Sort of a snow day

 

I’m pretending today is a snow day. We do have about an inch of snow (our first snow that has stuck this winter!), but now that I’m an adult, of course work isn’t canceled when there’s snow. Especially in Hamburg. They’re so much better at dealing with the snow than the DC/MD/VA area!

But I only had one early class this morning, after which I went back home and went right to sleep.  Since I don’t have to work this afternoon, I’m just going to pretend that the rest of the day was canceled due to the snow, just like the good old days!

Remember that feeling as a kid when school was canceled? It was so exciting because those days were always so few and far in between that it was really special. We could finally pull out those sleds we got for Christmas and spend the day making snowmen, having snowball fights with the neighborhood kids, or sledding down the neighbor’s big hill. Those days were absolutely marvelous, and there was always a cup of hot chocolate ready for us when we got back inside. One year, I remember making a spray bottle with water and yellow food coloring, and my brother Jonathan and I laughed ourselves silly as we went around to every tree and sprayed the base of it yellow as if our dog had peed there. Yellow snow!

Now that I’m an adult, I’m happier to stay inside, eat a bagel and drink hot chocolate and just keep everything cozy. We’re going snowboarding in Austria next weekend for one week, so I’ll get to “play” in the snow then!

Happy snow day, Hamburgers!

Ribbon & Chiffon

Tuesdays are my half day of work, so after running some errands, I spent about 5 hours trying out various methods of making fabric flowers.

First, I tried this tutorial from Alisa Burke to make roses out of ribbon. I had gotten some pretty shades of ribbon from Tobi’s sister for Christmas – white, gray, and pewter – and was happy to give that a try. I also used another ribbon I had saved from Christmas wrapping and sewed a fun button in the middle that I got from a flea market.

Next I tried the chiffon flower, via this tutorial over at Project Wedding. Chiffon frays a lot, so it was a little more difficult to work with, but has a much softer, more flowery feel to it. (Does anyone have any ideas on keeping chiffon from fraying? Google told me it’s best with anti-fray glue, but I don’t have any of that.)

Then I modified the pattern and tried cutting out hearts, fanning them out, and sewing them together. They were much smaller, of course. I also tried one with the satin I had.

The last thing I tried was this ranunculus. I’m going to try it with more layers next time to make it a bit fuller. You achieve the curled look with chiffon* when you pass it over an open flame…it’s a pretty neat trick! This is actually my second one, as the first one had a few brown spots from getting too close to the candle. The tutorial came from this awesome girl with an adorable French voice. Even if you don’t understand French, the video explains the process perfectly.

*If you try that method with satin, it will catch on fire. Just sayin’…from experience.

I also started another little project with seed beads and proceeded to dump a bunch of them on the floor. This crafty trick helped me pick them up from the ground a little more easily!

Tex Mex and Cupcakes

This Sunday it was our turn to host our weekly dinner with friends. There are 10 of us who get together every Sunday to eat dinner and watch Tatort (a CSI-like show). The food is always really great. But since Tobias was working this weekend, I was the one who got to cook. Someone said, “Ooh! Make something typically American!”

But what kind of food is American that they don’t already eat here? Hamburgers? (Somehow, in Hamburg…lol!)

But then I had an idea: nothing is more American than Tex Mex! And for dessert, I’ll make cupcakes! I enjoy baking, so that was good to go. And preparing tortillas was super easy. Just a lot of chopping to make salsa and guacamole, and then pretty much just sticking everything out onto the table for people to build their own tortillas. Easy preparation! Just heated up the tortillas in the oven, browned 1000 grams of beef and heated up some refried beans (imported and sold at 2.50€ per can – I splurged and bought two of them…that’s about $6.50 for two cans of beans, people!).

Everything went well and my guests really enjoyed having something different.

Maple Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

The cupcakes were another story. I used this recipe for Maple Cupcakes but didn’t have all of the ingredients I needed. Eggs being the most important missing item. Here in Germany there are rules about what you can and can’t buy on Sundays – most grocery stores are closed unless they’re near a train station, and then those stores actually lock up frozen goods and put away other items. You can only buy small quantities of things (not a 6-pack of 1.5 liter bottles of water, for example) and you can only buy items that are necessary for traveling.

So I wasn’t sure if I could buy eggs. But luckily, you can substitute them with quite a few other ingredients, like applesauce or bananas or even water! But I read buttermilk is a good thing to use for that because it makes the cake really soft and moist. But of course I didn’t have any buttermilk either…however, there is a substitute for that, too! All you have to do is take a scant cup of milk and mix it with 1 tbsp of either lemon juice or white vinegar. I had neither lemons or white vinegar, but I used some apple cider vinegar and it worked just fine. Let it sit for 10 minutes and then you’ve got homemade buttermilk!

So the buttermilk replaced the eggs and the cupcakes still tasted great. And for the frosting, I wanted to make something not too sweet and opted for a nice cream cheese frosting. Again, I didn’t have everything the recipe called for, as I didn’t have quite enough powdered sugar. But apparently you can make your own powdered sugar using corn starch and regular granulated sugar. And of course I didn’t have any corn starch…whoops. But flour worked just fine and my blender mixed it up into a nice sugar cloud for me which resulted in powdered sugar. Thank goodness for blender lids, otherwise I’m sure there would have been sugar all over the kitchen!

They turned out rather nice. They were a little messy, but we ate them with spoons directly from the silicone baking cups and it was perfect!