ACS Christmas Cookie Exchange

This year I am advising the ACS "Cooking Collective." Every week a few students cook and the whole club samples and learns on Mondays at lunch. Brilliant.

My first big contribution as adviser was to suggest a Christmas Cookie Exchange - every member of the club would bake different cookies and bring in copies of the recipe, and we would invite faculty as well.

Fun: Check

Festivity: Check

Good Food: Check

Highlights included "English Pie", "Dried Grape Cookies" and "Christmas Cookies with Honey." There was even a lovely Bulgarian version of the powdered sugar walnut cookie known variously as Swedish Teacakes, Russian Teacakes, and Mexican Wedding Cakes.

Now I just have to get through our Balkan dance performance at the Christmas concert and the Wednesday caroling through the halls and my festive teacherly roles will all be successfully completed....

Bet you don't know what "girini" means

I was reading a book review today at The Australian on a book called Why Italians Love to Talk About Food. The headline drew me because I've been experimenting with Italian cooking ever since we got back from Cinque Terre.

I was especially interested by this passage:

"Yet even the culinary passion is a union based on a wealth of diversity, as the variety of pasta types reveals, all of which, of course, should be matched with particular sauces. Take the following selection, whose names come from the realm of zoology: farfalle (butterflies), conchiglie (shells), lumache (snails), creste di gallo (cock's comb), code di rondine (swallowtails), occhi di bove (ox eyes), occhi di elefanti (elephants eyes), occhi di lupo rigati (ribbed wolf eyes), occhi di passero (sparrow eyes), girini (tadpoles), vermicelli (worms), linguine (little tongues), and orecchiette (little ears)."

Crazy, eh? But cool.

Read the whole review for this book written about Italian food by a Russian ex-pat here. So just to be clear, that makes me an American ex-pat in Bulgaria writing on an Australian paper about a Russian ex-pat in Italy. I love it.

Both Images borrowed from Google Images.

Hiking in Lakatnik

The ACS Hiking Club took its first trip today, having been delayed by the flu vacation a month ago. We went to Lakatnik, a simple, traditional hike on the limestone cliffs of the Iskur Gorge. Though other areas in the country are more stunning, this was a nice introduction to the year, and a great chance to get out into what our students call "the nature." (Many languages, we've noticed, attach an article to the word "nature," a hard habit to break when translating into English.) We had a stalwart, happy group of fifteen students, who dallied along, glorying in the chance to be outside of Sofia. We took many breaks, especially at the Communist monument atop the cliffs.

At the beginning of the hike, we crossed (read: bounced over) a bridge spanning the Iskur River.

A climbing shack. The Iskur Gorge is the most popular climbing location in Bulgaria.

Jess and Jeff, the two teachers who accompanied me, and Georgi, the president of the Hiking Club, "conquering" a small outcropping.

Ivan and Simeon

The Communist monument on top, and lunch time

Yulia and Lora. The monument is in the background.

Stefan is actually catching a spider here. I have NO idea where it rappelled from.

On the way down

My favorite thing about Hamburg

The Rathaus

A View from the Park near our hotel

Hamburg is clean, nice and expensive. It has a lot of parks, two lakes, a slough of Starbucks and more shopping shopping shopping. If we had been there just one day later, my favorite thing about it might have been its many Christmas markets. However, since they were still under construction, there was really no contest.

My favorite thing about Hamburg is that they sell dachsund cookie cutters in the kitchen stores. This year's Christmas cookie charge will be led by festive dachsunds. Thank you, Germany!

The Sofia Christmas Market

Today after parent-teacher conferences Brett and I headed downtown - dipping into Sofia's new Subway shop, passing by the new Starbucks, crossing near the new metro and then walking into Bulgaria's very first Christmas market. Things seem to be changing with every blink of the eye here in Bulgaria.

After visiting Christmas markets in Nuremburg, Munich, Basel, Brussels, Vienna and Prague, we had certain expectations: wooden nativity figurines, roasting chestnuts, mulled wine, glass ornaments, perhaps a live sheep or two. The Sofia Christmas market did not have these things. However, it did have something I've never seen at another market, something pretty amazing.

Gracing the skies above the market we saw a chorus of angels, lit from within their windblown white plastic robes. They flew in strange contrast to the early winter gray of the park and clouds. The angel just above the market entrance appeared to hover directly over the upraised gun on the Socialist-Realist statue behind the market.

I may not have sipped any mulled wine today, but I did meet some beautiful angels.

Sunrise on Campus

We've had some lovely late fall weather lately, and are seriously hoping it will just fade slowly into spring come January. Ha. Anyway, we're enjoying it and the lovely sunrises coming with it. These photos are by our friend Jaime Johnson, from her balcony on campus.

Holland: Snapshots

A House on the Canal

There are two ways to live "on" an Amsterdam canal - you can buy one of the colorful narrow homes reflected in it or buy a houseboat to plop down in its waters.

Seems to me the houseboat option might actually be the simplest of the two. Consider the following slight inconveniences to owning a canal home...

1. Because the fronts and therefore the doors are so narrow, most large items have to be hoisted via pulley from the hooks sticking out from the roofs.

2. Houses, perhaps due to the water shifting underneath them, frequently begin leaning at surprising angles - pitching forwards, right or left over time.

3. There must be some kind of law about repainting every 14 months because never have I ever seen so many perfectly manicured brick fronts. We saw brown brick, red brick, tan brick, creamy brick, black brick... with black shutters, white shutters, red shutters... with round windows, rectangular windows, square windows, arched windows... with step gables, triangular gables, bell gables, neck gables. Remembering your gable's name might be almost as hard as keeping your house pretty enough, but at least there is this guide to help.

The simpler way...

Amsterdam

Amsterdam, city of museums, bikes, prostitutes and pancakes. But we didn't go to any, or ride any, or see any or eat any.

Instead, we wandered. Up one canal and down another, taking in a rainbow of brick houses to the tune of spinning bike wheels and gently lapping water. We drifted into the red light district, through the eclectic shopping zone known as the nine streets, across museum square, around the train station, and back again. And again.

We dodged bikes, mopeds, cars and raindrops. We ate the best appeltaart in Amsterdam on our friend Iva's recommendation. We shopped at an organic market for a picnic that included sushi, dried bananas, Italian herb olives and blueberries. We saw houses that appeared to be tipping off their hinges - only lacking Pisa's horde of flashing cameras. We poked into a game store with Japanese Go, Magic cards, and mini-bowling. We listened to street artists on accordions and saxaphones and watched bathing birds in the Vondelpaark. We happened upon towering lit church towers and intriguing bakeries.

Guides to Venice always say just get lost. The same goes for Amsterdam, which, by the way, has 15 more canals than Venice. Who knew?

Take a Local Bite

A Fig and Walnut Tart

Vineyards

Olive Grove

Our FAVORITE gelateria - definitely homemade

Our daily menu in Cinque Terre involved dimpled sheets of crusty focaccia, local pan dulce filled with candied fruits, clementine oranges, pine nutty pesto on homemade pasta, pistachio and cinnamon gelato, cream cake with strawberries, limoncino and white wine.

Our daily views in Cinque Terre included arcs of olive groves and grapevines hugging the cliffs and fisherman in small skiffs out in search of anchovies.

It's safe to say the Cinque Terre rates high on the Fresh & Local Fare scale.

The Off Season

We were lucky to be in Cinque Terre the last week many of the restaurants and gelaterias were open. On our five-hour hike between the towns, we literally saw no other tourists. A few older women hunting truffles with their dog (dogs are favored over pigs these days because you don't have to wrestle them for possession of the mushroom), older men repairing vineyard posts before the winter, olives awaiting collection in their groves, women singing while they pruned grape vines, and groups of locals clustering around the town bakeries. Maybe not off the beaten track, but at least off the beaten season.

Just for Laughs