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Directories
Expats in the Wikisphere
While tooling around Wikipedia, I came across a page listing American Expatriates in Germany (who have Wikipedia articles written about them). The people listed are not all currently in Germany, it just denotes people that have lived in Germany at some point. Priscilla Presley and Martin Lawrence, both born on US military bases in Germany, make the list. I’m sure there should be quite a few more people on there, like Iggy Pop, who lived in Berlin in the 70’s, or Jeffrey Eugenides, author of the Virgin Suicides. And where are Brad and Angelina, they at least own a posh penthouse in Berlin-Mitte? They also forgot to list Evil Jared. I presume he’s still showing up naked all over Germany. Too bad I’m not white and nerdy enough to sign up on Wikipedia and update the page.
On a personal coolness note: I actually had one of the folks listed over to my house in Potsdam for Thanksgiving dinner back in 2006! In fact, he carved the turkey!
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The Great Vanilla Extract Experiment
For six years now, I’ve been bringing a large bottle of vanilla extract home with me from the States every year. I considered the tiny, overpriced bottles at KaDeWe. I searched the shops. I searched online. I looked at recipes. To be honest, it doesn’t look that difficult to make your own, so it’s time to step it up a notch. It’s time to start living what I preach. It’s time for me to make my own vanilla extract.
There are a myriad of recipes out there, just google and you’ll find them, but here’s mine. You’ll need 0.5L of alcohol, 4-6 vanilla beans, and a jar with a lid. You don’t need top of the line booze*, anything will do, as long as it’s 40% alcohol (that’s 80 proof). Vodka is nice and neutral, but I’ve seen dark rum in a lot of recipes. Since we don’t quite have a full bottle of vodka, I’m adding a small bottle of dark rum to the mix.
I decided that if I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna go all the way. So I searched and found an online shop Vanille aus Madagaskar, that sells 9 Bourbon vanilla beans from Madagascar for €12,90 (plus postage). (This is quite the savings over the beans sold in the supermarkets - and they look nicer too). I took each bean and split it down the middle, leaving one end intact. Some recipes say to scrape the bean, but I chose not to.
I dropped the 6 split vanilla beans into the jar, then topped them with the vodka and dark rum. It’s important now to store the container in a dark, cool place. It will take at least 4-6 weeks before you’ll be able to use the extract, and 6 months to full maturity.
* If you plan on keeping the extract around for 10 years or so, you will want to use high quality alcohol - but I’m not making enough to last that long.
Week 1
After one week of steeping, the extract is already a beautiful dark amber color. It still smells rather strongly of alcohol, but the vanilla scent is there. The jar gets shaken, and put back in it’s dark, cool spot.
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Want worship-worthier instructions? Check out the Make Vanilla Extract article by Ian on Instructables.
I am a link whore
It used to be that when I found a cool new blog, I added it to my Google Reader, read it for a few weeks to months, joined in the blog’s community by commenting at least semi-frequently, then finally, after careful deliberation, added the blog to my blogroll. Well, not anymore. I just don’t have the time. And there were a lot of really good blogs in my reader that I wasn’t getting around to commenting on, and therefore could not move them further along in my process to finally share them with you. That era has come to an end. I just imported everything in my reader. It’s all there on the left. If your blog is there and you don’t want it to be, tell me and I’ll remove it. If you’re like, “Who the hell is this chick linking to me?” Well, sorry, my little man doesn’t give me time anymore to properly introduce myself. I hope you’ll forgive that, but know that I’ve been reading (or at least skimming) your blog posts for probably quite some time now. If you are thinking, “Dude, I know Christina reads my blog and it’s not there,” blame my Wordpress import function. It didn’t grab everything and I probably missed a blog here or there. So feel free to yell at me about that. Otherwise, peruse and enjoy!
Video Wednesday: A Magical Journey to Laaber
I went all out for you this week, hiking all over town and then taxing my video editing skills to bring you this four and a half minute tour of the little town we live in. Enjoy!
Bonus points if you spot the dude in Lederhosen!
AmiExpat’s going to Munich
…from March 9 to 13.
Rainer’s got a conference, so drop me a line if you want to meet up. I’m game for coffee and cake, or a tour of the city, or a great ethnic restaurant, or shopping for designah duds, or… whatever (well, not swinging - see below). I would love if someone wants to plan a München meetup while I’m there.
I completely forgot to mention it, but the weekend before last, we all headed over to Ingolstadt (nice, but probably my least favorite city I’ve been to in Bayern thus far). On the way back, I didn’t notice the name of the town, but while passing through a village, we drove past a house proudly proclaiming itself as a Swinger’s Club. Right out in the open. On the main road. Rainer was quite a bit less surprised than I. In fact, his response was, “Well, they gotta meet each other somewhere, don’t they?” He so wouldn’t fit in in America 
And Oliver is getting his first tooth. It’s not quite through the skin yet, but I can see and feel it. God, it’s 7:15pm and I’m ready for bed. But Supernatural is on in an hour. What to do? What to do?
It’s too late to come up with a good title
I think I’ve made some progress with the blog’s formatting issues, but there’s still a bit to do. Hopefully I’ll have time this week to do a little more. Rainer’s off to Heidelberg, however, so that does not bode well. I got much respect for all the single mothers out there. I get completely stressed out when Rainer is out of town. Charlie turned three years old on Friday. They say that Bernese Mountain Dogs are “three years young dog, three years good dog, and three years old dog,” so I told Charlie that from here on out he’s supposed to be good. No more rolling in sheep crap or eating unidentifiable dead stuff lying on the side of the road or trying to steal Brötchen from the neighborhood kids.
The little munchkin turned 7 months old today. He’s been sitting up on his own for a couple days now and is going through some serious separation anxiety at the moment. It is, shall we say, a stressful time.
Tomorrow’s the Oscars and I don’t think I’ve seen any of the nominated movies. Wait, Transformers is nominated for Sound Editing or something and I saw that at Christmas time back in the States. Every year I’ve been getting less and less interested. I don’t know if I’ll stay up to watch this year. If I do, it would only be for Jon Stewart. Hmmm, having seen few new movies, I probably wouldn’t get most of the jokes.
I did catch the Texas Democratic Debate this week. Clinton and Obama were both good, I thought, but I couldn’t help thinking that Hillary was doing a great Professor Umbridge imitation a few times when she was smugly grinning while Obama was talking. It’s funny, I was reading some of the comments on the CNN article about the debate and (1) it seems the pro-Clinton commentors should work on their grammar and spelling, then (2) they seem to think that the rest of the world is “laughing” at the “idiots” supporting Obama. I’m not sure where they are getting this information, because from what I’ve read, it seems the world is pretty excited by Barack Obama (and would also be happy to have Hillary).
Well, it’s supposed to be a beautiful day tomorrow, with temperatures up in the 60’s, so I will probably be out and about, enjoying the freakishly warm weather. Cheers!
Survey for Regensburgers and nearby folks
Before planning the next Expat/English-speakers meetup (it’ll be a dinner), I’d like to gather some opinions about the meetups. If you live in the Regensburg area or think you might attend a meetup here some time, I’d really appreciate it if you could fill out this survey for me. It’s really quick - there are only 4 questions and a comment field.
I’m also creating a mailing list of folks who want to be emailed about meetup events. If you didn’t get an email about this survey, that means you are not on the list. Email me or leave a comment on this post if you want your email added.
Thanks!
Oh, and I know I’ve been a total blog-slacker. You can blame Brother #2. He got me season 1 of Heroes for Christmas and I popped it in last week. I was only able to tear myself away from the TV after a three day marathon. I’ll try to be a better blogger from now on!
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