Incoherent Scribblings

Photo Gallery

Since I bought my new digital camera, I have been taking pictures like a mad woman!

mBlog is nice enough to allow you to upload pictures, but only up to 60k per image and since I don’t want my blog to turn into a photo blog, I have decided to create a photo gallery.

So now, anytime you want to view some of my new photos, just click the link on the side bar to photo gallery. I will continue to add photos to this blog, but the complete photo gallery will be there.

If you would like to see more photos from my walk in the woods near Freising, click here.

A Walk in the Woods

Today was a nice day for a walk. Not too hot, cold, windy, rainy, or cloudy and right now there aren’t a lot of bugs. We chose to go for a walk in the woods near our home. Along the way, we came across a small village church that while in good condition, appeared no longer to be in use. We found out from reading the plaques along the way that the church and its graveyard are all that remains of the village of Oberberghausen. While I found the church quaint, I really fell in love with the graveyard. It was very small, but what I found so interesting were the gravemarkers. They were not made of stone, but of intricate metal-work. According to A., this type of gravemarker is very common in the Alpine region and his Austrian grandfather, who was a metalworker, occaisonally made these types of markers.

Cooking Lesson

A. and I love spicy food. I’m not talking mildly spiced food like you get at Chi Chi’s or some other Americanized ethnic chain restaurant. We like authentic food where the dishes are honest-to-goodness mouth-on-fire, nose-running, water-gulping spicy and if the name of the dish includes the word “angry,” so much the better. We are quite fond of Mexican, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, and above all… Indian. We are hoping one day to take a vacation where we can eat our way through India.

But I also like to cook. Through experimentation and a little help from my half-Greek husband’s relatives, I think I have gotten pretty good at Mediterranean-style cooking. But it has been my dream to learn to cook Indian, or at least a mean curry. I have tried experimenting, but something has always gone wrong. I had about come to terms with the fact that if I want Indian, I will just have to go out to eat it (oh, darn!).

However, as luck would have it, A. has a friend (E.) who is from Pakistan and according to E., Pakistani and Indian food have many similarities. A. had told E. about my curry experiments gone bad and somehow, managed to talk E. into making us dinner so that I could learn how to make a proper curry. Of course, E. is a bachelor and his cooking knowledge is somewhat limited, but A. figured it would be enough to give me an idea.

So last night, I got my first lesson in curry making. Though A. had told E. we like spicy food, E. was a little concerned that what we considered spicy wasn’t really spicy at all… I can understand his concerns, overall German and American foods are pretty bland… given this concern, he chose to make a medium-spicy Yogurt Chicken. And let me tell you, it was tasty!
I observed the entire process and took notes on paper concerning the ingredients and the process, but also made mental notes about some things I would probably change. (For example, I would probably use a little less salt and little more garlic.) After I a buy a few things I don’t have I am eager to try making curry again.

And on top of it all, E. offered to have us over again so I can learn more Pakistani recipes… I can hardly wait!