Apartment!

Hey y'all,

I want to tell you about our new apartment. Because it is so pretty, and so perfectly located, and so charming, and because we built so damn much Ikea furniture to put in it. Someone has to see all the furniture we built.

We are located here. It's a quiet little neighborhood just out of the center city and about a 10 minute walk from the train station.

Our apartment is a 4.5 room, counted Vaud-style. That means three bedrooms, a living room, and a hallway. Why the hallway counts as half a room? Dunno. But is actually useful, we have a nice little table in there to hold shoes, tools, laundry equipment, and extra cords. Here it is:


We also have a salon:


And a cute little bedroom:


We have another big bedroom that will be Jerome's office and a tiny bedroom that we turned into a walk in closet. Neither of those are really furnished, so I won't bore you with pictures.

But. But. The most important rooms are the sunroom and balcony. I don't have any pictures of the balcony because I am still working on building a little garden on the balcony ledge. I'll post pictures when it's done. In the meantime, pictures of the sunroom:




And this is how Ingegarde and I now spend our Sunday afternoons:


Yes, we need something on the walls to break up all the white expanses. And I need to make a little curtain to hide the front of the TV stand. And I need to finish my balcony project. But seriously, right now Ingegarde and I have some napping in the sun to take care of.

Recettes- Yogurt!!!!

Yogurt! I made yogurt and you can too! This is one of those facepalm moments, when I realized that I didn't need anything fancy to make yogurt, and that it's crazy easy, cheap, and healthy.

You need:

One little thing of yogurt. Any kind you like. The yogurt you make will taste like this, so pick your favorite, even yoplait or whatever.
Half gallon of milk. Whole milk is best. Trust me.
Glass pots. I just saved up some little glass pots from various sauces and things, and then washed them really well with soap and boiling water to get the sauce smell out. You can also buy the little mason jars people use for making jam.

That's all. Seriously!

Here's what you do:

Turn on your oven light, but leave the oven off.

Heat the milk just until it boils. This kills any unwelcome bacteria in the milk. Cover, and let sit until it cools down to somewhere around very warm. You should be able to put it on your wrist (like you would test a baby bottle) and feel the warmth, but it's not so hot that it hurts.

Stir in the little pot of yogurt. Mix well.

Ladle the milk/yogurt into your glass jars and put the lids on. Carefully put the jars into the oven, leaving the light on, and close the door. The light is enough to keep it warm. Leave in the oven for 4-6 hours, depending on how sour you like your yogurt. I did closer to 6 and the yogurt is good, but sour.

After 4-6 hours, take the pots out and refrigerate. They are ready to eat the next day! Now you have lots of little pots of plain yogurt! Put honey in it! Put jam in it! Put hot chocolate powder in it (yes, really)! Put sugar and a drop of vanilla extract in it! You can tell by my exclamation points that this is life changing, right?

And here's the best part: never buy yogurt again. When you get to the last pot of yogurt, use it to make the next batch. Just dump the last little pot into a new half gallon of warm milk and repeat the process. If you can't eat a half gallon of yogurt in the week or two that it will last in the fridge, just scale down. Use a quart of whole milk and a big spoonful of yogurt. Really like yogurt? Use two pots and a gallon of milk! The possibilities are endless.

In other news, we have the prettiest little apartment in Lausanne. I'll post pictures this weekend.

Gruyeres, the Town and the Cheese

Yesterday we took a quick day trip to Gruyeres. Gruyeres is, fittingly enough, where they make gruyere cheese. It is also the home of a castle, a chocolate factory, and a sci-fi museum. We decided to not try to tackle everything in one day, so our trip to Gruyeres yesterday consisted of (1) a fondue lunch, of course, (2) a hike, and (3) drinks in the sci-fi museum bar.

I should clarify that it isn't just any sci-fi museum. It is the museum of the artist who designed the aliens for Alien. His name is H.R. Giger and he took a liking to the little village of Gruyeres. He purchased an empty hotel particulier and turned it into his museum and bar. Even just the outside of the museum is worth a trip-- see the photos below. Some are from outside the museum and some are from inside the bar. I hereby formally invite everyone to come visit us, and I promise that a visit can include a trip to Gruyeres!

Jaunty Men in Hats

Swiss street signs are mostly like the American signs I'm used to. There is, however, one key difference. Pedestrian signage is generally of the "follow the man in the jaunty hat" variety. Attached are my favorite examples so far:

1) Follow the jaunty man in a hat downstairs.

2) Absolutely no jaunty men in hats allowed.

3) Jaunty men in hats skip with children!

My Morning Commute

Because Chexbres is a bit out in the country, I have to get up pretty early to make it all the way to Geneva in the morning. It's not always easy to drag myself out of bed for the 6:39 or 7:19 train, but sometimes catching the sunrise over the mountains makes it worth it. Here are some morning commute pictures, which you can enjoy without having to get up for the 7:19 train.

Recettes- Thai Curry Risotto

The Swiss grocery market is dominated by two co-op chains, Migros and Coop. They both seem pretty OK: good quality products at reasonable prices and a very good selection of local fresh products (vegetables, fruit, eggs, and milk all from the region). They are also enormous juggernauts, with associated banks, cell phone plans, department stores, and even legal services. You could have a whole Migros life if you wanted. That said, there isn't nearly the same variety of products that I am used to in an urban American grocery store.

So imagine my excitement when I found a little hole-in-the-wall in Vevey called, I kid you not, "Ethnic grocery." It was a crazy mishmash of any and all kinds of foodstuffs that were not Swiss, in a tiny 2.5 aisles store. I purchased the following: peanut butter (from Africa!), green plantains, ketchup, red curry paste, coconut milk, dried chickpeas, and tahini. The last couple of weeks have been a festival of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, tostones, hummos, and curries!

Which finally brings me to the recipe I wanted to post. Red curry risotto, which is really just a lazy red curry. You need the following:

1 cup dry risotto rice

One bouillon cube dissolved in a little more than one liter boiling water

1/3 cup white wine

Red curry paste (generally in the ethnic aisle of any big US supermarket, in a little glass pot)

1 small can of coconut milk or half of a regular sized one

Vegetables, in small cubes, any that sound good to you

Vegetable oil

Salt

In a skillet or pot, saute your vegetables in a little oil and half a tablespoon of curry paste until they are mostly done. I just made this with a few small potatoes, a carrot, a zucchini, and a little onion. Also excellent with eggplant. Set the vegetables aside.

In another skillet, add tablespoon of vegetable oil and turn to medium heat. Add the risotto rice and stir until the rice is hot and coated in the oil. Add the wine and let it bubble mostly off. Add the bouillon 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup at a time, adding more when the last batch is mostly absorbed. Stir every once in a while, but you don't really have to hover over it constantly.

After about 15 minutes, or after most of the bouillon is gone, add in the coconut milk, and 1-2 tablespoons of curry paste depending on your tolerance for heat. The stuff can be pretty hot! Once that's incorporated, add the vegetables and stir. It should be pretty soup-y. Let this cook for another 5-10 minutes, until the liquid is more or less absorbed and the rice is cooked. Add more of the bouillon if necessary. When it is done, the rice should be chewy but not get stuck in your teeth and it should have the consistency of a proper risotto. Serves 3 people as is, or add some meat or tofu and it should easily serve 4.

This is already a pretty lazy dish, but if you're feeling even lazier use a small bag of frozen peas and carrots. Skip the part where you saute the vegetables, just throw the frozen ones in at the end and they'll defrost!

Notre Petit Village, and a Cold Snap

After having spent a week going non-stop (trains, buses, trains, buses, work, apartments, trains, buses) I have a few minutes to finally sit. So I want to tell you about our little village.

We currently (sadly only temporarily) live in Chexbres. The first fun thing about Chexbres is figuring out how it is pronounced (hint: rhymes with "meb-ruh"). Once that's out of the way, it's hard not to notice that you're in a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Yes, seriously. The village is ridiculously cute itself, with little Swiss-style houses, a lively main street, smoking chimneys, and the wonderful little caveau I told you about earlier. But you take all of that, put in in the middle of 1000 year old terraced vineyards and surround it with Alps, and you have the makings of one of the most stunning vistas in the world. The local boulangerie is even quite good-- they make a german style dark bread that is soft and sweet and delicious.

Unverifiable but probably true story from the guy who owns the caveau: Apparently the boulangerie has been owned by the same German family for some number of centuries (I admit not remembering exactly how many). They had a tumultuous start: the founding boulangere was run out of town several times because his scale was off, causing his "kilo" of bread to weigh something less than a kilo. This was a Big Deal at this unspecified point in the past, and some government heavyweight was brought in to calm the situation. The scale was fixed, and the family stayed. Luckily their brown bread stayed as well!

My pictures can't possibly do it justice, but I've attached a few just in case. Do a google image search for "chexbres" and you'll see much nicer photos. One of the reasons my photos aren't so good is that we have had pretty bad weather the past couple of weeks. All of Europe is in the grip of an insane cold snap. The temperatures have been vacillating here between -5F up to about 20F, but not higher for about a week. My fingers are cracked and raw and I almost lost my toes today! I have to admit that it was my own fault, though, since I wanted to wear my fashionable boots instead of my practical ones.