An Assortment

I have long been contemplating the addition of food and recipes to my blog.  Often as I explore the inner workings of the internet, hopping from webpage to webpage, my attention lingers on blogs such as Smitten Kitchen or 101 Cookbooks.  Thus, I have decided to include a recipe here and there.

I know, I know, the world has enough food blogs.  But how many of those have 'oops, I'm a foreigner living in a strange place' mistakes included in them?  Not many, I'd bet.  These mistakes, along with the (hopefully more abundant) positives, will be included - for better or worse.  And plus, sometimes I make delicious things that I'd like to share with the world.

To kick everything off, I've got a summer strawberry cake that i made last May when strawberries were in season.  Maija was actually the one who prompted me to make this, and as strawberries are my favorite food and cake is almost always a good idea, I happily obliged.  Alas, my attempts at documenting the baking process were thwarted by the baking itself.  Or rather, by the eating.  But really, can you blame me??

The original recipe can be found on Smitten Kitchen.

Strawberries that went into the cake. I may have eaten a few as I was baking and taking pictures...

Recipe:

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for pie plate
1 1/2 cups (188 grams) all-purpose flour (can swap 3/4 cup or 94 grams all-purpose flour with 3/4 cup or 75 grams of barley flour, see Note)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 cup (200 grams) plus 2 tablespoons (25 grams) granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup (118 ml) milk
1 teaspoon (5 ml) vanilla extract
1 pound (450 grams) strawberries, hulled and halved

Preheat the oven to 350°F.  Butter the pan.

Whisk flour or flours, baking powder and salt together in a small bowl. In a larger bowl, beat butter and 1 cup sugar until pale and fluffy with an electric mixer, about 3 minutes. Mix in egg, milk and vanilla until just combined. Add dry mixture gradually, mixing until just smooth.

Pour into prepared pie plate. Arrange strawberries, cut side down, on top of batter, as closely as possible in a single layer.  Sprinkle remaining 2 tablespoons sugar over berries.

Bake cake for 10 minutes then reduce oven temperature to 325°F and bake cake until golden brown and a tester comes out free of wet batter, about 50 minutes to 60 minutes.

The unfinished cake looked like this.  The finished cake didn't look that different, except I ate some before I remembered that I wanted to take pictures of it. I have no regrets.

May provided many memorable moments besides cake-baking.  Each of these is captured and captioned below.

One day, I walked into one of my classes of 14 year old boys and this is what I found.  When Claudia (their teacher) asked them why they'd covered their chair in women's' sanitary pads, they responded, "Because they're soft and smell nice."

Poppies on my way to work

Outside of Salzburg there is a lake in the forest surrounded by wooden decks.  It's stunning, but I felt too awkward to take any really good photos of it because I was surrounded by half-naked men and women.  Austrians (of a certain age at least) seem to wear one bathing suit for swimming in and a different bathing suit for lying around.  And if they're women, they'll often leave their tops of to get a perfect tan.  Not very American, but not that awkward...until you take into account that there's a zipline that runs over the lake, where teenage boys can gawk at naked ladies and get a thrill for a small fee. 

At one point during the last few months I managed to see Andy McKee in concert.  He is one of my favorite guitarists and I urge everyone to check out his music.

Schockomuffin from Kaffe Alchemie.  Heaven.

With Maija (and the other assistants) at Die Weisse - a brewery - for one of our last TA get-togethers.

Maija, me and Annie

Dave and Maria, still at Die Weisse

Delicious Weissbier on a balmy summer night

BBQ

Fleur trying to light the grill

 Back in May the weather turned from cold to gorgeous, the grass and leaves flourished, and we hosted an American-style BBQ, complete with American BBQ sauce.  Fleur and Katie - who had spent the first semester in Austria but the second semester in other countries, came back to visit.  Mostly we just had a great time hanging out, eating and drinking, and singing oldies and really bad 90s songs at the top of our lungs.  Needless to say, we had a blast.

Still trying to light the grill

Fleur and Maija

Katie, Nick and Fleur

Matt photobombed our nice picture.  This is a common theme in pictures with Matt

We schlepped the watermelon (and the grill!) the whole way from my apartment to the park. 

Watermelon massacre

Dave and Maria with one of many grilled bananas with chocolate

Yum.

The gang

Dave and Maija.  Dave went around the circle of people and hugged everyone

Dave and Fleur

Maija headbanging to Bohemian Rhapsody (most likely) and Fleur looking less than amused

From left: Annie, Fleur, Maija, Nora and Lars

Katie and Maria, having a moment

More Bohemian Rhapsody sing-alongs

Dinner the following night at Bärenwirt, a wirtshaus along the river

Augustiner beer, only the best beer in Salzburg (perhaps the world)

Nick and his knödel (dumpling) the size of a cannonball

Schnitzel Cordon Bleu, made into a little monster.  We might be teachers but that doesn't mean we're too old to play with our food.

Sunset over the Salzach

May Day (100th post!)

The view from my train window.

Back on the first weekend of May, I uploaded a bunch of these pictures and celebrated an inner victory over my 100th post.  That seems like a long time ago now, especially since I have about 20 more posts in the lineup.

My first weekend of May started with a train journey out to Bruck an der Mur (Bridge on the Mur), which is about a four hour train journey from Salzburg.  My friend Catherine (or Jäger to almost everyone in our Bowdoin German class) lived out in that direction, and I'd been promising her for a year that I would go visit her.  So with the end of the year in sight, I figured I'd better go.  Jäger actually lived in Judenburg (Jew Castle - I kid you not) which was a short train ride away.  We ended up in Bruck an der Mur due to a small get-together involving a bunch of Fulbrighters that I hadn't met.  I didn't realize how spoiled we were in Salzburg to have so many of us in the same place.  The poor people in rural Austria had to arrange "big" events to get a chance to see each other.  Jäger, for example, lived in a tiny village (or willage if you're a native German speaker) without any Americans, Brits, French, Spanish or Italians.  Just Austrians with a thick dialect.  On the plus side, her German is a million times better.

Anyway, I met a ton of new assistants, many of whom were not going to be back this year, at this party.  The following day, Jäger, Matt and I headed to Judenburg for Jäger's soccer game.  The game was most interesting because of her coach, who wore jean capris and shouted in incomprehensible dialect for most of the game.  Even to my ears, which are attuned to some strange German dialects, it sounded like "EWHODSIOEIOEFWHOIEWLKLKCCCHHHHHH." After that adventure, we took a small detour to a beautiful bridge and watched the sun set.  Then we headed back to Jäger's, and I rested up for my next adventure - the Maypole.

Jäger and Matt, my wonderful hosts for the weekend

Jäger's soccer game

Cool bridge

The view of another bridge from our bridge

The picnic group!

Bowdoin reunion

Matt photobombed.

This is what we waded through to get into the water

Our picnic site

The Maibaumfest (Maypole celebration...aka May Day) was essentially just another excuse to wear a dirndl and drink beer.  I guess it's kind of the beginning of beer-tent festivals, which apparently happen all summer long.  The celebration we went to was at the Stieglbräuwelt (Stiegl brew world, the Stiegl brewery), which had set up festivities both outside and inside.  It looked like a mini Oktoberfest, with fewer rides and longer dirndls, and with a giant pole in the middle.  Every once in a while, a brave soul would try to climb the maypole, which looked like no easy task.  We'd missed the major festivities, though, so I don't actually know if anyone succeeded in making it to the top.  Certainly no one did while we were there. 

The maypole

Madels in Dirndls

More Madels in Dirndls

Maija and Emily dancing

Maija's dizzy face

Prost!

Nora and Lars joined us