Before & After: My Living Room...

I love rearranging furniture. And who doesn't love "before & after" pictures? (Million thanks, Suz, for opening my eyes; a piano CAN be moved!!!)

Before -- nice seating area, faced the windows. But see that tiny opening between the chair and the "end table"? It was the only way in...
After: aaaah...

Here's another perspective, which shows the convoluted path from front door to tiny entry point! Before:

After: Yay, now you can walk right in... sit right down...

I forgot to take a real "before" shot, but this is essentially what you saw as you climbed the stairs. Nothing but drawers. And whatever small toy was currently lost under that big piece o' wood -- there was always at least one! "Before":

After: nice and open! (just disregard the carpet wrinkle...)

And the whole experience was made even more fun for me because just a few days earlier, I'd come across the room grids I'd made when we moved in. So Suz and I batted ideas around on paper a little before we started hefting the actual furniture.


Suz gave me a bit of a hard time about these little slips of blue on a sea of squared white. Tell me I'm not the only one who does this. (Well, other than you, Mom.) It's not like I took aerial pictures of each piece furniture and then cut those wee pictures out. Or made small scale models of all the furniture so I could move them around in 3D. Oh wait, I did do that... Got a little carried away planning the nursery 6 years ago...


What can I say... it was pre-kids? And I like cardboard? And wee stuff? And the lights don't actually work? : ) Really, it all started because, for once, I painted a test piece on posterboard to see the actual wall color. And then things just kept going from there... (Yes, I realize I'm slightly insane. But at least I can admit it...)

Oma's German Goulasch...

Pictures of the furniture in its new spots will have to wait another day -- I got into a decluttering project and it threw up all over the sofa. Plus all the cushions are once again on the floor from this morning's "safari" and the "lions" did not put away their "caves" before the biggest one went off to Kindergarten...

But in her comment today, my cousin asked for the goulasch recipe so I figured I'd post it here. Side note: I have been told that this is not goulasch because goulasch is red and has paprika and loads of other spices in it. Well, this is what my German grandma always made and always called "goulasch;" you can call it whatever you want. I call it good and easy, though it does require time...

Ingredients:
1 lb. beef, cut into chunks (0,5 kg)
1 lb. pork, cut into chunks (0,5 kg)
oil
salt
pepper
1 med. onion, finely chopped
1/2 pint cream (250 ml)
2 c. (or so) water (500 ml)
1 beef bouillon cube, optional
1/4 c. cold water (50 ml)
2 Tbsp. flour
1 lb. rotini noodles, cooked (0,5 kg)

Barebones directions:
Season meat with salt and pepper, then brown it and the onions in a large pot with a bit of oil over high heat, adding a bit water and scraping up the brown stuff from the bottom of the pan as needed. Add rest of water (at least enough to cover meat) and bouillon cube (only if you think you need more flavor). Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 2 hours or until meat is tender. In a separate continer, mix cold water and flour. Add to meat mixture and bring to a boil. Add cream. Serve over noodles.

Additional comments:

• The key to this dish tasting good (even without the addition of the bouillon cube) is to get lots of brown stuff to develop on the bottom of the pot; I think the technical term is fond. My mom usually throws in all the meat at once; I find it easier to do it in batches. Otherwise the meat releases so much juice that I can't get any good brown stuff, er, I mean, fond to develop on the bottom. And remember, that's what you're aiming for in this step, lots of fond. I throw the meat in, don't stir it, and let it go til it's just shy of burning. I quick stir it, sometimes addng a little water so I can scrape away some of the fond, and then let the meat almost burn again, etc., til it looks like it's all nice and browned. I dump that all out and then do the next batch. And whenver there's too much brown stuff forming, I dump in a bit more water and scrape; the water evaporates pretty quickly and the brown stuff kinda sticks to the meat.
• At some point, you should also dump in the onions -- before you brown the meat, added all at once, or with the batches of meat, whatever. It's all good.
• And if you want to dump in some of the cream while you're at it, that's fine too. Sometimes I add maybe a quarter or so during the browning process; the rest isn't added til the end. Or if you add it ALL at the end, that's fine too.
• OK, where were we... once all the meat is browned, pour in just enough water so you can scrape off any remaining fond. Add back any meat/onions that you set aside. Then add in the rest of the water, making sure it's enough to cover the meat. If you got lots of fond, then you can skip the bouillon cube. Or if you're my brother Al, then you add two of them, regardless 'cause you can never have enough beefy flavor.
• I think the rest of it can be done just fine with just the "barebones directions." Oh, one final note: if you really want it to be like my Oma's Goulasch, then you have to also toss the cooked noodles with some breadcrumbs right after you drain off their cooking water.
  
• I usually make a double or triple batch and freeze the extra, though the sauce is never as nice after it's been frozen...

Guten Appetit! Now I better go round up my "lions" and get them to clean up my cushions!

Mental Fragments...

Made Beef Stroganoff, first time ever last night. I do like to take pictures of my food, but the photo below came from Cook's Illustrated, same as the recipe. Tasted fine, but Ken and I both like my Oma's Goulasch better, maybe just 'cause that's what we're used to...
- - -
Made the recipe in part so I'd have something nice to bring to my friend Suzanne yesterday. I'd rather cook, she'd rather clean (see end of post). So, in exchange for dinner once a week, she cleans my house once a week. This is our third week, and I'm lovin' this deal!
- - -
Before she left, she also helped me rearrange the living room, but I keep forgetting to take "after" pictures when it's light outside, so will post those soon...
- - -
So Friday morning, my housed was cleaned by one friend. Then Friday evening, my plate was dropped off by another. We were at Color Me Mine together last week. She wrote a great post where she described our night there in the form of a personality quiz. Everyone's pottery turned out so beautifully (including yours, Kristi!!!). Click the link above to see them all; here's mine (photo swiped from Kristi's site):
Used my favorite colors and a stencil that reminded me of my hibiscus. Now I need to get a plate hanger so I can hang it by my sink, to be my "sunshine" during this frigid spell we're in.
- - -
Need to get a dowel too. We started making a closet for the doll clothes, inspired by LiEr's cardboard creation. (LiEr is a whiz with cardboard and tape.)

Daily Bread...

Mmmmm, a friend was over last week and showed me how to bake bread... with whole wheat so freshly ground, it was still warm. (She brought her grinder over.) Mmmmm. We weren't sure exactly how much dough to make for my loaf pan. But too much rise is better than not enough, right?


And unlike the last time I tried making whole wheat bread (more than two years ago), this loaf actually had some springy elasticity to it.


Still a bit more crumbly than store-bought, but way better than last time, where I ended up with an unappetizingly heavy hunk of big crumbs! It was warm fresh bread -- slathered with butter -- for the whole family. Yummmm!


I didn't think it could taste any better, but then remembered what's up in my cupboard, next to the peanut butter... (Same place, by the way, that you find it in the grocery store. If you've never tried nutella, you absolutely must! We love to dip pretzel sticks in it too.)


In case you're not sick of "Germany last year" pictures yet, here's one that I love: Sophie eating her breakfast. (Germans eat nutella on stuff like we eat peanut butter. And sometimes, the crusts on the breakfast rolls are a little too crunchy for 2-and-a-bit-year-olds to bite through so the whole thing flips up unexpectedly!)

Found some more fun memories in that day's folder. I loved the short little drive I took every day to bring the girls to and from their kindergarten. On this day, I decided to stop and take pictures of some of the houses that I always passed along the way, with their clay tile shingles, stucco siding, "balconies" instead of "decks", etc. So different than what I see in my neighborhood here...

I thought the one, below left, was interesting too since you could see the construction process -- big orange bricks instead of wood framing...


The house, below right, was not "on the way" -- it's the house my grandpa built. He and my Oma lived in the first floor and rented out the second floor. I guess you'd call it a duplex? : )


These ones below weren't on the way either; rather they were in the same town as the church (mentioned at the end of this post). The grey slate tiles on the walls are really common in this area too.


And here is that church. I love the entrance...


P.S. Don't even bother asking me for the bread recipe. I made another loaf the next day; it didn't turn out nearly as nice as when my "teacher" was looking over my shoulder. More like my lumpy one from two years ago... -sigh- Will have to practice some more...

"Pirensess" Purse

12/8/09: Pattern pieces with basic instructions are here (US Letter) and here (A4).

Heidi had a birthday party to go to this weekend so it was time to sew up another reversible purse. She picked out the fabrics again -- solid pink for one side and a vibrant pink design for the other. (Picking out fabrics is much easier to do since the cleanup since everything is visible--and guess what? it's been a week and I've used stuff from it and yet it still looks the same! but so does the other side of the room, the messy side!) Loved the unexpected orange she picked out for the flap and straps! Here's Sophie modeling it with the monogram side out.

I drew the 'm'; probably should've asked Heidi to do that -- amazingly, she's been drawing "bubble letters" since age 4 -- but I'm not quite there yet in the giving-up-control department. It was hard enough for me to let her cut it out, once we'd fused it to some felt (for stiffness and thickness). But she did a great job. I need to remember that for all the next times... Then we fused it to the flap and I zigzagged around the edges to make sure it stays put.

When I asked Heidi what we should put on the "other" side, she said it should be a princess purse. So I ask her to design the crown, and let her cut that out too. (I added the diamond and topstitching though -- it needed just a little more than the bobbles on top, I thought.)

Not sure why the fabric looks so purple in the pictures above. Below is a better representation of the colors. And I love the card Heidi made to go with it...

And what I see the birthday girl clutching tightly in her arms when I picked Heidi up from the party? ...a Webkinz kitty. :)

Speaking of crowns, here are a few more pictures from a year ago... The girls and I made some simple cardstock crowns to help celebrate Fasching (also called Karneval, a big celebration right before the Lenten season begins. Germans don't really celebrate Halloween, but the kids do get to dress up in costumes for Fasching.)

The girls wore them everywhere for a few days, including to the grocery store (where they hardly attracted any stares since it was Fasching after all) and also on our trip to the train station to pick up Daddy, who we hadn't seen in 3 weeks! They also kept adding to them -- coloring them, gluing on "jewels," and more. They soon became too heavy and cumbersome to actually wear! : )