Interesting snacks

I always like to try new food items and you never know what wacky food combinations will work well. This week I grabbed two new snacks, Snips and Schoko Pfeffer-Nüsse, and two favorites I discovered last year, Lebkuchen and Quarkini.
Snips are the same consistency of Cheetos (maybe a little less gummy on the teeth), and [...]

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Do you know where your eggs come from?

I do!

Most of egg packages here in Switzerland have a code printed on the inside. Our eggs this week happen to come from the nearby town of Neftenbach. We went there recently for their annual festival, and 800th year anniversary of the town. I can also tell you that my eggs came from a guy [...]

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Fresh Fruit of the Summer

Every few weeks here in the summer, a different fruit comes into season. Unlike the mega-grocery stores back in the states, you usually can only get the fruit that is in season. Instead of bland watery strawberries, or peaches that have been genetically engineered to be shipped hundreds or thousands of miles, in Switzerland they [...]

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Swiss Chocolate Review

I have a new favorite chocolate bar. I’m not normally one to eat milk chocolate – much prefer dark chocolate. But when the milk chocolate is absolutely packed to the gills with hazelnuts and raisins, that’s a different story. I’d show you pictures of how absolutely choc-full of goodies this bar is, but… erm… we [...]

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Polenta

I’d never cooked, much less eaten polenta before. I know – total foodie who’d not yet dined on polenta? Who’da thunk? Polenta is pretty popular here, so I thought I’d try it. I bought a package of polenta that had dried mushrooms in it. It sat at the back of my pantry for months on [...]

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Brot für Alle – Fastenopfer

Today I went to buy bread at my favorite local bakery. I tend to stick to types of bread that I know we like, but I was in the mood to try something new. I pointed to a bread that I don’t remember the name of and we enjoyed it with some roasted fennel, potato, [...]

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Carnitas a la Krys

Here in our tiny Swiss kitchen, I often have to be creative when I cook. It isn’t just the ingredients that can be a challenge, but also allowing for the available utensils, pots, oven space, etc (we brought almost nothing from our own kitchen).
I wanted to make a TexMex speciality, Carnitas, for some guests that [...]

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Quick Fact

I made chocolate chip cookies last week. Chocolate chips are a bit hard to find, and there is usually only one brand in the store. But the funniest thing about them is that they are square! I forgot to take pictures before we gobbled up all the cookies. In our defense, most of them went [...]

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Schupfnudeln

While at the Konstanz Christmas market, Heath and I (and Eddie – he enjoyed it too) were introduced by our local friends to a dish that I don’t exactly know the name of. Apparently it is frequently made at homes in Germany and northern Switzerland and is really easy and delicious.
Schupfnudeln are an elongated sort [...]

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Convenience Food?

In my former life, I worked for a personal chef company, and still chat with their chefs somewhat regularly. A topic came up about convenience food, and what foods they occasionally “cheat” with.
Here in Switzerland, there aren’t all that many pre-packaged convenient foods (at least not the incredible variety that you can find back in [...]

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Holiday cooking

For all of my life, I’ve spent the holidays at my parents’ house, or in the past few years, my husband’s family’s house. I’ve occasionally contributed a dish, but usually all the cooking is left to someone else. This year we’re going back to Texas for Thanksgiving, but this Christmas is the first big holiday [...]

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Oops!

There is a nice little Mexican import shop in Zurich that we’ve been to a few times. The last time we were there, among other things, we picked up two packages of flour tortillas and a package of handmade tamales. I grabbed the former, and as the baby was screeching, and the store was a [...]

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“Hey honey, watch this!”

You know that phrase can never prefix something good.
“Hey honey, watch this!” My husband said as he stood in the kitchen with an egg in his hand. “I’ve been watching Gordon Ramsey*.” He cracked the egg fearlessly on the side of the pan. Half the egg splurted out on the countertop, and the other half [...]

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Lunch!

In my previous life, I worked in a field of the culinary arts, and as such I have lots of friends who are ardent “foodies.” I am asked a lot what we are eating over here. Today, I’ll share what we had for lunch. If we’re not eating leftovers from dinner the night before, and [...]

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a learning curve

ARGH!!!!! The eggs I bought are already hard-boiled!!! WHY ON EARTH??? And I’m still short an egg to make Greek Meatballs for dinner tonight. Since I already cracked an egg partially open, I guess I can’t return them. #$%@!!

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