Tuesday Tales: Daily Food of a Consultant

Insanely busy with conducting team plannings this week. Therefore here is my food of last week in very short form :)

Monday: Spaghetti with some type of nuts

Tuesday: Kohlroulade (cabbage roll) with potatoes

Wednesday: Schnitzel sandwich from the bakery (a Wednesday favorite)

 

Thursday: Back home in Frankfurt and had spaghetti with tomato sauce (my go-to meal when I do not know what I want to eat)

Friday: Sushi on the Main. The weather was great all week so we grabbed a bottle of wine, some beer, and sushi and enjoyed it with friends next to the river.

Saturday: Delicious garlic fish made by my sister, who we were visiting in Stuttgart this weekend.

Sunday: A giant meal of potato salad, schnitzel and BBQ deliciously made by my dad. Good thing we got the grilling in before it started to hail and storm! The drive back to Frankfurt was interesting to say the least...

Very brief but no time to spare this week. It is a good thing that a picture can say 1000 words ;)

Cookie Swirls

We really do not bake a lot (we swear!) but for some reason all the unhealthy treats seem to be what we  remember to take pictures of. Therefore, yet another cookie recipe...

This recipe was sent to her by a Polish friend. It is a good thing that google translate exists or she would have had absolutely no idea how to make these. The recipe here is it translated, but the original link is listed below.

About 30 cookies:
175g butter
70 g sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
230 g flour
2 Tbs Nutella
1 Tbs cocoa

Blend the butter (softened), vanilla and sugar together. Add the flour and knead the dough until well mixed.Split into two equal parts.









One part will stay as is. Add the cocoa and Nutella to the other part. Mix so that the dough is a nice rich brown.









Roll both halves into rectangles (it may be a good idea to put a little flour down before you roll). The rectangles should be about 15 x 20 cm in size. It is okay if they are not exactly this size, it is more important that they are both the same size!




Decide what color you would like to be on the outside of your cookies. Make this the bottom rectangle. Lay the other rectangle on top. Roll the pieces together into a tight roll. Wrap in aluminum foil and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Before you take the cookie log out of the fridge to cut, preheat the oven to 170 C (340 F).




Cut the cookie log into thin slices (5mm thick).

Place on a baking tray leaving a little space all around them. Bake 10-12 minutes. Let cool for 2-3 minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.





These were made very very quickly. If you take the time to really roll your dough nicely it would be no problem to make them even nicer looking. Pretty cookies without lots of work. Yum!

The original Polish recipe can be found here.

Tuesday Tales: Daily Food of a Consultant

Monday started with a typical German Eintopf with 2 breads from the canteen. Due to the cold that I had, I was only able to eat Chinese soup  the following day to try to get my voice back. Still influenced by the same symptoms on Wednesday, I had an entire pack of salvia bonbons, baby tomatoes and lox. Unfortunately, this still did not bring any recovery or my voice back which made me leave on the next day to go home to Frankfurt.

After being being back home, I made spaghetti with vegetables. On the following day I cooked a salad with nachos, ground beef sauce and cremé fraiche. This meal was actually repeated because I wanted to also serve her the deliciousness on the following day. Saturday was filled with noodle salad and picnic snacks while recovering from my flu. On Friday I made pizza dough from scratch which was then formed by her into tasty pizza to have a nearly healthy weekend dinner.

Rich Brown Mushroom Sauce

We promised to share the amazing rich sauce we served with our Pork Fillet Wrapped in Ground Beef and Phyllo Dough entry but traveling and other tasty entries got in the way. Never fear, now we are sharing this delicious secret with you!

For this sauce you need:

The pan drippings from cooking a red meat (of course, if making the pork fillet just use these)
100 ml white wine
100 ml broth
100 ml creme fraiche
200 ml creme
1 Tbs tomato paste
750 g mushrooms, sliced
2 large onions
2 cloves garlic
50 g butter
A few shakes of Worcester sauce
Salt, pepper, and other herbs of choice (like parsley or chives)

Once you are finished cooking the meat, remove the meat and add a little of the wine or broth to help scrape off the pieces stuck to the bottom of the pan. Pour what you get into a glass and set aside.

Melt the butter in a pan over medium-high and once hot, add the tomato paste, mushrooms and onions. Cook until they are well done and have no liquid left in them. Add the garlic (pressed or diced).










Add the cream, creme fraiche, wine, the drippings you put aside, and broth to the pan. Let simmer for about five minutes or as long as it takes for the sauce to start to get very thick.

Add a few shakes of Worcester sauce and seasonings (salt, pepper, parsley) to taste. Keep cooking so that the sauce gets very thick. If your sauce is not thickening it may be because the mushrooms still had too much water in them. To fix this, add a small amount of flour or corn starch, just not too much or your sauce will taste like flour!






Once thick and tastes great to you, take it off the stove and serve!

Tuesday Tales: Daily Food of a Consultant

Due to a bad cold this week, the very short version of my daily food:

Monday: Homemade lox roll with salad

Tuesday: Acceleration Meeting - we ordered lots of finger food and sandwiches (plus Schnitzel)

Wednesday: Noodles with Mushrooms (in the new restaurant of our hotel)

 

Thursday: Fish, potatoes and vegetables made by her to welcome me from the crazy week.

Friday: Holiday! - Eating cheese fondue and having an awesome night in Paris.

Saturday: Still Holiday! Having a picnic in the parks of Paris while a heat wave gave us a lot of sun.

Sunday: Receiving a weird boxed present which we will reveal its secret in our Paris special blog entry!

Now I am off to try and recover. A longer entry next week I promise!

Tuesday Tales: Daily Food of a Consultant

Monday started with a healthy fish fillet with pepper sauce and potatoes. In terms of being healthy, only about 400 kcal made up 1/5 of my daily food I should eat. I was able to continue with this healthy approach into the next day. I got a grilled salmon with mini potatoes and spinach from the Croatian restaurant close to Cologne, while sitting outside in the sun. Currently we luckily have a heat wave here in Cologne so therefore we can enjoy the very European habit of eating outside in beer gardens. While being pretty busy on Wednesday, I was able to get some good and basic spaghetti from the canteen opposite of our new office environment. 

Did you know that 40 g of uncooked spaghetti will end up in 100 g of cooked spaghetti? - Even more interesting is the fact that spaghetti is full of energy! 100 g = about 150 kcal. This means my meal was equal to about 750 kcal.

 

Picture by Norbert Wilhelmi

Thursday was homecoming day. We gathered our friends together in Heroes to celebrate the 4th of July for her (the lone American there). I had a delicious spicy burger and french fries. Calories? - Well lets not talk about that... it was the 4th of July after all, wasn't it? ;). A healthier approach on Friday: Tomato mozzarella with salmon rolls on our balcony, enjoying the sun overlooking Frankfurt. She went to the Women's Charity Run in Frankfurt on Saturday and I supported her by making homemade burgers and french fries at our place to feed all the guys and get them ready to cheer for the ladies. What you see here is my version of a burger which made us guys strong to cheer ;).
On Sunday he tried (not for the first time) to make an omelet. After he horribly failed and made the omelet into scrambled egg he served it to her in bed so she could have  a lazy Sunday (perhaps she should stick to the omelet making for now on). Additionally, we got an exciting invitation for Indonesian food from our very good friend. Besides our small present in the form of an apple torte, we had beef (which is called is rendang) and the vegetables mixed called kailan and bok choy (actually this is Chinese but "freestyle" of our very good friend because the vegetables usually are not cooked together. Next week we will be heading to Paris, to enjoy the exiting food of the frog eaters... let's see if we have the courage to try them!

The Tastes of Brussels, Belgium

The last weekend in May we loaded up two cars and road tripped it with six of our friends to Brussels. We left on Saturday morning and headed home on Sunday night, so time was short, but we fit in a lot - both sightseeing and eating.

Instead of boring you with lots of text, we thought we would stick with lots of pictures.

We enjoyed...


Belgium waffles:

with chocolate

with bananas

with powdered sugar

Belgium chocolate and candies:

Belgium french fries and other delicious unhealthy things:

plain and with ketchup and mayo

as a sandwich (Mitraillette)

funny spicy chicken sticks

And of course Belgium beer:

All over a very successful and delicious trip!

Tuesday Tales: Daily Food of a Consultant

This week started out with a salad mix, two rolls, salmon and 1/4 of a melon combined with about 500g of grapes. Walking back from the supermarket with this in my bag generated a surprised response from my manager. He said I would never be able to eat that all... I proved him wrong! About 500 kcal later I was full and happy!

Tuesday must have been exiting for our current hotel Frechener Hof. They opened up a new restaurant in the first floor where I had  noodles with chanterelles. Wednesday was homecoming day this week. I surprised her with creme fraiche and lemon pasta with smoked salmon.

The early homecoming brought to me the opportunity to cook a little more this week and this was why I made on the next day my one and only favourite meal Spaghetti Aglio-e-olio supplemented by her addiction: Tomato Mozzarella.
This week ended with a special... we went to Prague and on the way stopped to eat delicious Chinese food in Heßbach , a town in the middle of nowhere (about 156 km away from Munich).
We spent our time in Prague with seven of our friends sampling the delicious Czech beer and food. What you see here is a pan with a variety of meats.
Sunday was spent mainly shopping,  sending cards and taking the free walking tour with Filip ("the most economic way to write the name Filip"... no extra letters). Beside the very good and entertaining tour, we tried a burger at the yes Burger place. Unfortunately the Burger place was pretty disappointing due to the cold fries and a rundown environment. Nevertheless it was cheap and Prague is all over worth a visit! We will share more from our time in Prague, and our previous adventure in Brussels, in upcoming entries.