Holiday Meals

I'm a planner. This is helpful in Germany during the holidays, since stores are closed on days when big family meals are scheduled. If you forgot to buy carrots for the carrot casserole or a baguette to go with the soup, you're out of luck. There was one year when Schweinebraten (pork roast) was on our plan for New Year's Day, and minutes after the stores closed on Silvester, I realized I'd never bought the roast! I vowed I would never let that happen again.

More on this meal shortly...

Sometime back in November I made a list of meals we'd cook during Christmas, and we assigned them days, padded in between with "leftovers." I made three shopping lists and checked them five times each: one for Mustafa, our Tuesday vegetable guy who was willing to deliver on Friday evening, one for pre-ordered meat from our butcher, and one for the supermarket, which I try to avoid like the Pest during the holidays.

Our refrigerator is not large enough to hold vegetables, milk, cream, cheese, and wine for an entire week (especially because of the quantities of cheese we I require), so we loaded up a cooler to put in the garage. Luckily it's just cold enough for that to work.

Our first unceremonious meal was Toast Hawaii - basically a glorified grilled cheese sandwich. Despite its name it's actually a German concoction of toast, ham, pineapple, and cheese. It's a nice alternative to frozen pizza and, like pizza, also produces no leftovers. This was key.

Toast Hawaii

On Saturday evening we made beef stir-fry with tenderloin and fresh vegetables. This is the only meal I make without a recipe - I just wing it and somehow it works. M did the meat to make sure it was done perfectly, and he also found some good ideas for the sauce, in which we used Wokgewürze from Ankerkraut. I'm notorious for making way too much stir-fry, but this year I judged well and we didn't have leftovers. We were still on track.

Beef stir-fry

Sunday evening was Christmas Eve. Our traditional meal is Raclette, which we think works well for a relaxing evening. Boiled potatoes, fresh mushrooms, ham, cheese...and lots of other snacks to nibble on while waiting for the cheese to melt. The meals are getting better...

Raclette - I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that this was not
too much for the two of us. The ham is sliced really thinly.

Raclette also yields no leftovers. We discovered a few years ago that Raclette cheese is good for nothing except Raclette (hence the name??). It's got a peculiar smell, which tends to permeate the contents of the fridge if not sealed well. Since there's no sense in keeping it for anything, we toss the leftovers. However, because of my careful notes from previous years, we order just the right amounts for the number of people at the table. Raclette, for us, is a perfect Heiligabend dinner.

Then things got weird.

Our plan for Christmas Day was Rehrücken mit Kräuter-Nusskruste, Rosenkohl, und Kartoffelgratin (Saddle of venison with an herb-nut crust, brussels sprouts, and potato-gratin). We had bought a frozen Rehrücken from Metro, and I had found the recipe in Lukullus, the little magazine I pick up from the local butcher each week. M was even willing to try the brussels sprouts, which I inexplicably love.

I did nearly nothing all day except read, M worked on a project he'd been saving for the holidays, I took a nap... At five o`clock we headed into the kitchen to get started on the meal, and discovered...the venison was supposed to have marinated for 3-4 hours. Oops. We scrambled, tossed around our options, and went with a different recipe for half of the meat that didn't require marinating. M also remembered an alternative recipe for brussels sprouts he had seen on our noon show, which looked much more tempting to him because it included bacon.

This recipe only uses the green outer leaves,
so we still had the rest to use for the original recipe the next day.

Although I'd had my heart set on the Kräuter-Nusskruste, this meal was delicious! We'd never made venison ourselves, but this recipe is a keeper. We had a few pieces left over, plus half of the potatoes and most of the brussels sprouts.

Our original plan for the second Day of Christmas was leftovers from Monday, but this turned out even better. We went back to the first recipe, marinated the meat all afternoon, and made the herb-nut-crust. M cooked the meat expertly yet again, and both of us liked this recipe even better than yesterday's. This is the photo you saw at the beginning of this post.

The meal we've settled on for the future is the brussels sprouts recipe from Monday, the potato-gratin, and the venison from Tuesday. Then it will be a perfect meal.

On Wednesday we really had leftovers - the rest of Tuesday's delectable venison, I finished off the sprouts, made fresh broccoli for M, thought about a salad, and we split the last two spoonfuls of potatoes. Almost nothing was wasted.

For Thursday I'd planned gefüllter Lammbraten (stuffed lamb roast), found in another Lukullus magazine. The beauty of not having guests for the holidays was that we could experiment with new recipes to potentially use in the future without worrying about something going wrong and guests going hungry and wishing they hadn't come. We usually make lamb stew, but we wanted to try something new. If it didn't work out, we could always have venison leftovers.

It turned out just fine and was very flavorful,
though less photogenic than the venison.

For Silvester we'll return to a favorite family tradition - fondue and "Dinner for One." I pick up the beef & pork tenderloin from the local butcher in the morning, M makes the fondue soup in the afternoon with roasted beef bones, soup meat, Suppengrün and one Nelke (clove), and while the soup is simmering he makes the Sahnedip. My daughter will be drooling by now...This cream dip is good for dipping vegetables in, spreading on a baguette, and dolloping on the cooked tenderloin. We used to do several dips, but now we don't bother with anything other than the Sahnedip.

This was a few years ago.
We'll only need two plates this year.

Fondue is a great meal for Silvester because it stretches out over a few hours, you're forced to eat slowly, clean-up isn't bad, and it's healthy. Healthy-ish.

We watch the British short comedy "Dinner for One" and giggle like fools every year, grumble about those who shoot off fireworks before midnight, go outside at midnight to toast with glasses of Kessler Sekt while watching the sanctioned fireworks (and M prowls around watching for burning missiles landing on our roof), and then we go to bed because we're too old to keep going.

On New Year's Day we eat the leftover soup with any remaining bits of tenderloin for lunch and have cheese and crackers for dinner.

And that was our meal plan for this holiday season. It's back to spaghetti, casserole, and frozen pizza for the first few days of the new year.

We hope you enjoyed your holiday food fest as much as we did, and we especially hope you had as little stress as we did! Even when something went wrong, we just found a way to deal with it. Easily done when you're only two people...

Lastly, we wish you a Happy New Year and a pleasant, happy, and above all peaceful 2018.

Life Lately

I enjoy the "Life Lately" posts of Adventitious Violet, which she posts periodically, and since I know I don't have time to sit down for a thought-provoking post about travel or differences between Wisconsin and Swabia, I thought I'd write one of these over coffee this morning so readers know I haven't disappeared.

I've been working every day (though not even close to full-time) and studying for the C1 German test coming up on July 1st, and that means it's harder to indulge in an afternoon nap. Our house is in disarray, the garden is as unruly as a teenager on Red Bull, M has all but taken over cooking, and that best-seller I've been imagining in my mind for upwards of 35 years has still not been written. Of course, I waste an embarrassing amount of time checking Facebook and CNN, but at least M blocked Fox News from our Network (at my request) so I can no longer get outraged at the comments sections of articles. I've been totally neglecting my parents despite knowing my mom enjoys getting an email from me in the morning, and my list of "to do" is much longer than my list of "have done".

Basically, since I have the same 24 hours that everyone else has in a day, I have no excuse for the current state of affairs, and during my afternoon nap today I'm definitely going to conjure up a plan to get back on top of things.

Since I'm on my second cup of coffee, though, I'd better get going on Life Lately...

Teaching

I am still teaching the Englisch-AG to students with mild learning disabilities twice a week, though this will be my last year. I'm just so much happier teaching adults, even though I really like the kids in that class. Half of them "graduate" in July because this school only goes to the ninth grade.

Four days a week, Tuesday to Friday, I teach basic German at the Hermann-Hesse-Kolleg. I've had four students, whom I briefly wrote about a few posts ago, but yesterday the woman from the Ukraine had her last day and Tuesday is the last day for the woman from Japan. The school director told me that I'll probably gain a few new students next week, so we'll see what happens.

Last week I mentioned Esslingen and how beautiful it is, and we decided to take a class trip there this coming Tuesday! I'll give them an informal Stadtführung (city tour), we'll have lunch, we'll walk up to the Burg, and we'll bask in the beauty of my favorite German city.

Learning

As I mentioned, I'll be taking a German language test (C1 level) on July 1st. I have found several practice tests and activities online, and my results have not been impressive. I never properly learned the passive voice or indirect discourse, so I've been studying those especially. What I really need to focus on is expanding my vocabulary and the subtle changes in meaning when a verb is coupled with a different preposition, for example: bestehen aus vs. bestehen in. I'm now working on a book I've had for a while but left on the shelf - Weg mit den typischen Fehlern! (Avoiding Typical Mistakes) - and wishing I had started it the day I learned I'd be taking this test.

Traveling

I already wrote about parts of my trip last month to visit my daughter in Philadelphia. Not long after I returned, my Schwiegermutter and I accompanied four American exchange students from my hometown, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to Berlin for four days. They were a great group, very interested, spoke plenty of German, and we had a very good trip. We saw everything we could see in that short time, and sometime after my test I'll probably do a blog post about it.

das Brandenburger Tor made of chocolate at
Fassbender & Rausch Chocolatier
The sign says "no touching", but it doesn't say a thing about licking!

Reading

Besides grammar books and the local newspaper, I've been reading a book I bought in Berlin about the wall as well as Einwanderung und Asyl: die 101 wichtigsten Fragen (Immigration and Asylum: the 101 most important questions). Irgendwo in  Deutschland, the sequel to Nirgendwo in Afrika, has been at my bedside for months, and I am making very slow progess in that one.

Cooking

As I type this, M has another hunk of meat in his sous vide jacuzzi, which has been in there since Thursday evening. Tonight we're having BBQ spare ribs with a sauce that is so insanely delcious that I've been putting it on everything but cereal. It absolutely lives up to its name:

We still have to decide what we're having with the ribs. If I want my daughter to be impressed, it has to be something other than potatoes.  Update: it was fries and cole slaw. See below.

And there they are, with homemade Krautsalat.
They were decadent.

Watching

The EM games, of course, or at least the ones involving the German team. I've fallen behind in what we affectionally call my "Scottish porn" (Outlander; it's not really porn, but a historical romance that gets a bit racey at times) because I lost interest in the second season when the setting was in France rather than in Scotland.

Our other regulars are "the Mentalist", "Big Bang Theory", any and all quiz shows, and "die Rosenheim Cops". Although the first two are American shows, we watch them in German because that's how they're aired on TV. M watches all kinds of other strange shows on the Man Channel (DMAX), which I try to tune out while studying German grammar.

Missing

My 25th college reunion is going on this weekend in Appleton, Wisconsin (USA). My former classmates are posting lots of photos on Facebook, and it's embarrassing how many people I don't remember well. It was and is a small college, after all. I suppose if I hadn't got married in my second year, I would have spent more time on campus and with my classmates. I think what's going on is that the classmates with whom I was really close are also not attending. By "missing" I don't mean I wish I were there, but rather I am not attending because I'm just too far away.

Socializing

Since I'm in town for teaching nearly every day, I run into my former students and other Syrians I have met through the HHK and the Sprachcafé at least once a week. It is always a pleasure to see them, and they greet me warmly, even from afar as they wait for their bus and I'm dashing past to pick up more Bergkäse from Aldi. Usually we have time for at least a brief chat.

A German teacher friend of mine from Colorado is in the area, and we'll be meeting next weekend! It will be nice to get together for the first time since 2012, and M and I are looking forward to it.

Writing

Yesterday I met one of my former students for several hours so he could tell me about his story - his life in Syria and Lebanon before the war, his journey to Germany when he decided he had to leave, and his life here since arriving nine months ago. I will be talking to as many refugees as want to share their stories with me, and I am writing about them. I am not entirely sure what the end product will be, but at the very least they and I will have a written account of what they have gone through. Their stories need to be shared.

That's what I've been up to lately, for those who might have wondered. But now my coffee is finished, and I best get back to preparing for my test! We also have plans to get some yard work done today. The hedge is getting out of control!

Have a great weekend!

one of our Rhododendrons a few weeks ago
They're all finished blooming now and ready for beheading.

My Mom's Visit

This month's Highs and Lows post is being supplanted by the following because 1.) I didn't have any lows this month - seriously, not one! - and 2.) most of my highs had to do with my mom's visit from the U.S..

While my dad is trekking and sight-seeing in the Himalayas, my mom popped over for a visit with us for almost two weeks. She arrived a week ago today, and one of the nicest things about her visit is that nothing is rushed. She has no "official" reason for being here - no cruise or other European vacation, no official exchange business, no parties to attend.

What this means is that my mom has spent some days seeing my life and what I do from day to day. This often includes hours of "down time" - she's taking a nap as I write this. We've been relaxing to the point of being dull some days, but everything we have done has been really enjoyable so far! There's more to come next week, but here's what we've done in the last week.

Good Meals

M and I have enjoyed cooking together for her.

Maultaschen in Brühe

Rouladen in the making

Rouladen mit Nudeln
(This is an older picture with Spätzle, but for my mom we made homemade noodles with our pasta press)

Spargel Überbacken
White asparagus with ham & cheese in a white wine-butter sauce

Züricher Geschnetzeltes und Rösti - one of our favorites

Forewarning if you ever plan to visit us: this is not a low-fat household and we don't know what to do for vegetarians. We cook everything from scratch, though, and buy as much from local farmers as possible. But it's all about the meat.

Bounty from Wisconsin

My mom brought a whole bunch of things I'd asked for, plus one surprise - a Marguerite Henry book I fondly remember from my youth, Five O'Clock Charlie! This was a gift from the son and daughter-in-law of my grandmother's sister. I associate this book with memories of my mom's Aunt June, because I always found it on her shelf and read it cover to cover when I visited.

Other items pictured: cutting boards in the shape of Wisconsin, refrigerator magnets and tea towels of Wisconsin and Sheboygan, Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate chips, a scarf my dad bought me in Argentina, a silicone pot scrubber, and Baker's string cheese (there are no words for how much I love this string cheese, bought fresh from the factory near my hometown (and then frozen for the overseas journey). The Wisconsin-themed items are for when I have occasion to give a gift and want to give something from the homeland.

Esslingen

On Monday we drove to Esslingen (I drove!!) to have a lunch meeting with friends who are in charge of the Esslingen-Sheboygan exchange and then met for ice cream and a chat with the Sheboygan, Wisconsin exchange students who are spending five months in Esslingen.

Kaffee und Kuchen

On Tuesday we drove to the Spargelhof in Bondorf where I always buy our asparagus - picked that morning - and in the afternoon we met six of my (former) students from Syria and Eritrea at a café in Horb for coffee. I was definitely looking forward to introducing them to my mom, and we had a lovely afternoon!

Moms Geburtstag!

Wednesday was my mom's 74th birthday, and she was treated to a lazy morning while I went to M's office for the English lesson. In the afternoon we picked up my Schwiegermutter from the Bahnhof, and in the evening we all four had a wonderful dinner at Straub's Krone.

 P.S. No, that is not a missing apostrophe in "Moms Geburtstag". In German possessives do not take apostrophes.  

our mums
friends since 1987, 19 years before their kids got married!

creme brulee with a birthday candle

American vs. British English

My mom and Schwiegermutter came with me to my Englisch-AG (where I teach conversational English at a school for students with mild learning disabilities), and we did several activities focusing on the differences between American and "proper" English, as I often call the two languages. It often seems true that Americans and Brits are "separated by a common language" (George Bernard Shaw)!

Ancestors' House in Nöttingen

On Thursday I drove my mom and Schwiegermutter to Nöttingen, where we met the couple living in the house my great-great-great-great grandfather built in 1797. They are such warm and gracious people! They had prepared for us delicious homemade cakes as well as a CD full of information about the village and the house - including details about the renovations they've done. The house is under Denkmalschutz, and when they gave us a tour they pointed out the parts of the structure that are original. They helped us visualize what the house and rooms looked like when Jacob Jung lived there.

a painting of the house done by a relative of the current owners

Damenreitstunde

My ladies' riding lesson is on Friday mornings, and my mom was kind enough to come along and snap a few photos despite it being a bit cold. This was nice for me because I could finally have some pictures of me with Mallory, the little horse I ride most often.

Syrisches Essen

On Friday afternoon we were invited to the home where several of my Syrian students live, and they cooked for us several Syrian dishes: Taboule, Freekeh, and a dessert. The food was delicious, and the Deurabisch (Deutsch-English-Arabisch) conversation was very interesting! We talked about religion, customs in Germany, Syria, and the US, their journeys from Syria to Germany, and their hometowns. They showed us on Google Maps where they used to live (much of which has been destroyed by the war). Several of these men lived in villages outside of Damascus just a few kilometers from each other, but they first met when they arrived in this tiny German village back in September 2015.

Pre-Mom's-Visit Highs

The following highs happened before my mom arrived...

• meeting one of my students twice for several hours so that he could tell me his story - of his life in Syria before the war and his journey from Syria through the Balkan route to Germany. His complete story is too long for a blog post, and since I will be talking listening to my other students and some of their friends as well, this may well be the start of a new project!


• our sixth Kochkurs at Straub's Krone, this time focusing on Spargel, Wildkräuter, and Rhabarber.

That's it for April! I hope you had a good month as well!

Another Swabian Compliment

I've written about Schwäbische Komplimente before, and I assume my readers trust me that I wasn't exaggerating. M dished out a spontaneous one the other evening that I thought I would share.

Let me premise it by saying that M doesn't really enjoy baked chicken for dinner. It's not that he doesn't like chicken, but more that it isn't a juicy steak. I like making it, though, because it's a meal I can do without any help from him, I can start it in the late afternoon so it will be ready by the time he gets home from the office, and the recipe I use is very easy, resulting in tender, juicy chicken every time. What's also great about it is that I can use the leftover chicken for a pasta salad or quesadillas the next evening and make a broth out of the carcas. But to M it's still "just chicken".

source

While I was teaching the DaF class for the past few months, I wasn't home in the afternoons and therefore couldn't make any roasts or meals that required lots of prep. When he playfully grumbled about the time I was taking in the evenings planning lessons and writing worksheets, I'd usually say, "Well, look on the bright side - at least you don't have to eat chicken!"

Now the class is finished, and I'm back to planning meals like I have for the past 3 years. Last week one of those meals was baked chicken, potatoes, and glazed carrots. M crinkled up his nose and I said, "Bet you wish I were still teaching, don't you?"

After the meal he very genuinely thanked me for cooking, and added:

"Since we haven't had chicken in so long, it wasn't even....."

He let the rest of his Swabian compliment disintegrate into the wind with a sheepish grin, but his meaning was clear. To be honest, I hadn't expected such high praise!

He accepts that I will bake a chicken for dinner every now and then, and I accept that he doesn't love it like many of the other meals we make. Since Spargelsaison opens tomorrow, we're about to spoil ourselves royally, and there won't be another chicken on our table for quite a while.

Bring on the Spargel!!

March Highs and Lows 2016

March is a pretty blah month, but April brings the promise of spring, and this post means April is about to begin. From the weather reports, today is supposed to be the warmest, nicest day so far, and in the near future.

HIGHS

• every day teaching my students at the Hermann-Hesse-Kolleg continues to be a high!


• two riding lessons on the darling Mallory, who has moved into a new flat (stall) with an outside view. Apparently not everyone likes to ride her because she's SO fast - she's often "auf der Flucht" (fleeing), as the instructor says. But I feel like I know her pretty well by now, and I do really enjoy riding her.


• our Denglisch Kochkurs at Straub's Krone with two other Stuttgart expat bloggers, Traveling Hopefully and Kaffee und Kuchen. I think we learned even more this time than usual, and definitely prepared more dishes that we can and will do ourselves at home. In fact, we've already done a few of them! 


• trying (and succeeding at) these two dishes we learned about at the Kochkurs:

Kässpätzle (with bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin)

Apfelküchle mit Hausgemachter Vanillesoße

• making a beef roast (cooked for 3 hours in a bath of wine and broth) on Sunday because we needed some meat to accompany our leftover Spätzle - fried the second day in a pan with butter.

• attending a Lenten church service because I learned that one of my students would be singing and then speaking to the congregation. He had asked me for help writing out what he wanted to say to them, and I wanted to go to support him. (ähm...I haven't been to church in quite a while...) He sang two hymns in Arabic - a capella - and he has a beautiful voice! The songs were very mystical and melodious. I could have listened for hours. The worshippers applauded him warmly for his words of thanks to the community at the end of the service, and one of the woman invited him to come to choir practice! On Easter Monday he and another of my students sang with the choir during a service.


• trying my grandmother's coffee cake recipe a second time (see "lows" for the first attempt) with M's help on a weekend and not completely failing.


• attending a Lichtstubenabend in our neighboring town to learn about the various Denkmäler such as Feldkreuze and other monuments in and around the town.


• making Maultaschen with M - and succeeding! We made everything from scratch, including the pasta dough, which we rolled out with our new pasta press.

The pasta needs to be thin enough so one can read a newspaper through it.

• Easter dinner! M and I were alone this year because my Schwiegermutter went up North to spend the week with M's sister and family, but we M still made a delicious meal. Lammkeule (leg of lamb), roast potatoes, and Kohlrabi französisch. This is why we don't go out to eat a lot (other than to Straub's Krone) - because the meals we make at home are our favorites and we enjoy cooking together!

LOWS

• In the Landtagswahl for Baden-Württemberg, the third most popular party (of the 10-12 viable parties) was the AfD. This is not quite the nazi party (NPD), but they are extreme right-wingers who, if living in the U.S., would probably be voting for Trump. It makes me extremely sad that even in our little village of 2200 residents - where I feel happy, comfortable and safe - the third most voted-for party was the AfD, who are vehemently anti-refugee and anti-foreigner. Actually they're probably not against all foreigners - just those who look and sound like foreigners.


• trying my grandmother's coffee cake recipe for the first time and failing miserably. The dough went into the trash instead of into the oven.


• Donald  Trump, and everything about him, especially the people who are cheering for and following him.


• reading about the Refugee Program Integrity Restoration Act passed this month in the House Judiciary Committee. "Despicable and cowardly" one politician against the act called it. I agree. If this passes and becomes law, I will be ashamed. The "home of the brave" will then be a complete farce.


• saying "auf Wiedersehen" to my Syrian and Eritrean students, as their class ended today. Even if I teach again when the next round of classes starts again, I am sure I will never have another group of students like this one. They made such an impression on me, I learned so much from them (even if I still cannot confidently say "the United States of America" in Arabic despite their repeated attempts to teach me!), and I will miss them immensely. I do have a way to contact them each through email or Facebook, and I hope we can meet occasionally.

I wish you all a happy start to April!!

The Tools of Cooking

Amazon always knows when we've attended a Kochkurs, because M's shopping cart fills up with gadgets and utensils we can no longer live without. Ever since our first Kochkurs back in 2013, we have been buying things for our kitchen that Martin S. (the Chefkoch) demonstrates or has us use - not because he encourages us to do so or is advertising these products in any way, but because we see the value of having a well-fitted-out kitchen rather than making do with what we had before we knew better.

Our next Kochkurs is scheduled with our neighbors in early April. Cooking is something we truly enjoy doing together, and we are humble enough to admit that we have a lot to learn - especially from a pro!

The other day I decided to gather as many things together as I could think of that we have either bought because of the Kochkurse or that we happened to already have but used in a Kochkurs. I probably forgot a few things, such as the Fleischwolf (meat grinder), which just arrived last week, but since we haven't used it yet and it was too large for the photo, I'll save that for a future edition of this post.

1. Pasta Press

Our pasta press is only about two weeks old. We bought it for making Maultaschen after our recent Schwäbischer Kochkurs, and it's brilliant! We were able to get our dough thin enough, which was one of my problems both of the other times I tried to do Maultaschen. Just today we also made homemade noodles to serve with Gulasch, and they were fabulous - and easy! It may have been psychological, but they tasted better than dried noodles from the bag.

2. Thermomix

Ok, this baby is great, but holy-hell expensive (and not serviced or sold in the U.S.). We've used it for a bunch of things and had a healthy mixture of successes and failures - the applesauce is to die for and the smoothies are really good, too. Steamed potatoes and a fish dish, not so much. Despite several failures, we are still glad we bought this thing.

3. Mörser / Mortar (and Pestle)

Ok, in fairness, M has had this huge and heavy thing for years, but Martin S. confirmed this is the one to have. If you ever want to buy one of these to grind your own spices, get the heavy mother. The little ones - which fit better in the cupboard and won't break your tile floor if you drop it - are not worth the few Euro they cost.

4. Silpat Mat

We used this in the Asiatischer Kochkurs for a carmalized crispy thing to garnish our dessert. I have to admit we haven't used it yet at home, but I keep intending to. The little garnish was so easy, and delicious! I'm sure the mat can be used for lots of other fancy things - more research needed.

5. Kochpinzette / Kitchen Tongs

We hardly ever use our pinchers with the big fat hand-like ends any more. If I need to give a gift to someone who is starting outfitting a kitchen, I would give this. It works for pretty much everything from noodles to meat. You just have to be careful not to poke any meat you're flipping because you don't want the juices to escape. Don't go for the cheap Pinzette; get a good one.

6, 7, & 8. Langer Pfeffer (Long Pepper), weißer Pfeffer (White Pepper) and Sternanis

Maybe the rest of you knew about these spices before, but I didn't! Langer Pfeffer is a stronger, hotter version of pepper, especially useful in Indian dishes. Weißer Pfeffer is good for cooking because it doesn't look like little dark flecks or bugs in the final dish. Regular black pepper is only for the grinder on the table because people want to see the pepper they sprinkle on their food. Sternanis tastes and smells like black licorice, so it needs to be used carefully. It's fun to experiment with spices we haven't used before.

9. Vanilleschoten / Vanilla Beans

I'd never used vanilla beans before moving to Germany, and most American recipes call for vanilla extract anyway (which isn't available in Germany that I've seen). Holy cats, though! Baking with real vanilla is so much better anyway. The more we learn, the more we cook with real and fresh ingredients rather than just the flavors.

10. Spätzlebrett / Spätzle board

We've been doing our own Spätzle (homemade Swabian noodles) for decades, but recently we've taken to using new-fangled contraptions to make the job easier and the Spätzle more uniform in size. The traditional way to make Spätzle, though, is to scrape the dough from the wooden board into the simmering water. After our last Kochkurs I dug my Spätzlebrett out of the "kitchen extras" box in the basement, and now it has its proper place in our kitchen!

11. Zester Reibe / Zest Grater

This little bugger is sharp and dangerous as hell, but it works best for grating lemon or lime peels, and especially ginger. We had been using our multipurpose grater until we saw how much finer the zest was with this tool. We bought one and store it in its protective sheath!

What tools and gadgets do you have in your kitchen that you have recently discovered or couldn't live without?