Taste of Home: Kartoffelsalat (German potato salad) UPDATED!

At my house making potato salad used to require planning, because the recipe I blogged about before  called for an overnight stay in the fridge.  In addition, I would always cook potatoes specifically for the salad, because I was convinced that refrigerated potatoes would not work.

But then, during a trip to Germany, my son asked my mother to make potato salad for dinner - about 30 minutes before dinner was to take place.  I figured that it could not be done.

Apparently, my mother disagreed.  She pulled out some boiled potatoes from the day before from the fridge and fixed German potato salad in about 10 minutes flat. At dinner, my son remarked: "Mom, Oma's potato salad is still better than yours!" Back in the US I worked on improving my recipe - and I do think it's much better now, if I do say so myself.

So, without further ado, here is the recipe I use now:

Taste of Home: Zimtsterne (Cinnamon Stars)

It's that time of the year again - I am baking.

Cinnamon stars (Zimtsterne) may just be my favorite cookies - ever! They also don't last long when I share an assortment of Christmas cookies with my colleagues at work.  Turns out, they're not hard to make - and they're even gluten free!

Happy Belated Birthday

Happy Belated Birthday to my stepson.

Silly me, I completely forgot that his birthday was yesterday, not because I forgot the birthday, but because I didn't realize that yesterday was the third....  Apparently, I do that a lot.

But that's not why I am writing about the birthday issue. I am writing this because of the word "belated".

See, when I first moved to the States, I would find greeting cards in the store that read "Happy belated birthday".  I had no idea what "belated" meant.  It was not a word I learned in school.  (I could have looked it up in a dictionary, but never did.  And yes, this was pre-google.)

Since the "belated" birthday cards could usually be found right next to "Happy Birthday to granddaughter" or "Happy birthday from uncle" I decided that the word probably meant something similar to "related".  "Belated"/"related" - you see the connection, right?

I figured that a "belated" was somebody who was not related, but not quite a friend - an acquaintance so to speak.

I took me a few years to figure out what it really meant.....

Taste of Home: German Christmas Cookies!!!

I like cooking, but baking - other than bread - has never been of much interest to me. For some reason, that changed this year.  I spent the last 2 weeks before Christmas baking cookies, lots and lots of cookies.

My kids were convinced that I had lost my mind.

I don't even eat cookies, why would I bake them?   I think the answer was: "Because I can".


I am actually planning on sending a tin of cookies to my Mom in Germany.  She has sent me cookies in the past, but she didn't bake this year.  When I told her that I would send her some this year, she cracked up laughing.

Never in a million years did she expect that I would send her cookies because (1) I don't bake and (2) I don't ever make it to the post office.

By now the baking has in fact happened and here's a picture of the tin that will be sent to my Mom (if I actually make it to the post office sometime soon.)

Unfortunately, I suspect that they won't look like that when they get there....

Finally - a yard sale!... and a sunburn

The rain date for the yard sale was today.

I usually don't have high hopes for rain date yard sales.  People who showed up the week prior are not likely to show up again.

But this time around, it seemed like the rain last week was persistent enough that nobody really had any misconceptions about last Saturday as a yard sale day.  Today, I had quite a bit of traffic - all day - from about 7 am (start of the sale was 9 AM...) until I closed shop around 1 PM.

.. and I did have a lot of fun!

Let me tell you my secret for having fun at yard sales....

Too much to do, too little time - and then came the rain...

We had our annual neighborhood yard sale on Saturday.

There are a few boxes and shelves in my basement where I collect things all year.  That seems to be the only way I can find the "yard sale stuff" at yard sale time. 

I got up early in the morning and lugged all that stuff in the garage.  There was a slight chance of rain, so I figured that I'd be safe, if I held the sale in the garage.  After all, yard sale customers would not be deterred by a few sprinkles.

Two Half-Marathons - #2

I was expecting yesterday's race to be better than the last one.  After all, this was not my first half marathon...

Luckily, the the Team in Training (TNT) walking coach reminded me of the fact the "every race is different".  She was right.  I learned a ton of new stuff from this race.