ago to get my apartment's management to replace the carpet. I always figured I was lucky they gave me a place to live, and never thought I'd stay long enough to make it work the effort. And, to me, the carpet never seemed so bad in the first place. But my family always figured I was paying enough in rent each month to warrant a pet free, stain free, fluffy new carpet.

The one defense I always used to support my laziness was that the whole carpet installation was just too much work for me to deal with, me a successful, working journalist with far more important things to worry about. At some point this past year my mom decided she was sick of this BS and volunteered to come down with my dad and do it for me. (You may call me spoiled. I call this the millennial generation. Read up on it.)

So about three weeks ago they descended on Sarasota, and more specifically my sacred little refuge. Before I knew it, they were in my apartment turning my nice, settled life of six years upside down, packing and stacking up all of the books, knick knacks and photos that hadn't been moved in years and piling them up in the kitchen. Before long, there was nothing left in my living room but the carpet stained by years of accidentally spilled red wine and coffee. (Before this whole ordeal began, my friend Elaine and I talked about kissing the old carpet good bye with a baptism by red wine. But then we realized the wine would be put to better use if we just drank it).

All of my belongings hovered in towers on the counters in my kitchen, my furniture lined up next to bed, when the carpet people showed up at 8:30 a.m. I stood watching them tear up my living room in some sort of trance as my mother shooed me out the door to the office. It's a rare event I get my butt to work before 10 a.m., and I think my editor found it amusing the new carpet installation was traumatizing enough to propel me so early into the office.

It really wasn't such a big ordeal. In fact, I got through it doing next to nothing. It was the whole metaphorical process of picking my whole life up, moving it around and leaving it unsettled and disorganized - if only for an evening - that I found so traumatizing. To me, a new carpet also felt like a commitment. It felt like I was pledging to stay in this very place a good chunk longer to make it worth the while. This was also all happening the week before school started, so I was stressed and busy at work trying to file a bunch of stories.

I walked into my apartment at the end of that day, already tired from my back to school preparations and terrified of what new projects my parents might have found to take on that morning. I immediately smelled the new carpet odor, and as I took the few steps down the hall to see my new carpet found myself smirking.

"So..." my mom said beaming from my living room as she put all of my personal belongings back in all the wrong places. "What do you think?"

She was so excited that for a brief moment I thought about just lying. Pretending like it was the greatest thing since manchego cheese or a bottle of Santa Alicia. But at that point I was already too tired, too overwhelmed and too drained. I just found the whole situation amusing.

"It looks ... well ... the same as the last one," I said laughing. "I guess it is cleaner."

I started moving methodologically through the apartment putting everything back in its proper place. For a moment I thought "Maybe this is the time I should just mix it all up. Leave it somewhere new. Aw hell. I'll just get to it later." We were up and doing random "projects" around the house all night. We finally finished to break for dinner at about 10 p.m.

Thus began all the fun, all the excitement, all the stress and lack of routine that has left me in the drained state I now inhabit.

Before they left the sunshine state, my parents took me to Disney, where we wandered around an amusement park in the August heat, ate with Remy (of Ratatouille fame) and at Wolfgang Puck's and Emeril's. They left me one Sunday, and I woke up the next day for the first day of class at a brand new high school at 7 a.m., when I had my Starbucks confiscated. Then ensued all of the 28th birthday celebrations, all of the Bobby Flay, chicken wing festivals, workouts with my brother and blog project shenanigans. Not to mention all the thinking and reflection that comes with every birthday.

I was drained when it all started and I was drained when I came back to Sarasota this week. It was all I could do to make it for two more birthday celebrations : ) After my friend Dan took me for a birthday drink (or three) at some point this week I knew I had it. I was in bed that night by 9:30. Somehow I made it to the weekend, muddling through all the tired and all the cranky that follows all of this over stimulation.

So one might believe it was good karma that after all these weeks of stress, fun and excitement, that I pulled a country with a national dish that amounts to not much more than a comforting and hearty chicken soup. What better way to kick back, get back in touch with yourself and relax your soul than chicken boiled and simmered in a pot with a bunch of yummy veggies?

I will admit that even as I write this I still don't feel like I've really taken a break, or as Jimmy Buffett once sang "a weekend off to try and recall the whole year." But an evening home in my comphies with a delicious one pot dish is a little closer than where I've been lately. I'm on to some more carmenere and carrot cake.

PS - Hope this was sufficient Emily! I am so fortunate to have friends who always point me in the right direction : )

One down, 202 to go...

So that concludes my first culinary adventure. In all, we spent about 10 hours cooking (not including getting the brine ready) over the course of two days. Pretty labor intensive. But hey, it was the kick off. And I had helpers.

I was moderately worried when I returned to Sarasota today to pick two countries for next weekend that I would end up with obscure places that would pose difficulty tracking down recipes, not to mention ingredients.

I think I lucked out. The two I picked: Panama and Myanmar.

A quick review of the Internet showed that this should not only be pretty easy to come up with recipes, but ones that look pretty tasty. So I'll be spending some time this week exploring options and will hopefully post some recipes when I am ready. I may pick a few other neighboring countries to round out the meal.

Oh and by the way, my mom filled out the application for me to get my passport renewed. So I guess all I need to do at this point is write a check and drop it in the mail. Here I come Canada!

Bon Voyage

So I'm too lazy to renew my passport. Now, I can't even go to Canada.

That's pretty bad, considering I grew up just about 30 minutes away in Buffalo, NY. You can walk across the border.

All it would take to get my travel credentials renewed is a short walk around the corner to Walgreen's for new photos and a brief stop at the post office. I've actually been carrying my old, expired one around ever since I got this bug to go wine tasting across the border in Niagara Falls and thought I'd spring the extra $60 to put a rush on it. Never happened.

People who know me aren't surprised. I like routine. I get comfortable.

Most people my age spent their 20s restlessly jumping around the country in search of new jobs, new loves and new adventures. Not me, a once wandering and ambitious teen. I have spent the past six years comfortably roosting here in the exact same job and the exact same apartment in Sarasota, Fl. It took years of uncharacteristic nagging from my mother - and a promise to oversee the process - to even let them replace the carpet in my apartment this summer.

Perhaps there is something more subconscious to my apparent laziness.

The truth of the matter is I'm pretty happy. I have a good job, which I get a lot of enjoyment out of and feel like I am making a difference. I have great friends and a supportive family. Life is pretty good for me.

I didn't feel that way a few years ago when I was first starting out on my own. I struggled with the high expectations I set for my job, missed my family and had trouble finding people in my new home to connect with. There were many times I thought about leaving.

Instead, I found the one place I could escape all of my frustrations and anxieties: my kitchen.

Evenings spent home alone away from my family and closest friends, I never really felt lonely. It may sound lame, but I had Emeril, Rachael or any other recipe or cookbook on my counter as I cathartically chopped, stirred and simmered away my depression. Somehow a few hours behind the cutting board with a glass of wine helps put life in perspective.

Over time, and with practice, I managed to find a balance between a solid work life and social fulfillment. My friends and I love to get together now with some food, a good bottle of wine (or a few) and great conversation.

But the problem with routine is that at some point it gets boring. Before you know it another decade is almost gone. You're pushing 30 with limited vacation time and finances and can't even muster the motivation for a quick trip to Walgreen's to leave the country.

What once seemed like all the time in the world to accomplish your hopes and goals has vastly diminished. Rather than the exotic life you dreamed of as a child, you're a single 28-year-old reporter living in the state with the largest population of senior citizens in the country.

The something to break the monotony came to me one Sunday morning as I tracked down a recipe for Greek Moussaka. I love ethnic food and experiencing different cultures and cuisines. I cook every weekend, and sometimes the biggest challenge is figuring out what I'm in the mood for. Why not cook my way around the world, researching and tracking down a recipe from every country, and blog about it?

In this age where one can Google and Wikipedia their way around the world you don't need a passport to experience something different. I am just a short walk away from the local Publix and a few hours from a great paella. Besides, cooking blogs seem to be all the rage anyway.

Before I published this very long first entry I showed some drafts to my closest writer friends and my little brother, who pointed out the air of "when life gives you lemons" to my story.

But the scholar in him eloquently noted that this really isn't about someone handing me something sour to deal with. Life has given me a seemingly endless supply of fine ingredients, talents and opportunities. It's up to me to figure out what to do with them.

"It would seem as if life is inherently good," Ben wrote. "When life (and Publix, Food Network, the Internet) gives you every food you'd ever want, yet your (allegorical) kitchen's a mess, make as much food as you can."

Now that sounds like a plan.

So 203 countries, I'm going to try to get through in 80 days (If Jules Verne could do it ...). I was originally going to try to do this consecutively, but my mother pointed out that might be too ambitious. So I'm going to just cook on Saturdays and Sundays, and maybe sneak in an occasional weeknight. I think it was always meant to be a metaphorical, Biblical 80.

Basically what I'll do is put all of the countries in a hat and every Monday draw two out for the following weekend. I'll probably pick a few other countries with similar cuisines to round out the meal and make the 80 day deadline. I'll post recipes during the week, for anyone who wants to follow along. And of course I'll share my awesome and entertaining stories about the cooking (and the parties).

The feasting will begin Sept. 6, 2009 - my 28th birthday. I will be home in Buffalo, NY.

And what better place to start the culinary adventure than where you came from, sort of. So my dad and I will be whipping up a birthday feast from our ancestral birthplace - Germany.

With any luck, this will at least suffice as some adventure and intrigue until I figure something else out, or at least have motivation to renew my passport.

And maybe along the way I'll figure out what else I should be doing with all these damn ingredients.