Pollo al Cuñete

We've reached La Huacana, where we can enjoy the fine cooking by Toño's sister Chilo. The first lunch she served us today was Pollo al Cuñete with pineapple, almonds and dried plums.




Start with a chopped pineapple, dried plums, a bit of water and a bit of white balsamic vinegar. Blend the mixture and pass through a sieve. Fry the chopped chicken in olive oil complemented with a bit of butter. Season every piece with salt and pepper while frying and add some pressed garlic after turning them over. Put the chicken pieces with the sauce in a casserole, add some plums, peeled almonds, a couple of chilli jalapeño, some sugar, peppercorns, marjoram and bay leafs. Put the casserole with a lid on into the oven for 1 hours and 20 minutes at 200C/390F. Remove the lid after 50 minutes.

Yes, I did ask for a second servings.

PS: If you have no peeled almonds, put the unpeeled ones in boiling water. The skin should go off in no time.

Location:Morelos Norte,La Huacana,Mexico

Cookies Delivered

I was a good boy today, travelled through the heaping snow and brought my mother the Christmas cookies. She was already worried and thought with me having to travel to India this weekend, there will be no time for the cookies. She's relieved now.

Good News from Татьяна & Toño

My sister-in-law Татьяна had some serious troubles with immigration in Switzerland (read about). Basically, the authorities claimed that my brother and Татьяна were engaged in a sham marriage.

My brother had to hire a barrister. There were two options. A) The Specialist in Swiss immigration law but from another Kanton (state) or B) one with the following qualities:

• local, knowing all and sundry
• member of parliament for a xenophobe party
• immigration-phobic voting record
• bulldog-like qualities in and off court.

My brother went for option B and his tactic seemed to have worked. The immigration department caved in very early in the legal process. This week Татьяна had been granted right of residence in Switzerland. She is not an illegal immigrant any more and can now visit her mother in Russia, who will celebrate her birthday at the end of this month.

Toño's troubles were not as bad as Татьяна's, nevertheless, they gave reason to worry. Toño was dissatisfied with his employer and had given his notice (read about). Almost unheard off, Toño's employer seemed to have noticed this shot across the bows and has actually changed his behaviour towards the employees. He also kindly asked Toño to reconsider. After some meetings, in which they both talked about their expectations, Toño withdrew the notice and is back on board.

Now both Татьяна & Toño can smile again.

Do you sleep in the same bed and do you shag regularly?

A new chapter has opened in the marriage turned saga between Татьяна and my brother. Thurgau's* migration department has denied Татьяна permission to reside on grounds of sham marriage. Everything rests purely on circumstantial evidence:

• Age difference (28 years)
  
• Татьяна's social background (rural Russia)
  
• how they met (at work).

There is the possibility to appeal the decision, but this involves lawyers (= heaps of money) and embarrassing interviews (typical question see post title). They want also to get married in church this summer in Russia. But with the legal uncertainty, they can't make any plans for their future.

* their state

Do It Right - Do It Simple

The oldest memory of Black Forest gâteau, I can remember, was my sixth birthday when a piece of it was catapulted from Bruno's spoon into Sigi's ear.



But I must have known it before that, then I'm dead certain that I'd wished to have Black Forest gâteau as my birthday cake for when my school friends came over to celebrate with me.

With the exception of spinach, your mother's version of a dish is usually the benchmark that can hardly be met. So it is at least for me with Black Forest gâteau. All others are usually far over the top - that is, they have cherries added or far to much stuff on the top. My mother went for a simple yet unbeatably scrumptious approach.



My mother does not make it any more but luckily my sister adopted the recipe and recently shared it with me:

Biscuit

Make the biscuit at least one, better two days in advance.

Mix 3 egg and 150 g sugar and it is all bright and fluffy. Fold in 130 g flower and 20 g cacao powder. Pour in a greased springform pan and bake 20 minutes at 200°C/392°F. Let is cool at first in the pan so that the condense water is soaked up by the biscuit and it stays moist.

Topping

Make as late as possible prior to serving the cake.

Cut the biscuit carefully once or twice horizontally. Pour over each biscuit disc a tablespoon of cherry brandy. Beat 500 ml cream until stiff. Smear the cream over the bottom biscuit, add the next layer and continue until the top is cover with cream. Cream also the sides. Add chipped chocolate until the cake looks speckled.

Option

This is not for the purists. In an Indian hotel I saw a White Forest gâteau. For this, substitute the cocoa powder with flower and the black chocolate chips with white chocolate chips. Don't forget to duck down, if a purist tried to throw it into your face.

Moi, l'architecte d'intérieur

This September, my brother surprisingly married his milker Татьяна. So far my brother and my parents were living in the farm house. Nevertheless, my parents were anticipating a marriage much earlier and wisely bought decades ago a small house down the road to use it as Stöckli:



My brother is not always the speediest and now my parents are aged 77 and 85. You can imagine that moving at this age is no easy undertaking. However they are up to it, but need some help to get the place ready. My sister makes no bones about things and thus took care that the carpets get cleaned, the hardwood floors get reworked and that a telephone line is connected. But since I'm the pooftah of my clan, interior design just had to be declared my field of expertise.

I is unclear when the house was actually built, but it must be around 400 years old and this had to be taken into account when selecting things. I don't mean that I was going to get 400 year old furniture and that all plumbing had to be removed. What I had to find were things that match with both the old building with its tiny rooms and my parents.

The pièce de résistance was clearly the settee for the drawing room. First I tried affordable furniture stores. This was torturous! Who was I to know that this planet is chastised with so many ugly furniture. I then tried the second hand stores. All furniture of the affordable shops obviously ended there. Close before I hit hit rock bottom and was about to declare defeat, Toño demanded that I had a look at a store nearby, which had a wide range of couches. And yes, they had the one model I was looking for:



I know, the Louis XI lounge table is not the most perfect match, but my parents will bring a lot of their old stuff and it will be a wild style mix anyway. If what I got would be too perfectly matching, it would not go with the other furniture.

In the background you can see the coat rack. It was originally designed for the Statens Järnvägar (Swedish State Railways). I chose it because it is solid and dynamic at the same time.



One of the most neglected fields is light. And since I also worked in designing lighting is usually spent a lot of time choosing lamps and bulbs bringing the lamps into effect. Luckily I found the Berliner Messinglampen GmbH. Of course choosing a chandelier would be nice, but the rooms have a low ceiling and thus I went for this:



and for the bedside tables:



Now, my parents can move. When this is completed, a second round will be necessary to fill the gaps.

My Toys

Over at Lonely Blue Boy there was a post this morning on the film C.R.A.Z.Y. and the memories this film triggered, namely the similarities in the youth of both the protagonist in the film and the blog's author (read about).

After reading the post I looked for some old photos of me to trigger my memories of what I had played with. Actually to search, whether there was anything doll-like in my past.

One of the oldest I found with something toy-like was me eating a flower:



I can't remember if this was pure insensitivity or my first political statement, since on this very day the Soviet Union and members of its Warsaw Pact allies invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring.

The next I found was clearly me playing manly. Like here when I was imitating my father sharpening sickle bars:



Or playing trucker with my father's visor cap:



If you get the impression I was an outdoor kind of child I have to correct this immediately. I think I preferred to play indoors. Of course, Lego were extremely important:



But fare more important were florist wire sticks (the wood without the wire):



An uncle of mine worked in a nursery and he must have collected them for decades, since I had a crate with hundreds of them. I preferred them to all pre-fabricated toys, because they did not limit me at all. I built huge cities and places for the adventures I had in my mind. I think I've never thanked my uncle for this.

So I can't remember anything doll-like. There clearly was a teddy. There can't be an Urs without a bear. I have no picture of him, so here are some newer generations:



I don't think my furry companion is still around. It was in quite a bad shape and I remember that I had to fix it with needle and thread for several times (so here came the gender bending hint).

Of course, when I grew older I changed my toys. for about a decade, you could hardly see me without my Canon AE1. I even had my own darkroom to make prints (black & white only). And yes, I followed my father at least with having a thing for headgear.

Behave Yourself!

Don't get distract by the lovely cleavage*.



This is my nice Susanne. However, you'll have to call her Officer Susanne from today on. This evening she'll be sworn in as police officer. Better behave yourself! I reckon Susanne can be quite merciless.

* and/or handsome Toño.

Turmoil On The Farm

The wedding of my brother and Татьяна is over. Everything went well. My sister, Toño & I could run a catering service. We complement each other perfectly.

The only problem was that we kind of lost control over the guest list, which was made only last Sunday at a family conference (like all organisation). The first signs were when people started to RSVP, who had never been invited. In other words we had no idea how many people might show up. In the end, 20% more than invited sat at the tables. Quite successful for a invitation that went out only days before the event.

The farmers in our village have the tradition to give a young animal as a wedding present. The idea is that the freshly married couple fattens the animal and that all farmers are invited to partake when they succeed.

My brother and Татьяна received this lovely piglet.



Isn't it cute? But it's also quite shifty. When my brother and neighbouring farmer Franz were installing the fodder and water dispenser, it leaped through the ajar door and escaped into the meadow. Well if you're a piglet, better don't mess with pig farmer Franz. In not time it was back in the shed.

Wedding Planning

The permit has arrived and my brother and his fiancée Татьяна can tie their knot this Friday afternoon in a civil marriage ceremony.

This morning, I received calls from both my sister and my brother while I was still in bed. My sister prepared me for my brothers request. He needed a suit and thought I might have what he needed.

In the afternoon we all met at my clan's residence. At this point of time only the date and the suit were solved. We had neither had a location for a reception, nor a menu, nor a guest list. These are the wedding planers in front of the residence.



The reception will be held in the arched cellar. We even agreed on a menu, a to-do-list and my brother and Татьяна made the guest list. So now, the guests have to be notified by them. Most of them do not have the slightest of a clue yet. And we need a caterer, heaps of flowers and Toño has to get some cartloads of champagne.

As usual, I think we completely forgot to ask my mother about her opinion.



Btw, my clan resides in this house since 1863.



Stay passionate and Godspeed!
Mr. Urs

PS: The ceremony in front of the altar will be held next June in Russia. How this will work with my brother being Zwinglian protestant in a Russian Orthodox ceremony will be something we will have to solve after this week.

Sweet & Salty

When I visit my clan I usually bring something to eat. Mostly something I bake, since that's so much easier to carry on train & bus.

This weekend I tried 2 new cake recipes (yes, I use my family as guinea pigs) - a sweet and a salty variant.

The sweet is a blueberry pie. It is basically many blueberry muffins in a brick form.



The salty variant is a ham wrap cake.



Besides of ham it contains onions, tomatoes, gherkins, curd cheese, eggs, cheese, parsley and mustard.

In other family related news, a provisional date for my brother's wedding is set for September 18. The residence permit for his fiancée is still pending. However, our trip to Paris is cancelled. We will celebrate Toño's birthday in Switzerland, since Toño has been chosen by the love birds to be witness to the marriage.

And my sister passed the written test for her shunting locomotive driver license with 99% correct answers. The failed were related to electric locomotives. She plans to pilot only diesel ones and did not learn for those. Now she has to practice for the driving test. Stay clear of rails!

Country Cousins

Last Friday, my brother called, requesting mine and Toño's help on Saturday. In other words we were supposed to get our hands dirty and to get up far earlier than on a school day at a time I did not even know existed. Even Toño, usually exuberantly joyful by nature, only managed to create a wry smile for the picture.



We were called to pick gherkins. This is done with the help of a self-propelled "machine".



The gherkings are planted in long rows, about two meters apart. On each side of the plants wide nets are laid on the ground, on which the gherkin plants twine. The machine lifts both nets on the side of the gherkin row together. On the machine three pickers are places on each side to harvest the gherkins.

This is Константин also an Udmurt like Татьяна, who will stay on the farm for the next 14 months. He was the last on our side and was assigned to the lowest level - that is, he could lie while working.



If I got everything correctly, our motley crew was assembled from Russia, Ukraine, Moldavia, Poland, Romania, Mexico and Switzerland. Thus the lingua franca was Russian.

Right before lunch, one of the two machines broke down and we were reassigned to reaping tobacco. It was the second harvest, which is also the second tedious to pick. Usually one can take three ripe leaves, starting from the bottom. The first time, one is crawling along the ground. The second time kneeling or heavily bent-forward is the way to go.



Toño was assigned the easy outside row, while my sister and I were in the dense inside. Talking about my sister... she is currently working on her shunting locomotive driver license.



At the end, the piles had to be carried to the cart without destroying too many leafs.



We had been asked, if we would also help out today but I just mumbled some weak excuses (church, laundry) and buggered off home to our urban residence to recover.

Татьяна is Milking for Switzerland

Татьяна, my brother's milker and fiancé, hit the headlines, which read I only milk in Switzerland.

As usual, newspapers are full of lies, since Татьяна is (officially) not even in Switzerland. Her resident permit is expired and the renewal which she requires to tie the knot with my brother takes ages to process. Thus there is still no date set for the wedding. Which is awful, since Toño is so desperate for a party.

Birth Control Failed

Last Sunday, my mother disclosed another family story...

Yesterday, my father could celebrate his 86^th birthday. He was born on July 27, 1923. My paternal grandmother was born on July 26 and kind of hoped that her baby would be born on the same day too.

In 1923, my clan was laying a new roof. On her birthday, my heavily pregnant grandmother was caring tiles all day, hoping that would bring things into motion. Despite all the hard work, her wish was not fulfilled.

Meet Татьяна

This is Татьяна (and Toño).



Татьяна did not like it when I took the picture, because she just spent the day picking gherkins on the field, she was sweaty and her hair was all messy.

Татьяна is my brother's milker*. But Татьяна is also my brother's fiancée. Татьяна is from Russia - that is, from Udmurtia** to be precise. Yes, this the 'home' of the AK-47 rifle.

My sister told me this news last week when we were talking on phone. There is not yet set a date for the marriage and my parents have not yet been informed***. Though due to visa issue they have to tie the knot before September. Toño so hopes there will be a big party.

By the way, Татьяна is spelled Tatyana in English.

* In Russia, milker is a female profession (according to my father), (Russian) men lack some qualities to excel in this job.
** Татьяна's native language is Udmurtian.
*** hence this is all hush hush and you haven't heard of it, поняли?

The Tempest²

I just talked to my brother to find out how the farm survived yesterday's tempest.

The tobacco and gherkin fields are completely destroyed. Potatoes and sugar beets are severely damaged but might recover. He'd bedded the tobacco already twice. Now he might not find any seedlings anymore.

No Flowers

I did it again. My brain does not do names. It's even worse with birthdays. Almost a month ago, my sister was celebrating hers and I only remembered today. As a poor consolation is here a song by the lady my sister was named after:

Spring Awakening

My return from India was highly appreciated since the garden geranium needed to be pruned and a soil replacement. Thus on Saturday, Toño and I went to my clan's residence, where we can keep our garden geranium at the right temperature in the almost 400 year old cellar with meter thick walls.



From exactly there, some more disturbing news arrived yesterday. My brother and my father had an argument which resulted in my father walking away. My mother and siblings had no other choice than to call the coppers when night fell. Luckily those had the right instincts and found him rapidly. My father can be stubborn as a teenager. He refused to get in their car. An officer had to walk him home.

I *heart* Шпроты

My brother has a young Udmurtian farm help from Ижевск in the Western Urals. She went home to celebrate Новый Год (New Year) with her parents. For that, she wanted to bring them a cuckoo clock from Switzerland. Since I'm always cruising around the world, Toño went to buy one for her.

Toño has a distinguished taste and so he did not buy just any cuckoo clock, but The Cuckoo Clock (hand made, Swiss made, precise, beautiful, you name it). Of course, this was beyond the budget of a farm help being exploited by a Swiss farmer.

Well, we are no brutes and gave the clock to her as a present. Татьяна offered to bring something from Russia in return. Bring us some cans of Шпроты (sprats), I demanded.



Tatiana is a smart girl and got the hint. She brought some cans of sprats and the only thing that goes along with them - right, Vodka.

It's not any vodka but Kalashnikov Vodka (Caliber 500 ml x 40°), since Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47, lives in Ижевск.

Premier With 77

Today, we could celebrate the 77th birthday of my mother. I made her a Charlotte Royal for the occasion. It was well received, however, my father pushed me out of the limelight. He gave her flowers. Like for the first time ever.