A(nother) Week of Good Food

I've cooked quite a bit the last few weeks, and it's been fun. Wednesday night, we hosted another family dinner at our apartment. We didn't have 18 people this time, but we came close.

James and I came up with the brilliant idea to just make fried rice for everyone, including a vegetarian option for the herbivores in our group. So we made about four pots of rice on Tuesday night. Haha.

Since I only have two pans though, it was difficult to cook everything in one sitting...so we actually cooked four pans full of fried rice. Brandon made the last pan. He only learned how to make fried rice from me about two weeks ago, but I think he's better at it than I am. Haha.

Well, after the success of Wednesday's dinner, Brandon invited me over for one of his recipes—an Italian pasta dish with tomatoes, zucchini, onions, garlic, and sausages all in a delicious white wine sauce. I think I will give that a try when I get to Berlin.

We topped it off with some fresh squeezed lemon, and man, that was some good food. Good white wine on the side too. We cooked two pans full of this stuff, and between the two of us, we wolfed it all down.

There's a city library near our German course, so Brandon has been borrowing a number of items from there. Last week, he got Jaws in German, but we never got around to watching it. Well, tonight, we definitely watched a German classic, Winnetou I. It's a 1963 film about cowboys and Indians. If you know anything about Germans and the old American West, it's almost 99% certain to be related to cowboys and Indians or Karl May, a famous German author who used to write about the American Old West (although, if I remember correctly, he never actually visited the US).

Anyway, we watched this movie, and the simplest review I can give is: it's hilarious. Haha. Watch it, and I think you'll understand. It is in German though, and there are no subtitles. There are long periods of no talking though, so even if you don't speak German, chances are you'll understand the story line.

This weekend, just about everyone is leaving or has already left for their host cities or another European destination. I almost bought a ticket to join the group going to Amsterdam and Brussels, but money and research will keep me in Marburg this weekend. No matter, tomorrow I'm cooking dinner (butter chicken curry) for the few of us who are remaining in Marburg. Then on Saturday, we're going to get a special weekend train ticket to go to Kassel, which is supposed to be a nice little city. I'll take lots of pictures.

Other than that, I have to do laundry, transcribe more interviews, get ready for my research project, and prep for our German radio show on Sept. 21st. I wrote out my section today in German. I have to say something's clicked in the last two days. I've been much more comfortable speaking and writing in German. In fact, I'm making mistakes with English now. Haha. Oh well.

Sam