Modern Pioneering with Georgia Pellegrini

Hello! I'm just about over jet lag following a two-week solo trip to the States to visit my parents. My daughter, who is a college freshman, was able to spend her spring break with us, and we had a delightful time together doing not much of anything. Though I meant to take some pictures and do a blog post about my hometown, I couldn't be bothered. So there--that will have to wait!

Just before I left for Louisiana, I got in a Spring-y mood and ordered the book Modern Pioneering, by Georgia Pellegrini. It was waiting for me upon my arrival back in Germany, and I'm really enjoying flipping through it. Pellegrini, who learned to hunt and wrote about it in Girl Hunter: Revolutionizing the Way We Eat One Hunt at a Time, has turned now to a diverse array of projects, recipes, and introductions to skills that just about anyone (living anywhere) can learn, if they want to live a bit more self-sufficiently.

Pellegrini encourages readers to make small but thoughtful attempts to garden, cook from scratch, forage, put together a pantry, use resources wisely, and maybe pick up a few new skills. Much of the content is food-related, which makes sense as Pellegrini is a professionally-trained chef. To be clear, this isn't a book about homesteading, and there's no info about raising animals. Crafts are not a focus, either. This is more of an introduction or overview--something to whet one's appetite for learning and making, especially with regard to food. It's packed with great photos and easy instructions, and I really do think I'll use it often. I'm happy to add it to my burgeoning collection of books on cooking, gardening, and self-sufficiency. Hopefully you'll enjoy it, too!

Four Tiny French Cookbooks

Aren't these little cookbooks from Marabout just adorable? And they are indeed little--the pages measure about 3" x 3". There are many more in the series, and I've decided to try to pick one up each time we visit the French hypermarché Carrefour.

Each book is centered around the use of one whole food, such as bell peppers, or a branded convenience item popular with French and Belgians. As you can imagine, a number of cheeses are well-represented (note the topic of three out of the four books I've bought thus far). I like that each recipe has an accompanying photo, and the styling is lovely. 

Though I don't bake a lot of sweets these days, I'd like to have the book about Nutella (which comes in a set with silicone molds), as I tend to end up with a lot of half-eaten jars of Nutella due to The Boy's insistence that it gets "old" after being open for just a few days.

In case you're wondering, I've looked through all four of these books and been inspired, but I haven't actually made any of the recipes yet. For one thing, my once-quite-good French is a bit rusty now, so I know I'll have to translate certain things. All of the recipes are uncomplicated, though.

By the way, Marabout has some fun Pinterest boards. And if you're a cheese-freak, you might like to visit my Fondue and Raclette board as well. Bon appétit!

November in Germany

Hope you don't mind my catching up a bit on last month before I get to the happenings of December. One day before Thanksgiving, we woke up to this scene. The snow had melted by early afternoon, but that's just fine, as we know we'll be getting more soon enough!

It was definitely time for warm drinks in a little corner of our favorite coffee shop in town. We stopped by a couple of weeks ago.

After our drinks, the owner, Guido, decanted some olive oil, walnut oil, and apricot vinegar for us. We love that he gets the finest oils and vinegars in his shop, displays them beautifully in glass, then makes recommendations and allows tastings before you make your choices and have them bottled. I used some of the walnut oil in the celery-date-walnut salad I've made for the past five or six Thanksgivings.

The following Friday, Husband and I drove to a fancy mall in Luxembourg City to visit a Cora Hypermarché (large, very overwhelming grocery store). Our main purpose for driving an hour each way for groceries? Husband is mad this year for moules (mussels), and after recently figuring out how to prepare and cook them ourselves, we've had them several times. The next time we had mussels, we were fortunately able to buy them locally. Above is our third effort, Thai Red Curry Mussels. So good.

Note the gray skies. When the weather was dry enough, the Boy shot baskets at a kindergarten playground. He's getting so strong.

On chillier evenings, we got the wood stove fired up. I do love it, even when it's not really cold enough in the house to get it going! Our home, built in the 1990s (not 1890s), isn't drafty at all. 

Oddly, I didn't get a single photo on Thanksgiving this year. 

Oh, wait--Husband did. Here's the ham he smoked, which was fantastic. Ever since we bought this Brinkman smoker over the summer, he's been a smokin' fool. It was the first time in ages that we haven't hosted on Thanksgiving, but we and another family still managed to eat ourselves silly in the home of some good friends a few villages over.

Coming up: oh, yes: it's time for German Christmas markets!