Cologne, Day 2

Today, we toured the Cologne Cathedral.  It took over 600 years to finish construction on the cathedral, from 1248 to 1870, and there are some parts inside that still look like they might not be quite complete.  Talk about slow by little!  I hope Kevin doesn't start comparing his projects to that!

God is in the Cologne Cathedral.

After touring the cathedral and opting NOT to climb 500 steps to the tower (thank you, thank you, thank you!), we had lunch at Früh am Dom, where they make things really simple by serving one type of beer:  Früh Kölsch.  Also by just carrying what is essentially a basket of 0.2 liters around the restaurant and dropping a new one in front of anyone who doesn't have one.  Kevin narrowly avoided ordering pork knuckle, but then wondered if he was missing out.

Kevin loves his baby beer.

The small, not even half-pint 0.2 liter size is supposedly to prevent the beer from getting warm.  Kevin says that, when we get to Munich, they will give us a full liter but expect us to drink it just as fast as the 0.2 liter, so it doesn't get warm. 

Still a little jet-lagged, we headed back to the hotel and took and afternoon nap before heading out to the Cathedral Christmas Market.  We enjoyed our first mugs of glühwein .

Here is one of the more festive-looking stalls inside the Cathedral Market...

I had a bowl of mushrooms from this stand for dinner.  They have a giant griddle, and start at one end with fresh mushrooms, onions, and seasoning.  As it cooks, it gets pushed down to the other end and is served up as deliciousness with a slice of white bread.

Goodnight, Cathedral! Tomorrow, we're going to check out one of the two (yes, two) mustard museums and the chocolate museum!

And We're Back! ...in Germany!

After a several month hiatus, I decided that I couldn't pass up blogging our trip to Germany.

What??? We're in Germany?

Yup!

Kevin and I had been talking awhile about doing some belated honeymoon travel (we only had a "mini-moon" and our friends' wedding cruise - which didn't count.  :-)), and after considering such temperate destinations as New Zealand and Hawaii, we settled on gray, blustery Germany.  Ok, we've only been here a day, so it's not fair to say yet that it's cold and blustery - that might just be today.  But several years ago, I read an AAA article about German Christmas Market cruises, and we agreed it would be nice to do someday.  This fall just felt like "someday" to us, so here we are, touring the Germany Christmas Markets, only by train instead of boat - much less expensive.

Before sunrise this morning, we arrived in Köln (Cologne). Which is not as early as it sounds - the sun was just rising as our train pulled into the Hauptbahnhof at 8:12 AM.  After sleeping for less than 2 hours on the plane, we were so grateful that the nice folks at the Hilton Köln had a room available for us and let us check in at 8:30 AM.  And our room is just so awesome.  Sure, our window peers into the windows of an office building next door, but the room is really spacious, sleek and modern.  Maybe I'll post some pictures tomorrow after our bed is made - we took a four hour nap!

We plan to explore Köln more closely tomorrow (predicted to be sunny and seasonable), but here's a peek at what we previewed today:

I made this gingerbread house on the plane.  My mother-in-law would be so proud.

 This was an awesome little toy store with a special little door for it's young (and young-at-heart!) patrons.

 It's magic inside the Kölner Dom Christmas Market!  And SUPER CROWDED!

The other side of the gothic Kölner Dom looks pretty ominous at night!  Pretty cool picture, though!

Now that it's almost 10PM German time but my body thinks it's 4PM (or does it?), I think I'd better attempt to get it on schedule by getting some sleep!

Cooking Spree

When we got back from the Outer Banks a few weeks ago, I was refreshed and motivated. On vacation, I thought about how little free time I seem to have on weeknights, and came up with an idea.  I was determined to ease my weeknight stress by prepping meals on the weekend.  So, that first Sunday back, I was on a roll.

I made a tower of pasta salad for us to take for lunch during the week...

I would share the recipe with you, but it came from the back of a pasta box, and I threw it away when we ended up not liking the salad so much.  The dressing used a cup of sugar, and was way too sweet. There was also a little too much of it, so I cut it with some vinegar and added it to some sliced cucumbers and dill to make a little cucumber salad...

This seemed like it would be a near-ethnically appropriate side (German) for Monday night's dinner of haluski (Eastern European).  Now, from what I can tell, though, there is more than one dish that is referred to as "haluski," but I only really know the cabbage and noodle version. I don't really use a recipe for it, but here is something close from Epicurious.  Here is the pile of cabbage and onions I chopped...

I didn't think to take a picture of the finished product, which I actually cooked up Monday night. 

The piece de resistance, though, were the green enchiladas.  The recipe came from the Simply in Season cookbook, which is organized season to season, based on commonly available produce.  I use this book a lot during CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) season, as we often end up with vegetables that I am not sure what to do with, or need a new idea.  For example, haluski is my go-to with cabbage, which is fine for the first time or third time we get cabbage for a season, but if we get cabbage five weeks in a row, everyone will get sick of haluski.  So, I can just go to the index and look up "cabbage," and it will have some alternatives.

With the green enchiladas, though, it was the other scenario - the "what in the world do I do with the vegetable?" one.  The vegetable?  Tomatillos.  We got tomatillos last summer, too, but they languished in the crisper until the only thing to do with them was add them to the compost pile.

Tomatillos are funny little things.  And they're sticky!

 The recipe called for poblano peppers, but I used cubanelle because they were $2 cheaper per pound at the grocery store.  When I googled "cubenelle" on my iPhone at the store, I found that they are commonly substituted for poblano in American cooking, so my hunch is that they are similar but not as hot?  I haven't dabbled in a lot of peppers or Latin cooking, for that matter, so I don't really know.  But the dish was yummy with the cubenelle peppers, which you first roast.  I did it on the grill.

For some reason, I just think roasting peppers is really cool.  You get them all black and crispy, then peel the skin off and they are sweet and delicious.  Like a pepper butterfly emerging a scorched cocoon.  :-P

You blend these along with roasted tomatillos, cilantro, some other stuff  and most surprisingly, peanuts!  Then, wrap grilled chicken in tortillas with cheese, put them in a baking dish, and cover with the sauce and more cheese.

I was a little nervous, but they turned out really good!

So, this all took pretty much all day, and I have to admit, I haven't been as productive since then.  :-/

What good intentions have you come back from vacation with that soon fell by the wayside?

Another Thing I Learned on Vacation

Is that, at a Food Lion in Virginia:

1.  You can buy a mini-keg of Coors Light.

2.  They price out the booze by quart, just like juice or milk, whether it is in a mini-keg or cans.

 3.  Surprisingly (to me), it was significantly cheaper per quart to buy a case of cans than the mini-keg.

Cans @ $1.97/quart of beer

Mini-keg ("home draft") @ $2.98/quart of beer

Maybe because the cans were on sale?

Since I've always lived in "blue law" states, it still feels a little illicit to be looking at beer in the grocery store!

Lessons Learned at the Beach

In the days, weeks, and well, even months leading up to our vacation this year, I've felt overwhelmed, haggard, and tired.  In addition to relaxing last week, I tried to take some time to consider how I might be able to feel a little more peaceful and energetic in my everyday life.  Now, I was on vacation, so I didn't really think that hard, but here are some things I figured out on vacation:

• Go when you have to go.
• Plan ahead so you have room to be spontaneous.  

• Live in the moment.

• Go to bed early.
• Take time to think about yourself.

• Stretch in the morning.
• Take time to think about nothing!

Engineer at Play

Kevin's mom went on a childhood toy binge at Five Below before leaving for vacation.  I can imagine what happened.  She went in with plans to get decorations for Mr. Ulmes' surprise 60th birthday party (which was a huge hit), and got swept up by bargain and nostalgia, walking away with water guns, Silly Putty, jacks, and model airplanes.  I tried to put my model airplane together for approximately 9.2 seconds before declaring that the boys were welcome to use it for spare parts or tricking out their own planes.

Kevin test flew his plane indoors (a big no no!)
:

Ok, I'm really embarrassed that I ended up shooting it sideways, but can't for the life of me figure out how to turn it.  Any suggestions?

Summer Goings-On

Finally, we're on an honest-to-goodness vacation that has given me some time to update this blog!  We're down in the Outer Banks on the annual Ulmes Family beach vacation - my first as an "official" Ulmes.  We rent a house for a week with Kevin's parents, brother and fiance.  Next summer, it will be her first vacation as an "official" Ulmes.  :-)

This picture is from last summer, when I was still "unofficial."

 Lots has been going on in our world!  In the weeks leading up to July 4th, we were working feverishly to get our house to look like, well, a house, and not a storage unit.  Although it's certainly not as homey as I'd like it to be, yet, it does finally look like a place where people live, and not where they store stuff.

Kevin was particularly concerned about getting the pool and the pool area ready.  This ended up being a huge task.  It appeared as though the previous owners did pretty much nothing to maintain the pool or pool area.  The pool was essentially a pond, complete with tadpoles and croaking frogs, surrounded by overgrown bushes and grasses.  Kevin worked valiantly for what seemed like weeks trying to clean that pool out using the skimmer and a variety of chemicals (his favorite part), but finally relented and emptied the pool.  Then, he just jumped in with a power washer and scrubbed up the sides.  We actually have a pretty cool time lapse video of this, which I'll have to post after a little processing.

We then cut back the overgrown foliage around the pool.  I've been really bad about remembering to take "before" photos, but here's some of the work in progress:

Kevin

Bryan

Sarah

Unfortunately, although we have a ton of pictures (to come) from our July 4th Housewarming BLAST, we don't really have one that really shows the transformation.  I'll have to take one when we get back to show you.

Bryan and Sarah, pictured above, were invaluable indentured servants helpers  house guests over the past two months.  Another thing that's being going on is that these two have been staying with us since their house sold until they were able to move into a new one.

They don't always look this nice.

This was originally only supposed to be a few weeks, but their original contract fell through, so it ended up being a little longer.  The good news is that staying with us just a few weeks lured them up to our area, and they found a charming place for much less than where they were originally looking.  So, now we have more friends up north with us!  They were also super, super-helpful with our home projects, and while Sarah insists they are "forever indebted" to us for letting them stay with us, we can assure her that the feeling is mutual!  The house will be empty when we get back from the beach, and we will miss the weeknight dinners and weekend bacon!

We also spent a few days in San Francisco and Monterey, CA, while Kevin was out there for a conference.  I have a lengthy post about it that I started on the airplane ride back that I'll post soon.  Here's a preview:

So, sorry for what has essentially ended up be the equivalent of a mid-summer Christmas letter.  Consider it your Christmas in July gift!