Ah, Munich.

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So I survived Oktoberfest, relatively unscathed. And that’s no small feat, given the facts at hand:

1. I am old.

2. I am not young.

3. I was drinking beers that were bigger than my head.

4. I have a really big head.

It really wasn’t all so crazy though. Sure, I tasted many of Munich’s finest beverages and crashed on a friend of a friend’s apartment floor, just like the old college days. But most of the energy Husband and I could once muster for insane all-day beer drinking antics was redirected toward perfecting our German wardrobe and eating sausages.

I’m pretty sure that means we’re getting too old for this sh*t. But that didn’t stop us from having a totally most awesome time anyway.

First, let’s discuss the sausages. I don’t think they eat anything else there. I have never seen so many kinds of roasted meats and encased animal products, and it was a little bit like heaven. Nary a fruit or vegetable to be seen, unless you count cabbage. Which you shouldn’t.

See that sandwich there? I don’t even know what that is! But we saw a bunch of people lined up to eat it, so we followed suit. I think it might be some type of really fatty ham with a chunk of cracklings on top. Cue the simultaneous Husband/wife heart attacks.

Aside from the threat of collective coronary distress, I would be concerned about a national outbreak of scurvy, were it not for the 1/2 beer, 1/2 lemonade beverages offered to the masses who needed a break from the constant flow of alcohol. Nope, no water. We’ll water down your beer with lemonade until you pull yourself together and stop acting like such a pansy.

Those Germans! They really take their festivals quite seriously. Everyone dressed to the nines in lederhosen and dirndls. Everyone singing the old German songs. People just seemed genuinely elated to be wearing funny suede pants and dancing on tables. Some of us were so excited about dancing on tables that we forgot just how slippery beer slosh can get and learned how fast a leg can swell up after blunt impact with a bench.

But in general, the atmosphere in our tent wasn’t as sloppy as I’d imagined. You know what was surprising as hell though? The disco music coming from the OomPahPah band! Abba never sounded so good.

After our day under the beer tent, we woke up (un)refreshed and ready to tackle the city. And just what do you do after a day of intense beer consumption and extreme merriment? How does one best compliment the joyous excess of oversize pretzels and the camaraderie of newfound German friends?

We weren’t quite sure. So we ate more sausages and then went to Dachau. And yes, getting directions to the concentration camp while wearing a green hat with a feather in it was one of the more awkward conversations I’ve ever had.

Vocab Friday: Oktoberfest edition!

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This is going to be a short, sweet lesson this week, and when you get to the picture below you’ll really see what I’m talking about. You see, as you’re reading this, I’m actually sitting in Munich, under a beer tent, hoisting mugs of frothy German brew to my face with both hands.

But wait – How are you typing and drinking those gargantuan beers at the same time you ask? Well, it’s a miracle of technology, really. In a rare but powerful moment of NyQuil induced clarity, I realized that I can write ahead of time and set this puppy to post whenever I want.

Yes, I am slow with figuring out basic WordPress stuff. I am also suffering from an ass-kicking cold that better be gone or at the very least muffled by the medicinal powers of bratwurst by the time you get this. Because attending Oktoberfest has been a lifelong dream of Husband’s, and I just can’t be sick for it. Something tells me I’ll feel plenty sick afterwards, but that’s nothing a little rest and maybe a big soft pretzel won’t fix.

In preparation for this momentous occasion, I followed our good German friend’s advice and made a little stop at a store called Finn Austria. And because I never, ever, EVER miss an opportunity to dress Husband in ways that make me amused, I went ahead and purchased these:

Am I the best wife ever or what?!

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culottes de peau

Pronunciation: coo-lots de poh

Definition: Lederhosen. Leave it to the French to give a very German thing their own name. As in,

“I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell can’t wait to see Husband in his new culottes de peau!”

Adventures in baking.

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I love to cook. Mostly because I love eating, and there aren’t always other people around to feed me. But I also love the challenge of it. I like to really get my hands dirty and see if I can actually make something edible. And because of the way my brain works, it’s also usually an exercise in creative problem solving, like, how quick can you put out that grease fire?! And can you scoop out the mountain of pepper that just accidentally poured into your soup?

The problem is that I’m a big picture kind of girl. I see a recipe like this, and all I can imagine is digging into a dense, chocolately brownie oozing golden salty caramel. The steps between reading that recipe and shoveling brownies into my face are a little hazy, the detailed instructions just minor hurdles on the way to chocolate salted caramel bliss.

So it should come as no surprise that I set out to make these brownies with only about half of the correct ingredients. Part of that I blame on France: I couldn’t find sour cream, so opted for crème fraiche instead. The chocolate isle was very confusing, so I’m not sure I got the bittersweet baking kind. Chocolate sauce was non-existent, so I thought hey, why not just throw some Nutella in there! Recipe instructions be damned.

So just to clarify, I was flying by the seat of my pants on 3 major ingredients. Out of about 5. It was like improvisation, ok? Like jazz in the kitchen! Played by a tone deaf dog. Anyway, first I tried to make the caramel.

You just mix up some sugar and corn syrup over high heat, and then whisk in some cream and salt. Sounds easy enough right? Well, except for the no candy thermometer and caramel needs to cook to a very precise temperature or it completely incinerates into a nasty tar-like substance part.

Yeah, that first batch of caramel didn’t turn out so well. I would have taken a picture, but I was too busy plunging my face trying to get the burned caramel taste out. (Yes, I tasted it. Don’t judge.)

So I tried again. And this time, success!

Except that I used up all the sugar I had. And the brownie part of the recipe called for a cup and a half. This would not have been that dire if it wasn’t 10pm on a Sunday. In Paris. Nothing would be open until Tuesday. I considered smashing up some sugar cubes, but a test run merely yielded shards of sugar all over the floor. So I bolted down the street in my pajamas, and miracle of miracles, found a convenience store open! See, god really wanted me to have those brownies.

Back in the kitchen, I set out to complete part 2 of the recipe. I was about 3 hours into the baking process at that point, so I just kinda slammed all the ingredients together and speed mixed. The batter was so thick I could barely scoop it out of the bowl, which meant that the Nutella substitution was either totally brilliant or a total FAIL. But 40 minutes later, the proof was in the pudding, er, brownie:

Oh sweet baby jesus in velvet pants! The goodness almost melted my face off. I kept waiting for rainbows and unicorns to shoot out of every bite! So I think all of the time and agony was totally worth it. I also think it should be clear now why I will never have my own cooking show. Unless Comedy Central comes knocking.

Vocab Friday: Afterburn

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Not to be confused with heartburn, although I did feel a little of that during some of the racier parts of this book that my dad sent me. It’s a funny thing, reading a mobster-POW-sex thriller that has the word “penis” in just about every other paragraph, knowing your own father read it and thought of you.

I mean, we swap books all the time and I love it – not only is my nightside table always full, but I get a unique portrait of the man who raised me through his literary choices. It shifts over time, but he can always mow through a good Lincoln biography or fighter pilot tale. Lately though his interests have been leaning toward the introspective – stories that question the meaning of life or the value of life or the point of life or something.

Dad’s been gettin all metaphysical on my ass, which should make you giggle if you know my dad. So I was totally lulled into complacency by Thornton Wilder’s contemplative Pulitzer Prize winner when WHAM! Some guy is getting his balls shot off. Holy explicit sex scenes and multi-orgasmic women dad! Could you give me a little warning beforehand?

I know I probably sound like a prude, but it kinda catches you off guard when the last book Dad sent was about a priest questioning people’s inherent goodness and all the sudden I’m reading very explicit descriptions of mobsters drilling people’s faces off and women getting, er, shtupped into oblivion.

There was a rather good story line and a grander moral point in there somewhere, but as Peter Kurth notes over at Salon, “damned if you can tell what it is amid all those power dicks and severed limbs.” I felt kinda naughty reading it, like a 12 year old with a pilfered Playboy. And then I thought about my dad reading it, and it kinda made me want to stick my fingers in my ears and go “LA LA LA LA LA I DON’T WANT TO KNOW!”

So few nights ago I brought this up with him over Skype.

“Yeah, so I starting reading that book you sent.”

“Oh? Which one?”

“Um, the one by Colin Harrison, called Afterburn? It’s really, um, descriptive. The details are quite, ah, visceral.”

“Vis-ah what?”

“Dad, there’s a whole lotta explicit sex and violence! What the hell!?”

He cracked a big smile. “I know! Isn’t it GREAT! I couldn’t put it down! Maybe you could write something like that someday!”

*    *    *

And today’s word is:

rougir

Pronunciation: roo-jeer

Definition: To blush, from embarrassment, nervousness or naughty novels. As in,

“Geezus Dad! Some parts of that book made me rougi jusqu’au blanc des yeux!” (blush to the whites of the eyes)

Why I study French.

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You might think it’s so I can assimilate into the culture. Or perhaps have an easier time at the grocery store. Some could fairly assume it’s just for the sake of bettering my mind.

But that would be incorrect. I spend mornings going over grammar and countless hours humiliating myself in front of more advanced classmates so that I can confidently say to my friendly metro worker,

My phone has fallen onto the train tracks. Would you be able to retrieve it for me? Yes, it was stupid. No. I won’t drop it again. Thank you.

That’s the power of foreign language, people. Amazing!

Oh, the places I can drink!

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Yeah, yeah, it’s Saturday. And I missed Vocab Friday. But I was busy showing some awesome friends around Paris and doing some awesome things, like attending an open-air performance of Carmen at L’Hotel des Invalides:

With a picnic of saucisse and wine of course:

And then we went back to champagne country, so I could say hi to Tina Turner:

And restock my champagne rack:

And engage in a little public drinking on the train ride home:

So apologies for skipping out on vocab yesterday. But there aren’t really words to describe the awesomeness that was going on anyway. The good news is I’ll be back in French class this week, so we’ll return soon to our regularly scheduled programming: baby jesus in velvet pants and boob vocabulary.

In other news, DANGER BEES ARE REAL!

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I got a comment last week from musician David MacMichael, informing me that his alterna garage rock band is in fact called The Danger Bees. Dan-ger Beeeeeeeeeeees, Dan-ger Beeeees! They’re pretty good, although I think their current set list is severely lacking in the spider man theme song department. If Homer can do it, so can you David. So can you!

Now if only we could convince him to use the photo above as his next album cover…

Labor Day mysteries.

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Ah, Labor Day weekend. While most of you were firing up the grill, cracking open a few cold ones and hanging with the fam, I was busy getting pooped on by a pigeon and watching at least a million episodes of 48 Hours Mystery on the computer.

Don’t worry, these events didn’t occur at the same time. The fly-by pooping happened when we took a break from the laptop to find sustenance outside the apartment. Serves me right for laboring to get my a$$ off the couch, right!?

I don’t know why Husband and I have such an infatuation with 48 Hours Mystery. But back home we spent many a Friday night hunkered down with a Vacce pizza, enraptured by America’s weirdest capers, most of which go something like this: Perfect husband/wife found stabbed/strangled/shot/thrown overboard. But they were such a happy couple!/totally had whacked out secret lives going on/managed a swingers ring in their perfect town. Jealousy ensued/the life insurance policy was ready to be cashed, so husband/wife conveniently disposed of his/her spouse, making it look like an accident/disappearance/serial killer massacre. Small town detective/district attorney knows what’s up though, and sets out to see justice served.

It’s enough to make you wonder why people are so afraid to just get a dang divorce. Wouldn’t that be a hell of a lot easier than bludgeoning your spouse and then making it look like the cable man did it? But apparently to many married/cheating/unhappy/nutso spouses, the answer to that question is no.

It boggles the mind. So much so that Husband looked at me about mid-way through our 10th episode and genuinely asked, “Um, can you promise not to kill me if you want out of this marriage?”

I thought about it a minute.

“Ok, I won’t kill you. But if you cheat on me I will maim you.”

He considered the deal. “That seems fair.”

“Let’s also promise to never go on a cruise. Those things are floating death traps!”

“Oh totally. No cruises. Too easy for one of us to get ‘accidentally’ thrown over.”

“And if a serial killer does break in and strangle me while you happen to be out on business, you have to cooperate with the police. Otherwise you look like a suspect.”

“Of course.”

Satisfied, we snuggled up and finished watching the show. And if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

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This one’s for you, Harold Dow!

Vocab Friday: Les Mouches

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No, that’s not a special champagne cocktail. Although a little hair o’ the dog might not be so bad right now, since I was up rather late sipping a cherry liqueur with a funny Polish name that translates roughly to “Grandma’s Splash.” I now have waves of pain pulsing through my cranium which lead me to believe that Grandma likes to hit the sauce hard.

The concoction/contraption above is actually the fruit of a pesky fruit fly problem that’s been plaguing my kitchen all week. And the mosquitoes that have been dive bombing our bed in the middle of the night. Funny how flying bug infestations happen when there’s no AC so you have to leave the windows open, but there are no screens so every creepy-crawly on the block wants to stop in for dinner. I asked my French teacher how real Parisians solve this problem and she looked at me like I was nuts. “Les moustiques?! N’existe pas à Paris.” Mosquitoes! In Paris? Impossible. I then showed her the line of angry, itchy bites down my leg. She looked at me with a straight face and told me I must have fleas.

I’m fairly certain it’s not fleas, since I can see the fruit flies and mosquitoes circling and last time I checked, Husband’s body hair had not yet reached canine levels. So yesterday I decided to get all crafty up in this piece. My bug death trap is sinister yet simple in construction: pour a little vinegar into the bottom of a glass. Roll a piece of paper into a cone, taping it in place. You want a small opening that hovers just above the vinegar. That way the flies, unable to resist the siren call of fruity fermentation, fly down your paper cone of death and either splash to their vinegary end or panic when they can’t find a way back out.

I don’t know if this works for mosquitoes, but I’m hoping they’re dumb enough to fall for it too. In the meantime I will wait for my first victim, wringing my hands and cackling an evil murderous laugh.

Yes, this is what my life has come to people. Fruit fly traps and blogging. But don’t judge – it’s amazing what passes as entertainment when your only other option is the BBC. And so I bring you vocabulary:

la mouche

Pronunciation: la moosh

Definition: A fly. Also the name for those fake beauty marks Marie Antoinette and her pals used to stick on their faces. As in,

“Can you tell my brian is fried from all that Grandma’s Splash? I’m blogging about mosquitos and les mouches and Marie Antoinette’s fake beauty mark!”

The anti-frites, anti-foie gras dinner.

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One of the best parts about having visitors here is showing them all of the most glorious things to eat. And we all know that I’ve been doing some serious eating. No one, and I mean no one, leaves on my watch without at least trying:

  • pain au raisins (from my corner bakery, bien sur)
  • pain au chocolat
  • salted caramel macarons at Carette
  • pâté de campagne
  • banana and nutella crepes
  • lamb chops
  • french onion soup
  • my homemade chicken en cocotte
  • gallons of champagne
  • moelleux au chocolat
  • those little dried sausage ball things that are like crack
  • some really stinky cheese
  • fresh baguette

And that’s usually just on day one. So it’s no surprise that after a couple weeks of entertaining guests, my organs are in dire need of a little rest. My body cries out for something simple, something fresh, something with some vegetables on it. That’s why after sending off the in-laws on Sunday, we went directly to Al Taglio for this:

Before
After

Oh, pizza by the kilo! How do I love thee? Let me count the ways: with thinly sliced potato and truffle cream, with speck and smoky eggplant purée, with sweet pumpkin sauce and salty prosciutto. And let’s not forget the simple pairing of mozzarella and garlicky tomato. All settled onto a perfectly crisp-yet-chewy-inside crust. The crust! Tis’ not the sad soggy specimen found beneath most lame slices around here, no. This is the crust of my dreams. I want to be rolled up inside that doughy wonder to live out my last days. Which at the rate I’m going, will probably be sometime around next week.