Fruits, Glorious Fruits - Strawberry!

Strawberry, this bright red beautiful fruit's season is here!  Traditionally June is the absolute strawberry month in Germany and the season will last until September.  It is said that each German eats an average of about 3kg of strawberries during the season.

While the strawberry season is in it's full swing, the asparagus season is coming to an end.  In the months of May and June there are many little stands, or stalls along the road or street selling just one or both of these seasonal harvest.  I normally buy my organic strawberry from Bioland during the weekly market, just to make sure we are not putting the good stuff and the bad stuff(pesticides) in our mouth at the same time...

These delicious red stuffs are very high in vitamin C.  With a serving of 152 grams, strawberries offer 149% of your daily vitamin C!  They are low in cholesterol, sodium and saturated fat.  High in fiber, potassium, folate and magnesium, they are anti-oxidant too!

So we waited no longer and went to the strawberry farm yesterday to have some fun.  

Let's have a look at some photos!

 

This was the second time we went strawberry picking at Erdbeerparadies Kraehenwinkel.  It was a nice and sunny day!



A little stand to get/buy a basket for 50 cents each and later after picking the strawberries to weight them and pay.  It cost 3 Euro per kg.

 

Some were there to 'pick and eat'......  :-)

                                                           So let's get started!



They are hiding under the leave.  Beautiful bright red yummy juicy strawberries!  Too bad all the strawberry fields open for visitors are not organic though...

Angelica took her sweet time searching for strawberries that are not too big nor too small, must be bright red and with perfect strawberry shape.  She even checked the bottom to make sure the whole strawberry is red.

And finally, our harvest!  We couldn't pick more as they can't be kept long.  That was almost 4 kg.  With that I'm gonna make a strawberry shortcake!  Hmmm, yumm!

Vienna

Vienna, described as Europe's cultural capital, is a metropolis with unique charm, vibrancy and flair. 

That's where we went for the Easter long weekend.  Since we had to visit a family staying in the south of Austria, we only had one day to explore Vienna.  But never the less, we managed to visit some places, try out some food and had a little bit of adventures too!

We arrived Wien(Vienna) on Friday in the late afternoon.  Immediately, we went for a walk.  Not far from our hotel was Votiv Kirche(Votiv Church).  The photo above is a view of the church from the Rathaus.

                                                           Burgtheater

                                                                          A nice wall at the University

                                                             Passed by some nice dome too :-)

Then it was time for dinner.  The kids and I would definitely try out the Wiener Schnitzel....

                                                                             Wiener Schnitzel (Puten)

And how could I not order the Sachertorte, a rich chocolate cake with a little apricot jam filling, serve traditionally with whipped cream.  It was a little too sweet for me.

We started early the next day, took the tram with the intention of going to the St. Stephen's Cathedral.  Following my husband's instructions, we ended up somewhere else....  "That's it."  I said, "I'll read the map from now".  So we started from the Volkstheater, then went to the Naturhistorisches Meseum.  The kids had a good time at the museum.

Lunch at the Museum's Cafe Nautilus was simple and nice.  Kids had Wiener sausages with bread.  And we had Wiener Gulasch soup.

                                                                                    

And Wiener Eiskaffee is always yummilicious!



                                A fabulous view of Kunsthistorisches Museum from the Cafe

Andrew appreciating a beautiful blue stone

Angelica loves crocodiles

Kunsthistorisches Museum

After that we headed to Hofburg and took a Carriage ride.  And when it was tea time, we were at one of the street near St. Stephen's Cathedral.

                                         Another Sachertorte for tea.  This one tasted much better!

 Kaiserschmarrn, soft, fluffy pancake that ripped into bite size and slightly roasted in a pan, served with applesauce.  Yumm!



Kaiserschmarrn was not on my 'food to try' list.  But I tried it anyway as I knew I wouldn't be able to get Salzburg Nockerl.

After tea and some shopping.  It was time to go back to the hotel for a rest.  While it was time to get out of the tram, my husband said that it was the next station.  I said no, he said yes.  And because of that we ended up somewhere else again.  After asking someone, bla bla bla, it was another wrong tram....  Funny?  Well not when you have two tired kids with you!  After another tram and more walking, we arrived our hotel safe and sound!

Looking for a nice restaurant for dinner near our hotel was a challenge, we walked and walked to find all the restaurants were closed.  On a Saturday evening?  Aren't Saturday evenings the busiest time for restaurants?

We finally found one near the Rathaus, a restaurant called Einstein I believe.  Kids just preferred to have Wiener Schnitzel, and again my husband had Gulasch soup!

I had Balkan-Pfanne,  kind of like Gulasch served with the yellow thing which was sort of like Gnocchi.

A closer look at the Gnocchi

That pretty much conclude our day in Wien.  The next day, we had to leave right after breakfast to the south of Austria, Klagenfurt.  Everything packed, hotel paid, we arrived the underground car park.......  We were stuck!  In the car park!  The machine kept saying that the ticket was not valid, it was given by the hotel, with the parking fees paid.

After talking to the hotel reception on the phone, bla bla bla, went to the autopay machine to activate the card(instructed by the reception), it still didn't work.  In the end, Georg gave up, pay an extra 15 Euro and hooray, we got out of the car park!

It was snowing lightly while we left Vienna.  Yes, snowing, in April. 

The drive to Klagenfurt was a nightmare.  Georg kept asking "where are the highway?"  "Ya, 20km more, and we'll be on a highway..."  We were up on the hills, or should I say mountains.  It was snowing, and all white.  The road was narrow, curvy, and ........  I had to take an aspirin because of that. 

We spent a night at our friends in Klagenfurt.  Early next morning we left for Hannover.  This time we were driving on a high way, heading to Salzburg.

                                                            

We could go left to Italy, or middle lane to Slovenia, right to Salzburg which leads to Germany.

While driving towards Salzburg, the GPS kept reminding us that there was a tunnel in front of us.  I found that odd.  So I click the options button and found that the GPS was set to 'avoid the tunnels'!!  So if you don't want to go under, then you have to go over, right?  That explained why we were crossing the mountains and were not using the highway from Vienna to Klagenfurt!  How silly!

Despite all the unpleasant adventures, we had a good time in Vienna.  It's a beautiful city that I would love to visit again and it's VERY clean.  No broken beer bottles.  ;-)  The drive to Salzburg was lovely as along the way we got to see beautiful scenery, beautiful mountains.  And we made it home to Hannover safe and tired.  :-)



Green! Is for St. Patrick's Day

Yes, we think of green when it comes to St. Patrick's Day.  So here I am showing you some of the images that go with this theme.

'Green Dudes' - Marshmallow coated with sugar icing.

 'Pretty Bretzel' - Bretzel coated with white chocolate.

And Malaysian Kuih Lenggang - Coconut in green pancake, check the recipe here.

Have a Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!

Valentine's Day and Fasching

This photo shown on the left are little heart shape bath oil from me to Andrew and Angelica on Valentine's day.

I must mention that the florists here do not double or triple the prices of flowers or roses on this day.  I wonder how much does a rose cost nowadays in Malaysia on a Valentine's day?  RM5?  RM15? or RM30? 

My daughter, Angelica drew me some wonderful drawings for Valentine.  So many that I could just pick up one small piece of paper on the floor, to open and find her lovely drawings for me.  :-)   Of all her drawings, or messages, the one I love most is this :

She explained to me that the double lines are "plus".  So Angelica + Tina + Love.  How very sweet of my little princess!  I was so touched by this!


We didn't plan to eat out on this Valentine's day, and these were what I'd prepared  :

Roast chicken with sides, long beans wrapped with bacon, and roast pumpkin.  Served with mashed potato and gravy.

Dessert was this ice cream pudding.  That was my first attempt and was not so happy with the result.  I couldn't find chocolate roll at the supermarket, so I had chosen the marble cake instead.  It would look a lot prettier if it was all chocolate colour on the outer layer.

Inside was Vanilla ice cream with chopped pistachios and strawberries.  Do you see now why the outer layer should be in dark brown?
I will try making this pudding again with my own chocolate cake recipe for the outer layer.  And will post the recipe once I get it right!  :-)

More dessert?  Yes, strawberries dip with chocolate!  Delicious!



Next is about Fasching.  Fasching means carnival.  Angelica had her Fasching at the kindergarten today.  Everyone dressed up with costumes.  I had been busy making her coustume and had no time to blog.  Now I can relax, have a cup of coffee with my fresh baked Apple Strudel (recipe soon) while writing this post.  :-)  This year's Rosenmontag falls on 20.02.2012.  You can click on the words to learn more about the festival.   

The theme for this Fasching was "Winterwunderland" and Angelica wanted to be a penguin.  I couldnt find the right costume for her so I transformed her bat costume into a penguin and I did it. 

Though most of the parents didn't follow the teachers' Fasching theme (oops), the children had a good time playing games, eating some special prepared party foods and popping the ballons.  And I have one more costume to make....... luckily it's an easy one, a Ninja!

YuanXiao Festival / Chinesisches Laternenfest

Yesterday was the Lantern Festival or YuanXiao Festival.  We also called it Chap Goh Meh in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.  It is a festival celebrated on the 15th day of the first month in the lunisolar year in the Chinese Calendar.  This 15th day, also mark the end of the new year celebration.

My husband George was away in Poland.  I wanted to cook some food to celebrate this day and didn't want to celebrate with just my two kids.  So I invited my friends, a Vietnamese couple to come over for dinner.  I'd recently learnt that the Vietnamese and the Chinese have quite a few things in common.  For example, red is the lucky colour,  they celebrate lunar new year, and they also believe that the year of the Dragon is a good year to have a baby boy!

I wanted to post some photos of the foods I'd prepared.  Nothing special, they're just some simple Chinese foods.

The apertiser, with deep fried wontons, seafood rolls and crab claws.

Bak Zam Gai served with chilli, ginger, garlic, soy sauce.

The children's favourite oven baked chicken wings.

Stir fried celery, black fungus and pork belly.

Shrimps with ginger, spring onions and Chinese wine.  These shrimps are not bad, will definitely buy the same brand in the future.

And finally, the Yuanxiao, Yuanxiao is a glutinous rice ball.  Also called Tang Yuan.  Tang Yuan has a long history in China.  The Chinese believe eating Yuanxiao will give them good life.








I'm glad that I'd invited Lyly and Trong over for dinner.  They were great companies and we had some good laugh speaking our broken German.  :-)