Wednesday, September 21 - A Fun Hump Day

What a beautiful day! The mornings are now about 4 degrees Celsius but it warms quickly once the sun gets shining and thank goodness the sun is shining! Today I woke at the crack of dawn to take Dave into the office because I had a full day of running around to do and he had a late afternoon meeting.  As much as I don't like to see the outdoors before the sun comes up it was a nice morning and a bit of a change from my normal am routine. I got home, threw in some laundry and enjoyed coffee before heading to the woods with the walking ladies. Only 4 of us today which was a good chance for me to learn German! No good English speaking gals today! I had to quickly go home afterwards to get ready for my first German cooking lesson! Beate invited me to join her while making the Dampfnudeln which is a traditional sweet or salty white roll that is pretty common in this area to eat with potato soup or as a dessert with vanilla sauce...talk about heavy and carbs! Its quite a process too!

From Wikipedia: "Dampfnudeln are made from a dough composed of white flour, water, yeast, salt, butter or margarine, and sometimes also eggs and sometimes a little sugar. The dough is formed into balls about the size of an egg, left to rise and then cooked in a closed pot, preferably a high-rimmed iron pan with a lid, with milk and butter (or salt water and fat) until a golden brown crust forms at the bottom after the liquid has evaporated. The tops remain white."

The Dampfnudeln before and after's

A batch of the "salty" ones!

Beate was a pro at handling all the dough, because her family runs a bakery in Mannheim so she wasn't afraid to beat the crap out of it! It was fun to watch her. Next time she makes homemade spätzle I can join for that lesson and also when she does Christmas cookies which I was so excited about since I don't have the counter space to do a lot at once this year! We made about 30 Dampfnudeln and also made a potato/pumpkin soup. It was ready by the time 2 of the kids got home from school. I met the cutest 8 year old, Tobias, who practiced his English with me because he's learning it in school. So maybe I help him, he helps me?!

They invited me to stay and eat with them but since I had the car I wanted to head to K-Town to a sporting goods store that was having a big sale to see if they had walking sticks....and success! I found a great pair, LEKI, which I had read good reviews about. They only had 1 pair of 105 cm, perfect for me and Dave commented how short they were...the size of his arms! Well I'm short and I think Dave has super long arms! Anyway I'm super excited to try them out.

My new sticks!

It was such a fun productive day, I think it's good for me to have the car once in a while. Got a big load of groceries, case of beer, took our grass clippings to Neuhemsbach where they can be dumped on Wednesday's, got gas for the 1st time by myself, vacuumed the car, and took a nice countryside drive. All things that would be difficult to do on my bike :)

I think the best part of the day was when Beate said that I was not a typical American, I ride my bike and I don't want tv! I got a chuckle out of that :)