This last week, it feels like my life has revolved around food. Of course, if you know me, you’re probably thinking, when does her life not revolve around food? Yes, I love my eats, I even plan foodie vacations, but this week has felt even more food-centric than usual.
At midnight Thursday, I eagerly ripped open my birthday packages from Rainer to discover he’d given me (off my wishlist) Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking
The next day we headed to Munich, where I was planning on going out for a fabulous dinner at my favorite sushi place in Germany Tokami (I love it, but if you know of a better place, do tell). I’d been dreaming about a dinner there since Rainer brought up going to Munich, so you know how excited I was. We met Emily from American Wolpertinger for drinks at the News Bar and had a lot of fun getting to know her and chatting about German television. I decided to order a finger food plate for Oliver to have for dinner instead of the pasta with turkey which I would normally have gotten him, so that I wouldn’t have to feed him and could socialize a little more. I normally don’t let him feast on a plate of fried foods, but it was a special day so why not. It was a big platter, and Rainer decided to help Oliver finish it.
We parted ways with Emily and slowly made our way through the rain to the sushi place. We were waiting for Oliver to fall asleep in his stroller, but he wasn’t quite there yet, so we decided to make another loop of the block and see if he’d sleep. He still wasn’t asleep on our return, and then Rainer turned to me, “I don’t feel so good, honey.” It seems all that fried food did not agree with him. There was a Running Sushi Bar on the way back to the hotel, so we decided to get take out sushi for the hotel room. I hadn’t really thought this through, and ended up discovering that eating sushi while someone is getting sick in the next room is not that pleasant. It also doesn’t help having a hyperactive toddler trying to grab sushi pieces off your plate in order to chuck them at the trash can.
The next day, I did some shopping. Andrea and I were planning a joint birthday brunch, so I thought it would be cool to have some exotic fruit salad with ingredients from the Viktualienmarkt. I’ll skip ahead a little here and tell you that this was a waste of time. In Berlin, while expensive, the fruit from KaDeWe was still really, really good. I expected the same from the stands at the Viktualienmarkt, but upon cutting up the fruit for the salad, I discovered that it was as bland and tasteless as the stuff in the supermarkets, at sometimes almost double the price. I saved much of the salad by dipping the blandest items in a mixture of honey, lemon juice and water. I served the fruit with wildflower honey and fresh French cow cheese. It turned out okay in the end, but I’m not making that purchasing mistake again.
Rainer offered dinner at the sushi place that night, but after a day out in the rain (it did clear in late afternoon), and after Oliver did a face dive into the mud at a playground in the Englischer Garten, I just wanted to get home. Upon entering the Autobahn, I noted that it was really hard to see anything. The headlights on our car weren’t working. Rainer is yelling that he can’t see. I’m yelling that the cars merging in and out of traffic can’t see us. Rainer is yelling that he knows and my yelling is not helpful. We somehow safely got to a gas station in Garching and called Renault’s Service Line. I guy was dispatched and we settled in for the hour wait. We ended up eating an egg and limp bacon sandwich, wasabi coated peanuts, a Reeses candy bar, and a Dr Pepper for dinner (that was a highlight, you don’t find that stuff everywhere!). Rainer was expecting the worst, that the car would need to be towed to a shop and wouldn’t be fixed till Monday, but the guy was totally nice and it ends up that both our headlights burned out simultaneously. I thought it would have had to be the wiring for that to happen, but he said that no, it often happens that they blow out at the same time.
So we made it back to Regensburg in one piece, very late Friday night. The next day, Monet and I got our hair done in town, then Rainer dropped Oliver off with us while he went to the office. Rainer decided that Oliver should wear snow boots and capri pants that day, so he was making quite the fashion statement. Then Rainer picked Oliver up and Monet and I headed over to Andrea’s for tapas and a battle of the sexes round of Cranium (the guys beat us, creamed us, in fact). It was the first time I’d ever had tapas, and I found them quite tasty. I’m a big fan of octopus anything and she had made a great octopus salad.
Sunday was spent kicking myself for forgetting to buy the ingredients for the Wurzelsuppe. On Monday, Rainer left for the week to go to a meeting in Hanover and I got started cooking for the birthday brunch on Tuesday. I’d picked recipes out of my new cookbooks, including one I’d bought myself, Essence of Chocolate: Recipes for Baking and Cooking with Fine Chocolate
With Rainer being out of town, I had to prepare all those dishes after Oliver went to bed Monday, so I was cooking well past 2am. I was beat after brunch and hit the sack with Oliver shortly after 7pm.
I also baked one of the leftover molten cakes with custard sauce for a Macedonian friend and her Macedonian-German daughter today. My friend loved it and asked me to translate the recipe to German for her, but her 20-something year old daughter’s response was, “Schmeckt wie bei Burger King” (tastes like at Burger King). After seeing the look of horror this comment brought to my face (sorry, I really couldn’t control myself), she clarified that she loves Burger King and she loved the cake.
Today, I reflected upon my gourmet brunch preparations. I obsessively watched Top Chef this season, and that along with this German recipe challenge and these beautiful cookbooks have really sparked my love of food and cooking. I’ve wondered whether a career change to chef might be in order. It’s a little scary to consider such a drastic change of careers, statistician to chef, but I didn’t want to be scared off by fear. In the end, I’ve come to realize that I love cooking. I really love eating. But cooking is not my passion. In watching reruns of Top Chef, the chefs often describe the passion they feel for their work, and I don’t have that for cooking. I used to have it for statistics (scary, I know), but not in a long time. I thought about it a little longer, am I passionate about blogging? Not really. What am I passionate about? Then it came to me. I’m passionate about being a mom. I’m passionate about being the best mom that I can be to Oliver. I guess I’ve chosen the right career after all.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
WOW! What a food adventure! I think you are right – I love preparing food and cooking – but I don’t think that I would have the passion to make it a business – just something I want to do for myself and my family/friends. You chose the right career – lucky Oliver!!
Oh – and I think my soup would have been more refined if it was creamier instead of the half pureed/half chunky version that I ate! It was good though in taste, just not appearance!
As much as I love to cook, I think being a chef is very hard work. I have thought about opening a restaurant in the past, but I’m glad I didn’t.
Jientjes last blog post..Friday’s Fave Five
I had you pegged for a pastry chef prior to all of the cooking on this blog. You cook Thai, German, etc. etc.. but the cakes and desserts are where I think you excel the most. (Although, you are quite the achiever — cooking, baking, being a mom, statistician). Is there anything that you’ve actually NOT done well?!
@stephanie: Rainer had a bowl when he got back from his trip and said it did indeed remind him of baby food!
@jietje: My mom has a restaurant and it is really hard work. That’s probably one of the biggest factors in my realizing it wouldn’t be a good line of work for me.
@rachael: LOL! There’s plenty, I just don’t talk about those things a lot!