Kickin' it at home

Back in January, the city library closed for a 5-month renovation (only 4 more months to go!). The library wisely put the word out that patrons should stock up for the long, dry period, partly for the customer-service aspect, and partly so they wouldn’t have to move all the books to storage. We unwisely waited until the next-to-last open day to do our stocking-up. There were no DVDs at all (I think they may have been moved to one of the smaller branches), no English books, and the kids section was like a ghost town. John was able to find a big ole stack of travel books—checked out on my card! So now the library thinks I am obsessed with bicycling through Bavaria, etc. Hannah scrounged up several kids’ books, but it would take a shipping container to hold 5 months of reading for her, so that hasn’t actually helped with the bedtime what-to-read routine. I was reduced to scavenging through the cookbooks. I actually like to cook and would like to be able to make more traditional German recipes, so it wasn’t too much of a hardship. I found a cookbook with some *very* German-looking baked goods, so I thought I would try it out. So far, I have made one really delicious item and one really dense item, but since we are talking about German baked goods, I may have actually made it correctly.

No, the main enjoyment has come from the cookbook itself. For some reason, the producers of the second-most popular German soap opera, Unter Uns (“In Private” or “Between You and Me”; the first-most popular is Gute Zeiten—Schlechte Zeiten (“Good Times—Bad Times”)), decided that a cookbook full of photos of the characters from the show was just what the public wanted. I’ll let you decide.

Here’s the happy family:


Who needs water to surf?


Hey—Wham called. George Michael wants his hair back.


Now take a guess at the date of these photos.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

John and I were guessing mid-80s. *1996* is when the book was published, and the show first aired in 1994. Mind. Boggling.

Now, to complete the horror for you, I present the top of the page for the recipe for a pie made out of chocolate-covered marshmallows (here’s what they look like on the inside):


Oh my god—my eyes! That puppet totally creeps me out. Even if I were inclined to make the recipe—which I am not; can you say “diabetes”?—I don’t think I could stand around in the kitchen with the page open long enough to manage it. I am thinking of paper-clipping the 2 pages together so they don’t accidentally fall open.