A wedding cake and Tiramisu

This happened a while back, but it's definitely a story that should be preserved for posterity. 

It was Christmas 2009, my stepdaughter Maya was in town with her family.  She had been talking about getting married to her long-time fiancé that year, but as far as I knew no date had been set - and we were quickly running out of year to make the event happen. 

It was during during an informal family Christmas celebration on 12/28/09 (Monday) that she told the family about the small wedding she was planning for that Thursday (12/31/09).  The wedding was going to take place at her cousin Ryan's house and Maya's best friend was going to perform the ceremony.  She was inviting close family only, so she was expecting about 20 people. As I heard it the first time that night, that plans sounded good. 

After the Christmas party the I took the grand kids home with me, because they wanted to spend the night at Oma's house (i.e. my place).  We had a busy evening.  

My own wedding had been a small affair: justice of the peace, bride, groom, two witnesses and a red rose... so I didn't really think much more about the upcoming wedding that night.  

It wasn’t until the next day (Tuesday) I that I started thinking about the actual details of that little wedding get-together Maya was planning.  There were going to be 20 people at that house.  They were going to need something to eat or drink....

I decided that I'd buy some snacks, maybe some champagne, but then – as I was standing in front of a Black Forest cake at the bakery section of Sam’s club with my granddaughter - I suddenly realized that the traditional food for a wedding was actually – a cake….  Why had I not thought of that earlier? 

Taste of Home: Käsekuchen (German cheesecake)

I'm actually not a fan of sweets in general, but growing up in Germany, I made an exception for cheesecake.  After I moved to the States, I discovered that American cheesecake is quite different from the stuff I grew up with.

American cheesecake is dense - brick-like.  You could probably hurt someone by hitting them with a New York style cheesecake.  It's also rich; I don't even want to know how many calories are in a slice of American cheesecake. 

German cheesecake is light and fluffy.  It's got a crust that's to die for and a creamy melt-on your tongue filling.  It's great stuff - and almost low cal.  (OK, that last one may be an exaggeration, but it's good stuff, if I may say so myself.)

Unfortunately, as many German cheesecake lovers discover when they get to the States, one of the necessary ingredients is not available for purchase in many parts of the United States.  Making cheesecake requires "quark" - a white cheese that has the consistency of sour cream, but the flavor of a cottage cheese or ricotta.  Here in Kentucky, I can purchase quark in Cincinnati at Jungle Jim's for about $7 per 1/2 lb or so. If I ignore the cost of the road trip to Cincinnati, that amounts to a $30 cheesecake, and that's just a bit much for an everyday cheesecake. 

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....