the isle of sand and snow

Katherine and I took a four-day weekend and rode a train as far north in Germany as we could go: to Westerland, on the island of Sylt. The day we arrived was sunny and beautiful, so we walked on the beach in search of our hostel. We were told it was "a little outside of the city." That was okay; it was a nice day for walking.

The sun disappeared more or less permanently after that first afternoon, and it turned out we were about a month too early for the start of the (summer?!) season. Our hopes of going to the beach sauna in List and then jumping in the North Sea were dashed, since the sauna doesn't open until April and large sections of the bay were frozen over. We consoled ourselves by eating at Gosch repeatedly and taking a car ferry to Denmark.

provisions

Today, on my new ride to work, I nearly ran into a sausage truck. My initial annoyance turned to delight when I realized that the sausage truck was part of a market.




If my route to work hadn't changed when I moved last weekend, I very well may have kept on missing out on the glorious market that takes place on Schillerstraße every Friday. I did my best to make up for my past ignorance by buying out half the place: yellow tulips, three kinds of cheese, rose hip jam, turnips, clementines . . . I was out of control. It's a very good thing that the best way to get from work to home is via bicycle, and straight uphill.

white bean hummus

I'd been eyeing the white bean hummus recipe on Orangette for a while now, but hadn't been entirely assured of the existence of either white beans or tahini in Frankfurt. As it turns out, tahini can be found even in regular grocery stores, and Reformhaus Freya, which has loads of locations around Bornheim and the Innenstadt, stocks dried beans (and also dried chickpeas! I sense some hummus variations coming on soon.).

So last night, armed with all the ingredients, I made a huge, lovely bowl full of Molly's Little Family White Bean Hummus.


The recipe calls for a quarter cup of lemon juice, or more to taste; I used the juice of two lemons, which was about a quarter cup, but think I would go with three next time. I cooked my own white beans from dried instead of using a can, so none of the salt that you get in canned beans was already there. If you do the same, ignore the recommended amount of salt in the recipe and just salt to taste. I also added a whole bunch of black pepper. Definitely follow the instruction to drizzle with olive oil for serving -- that makes this hummus unholy good. I added some paprika as well.

The recipe doesn't say exactly how much it makes -- I got about three cups, a.k.a. enough to keep me well-stocked with hummus for a week, or to keep my friend Diana stocked with hummus for an hour. I can say with certainty, because I am eating it right this moment, that it is just as delicious the next morning, with a day-old petit pain, and hope it will continue to be excellent for Katherine's and my all-day train ride to Sylt on Saturday. I think it will. I have faith in this hummus.

blue skies help

When the sun is out and the sky is blue and bright, everything seems way better -- as though maybe spring truly is just around the corner. Bright yellow bowls from Butler's and a Bangladesh travel guide (for my trip to visit Lauren in, holy moly, two weeks) do not hurt one bit, either.

threw our shoes into the ocean

I'm more than a little in love with "Daylight" by Matt & Kim right now. It's basically how I feel about NYC, in music form. (Along with "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z, of course, which crossed over to Germany about four months after it got big in NYC, and used to make me really sad every time I heard it until I realized that, oh yeah, I could always move back.)

IKEA + Frankfurt's nightlife redemption

Katherine came to visit me in Frankfurt for the third (maybe fourth??) time this weekend. Because she is a dear, dear friend and also because she feels much the same way about houseware as I do, she accompanied me to IKEA yesterday. My new apartment was in need of outfitting. It has now been pretty thoroughly outfitted.


The people behind IKEA know what they're doing. Just when we'd gotten through the showroom and were bracing ourselves for the circle of hell that is the marketplace/warehouse, the gleaming lights of the IKEA cafeteria beckoned, along with the delicate wafting smell of Swedish meatballs. As further proof of IKEA's genius, just as we got to the front of the meatball line, there was a refrigerated glass case holding beer. It was determined that we needed that beer. And a plate of the meatballs, size large, to share.



Those meatballs didn't stand a chance.

This weekend we also:

+ went dancing twice (Living XXL is a winner, and has single-handedly restored my faith in the potential of Frankfurt's clubbing scene)
+ made the veggie burgers and homemade mayo I wrote about before (burgers: decent, could use some tweaking; homemade mayo: disaster, should try again with a different kind of oil than olive oil, and maybe more eggs; unidentified vegetable pickles: nasty, chucked immediately -- overall an interesting and mostly but not totally failed experiment)
+ cooked these pancakes (weirdly, they were way tastier as a mid-afternoon snack, eaten cold)
+ hung out with our friend Alex, who Katherine and I studied with in Freiburg
+ listened to way too much Uffie and Ke$ha
+ witnessed the return of Frankfurt's dozens of late-night bunnies

Solid showing all around, I think.

food & coffee & the city i love

I'm a huge fan of taking pictures of the table in front of me while at cafés and restaurants.










It seems like most everyone I know is working on repatriating rather than expatriating. Like Cheryl (moving my very favorite city!), and Katherine, and my ex-coworker Róisín, who just left Frankfurt after thirteen years of living here to move back to Ireland and become a teacher. And here I am, 3.5 months into ex-pat land, moving to a new apartment quite soon (for which I am only moderately equipped, but an IKEA run will happen soon, and in the meantime I am quite delighted with my impulse purchase of these spoons the other day -- I may not have forks or knives or, in fact, plates, but I have got spoons!).

I don't feel totally new here anymore -- I don't get lost walking around the Innenstadt; I have a working grasp of the public transportation system and how to bike to work; the German keyboard seems more natural than the American one on my laptop now (though this latter is just sad, since it means that I have been working too much!) -- but I don't feel totally settled yet, either. Summertime, everyone keeps telling me. Just wait for summer.

I don't think Frankfurt stands much of a chance of knocking NYC out of my number one favorite-city-ever spot, but I guess it doesn't have to. One of my college friends was born and raised in L.A. and had no intentions of ever living anywhere else. "It's the best city in the world," she said. "Why would I want to be elsewhere?" I didn't get it, where L.A. was concerned, but oh, I feel that way about New York. And as much as I miss it right now, it's strangely comforting, too, to know that I feel that way about a place -- and to know that I'm going to go back, that that is where I want to be. It's nice to have that to look forward to, nebulous though my date of return might be.

yo quiero taco bell

Yesterday I discovered another amazing and terrible thing: the imported goods section of Galeria Kaufhof's grocery store. I now have in my possession hot sauce and Old El Paso fajitas! There is not one single authentic Mexican thing about Old El Paso brand, but it is the food of my childhood. Be still, my heart.



There was also a tiny bit of blue sky yesterday, and though it snowed grossly overnight, the sun is making a weak effort to come out today. So, in spite of the fact that I am working all the time, life is not so bad.

danger danger

After much taste-testing, I've found the chocolate croissant that closest resembles the one I loved from Heitzmann in Freiburg, at Cafetiero on the Fressgass. Simultaneously a cause for rejoicing and a renewed call to exercise.

pickled vegetables and sriracha mayo

I'm completely with Molly from Orangette: I love the grocery store. I've never been much good at grocery shopping quickly; I spend way too much time wandering through and just looking, thinking about what I could make with that. Before I hit college and my palate expanded dramatically, I would have been scared of a packet of difficult-to-identify pickled vegetables at the hole-in-the-wall generic Asian grocery store in the underground mall part of Hauptwache. Today I looked at this packet and just started imagining the possibilities.



Katherine's coming to visit three weekends from now, and we have plans: spicy pickled vegetables, homemade veggie burgers, and Sriracha mayo. (One of these days I am going to make the Korean BBQ burgers from that last link, too.) I loving having food plans multiple weeks in advance.

Oh yeah! Today I got myself a new apartment, too! It's mine as of March 1st. Pictures to follow as soon as I have any.