Statistics: 365 Days of a Consultant's Food

One might ask me one day: What was the silliest thing you ever did in your life? From now on I have an appropriate answer to this question: I took a picture of the food I ate for one year and wrote about it every Tuesday (beside minor issues with my broken Laptop, holiday in Africa or the winter holiday in New York/California). People might wonder what a consultant eats every day and if it is really desirable to get paid for eating out and living in hotels and "on the road"? Well, from now on you have statistics of all the food an (un)usual consultant in Advisory eats while being on a project during the week.

With my project I covered 56% of the food I ate this past year, not including breakfast during the week which would then add up to a coverage of 77% (Hotel breakfasts are usually always the same).
This Year I traveled to 10 different countries including: Germany, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Poland, Switzerland, Kenya and the United States of America which all lead to the results of my daily food and experiences.
Enclosed the statistics:

Horse	1
Waffles	4
Bread with dip	5
Croissants	6
Aglio Olio	7
Currywursts	7
Fajitas	8
Frikandelles	8
Crepés	9
Fruits	10
Nachos	10
Seafood Pastas	10
Tomato Mozzarella	10
Breakfast food	11
Sushi	12
Fries	14
Potato related dishes	14
Sausages	14
Lox Bagels or Rolls	15
Chicken related	16
Hamburgers	16
Cake	17
Spaghetti Bolognese	19
Deserts	20
Beef related dishes	21
Seafood related	22
Pizzas	23
Pastas	38
Salads	40
Soups	41
Asian Food	42
Pork related dishes	42
Sandwiches	82

 

Thank you for reading! I will now enjoy my meals without taking a picture... (feels kind of weird) and have an answer for the silliest thing I have ever done - at least until the next crazy adventure :D

American Cheesecake

Unable to find pecans for pecan pie or pumpkin for pumpkin pie, she decided to make an American cheesecake for Thanksgiving. American cheesecake is quite different from German cheesecake. It is much creamier and more sweet than savory.

She couldn't remember any of the recipes she has used in the past, so she tried this one. The cheesecake part came out great but she was not so impressed with the crust. This could have been because she had to use German crackers instead of Graham crackers or maybe it just was not a great recipe (not sweet enough for her!). However, with some experimenting, we believe this recipe can definitely be first class in the future!

One large cheesecake (large!!!)

Crust:
~ 15 Graham crackers (she used Vollkorn crackers here in Germany)
2 Tbs butter

Filling:
4 (8oz) packages of cream cheese (important to use Philadelphia in Germany)
1 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup milk
4 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 Tbs vanilla
1/4 cup flour

Preheat the oven to 350 F (175 C) and get out a 9 inch springform pan

In a bowl, crumble the Graham crackers(quite fine) and add the 2 Tbs melted butter.









Once combined, push the mixture into the bottom of the springform pan.





Set aside and use a new bowl and mix the cream cheese and sugar until smooth. This was the first recipe that she used the new hand mixer and it made it so much easier than doing everything by hand!

Add the milk and eggs, mixing between each addition. Finally, mix in the sour cream, vanilla and flour.







Pour the filling (making sure it is smooth) onto the spread out cracker mixture.







Bake for one hour. After one hour, turn off the oven but DON'T OPEN THE DOOR! Let the cheesecake sit in the turned off oven for a few hours to keep it from cracking (or so the experts say, she let hers sit for more than 3 hours and it still had a huge crack).

Remove from oven after cooled and refrigerate until serving. This is when it is beneficial to live somewhere cold because we can use our balcony as an extra refrigerator :)
 

She served the cheesecake plain, but you can add a fruit topping or something else that makes it look fancy (and covers up any cracks).

Enjoy!

Pickled Eggplant and Zucchini

When we translate the name of these recipes from German into English they say pickled, however, picked brings up the wrong images for us. Really these are thin slices of eggplant and zucchini, cooked in olive oil with garlic. We made these in about ten minutes, instead of the suggest hours and hours of cooking and marinating, so the least we can do is keep the recipe's name.

We made this for his birthday and could have made a lot more because it was gone quite quickly.

What you need:
1 zucchini
1 eggplant
3-4 cloves garlic
salt
fresh parsley
a good amount of olive oil
balsamic vinegar (we used about 2 Tbs)

Wash the zucchini and eggplant and cut off both ends. Cut in thin slices. We thought they looked nicer being cut longways, but there is no reason you can't make small round pieces.

Dice the garlic and heat in a pan with a healthy amount of olive oil (a little more than just a thin covering). Heat this over medium-high.

Add each slice and cook on each side until cooked through and nice and oily. Remove from the heat, drizzle balsamic on top, and sprinkle with salt and some parsley.

Play around with what tastes good to you. With that much oil you can't really go wrong!

Happy Thanksgiving!

A very happy Thanksgiving to all of you! Unfortunately, he is stuck  away from home on a business trip, but that is not stopping her from making a meal with all the fixings to share with good friends. Don't worry, we'll keep some leftovers for him.

The meal will be a lot like the last few years and the recipes can be found here!

We will certainly be giving thanks to all the good in our lives this Thanksgiving and we hope you do to.

Bon appetit!

G&O lover

Three Easy Party Appetizers Using French Bread

This past weekend we celebrated his birthday by inviting friends over to eat eat eat. In all, we made more than ten different dishes ranging from hot to cold, finger food to knife and fork, salad to meat based. Many have already been blogged about in the past, including German Potato Salad, Italian Pasta Salad, Fleischküchle (German Meatballs), and guacamole with chips. Others we will write about in the upcoming weeks. For this entry, we thought we would share three super easy recipes you can make with just some French bread and a few other ingredients.

Bruschetta:

We already blogged about this one here so we won't go into detail, but with some French bread, tomatoes, garlic, onion, olive oil,  basil, and salt and better you can make a delicious appetizer. Just prepare for the garlic breath everyone at your party will have!

Cream Cheese and Lox Bites:

These were eaten up so quickly that we had to make a second batch. All you need is:

French bread
Cream cheese
Lox
Horseradish
Oregano and pepper

Slice the french bread into thin pieces (we aimed for about 1cm). Spread cream cheese over one side of the bread, add a piece of lox, a dab of horseradish (not too much if your guests don't like spicy) and sprinkle with a little freshly ground pepper and oregano. Yum!

Pesto Pieces:

You cannot get easier than this if you take the lazy route (we did!). Slice the French bread into thin pieces, put under the oven for a few minutes so they are lightly browned, and then spread a small amount of pesto over one side of the warm bread. If you want to go homemade, make your own pesto!

Try these three very easy and inexpensive appetizers at your next party. Low stress and do not have to be kept warm = success!

Tuesday Tales: Daily Food of a Consultant

Welcome back to Tuesday Tales: Daily food of a Consultant. The last two weeks were full of work and crazy proposal preparation so I had no time to follow up on the blog, but here it is now.  Monday started out with a cold dinner including tomatoes, cheese and bought potato salad from the Kaufland store in the bottom of my hotel. I was very excited because Kaufland is not available in Frankfurt but from the hotel I stayed at to the store was only a 1.5 minute walk... I think that is the closest I have ever slept to a supermarket. I also went back to the supermarket on Tuesday, but instead of buying cold, I tried the local Chinese place and was not too disappointed. Canteen food on Wednesday: Fish with potatoes and sauce. Thursday and Friday were a combination of unhealthy food. Thursday I had my last currywurst in freedom, as well as some alcohol on Friday... why? To prepare my proposal to her on Saturday! For this reason we of course ate out several times, with friends and alone, went to the theater, a fair and celebrated (clearly her answer was yes!). What you see here are the tapas which we had after the theater. A combination of all foods available and very delicious! This was also the first meal we ever had out in Frankfurt so a perfect place to celebrate our engagement. On Sunday we were tired of eating out so she made quesadillas which were very good and reminded me on our experience in Warsaw (which we haven't had time to blog about yet).

The following week was marked by a huge work event in which I participated. The contractor of our project invited us for a huge kick-off meeting to celebrate and start a new project phase. Luckily this time I was only limited part of the planning process which meant I got to enjoy the show. Needless to say that it still was a 70 hour week... Starting with Monday, I had Cesar salad with fried potatoes which were recommended to me by my colleague - turned out to taste really awesome! If I start a restaurant and have this on the menu... I will call it Maarten style! On Tuesday we drove to Guetersloh to take part in the preparation of the kick-off Event. Pre-ordered food from the car tastes the best! Unfortunately our colleague got stopped by the police - not only that but there was also only Lasagne left when he finally arrived at the event location. The buffet on Wednesday night turned out to be very delicious... I had potato salad and Schnitzel. I have to say, this potato salad tasted nearly as good as made by my grandma and that means something... food wise, the event was prime and I think all of the 150 participants we had enjoyed it. Thursday was the second day of the event which meant lots of work, videoconferencing with 360° Cameras and lots of chaos managing. I had spaghetti... Unfortunately I don't remember where it was... might be in one of the data centres or in the canteen of the contractor... I think it was good... ;D..On Friday I got up at 4 am to fly to Zurich. Here I enjoyed this pizza and learned about media analytics and how to train systems to understand sentiment and the public buzz... perfect week to be prepared for a holiday to Africa which will come soon! Due to this holiday, there will be no update for the next two weeks, but I am sure we will have lots to say about our Kenya beach and safari vacation once we return!

Fried Apple Fritters

Very unhealthy but very tasty. Only a few will satisfy your need for something sweet.

We only made half of this recipe and had way too much. This recipe serves eight.
2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
3 Tbs sugar
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
3/4 cups milk (whole is best)
2 tsp vanilla
2 Tbs melted butter (more if not using whole milk)
2 large apples (Granny Smith is recommended)
powder sugar for dusting (optional)
Oil

In one bowl beat the eggs and then add the milk, melted butter and vanilla.

In a larger bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.












Add wet ingredients to the dry and mix together.











Fold in the apples, already peeled and diced. More apples is better! You want extremely chunky batter.







Heat a few inches of oil in a pan or pot over medium heat. Once it is hot but not so hot that it will burn the batter right away (test first) drop a tablespoon of batter into the oil. We used a small pot so we could only fit about three or four drops in at a time.






Cook long enough that they are browned and then flip over so the other side cooks. In total it should take about 2 to 2 1/2 minutes to cook though fully.

Remove from the oil, place on a paper towel to drain, and dust with powdered sugar.




Serve right away so that they are hot.

We had lots of batter left over so the next day we made muffins out of it. A good use of batter but not something we would recommend without making so changes.

This recipe was adapted from The Pioneer Women Cooks.