Here is my attempt at the famous and famously complicated Hungarian Dobos Torte. I mostly followed along with this video from a Hungarian chef’s youtube channel. It’s in Hungarian and I, regrettably do not understand any Hungarian. Don’t blame me, I tried. But that’s another story. This recipe has been in my list of things to try for years. Literally, I have it saved from 2010. This and croquembouche. Some day I will make one of those… There are lots of interesting Hungarian cakes, but this one has stuck with me for 1 reason: it lacks fruit. I love fruit. And I love chocolate. But I never like fruit and…
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Learning Luxembourgish
Wait, what? Luxembourg is a small country nestled amidst the countries of Belgium, Germany, and France. There are about 600,000 people in Luxembourg, and they sometimes speak Luxembourgish. Yes, that’s really a language. It is most closely related to German and Dutch. At this point, because so few people speak this language, it is not really beneficial to use it in international business or other interactions. There are three main languages in Luxembourg: French, German, and Luxembourgish. My understanding is that Luxembourgish is spoken at home, elementary school is taught in French, and high school is taught in German. All government documents are in French, as we have had to…
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Luxembourg – April 2018
In April, we visited Luxembourg and fell. in. love. The city is absolutely beautiful and so picturesque up on the mountain. We loved the food and the people we met. We enjoyed venturing outside of Luxembourg city to Echternach, Joe’s familial home town. Food I loved the food of Luxembourg. It’s a peculiar mixture of German and French cuisines, and is quite unique. I love the heavy, saucy, creamy, old-world style foods, so I thoroughly enjoyed it. We visited a brewery and had bouneschlupp, a green bean and ham soup, followed by Kniddelen for me, which is a giant version of spaetzle, and Wainsaucisse for Joe. The kniddelen were superb,…
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My love for cooking
One of my favorite hobbies has always been cooking. As a small, nerdy child, I loved watching the cooking shows on the Discovery Channel (because the Food Network had not yet been born and not yet been killed by “personality” chefs, but that’s another topic). My favorite to watch was Graham Kerr on Discovery. My local public television channel had a cooking show from Louisiana, starring Justin Wilson. As a human who has never mastered sleeping, I would wake up at 6 a.m. on the weekends and watch Mr. Wizard and my cooking shows. Which, now that I think about it, are pretty much the same thing. Science and cooking.…
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The Black and White Dress…
Edwardian Ball When I first made this dress, I had no idea how much use I would get out of it. I’m not even sure what inspired me to make it. Actually…. I found this black and white striped satin and just fell in love with it. And I wanted to try making a big dress. This was my first foray into sewing a project this large and I had no idea what I was doing. It is made from a pattern for a French dress, and is intended to be worn with 18th century French panniers. These, I do not have, and have actually never worn with the dress.…