crocus
february 8, 2011
Salaam Dear Ones,
I can't remember the last time I had Saturday and Sunday off. Normally it's the busiest time of the work week. It is at the Branch, and it was in real estate in NY. It's been more than twenty years since I had a "normal" work schedule, and I must say, it took about five minutes to get used to. Check-in Saturday followed by dinner at the Takim family? Breakfast in the masjiid drinking cappucino and surfing Rashid's ipad? (I want one of those too now.) Yeah, I can do this....Rather wonderful to sit around two days IN A ROW. Wow. So THIS is what "normal" people do...
I brought brownies to Gottessegen on Monday and they went over like gangbusters. Today Andreas asked me if I brought the recipe to work. Oops. I'm going to bring it tomorrow and we'll make them together. He can show me how to change the measurements from cups and teaspoons to grams and kilograms. Who knows? Might be something for them to offer to their customers. I'm also going to turn them on the Kelli's Strawberry Shortcake, which, as we all know, is the best on earth. We're having fun sharing recipes... Andreas showed me how to make a Russian Walnut Cake today that a lady turned him on to. It is delicious and I can't wait to share it with you. Nutty and moist and not too sweet, with a chewy macaroon crust on top. Absolutely devilish.
We were discussing sourdough starter last week and I told Andreas that I don't think I'll be able to get this special starter that they buy in bulk here. He informed me that in the old days they made their own. It takes about three days, but once you make it, you can have it forever. Well, yesterday he told me he'd been thinking about our conversation, and that he will show me how to make the starter from scratch so that when I go home, I will always have it. Isn't that sweet? He's such an awesome person. It's so fun to tag along behind him all day, watching him make the most amazing stuff, asking questions and just drinking it all in. I must say though, there's a down side. I'm getting fat. I'm not only drinking. I'm eating. And eating. And eating.
I learned so much today...we made kaese broetchen (cheese rolls), baguette broetchen (long rolls that look kind of like hotdog buns), flocken kruste (oat bread), saatenbrot (seed bread) , zoepfli (braided challah bread), vollkorn kumpel (heavy seeded bread), plunder of every variety (Danish pastries), hefe teig (yeast dough), dinkel brot (spelt bread), aprikosenkuchen (apricot steusel cake), bienenstich (bee sting cake), mandelschnecken (almond spirals), pudding stietzel (pudding sticks)...
You can't believe how productive these three bakers are and how they waltz around each other. It's opening my eyes to a new way of working together that is actually TOGETHER, and not doing your own thing in a room with someone else doing their own thing, and telling yourself "we work together." One person can start a dough, set it to chill, and another person will take the dough out of the cooler and take it to the next stage. Someone will put bread in the oven and someone else will take it out. Someone will roll out a dough and someone else will cut it, and another person will make the filling. The three of them are totally interchangable on every product they make. They have three shifts that they rotate weekly - an early, a middle, and a late shift. They even take turns making deliveries. It's really quite something. Imagine if we could do every job on our team. Imagine if every person were completely replacable by every other person. It makes for a very smooth and efficient flow.
I'm sending you a picture of Merla and Kim, two of our helpers. Aren't they adorable? And you're not going to believe this, but there's actually a You Tube video of Dirk singing. Apparently this German film crew came and spent a couple of weeks giving acting lessons and shooting some of the local talent. You're gonna flip when you see this. I'll figure out how to get it to you.
The weather is sunny and spring-like. Yesterday afternoon Katya and I drove to Koeln to visit Julia and Mathias and their boys. On the way back from picking up David at kindergarten, Julia and I stopped in a small field of crocus, shocked to see them breaking through the ground, and so many! As we knelt down to examine them, we realized that a tiny crocus cluster at our feet had actually pierced a dry winter leaf and opened its purple flowers, impaling the leaf to the ground. How those flowers grew through that dead leaf is God's Own Wonder. Why the leaf wasn't simply pushed out of the way, rather than pierced as it was defies logic. Yet there it was in all its amazing glory. If the heart of a dead leaf can be pierced by such beauty, how much more is possible in the heart of a human being?
sending my love
fattie
PS Thank you to everyone who's been writing me.
I can't remember the last time I had Saturday and Sunday off. Normally it's the busiest time of the work week. It is at the Branch, and it was in real estate in NY. It's been more than twenty years since I had a "normal" work schedule, and I must say, it took about five minutes to get used to. Check-in Saturday followed by dinner at the Takim family? Breakfast in the masjiid drinking cappucino and surfing Rashid's ipad? (I want one of those too now.) Yeah, I can do this....Rather wonderful to sit around two days IN A ROW. Wow. So THIS is what "normal" people do...
I brought brownies to Gottessegen on Monday and they went over like gangbusters. Today Andreas asked me if I brought the recipe to work. Oops. I'm going to bring it tomorrow and we'll make them together. He can show me how to change the measurements from cups and teaspoons to grams and kilograms. Who knows? Might be something for them to offer to their customers. I'm also going to turn them on the Kelli's Strawberry Shortcake, which, as we all know, is the best on earth. We're having fun sharing recipes... Andreas showed me how to make a Russian Walnut Cake today that a lady turned him on to. It is delicious and I can't wait to share it with you. Nutty and moist and not too sweet, with a chewy macaroon crust on top. Absolutely devilish.
We were discussing sourdough starter last week and I told Andreas that I don't think I'll be able to get this special starter that they buy in bulk here. He informed me that in the old days they made their own. It takes about three days, but once you make it, you can have it forever. Well, yesterday he told me he'd been thinking about our conversation, and that he will show me how to make the starter from scratch so that when I go home, I will always have it. Isn't that sweet? He's such an awesome person. It's so fun to tag along behind him all day, watching him make the most amazing stuff, asking questions and just drinking it all in. I must say though, there's a down side. I'm getting fat. I'm not only drinking. I'm eating. And eating. And eating.
I learned so much today...we made kaese broetchen (cheese rolls), baguette broetchen (long rolls that look kind of like hotdog buns), flocken kruste (oat bread), saatenbrot (seed bread) , zoepfli (braided challah bread), vollkorn kumpel (heavy seeded bread), plunder of every variety (Danish pastries), hefe teig (yeast dough), dinkel brot (spelt bread), aprikosenkuchen (apricot steusel cake), bienenstich (bee sting cake), mandelschnecken (almond spirals), pudding stietzel (pudding sticks)...
You can't believe how productive these three bakers are and how they waltz around each other. It's opening my eyes to a new way of working together that is actually TOGETHER, and not doing your own thing in a room with someone else doing their own thing, and telling yourself "we work together." One person can start a dough, set it to chill, and another person will take the dough out of the cooler and take it to the next stage. Someone will put bread in the oven and someone else will take it out. Someone will roll out a dough and someone else will cut it, and another person will make the filling. The three of them are totally interchangable on every product they make. They have three shifts that they rotate weekly - an early, a middle, and a late shift. They even take turns making deliveries. It's really quite something. Imagine if we could do every job on our team. Imagine if every person were completely replacable by every other person. It makes for a very smooth and efficient flow.
I'm sending you a picture of Merla and Kim, two of our helpers. Aren't they adorable? And you're not going to believe this, but there's actually a You Tube video of Dirk singing. Apparently this German film crew came and spent a couple of weeks giving acting lessons and shooting some of the local talent. You're gonna flip when you see this. I'll figure out how to get it to you.
The weather is sunny and spring-like. Yesterday afternoon Katya and I drove to Koeln to visit Julia and Mathias and their boys. On the way back from picking up David at kindergarten, Julia and I stopped in a small field of crocus, shocked to see them breaking through the ground, and so many! As we knelt down to examine them, we realized that a tiny crocus cluster at our feet had actually pierced a dry winter leaf and opened its purple flowers, impaling the leaf to the ground. How those flowers grew through that dead leaf is God's Own Wonder. Why the leaf wasn't simply pushed out of the way, rather than pierced as it was defies logic. Yet there it was in all its amazing glory. If the heart of a dead leaf can be pierced by such beauty, how much more is possible in the heart of a human being?
sending my love
fattie
PS Thank you to everyone who's been writing me.