My Mammoth

This morning at 4:30 am, Toño woke me to inquire whether we overslept. Not yet. Unfortunately, I did not mange to get back to sleep and my mind started to wander around. To Siberia to be precise. To Lake Serechen in the Kolyma region to be even more precise. I have been in this area 5 times. My memories led me to the trip in the year 2000, when I celebrated my birthday there and received this piece of mammoth tusk with with a personal dedication:



In the morning on my birthday (August 21), we were greeted with snow on the tents. That is why I'm wearing a cap on this picture.



Nevertheless, I took a bath in the lake later that day. It is one of my habits to put a newspaper cover on books I take with me on travels. The picture has been taken here by Gertrud:


View Larger Map

On the following pictures, also taken by Gertrud, you can see why this area is worth many trips.



There is permafrost in the Kolyma area. This preserves mammoths, which have lived (and of course also died) there up to to 4500 years ago. During thawing period in spring, the rivers wash away some layers soil and occasionally people find the remains of a thawing mammoth. That is also how the tusk for my birthday sculpture was found.

Ham Wrap Cake

Preparation: about 45 minutes
Rising: approx 2 hours
Baking: about 1 hours
Serves 4 or 8 as aperitif

For 1 cake mould of about 28 cm/11 in in length

Baking paper for the mould

Dough:
300 g of flour (⅔ wheat + ⅓ spelt)
3/4 teaspoon salt
15 g yeast, crumbled
1.75 dl milk, lukewarm
60 g butter, liquid & coooled

Stuffing:
250 g ham, very finely chopped
1 spring onion, finely chopped
1 tomato, monder, seeded and cut into small cubes
2 gherkin in small cubes
100 g semi-bold curd cheese
100 g Parmesan cheese or Sbrinz cheese, grated
1 egg, beaten
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1 pinch of curry
Salt
Pepper from the mill
2 tbsp mustard for coating

Garnish:
1 egg, beaten
1-2 tbsp sesame seeds

Mix flour and salt and make a hollow in the middle. Dissolve yeast in some milk. Pour yeast with rest of the milk and the liquid butter into the hollow. Knead to a smooth dough. Let it rest covered at room temperature to double rise.

For the stuffing, mix all ingredients and season.

Roll out dough (rectangular, 3 mm thick, 28 cm wide). Spread mustard mustard onto the dough (leave a 2 cm margin at the sides). Spread the filling onto the mustard. roll the dough from 2 sides toward the middle. Put into the mould, which had been laid out with the baking paper.

Let it rest for 30 minutes at room temperature. Brush with egg, sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Bake for 55-60 minutes at 180 °C/356 °F.

Serve warm or cooled out. Goes well with a mixed salad.

[Source]

Blueberry Cake

Preparation: about 30 minutes
In the oven: about 1 hours

For 1 cake mould of about 26 cm/10 in in length

Baking paper for the mould

Dough:
260 g flour
40 g cornstarch
2 teaspoons baking powder
200 g sugar
1 pinch of salt
1 packet of vanilla sugar
½ lemon, zest and 2 tbsp of juice
3 eggs
175 g butter, liquid & cooled
1.5 dl buttermilk
150 g blueberries

Garnish:
100 g blueberries
1 egg white, lightly beaten
Sugar

Icing:
200 g powdered sugar
1½ tbsp lemon juice
1-2 tbsp water

Mix flour, cornstarch and baking powder in a bowl. Add ingredients of the list up to the lemon zest. Stir lemon juice, eggs, butter and buttermilk, pour to mixture. Mix to a smooth dough. Add the blueberries carefully. Pour into the mould, which had been laid out with the baking paper.

Bake for 60-70 minutes at 180 °C/356 °F. Let it cool out on a rack.

Garnish: drag berries through the egg white, and then through the sugar. Let them dry on a kitchen paper.

Icing: Mix all ingredients to a thick icing. Pour over the cake. Let it dry a bit and spread some sugared berries on the top. Let it dry.

[Source]

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!

Saturday Flowers

Office Flower - The Sequel

On August 7, I discovered that my office plant had started to bloom. Then it looked like this:



Meanwhile the flower has evolved quite a bit.



Why are there red and blue sub-flowers? How many layers are there still hidden? Does it consume humans? What is this?

Starting Something Good

6 years ago after the summer holidays I went to my first crawl class ever. A year later, Toño joined us. That is were I met him for the first time.

Well today, the swim summer break is over. At 19:30 pm in lane 1 normal swim practice will be resumed. I'm looking forward to it.

STARTING SOMETHING GOOD
envoyé par KALCLARK - Futurs lauréats du Sundance.

GTM Films & TV Shows collage including scenes from: RUNNING WITHOUT SOUND-THE LONG DAY CLOSES-PARIS, JE T'AIME-ALMOST NORMAL-DREAM BOY-BOWSER MAKES A MOVIE-MERCI, DR. REY-DARE-SOUS LES VERROUS-FORGIVE & FORGET-BOY CULTURE-THOMAS TREBUCHE-AND THEN, CAME SUMMER-GROUP THERAPY-ALTRAMONDO-TOM CLAY JESUS-DOORMAN-BUMPING HEADS-COMME UN FRERE-DANNY IN THE SKY-LE CLAN-SKINS-THE TOILER & THE WAYFARERS-THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH-ANGORA RANCH-2.37-APRES LUI-ANTONIO'S SECRET-DEFENSE D'AIMER-UNITED STATES OF TARA-VACATIONLAND-TOUT CONTRE LEO-PRESQUE RIEN-3 DAY WEEKEND-THE HISTORY BOYS-A SIREN IN THE DARK-JUSTE UN PEU DE RECONFORT-EATING OUT 2, SLOPPY SECONDS-RED DIRT & RUNNING DEEP. Song: Start of something good From the "Britannia High" OST

Ceviche - The Recipe

There is hardly any Hispanic American country that does not claim that Ceviche is their national dish. The recipe here is by Toño's sister Chilo and is thus a Mexican variant (original recipe).

Ceviche is the ideal party finger food. Thus the recipe here serves plenty. Actually it fully fills the bowl in this picture:



Ingredients:

• 2 kg freshwater fish fillets
• 3 large onions
• 1 kg tomatoes (preferably fully ripe beefsteak tomatoes)
• 8 limes
• plenty of coriander
• 4 carrots
• 2 garlic cloves
• 6 chillies
• 1 bay leaf

Bring about 2 litres of water to a boil with an onion cut into quarters, two cloves of garlic, a bay leaf and salt.



When the water is boiling add the fish fillet, which you have cut into small squares. Let them boil for a minute. Pour off the water and remove all the remains of the onions, garlic and the bay leaf. Let the fish cool down.



Meanwhile finely chop two large onions (or many small ones). Add the juice of four lime. Now finely chop and add to the onions: peeled carrots, chillies, coriander and the seeded tomatoes.



Do you see the REX Economy Peeler on the left side? It's gilded and a Christmas present by Toño. There is no posher way to peel carrots.

Mix everything together with the cooled out fish. Add the juice of three to four more limes. Season with salt and if you like a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Stir again and put it into the fridge for at least half an hour.



Serve on tostadas. If you like add some cubes of avocado. For those who like it spicy add a few drops of Tabasco sauce or habanero sauce "Maria Dolores". Bon appétit!



The fish ceviche is commonly served in Mexico as part of an appetizer at a barbecue with family. It goes well with a cold beer or dry white wine, e.g. a Riesling, Alvariño or Verdejo. Enjoy!

Dies Natalis Reservatis

My birthday was last Friday, however, I had received an invitation for a birthday dinner in my honour by our friends Christine & Wolfgang for last Thursday. They mixed up the date, which I did not disclose to them until we were through their door. They are just too good hosts to miss a dinner with.

Apparently Toño also wanted to spoil me but I did not give him a chance until yesterday, when he surprised me with crema de elote and entrecôte double with Calvados sauce, accompanied by a Château Grand-Puy-Ducasse 2004.

Who said birthday is limited to one day?

Waiting For The Blue Princess

Kylie is supposed to have performed two songs for the upcoming Bollywood underwater thriller Blue, but sadly, they are not yet included in the recently released promo trailer. Though I think she's visible briefly at 1:52, 2:03 & 2:04.



The movie is supposed to be released on October 16. Time to book a flight to Mumbai.

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.

Missed Glow

I has been a while that I spend the night to pumping tracks on a dark dance floor in a seedy club. That's possible why I've missed them glowing briefs:

Saturday Flowers

Spectacular Birthday

It's my birthday and Toño granted my wish to celebrate this with me by going to the Theater Spektakel, Zürich's international theatre festival.

We will see H3, a production by Bruno Beltrão* and three performances from France, the native country of cirque nouveau. In between we will breath the unique air that surrounds this spectacular festival, besides of dining lavishly at one of the stalls.



* "Possibly the hottest young choreographer in Brazil right now" The Independent (read about)

Micro Triathlon

My PE teachers better don't know that I eventually actually started to like sports*.

Added later

* doing it, not watching.

Preparations

Later today, we will make a (micro) triathlon with two rounds of 500 m swimming, 5 km cycling and 2.5 km running, organised by one of our swim buddies.

We have different methods to prepare ourselves for the tests of life. While I got up and made a berry rich smoothie...



...Toño is is already wearing his running shoes* to work (with the consent of his physiotherapist)



*with white trousers and a sailor style polo *swoon*