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Actually, wait – there’s more!

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You may have noticed that I specifically indicated the lack of milk in the above list of things that I could see. That’s because, usually, I like to scramble my eggs with a pinch of salt, a nice helping of freshly crushed black peppper, and a splash of milk before I fry them in a speck of butter. But not that day, oh no. That day, I fried in that usual speck of butter some eggs I had scrambled with the very usual pinch of salt, good helping of pepper, a couple of diced tomatoes and – sparkling wine which was actually left over from when I needed a cup or so for a risotto which was originally supposed to be prepared with a cup or so of white wine which I didn’t have and therefore substituted the sparkling stuff. Was also tasty.

But the EGGS! Oh. my. sweet – no – savoury. breakfast!

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Those eggs tasted just the tiniest, but nicely noticeable, bit of the sparkling wine, they were fluffy and silky, the tomatoes were floating in their luxuriously warm embrace just right… I was in heaven.

You know when you go to a fancy restaurant for a brunch of scrambled eggs, melon wrapped in prosciutto (which you leave for your meat-eating company to eat), cute little rolls, the most excuisite little jars of exotic jams, and everything accompanied by a glass of champagne? These scrambled eggs were all of that, folded into one – and stuffed into a toasted pita pocket. Glorious.

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End of story.

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No, really.

These two made me laugh out loud (yes, I actually lol’d):

…Baby seal walks into a club… what a tragedy…

and

…A guy walks into a bar. “OUCH!”…

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Another one on the puny site (*heehee*) reminded me of a joke my favorite ex-roomie tells a lot:

What do Budweiser and sex in a canoe have in common?

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They’re both f***ing close to water.

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This summerly, lighthearted, sanguine literary masterpiece was obviously B.H. – before Hubby. I can’t remember feeling that way since we’ve been together. I am happy to report that these days, I mostly cry about other people’s misery, preferrably people in movies or books. Hardly any romantic self-pity involved anymore. Growing up – check. About time, too!

I wonder… do dogs yap on about how doggy they are? Do butterflies feel inclined to tell all the world how they are butterflying around? And… do Grown-Ups even call themselves that?

Please hold the line while I *faint*.

For those out there who are not familiar with this magnum opus of a car, here’s what it looks like:

(click on image for source)

The funny thing about this picture (which I googled) is that my colleague’s car also has those dice dangling from the rear view mirror. I’m not entirely sure but maybe that’s a required original part? I don’t know.

All I know is this: Once you set foot and then butt in this car, you’re instantly californicated and it becomes virtually impossible not to be completely blown away. Also, it seems improbable to be in a bad mood in a car like that.

Don’t get me wrong here – I’m not a car nut or anything (I drive a Suzupel, for crying out loud – more on that at a later time), but this baby is just so perfect, I can hardly stand it.

The steering wheel is made of some sort of wood, all of the handles, and knobs, and switches are made of chrome, the gas cap is very much not conveniently located at the very back of the car (motor in the front) – and there are no safety belts! The first thing I did when I sat down in the surprisingly comfy black leather seat was reach for the belt – alas, to no avail! This is one of the very few actually dangerous things that are allowed in Germany: Having no safety belts in a vintage car if they’re not originally there. While everything else is strictly regulated here, the law has not dared to advance into this domain and ruin everything. I was actually very careful not to touch the car door when we were going around a bend, for fear of falling out, but even though it was painfully unusual for me not to be wearing a safety belt, it had a very liberated feel to it, adding to the whole Californication experience.

And the sound! You should hear the sound! There are a few hiccups when you turn the key in the ignition, and then there’s a roar, a short but full-bodied, dangerous roar before the engine finally settles into its rumbling growl.

Also, today being my first time actually sitting in one, I finally understood why a Mustang needs to be called a Mustang: It squirms and prances and skips and bounces, just like a wild horse.

Golly, gee, fellas, he’s so dreamy.

Those folding chairs would, one by one, fold under our respective weights – you know, Hubby is actually quite the gentleman and would, from time to time, offer me his comparatively comfy swivel chair and take the folding chair himself. The first wooden chair perished all to pieces and with a real bang under Hubby when we had dinner watching a DVD one unsuspecting evening. The second payed its debt to nature unter yours truly when we had another dinner watching another DVD another unsuspecting evening. Makes me think whether maybe the having dinner part had something to do with all that… Maybe we oughta switch to lighter fare. On the other hand, those chairs might have just been the crappy junk they looked and felt.

Today, Hubby told me the last of the folding chairs had a slivered leg and he wouldn’t stand for me sitting in that piece of crap any longer! So to IKEA we went and had a look around. Here’s the little baby Hubby bought as an addition to the careful interior design of his room, for me to sit in exclusively:

Ain’t she the prettiest little lady chair you’ve ever laid your eyes upon? I know she is the prettiest little lady chair my eyes have ever had the privilege to be laid upon. And a cinch to assemble, too.

So basically, I just wanted you to know: I’m in love!

Tonight, while I was asleep, as good girls should be at night – which doesn’t tell you anything about me being good or bad or a girl of either of these convictions because for all you know I could be an averagely okay-behaved boy who just happened to be asleep at night because he accidentally misread the clock – I had a great idea.

For a book.

I have great ideas for books all the time when I’m asleep. They usually involve me being chased by someone in a very complex and intriguing manner.

This one was different and I even remember what I think would be a great quote for a movie trailer (yes, when I dream, I dream big): “You don’t think my soul stays in this box of sand the whole time I’m gone, do you?”

Okay, so here’s the kicker: The quote is unaltered because the dream was actually in English. The whole thing, I swear.

I don’t usually dream in English. I admittedly talk to Hubby in a weird English-y kind of language most of the time we’re horsing around, and I have spent some time in English speaking countries. I sometimes can’t think of the proper expression in German and just blurt out the English one, making myself sound like a total douche showing off her mad English-language-Skillz.

But I don’t dream in English.

Well, I didn’t use to dream in English up until last night, to be perfectly accurate.

I had applied for the Green Card Lottery the day before, so maybe that had something to do with it, who knows. I just had the weirdest feeling when I was done waking up and noticed I hadn’t felt weird at all the first couple of seconds after just having awakened from a dream I had dreamed in English.

Anyway, the great idea for the book: There’s this man, who’s a strange kind of traveler. At certain points in his life, he turns to sand. In a box. And while the sand is in the box, his soul goes places. Which is why his soul doesn’t stay in the box of sand the whole time he’s gone, you see. In my dream, there also was a girl (very pretty, looked just like me) who held the box and had a very interesting look on her face.

There was more, but I forgot after having memorized the cool quote sitting on the toilet right after waking up. Well, there was of course a small time span between waking up and actually sitting on the toilet, because, a bit off as I might be sometimes, I haven’t resorted to sleeping on the toilet yet. I’m pretty much grossed out by toilets, so the chance of me falling asleep on one, which would entail me touching all kinds of parts of the bowl and the seat and… huh. This post is going places I hadn’t intended it to go. Go. Get it?

So, anyway, I guess there goes the book deal. I think there was something about shoes and interesting conversations with bums at a train station…

Oh well. Fame’ll have to wait a while for me.

I don’t have it often enough.

But when I do have it, there’s this fuzzy gush of yay soaring through me, and I can’t seem to find my head because I’ve used it all up.

Do you know that feeling? It’s “being-proud-of-yourself”.

In my case, it’s being proud of myself because I think I’ve managed to write a (first draft of a) research proposal in almost no time that would have taken most other people half a day.

I could be wrong, of course. Maybe what I’ve written isn’t even worth the paper I’ve written it on (well, I typed it on the computer, so there’s no paper, which means I should be safe as far as the value of the hypothetical paper is concerned). Maybe most other people could have finished it in less time, and done a better job, too. Maybe I’ll be told tomorrow that it’s all just a big fat load of bull crap and the worst thing I’ve ever written and how dare I steal everyone’s time. If that happens I’ll be ruinously embarrassed.

But you know what? It doesn’t matter. Just doesn’t. Because at this moment I’m feeling really proud of myself, and I don’t mind telling anyone who’ll listen, because I think I’ve done well. If I haven’t, I’ll find out soon enough, but until then I’m just going to enjoy that feeling of having no head because I’ve used it all up. I like it. And I need to cultivate that feeling since, as I pointed out earlier, I don’t have it as often as I should.

I posted a recipe for Because Pie over at the Munichies today, and one sentence made me think of a really silly joke I know. Here’s the one-and-a-half sentences that sparked this flash of inspiration: “place the dish in the oven for about an hour. Take it out, place the mozzarella slices on top and put it back in the oven for another half hour.”

And here’s the corresponding (?) joke (it’s a Q&A type of joke, where you ask some unsuspecting friend or foe a question and they’re bound to give the wrong answer):

Q: How do you go about putting an elephant into the fridge?

Naturally, most people struggle with the answer to this, as there doesn’t seem to be a sensible way (never mind a reason) of getting an elephant into a fridge, and of course they’re expecting a serious twist. Well, life could be so simple:

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A: Open door, put elephant in, close door.

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After having contentedly watched your victim slap their forehead, there goes the next question:

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Q: How do you go about putting a giraffe into the fridge?

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And of course, after having gotten the first one embarrassingly wrong, they quickly and confidently reply: Open door, put giraffe in, close door.

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Wrong.

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The correct answer, of course, is:

A: Open door, get elephant out, put giraffe in, close door.

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Tsss, silly friend/foe.

The joke goes on and on and I keep forgetting the rest. I shall look it up shortly and maybe I’ll post an update at some point. But I wouldn’t count on it if I were you, because, if “daily”, to me, means “sporadically”, what could “at some point” possibly leave to hope for?

So after I had spent about half an hour trying to decipher what she had intended to write and looking up all kinds of things in search of hints as to what the hell she was referring to, I decided to formulate three simple questions about matters I wanted to be sure of, because they were assignments the completion of which required quite some expenditure of time if taken on seriously.

So I mailed her my questions (they were along the lines of “did you mean this author when you wrote that name?” – “when you write ‘network’, which one of these do you mean?”).

What I received in reply to this were some marginally serviceable answers to my questions and a really helpful hint to “not just execute orders but to use my brains”. That so totally made my day. And left me without any intention of actually using up too much of my brains for this task – and how could I? After all, I had spent almost all of them already, trying to decrypt her first email. What was left went into devising a witty, yet calm and innocuous reply I never actually sent, indicating my inability to not use my brains, because they’re just there.

I’m almost sure she didn’t mean it the way it sounded to me. But the woman teaches leadership, for Christ’s sake!

You see, Germany has never really gotten the hang of pies. We make cakes and tortes, we build cars and highraise buildings, we don’t bake pies. So yeah, I got it online, eventually. It’s deep dish, light green on the outside, cream colored on the inside, and has this lovely rippled border (yes, I could just take a picture and show it to you, like I did with the hasselback potatoes, but seriously: where’s the fun in that?).

So it’s just delicious in itself. My mouth waters whenever I look at it. Or think of it, for that matter. Right now, for example, I’m practically drooling all over my keyboard, which is mildly upsetting because it’s not even actually mine.

On my last trip to the US I bought another pie dish, a glass one from the big W Mart. I haven’t even used it yet, because the other one’s just so much more… flashy.

Anywho, this pie dish I have, the lovely green frilly one, needs to be used from time to time to justify my going on the internet and using highly dangerous methods of payment (yes, I mean credit card). So I make pies. The other weekend I made a yummy if not completely set strawberry pie. And yesterday I whipped up this baby:

Look, it’s a spinach pie.

I made it because I happened upon low-fat puff pastry at the store, because I had cheese and yogurt and eggs in the fridge, because I had some creamed spinach in the freezer, and because I could. Because I have this pie dish, you know. By the by: You can see some of the cream colored wavy edges that make me salivate so much in the picture. Do you see them? Are you all drooly and googly-eyed yet? I know I am!

Anywho, now you know why I call this the “Because Pie”. I make it because. Because of all the wonderful things I find at the store, because of all the wonderful things I have at home, because Hubby was staying over, and because I can.

I also make this pie because it is just so versatile. I used yogurt, eggs, corn, kidney beans, cheese and creamed spinach as a filling to pour into the puff pastry lining, and mozzarella slices to top everything off. (Also, as I would like you to ignore in the photo because (there it goes again!) they don’t look very becoming, I have used some leftover puff pastry strips to “decorate” the top of the pie. Please don’t notice the pasty looking little bow in the middle.) I have also prepared this pie (not in this pie dish, though, but in a springform that has by now paid its debt to nature) with yogurt, eggs, corn, cheese, and tomato slices on top. Also very, very yummy. I can also imagine this pie without any corn or spinach at all and some broccoli instead. Or caramelized onions and leeks. Heck, even strawberries. Although I’d suggest going easy on the cheese when using strawberries. Also, the seasoning should probably differ. But seriously, you could make a sweet version of this pie any day. Or substitute the yogurt with cream cheese, which would basically make a cheesecake… oh, well.

In case you’re interested, here’s a list of ingredients and directions for this particular Because Pie:

Get…

1 package of (low-fat) puff pastry

1 cup of yogurt (I used low-fat as well)

1 cup of shredded cheese (I bought it shredded, because I’m lazy, but I’m sure this could be much more gourmet if you shredded a good cheese yourself)

1 small can of corn, drained (adds a lovely crunch)

1 can of kidney beans, drained and washed (adds protein and color)

3-4 large eggs (they add stability)

1 box of frozen (creamed) spinach (yes, frozen. Because (!) I’m lazy. My suggestion is: thaw/cook it according to instructions on the package before chucking it into the pie filling)

spices (I used cajun seasoning salt, pepper, nutmeg, nutmeg, garlic, and nutmeg)

1 ball of mozzarella, sliced (adds garnish and yum)

… and proceed to…

preheat your oven (or your neighbor’s, if they’re fine with that sort of thing) to the temperature indicated on the puff pastry package. (Peel peas permanently, preferably peering at people passing.) Line the loveliest pie dish you have with the puff pastry. Next, whisk the eggs and mix in all the remaining ingredients, except the mozzarella. Please do not go easy on the nutmeg! Potatoes and spinach need nutmeg. Period. Pour the filling into the prepared puff pastry pie pan (peruse the peeled peas if you please), and place the dish in the oven for about an hour. Take it out, place the mozzarella slices on top and put it back in the oven for another half hour.

Note that ovens are nasty little things that sometimes vary the temperature to burn our food. Just make sure to check from time to time if the filling is still jiggly. Once it stops jiggling it should be just about done. To keep it from getting too dark on top you can simply cover it with a piece of aluminum foil.