Another Cooking Story

Once our lasagna pan was emptied of lasagna, I decided it was time to make cookies. A few things stood more or less in my way, among them the following:

1. My lack of a bowl bigger than our two awesome pasta bowls that say, "PASTA" on them. They hold approximately one serving of pasta, and are in other words much too small to hold a batch of cookie dough.
2. The availability of measuring devices in my kitchen, which is: one measuring cup that tells you how many grams of rice/flour/sugar, but does not in fact measure volume.
3. My inability to remember the number of ounces in a cup, and the fact that the ounce labels on my Nalgene bottle had rubbed off anyway.
4. The fact that everything in Germany is measured in grams anyway, rather than cups and teaspoons.
5. But that didn't actually matter, since all I could remember of the recipe was "3/4 cup brown sugar" and "either two or three eggs" and "a few cups of flour?"
6. If there even were chocolate chips available in German supermarkets (there aren't!), they wouldn't have the Nestle Tollhouse cookie recipe on them.
7. German butter comes in 500 gram amounts, not in sticks. How many grams is a stick of butter?
8. Anyway, I don't have any way to weigh things.
9. Germans don't use vannila extract; they use "Vanilla Sugar." Do I therefore use less normal sugar? How much normal sugar am I even supposed to use?
10. Germans don't really use baking soda, so it's hard to find. Also, baking powder comes in little packets. Do cookies even use baking soda though?
11. My oven goes from 1-8. I don't even know what that means.
12. I'll have to halve the recipe in order to make it fit in my "mixing bowl," but I don't actually remember the recipe, so at this point that was moot.

So I made cookies, using chopped up bittersweet chocolate, eyeballing the amount of butter, 1 egg, about 3/4 of 1 tea mug of sugar, variously full teaspoons of baking soda and powder and salt, and some amount of flour that made it resemble the right consistency. I put the oven on "4" (a result of some pretty complicated Applied Math involving ratios, assumptions, and Farenheit/Celcius conversions) and hoped for the best.

The result? According to Jeremy, Cookies Take One were: "delightful, impertinent." Jeremy sometimes lets his sense of creativity (in regards to words) take over, however. I think the cookies were "good, though not like normal cookies." Cookies Take Two were pretty great though, and although Cookies Take Three ended up kind of flattened out, Cookies Take Four [Now With Cinnamon!] were the best cookies ever made, ever.

It should be noted that I didn't make all these cookies on the same day. That would have been crazy. I guess I should also note that in between Take One and the rest of the batches, my dad sent me the actual recipe, but at that point it would have been harder to figure out the measurements, so I stuck with my mug/eyeball methods.

Mmmm.

A Simple Plan

[This is sort of an old story at this point, since I've been busy wandering around the city and not checking internet as often as maybe I should (and that's caused hijinks of its own, but that's another story), so imagine it's still my second or third week in Berlin, and that it's time for me and Jeremy to repay Jesse and Jane for the dinner party they had a few days before.]

Due to astounding successes by me in the fields of Buying a Pan That Will Fit Lasagna and Finding the Hidden Ricotta Cheese in The Frighteningly Well-Stocked Cheese Department of the Local Supermarket, Jeremy and I were able to move forward with our plan of having Jane and Jesse over for delicious lasagna. Only a slight crimp was put in the plan when it turned out I was wrong in assuming that German boxes of lasagna noodles would have a usable lasagna recipe on them. There's certainly a recipe on the back of the lasagna noodle box, but it involved melting butter and making complicated sauces, and I was pretty sure that the last time I made lasagna, it mainly involved dumping various layers of meat sauce and cheese into a pan. So we decided to "wing it," which is a plan that for some people always results in some sort of success, and with me results about 20% of the time in strange burnt messes, 30% of the time in me finding myself wandering around Piraeus four hours before my flight is going to leave, 10% of the time in explosions of some form, and 40% of the time in something vaguely resembling non-failure. And somehow, this time, winging it worked, sort of, and we produced something akin to lasagna, with two kinds of ground meat and some delicious bacon [note: next time use WAY MORE bacon. mmm.] and untold many types of cheese. Stage 1 of our plan had succeeded, beyond all odds.

Our original Stage 2 (dessert) plan had been to make cookies, but since our cooking equipment situation means that the lasagna pan is also the cookie pan (it's basically a 4cm-deep cookie sheet), and since the amount of lasagna was frankly more than the four of us could handle, the cookie plan fell by the wayside. In its place: the Greatest Plan Ever.

Put simply: Deep-Fried Mars Bars.

For those of you who didn't work in the Let's Go office this summer, let me explain a few things. First: people in England eat very weird things sometimes. Second: one of these things is a Mars bar that has been deep fried in oil, and probably breaded or something. Third: it was a not-minor goal of the Let's Go: Britain bookteam to locate a deep fryer and make these deep-fried Mars bars. Fourth: this never happened.

But Jeremy and I had it on good authority (a Scottish person) that you didn't need a deep fryer, just some hot cooking oil, a few Mars bars, and some bread crumbs. Obviously, this was not a plan we could avoid trying. And just as obviously, this plan would not fall under the 40% that are in any way successful.

We were certainly prepared: I found some taste- and smell-free soybean oil, a box of breadcrumbs, and a half dozen Mars bars. After a little debate on the best way to make the bread crumbs stick to the candy bars (dip them in milk? cover them in oil? - we ended up trying the latter), we had some faintly breaded Mars bars, and a saucepan half full of heating soybean oil. I'm not sure what the first mistake was, but it's definitely true that not one of the four of us doubted that we should let the oil boil first. It must have been memories of watching french fries cook in fast food places that made us stand around the stove, waiting and waiting for some bubbles. Obviously, this did not happen, because now that I think about it, I don't think oil will boil at any temperatures reachable on a normal stovetop. So after a while, we put a bar on a spatula and dipped it in the oil.

What followed would probably have been predicted by anyone more experienced at cooking, or maybe just at life, but we, four Harvard-educated adults, were frankly kind of freaked out at the violent bubbling and smoking that occurred. Then the oil started to turn brown with melted chocolate, and various smells - by far the best of which was that of burned sugar - filled the room, so we moved the bar to a paper towel and observed its very disgusting state of oily meltedness. Clearly, we were doing something very wrong.

I tried to fish the pumice-like deposits of hardened, burnt chocolate out of the oil while Jeremy attempted to create a thicker breadcrumb covering for the second bar. For this, we brought out the milk, and ended up making some sort of paste of milky breadcrumbs - a paste that prefered to stick to literally any surface other than chocolate. In order to cover the candy bar, we eventually had to make a half-centimeter-thick cocoon of breadcrumbs, but this time there was at least no mass melting of chocolate. The result? A mottled brown, black, and tan log that smelled like deep fry, and tasted kind of like a pancake wrapped around a Mars bar. The meltyness of the caramel made it somewhat edible, but the atmosphere in the room, which by this point was thick with oily steam and probably the ghosts of sugar molecules, worked pretty hard to make anything unappetizing. I think we ended up throwing away the last half fried Mars bar, though heroically (and kind of disgustingly), we managed to eat between two and three of the things.

So Annie, Adrienne, Eoghan: if you still want to make some Deep Fried Mars Bars, here are a couple hints: use an exceedingly well-ventilated room, make a thorough covering of breadcrumb paste, and please, please don't wait for the oil to boil. And if your inventory of cooking vessels includes only one pot, one saucepan, and one frying pan, don't do this at all. We're still trying to scrub burnt oil off of the sides of the pan, and it's been quite a few weeks since the night of our misguided plan.

Hello, Stranger

While wandering around the city, I have at times been stopped by people who have questions. Most of this happens when I'm sitting on a bench at the Sony Center in Potsdamer Platz, the source of my free wireless internet [why the Sony Center offers free wireless, I have no idea. It's not like using their internet is going to make me buy the overpriced food at the Sony Center cafes. Well, one time it did.]. But most of the people without laptops in the Sony Center are in some way interested in, or confused by, the number of people sitting around, typing away or talking to their computers through microphones. So people will come up to me and ask, in a variety of languages and accents, what all the typing people are doing. And I tell them, and sometimes they understand me. Some people broach the conversation in awkward German despite their obvious American/British/Australian citizenship, and I answer them in German, and very rarely do they understand me.

But in other places, for example: walking down Unter Den Linden, there is less call for strangers stopping other strangers to ask questions. Which means that when this does happen, it's usually fairly interesting. The people who stopped to talk to me on Unter den Linden were two kids about my age, German-speaking but kind of mumbly, so I didn't at first understand exactly what they were on about. Their initial attitude - the gestures of lostness and vague needing-of-help that caused me to stop and try to look helpful - belied the fact that they were not actually confused tourists, but kids on a mission to have me join their bible study group. Now, I have absolutely nothing against Bible study groups in general - I don't go out of my way to go to them, but I have accompanied friends to similar events at times in the past - but it's a pretty huge assumption that a random person walking in the middle of a big city, especially on a heavily touristed street, is (A) a resident of the city, (B) lives somewhere close to wherever this study group takes place, (C) is, if religious in the first place, not already a member of some other study group, and (D) is going to be trusting/stupid/naive enough to join a group of strangers who wander the streets in search of a congregation. They really did look like nice kids, and maybe they meant well despite their very dubious methods of druming up interest in their group, but I told them that I would'nt be here much longer, and went on my way.

There was some other weird sidewalk exchange, but I can't remember it now, so I'll close with some highlights and finds of the past week:

1. literally steps down the street from our apartment: a restaurant that has 10'' pizzas and bowls of decent pasta for 2.90 each. That's almost definitely cheaper than me buying ingredients and making food on my own. Yes!

2. at the intersection 3 minutes south of us: a cafe and bar called MANOLO, run by very flamboyantly gay men who seemed to be confused by the idea of "coffee," despite having an extensive menu of coffee drinks - they interpreted my order of a cappuccino and a mocha as: first, just a cappuccino; second, just an espresso; third, just a mocha; fourth, as a cappuccino and a mocha with whipped cream, despite a conversation we had during the third iteration in which i expressed a preference for foamed milk, and no cream. The words for "cappuccino," "mocha," and "espresso," incidentally, are the same in German as in English, which makes sense, as they are Italian words.

3. many, many versions of a stand called "Mister Miller's Hot Dogs" that sells horrible combinations of American-style hot dogs and twisted, pseudo-American toppings (please don't get Jeremy started about the "chilli sauce"), seeming to completely fail to realize that Germany, and therefore Berlin as well, offers numerous delicious types of Wurst, including some that area similar to but far better than American hot dogs. Also, the Imbiss that is widely agreed to make the best takeaway Wurst in the city is directly across the street from one of the MMHD locations. Mysterious!

4. This is actually a mystery I've since figured out, but for the first week here I was a little confused by the sheer number of women trying to maneuver baby carriages and strollers through stores. I was once completely unable to enter a grocery store because a woman was attempting to push her double-wide twin stroller in through the entrance. It's not that more people have small children in Berlin than elsewhere, or that there are fewer babysitters available - it occurred to me as I watched, for the 20th time, the spectacle of a woman lifting a stroller onto a subway train that practically no one drives here, so mothers can't just transfer their kids from carseats to the kid seat on shopping carts.

5. Cheddar cheese: while available in a few select places (huge cheese store near us!!), it is pretty uniformly horrible. Apparently, all of the sharp or even slightly more interesting than mild cheddar is still kept out of Germany by some antiquated clause in the Marshall plan, or maybe England is hoarding the good stuff for iteself. If you come visit, bring sharp cheddar!

Style

My dad is not in the habit of wearing leather pants. This, while probably not too surprising, is not something that the majority of kids in Berlin could say. Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration, but the truth remains that while I feel confident in saying the majority of leather in California that is not still on cows is in the form of jackets or perhaps boots, I cannot give you that guarantee in Berlin.

People here wear strange things; this shouldn't surprise anyone. Probably everyone can pull up an image, imagined or remembered, of eccentrically dressed Berlin teenagers: multiple piercings, heavy eyeliner, spiky, green and purple hair, torn denim or leather clothing, surly German Shepherd sidekick. It's never occurred to me to wonder what happens to punks when they get past their 20s, so I wasn't really ready to witness the answer to that unasked question. The answer involves a lot of leather and incongruous reading-glasses-over-eyeliner, or appears in the form of a man I saw the other day, a man wearing a professorly tweed jacket (the kind with leather elbow patches), distinguished-looking bifocals, brushed-suede shoes, and shiny leather pants. It was the same effect as might have been reached if Sherlock Holmes spilled coffee on his trousers while staying over at Eddie Izzard's house, and had to borrow a pair of pants. Or if any middle aged man in any other city had a midlife crisis and couldn't afford a convertible. But in this city, it's not due to spilled liquids or fear of aging; here, it's called Style.

Not very many minutes after passing the Professor of Rock, I saw a woman in her 50s walking down the street in 4-inch, camoflauge-patterened stilletto knee boots and an army jacket. Then a white-haired grandmother in Puma sneakers, stretch denim pants, and an army bomber jacket. I honestly couldn't make up these combinations of person+outfit if I tried, so this is all guaranteed to be true.

The style of tourists is equally jarring, but here I don't think there's a huge difference between those in Berlin and those in any other European city in October. Hiking boots with jeans is all well and good - I'm really fine with that - but tight V-neck sweaters over baggy t-shirts is unacceptable in any country, at any time. The same goes for mixing pieces of clothing emblazoned with the logos of more than one major league sports team, or more than two teams from different major league sport. It's really great that you're rooting for the Astros to go all the way, it really is, but please don't also (and bewilderingly) wear a Celtics jacket and a Rams fanny pack. Also, who decided it would be a good marketing plan to MAKE Rams fanny packs? I just don't accept that enough members of the fanny pack demographic are Rams fans to make it worth setting up the embroidery machine.

But I have definitely digressed. My main point is that walking around the streets of Berlin alternately makes me want to gape in disbelief, giggle uncontrollably, or wash my eyes with some very strong form of solvent. Though I'm sure plenty of the punks are laughing at me.

Frieda

I have an apartment now, in the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood of Berlin, and it is, as all things generally are, much better than I had imagined in some ways, and much weirder and more inconvenient in other ways. For example, it is situated literally steps away from the Eberswalder Str. stop of the U2 subway line, which is convenient but obviously a little noisy. I didn't keep me from sleeping last night, but I don't think anything could have, since after watching the Gameday broadcast of the second to last game of the season for the Red Sox with my wireless internet connection (convenient!), I didn't want to stay awake to think about it. At some point, some very loud and possibly angry shouting on the street outside woke me up (inconvenient!), but in my comfy bed (convenient!), under my warm comforter (that I brought with me, so: inconvenient!) it was easy to go back to sleep.

The kitchen is totally usable, very clean and roomy, but I have to light the (new: convenient) stove with a lighter. The bathroom is possibly the strangest room, as you have to step up as you walk into it, and then step up twice more to get into the shower, so it's like taking a shower on a stage of some sort. The kitchen windows look out over a green courtyard, green because it's mossy, not because of any other plant growth. The entire apartment is very light, I think because it used to be the studio of the landlord, who is a painter. The landlord has a very green-eyed cat, named Frieda, who apparently loves my apartment. She has come to the window at least four times this morning, and when sitting on the ledge and looking at me fixedly doesn't work, she scratches at the frame. I let her in sometimes, because she's a pretty awesome cat, but much like a two-year-old, I can't have her wandering about unsupervised until I have cat-proofed the apartment. The reasons for needing to cat-proof and those for Frieda being awesome are the same, and essentially boil down to her not being a very stereotypical cat. She follows me from room to room, bounding ahead of me and runnign back to rub against my legs, and she tries to eat things on tables, like flowers or a basil plant. She tried repeatedly to crawl inside my backpack, and attempted to open my suitcases. Like cats do, she went crazy over a string, but like most cats don't, she climed into my lap and then proceeded to go crazy over the knee of my sweatpants. And she's much too big to be any sort of kitten anymore.

So now I'm going to go out and buy some things I need, like salt and a saucepan, and maybe a pretzel, if I can find a bakery open on a Sunday. Or, more likely, I will find myriad pretzels and food items at whatever celebration is going on on Unter den Linden, because tomorrow is German Reunification Day, and the festivities start today, as far as I can tell.