chattius

Snow, but dry cold with sun is nice. But thewing snow with fog and no sun ,it feels 20 degree colder than it is. luckily we had sun at weekend.

A good baked apple starts with choosing the right sort of apple, a sort with high acid and don't getting too soft while baking: I prefer a Boskop or a Holsteiner Cox. Without kids we placed the raisins some hours before in spiced wine. There are also variants of baked apples close to Himmel und Erde ( Heaven and Earth ) Without kids we placed the raisins some hours before in spiced wine. At Himmel und Erde you do dices from apples (heaven) und potatoe (earth) and boil and mash them, serve with roasted onions and roasted blood sausage. You can replace the apple part with a baked apple: Nearly 10 years ago, ice cream with baked apple taste 🐘 have a good brain.

Saturday enough snow for cross country skiing. After sundown a lot of noise in the sky from cranes flying south. As sure as hell some idiots drive without winter tyres in the dark and call the firefighters - so a busy night. Luckily only one who managed to damage the oil system. Lot of warning signs that the local country roads won't be cleared, news paper wrote it, was in radio, ...

classic -> Erich Kästner At summerbreaks we were at the farm of my grandparents, siblings, cousin and cousins. Boys in sleeping bags in the hay barn, girls in the former house for farmhands. There was also a box with books. Nearly all of Erich Kästner which already was read by my dad, uncles and aunts. The Parent Trap Emil and the detectives The flying classroom Dot and Anton ...

Fleetwood Mac -> Nautilus If you like FLeetwood Mac's Albatross, Nautilus is close to it. In Albatross the music tries to imitate a soaring Albatross, in ANutilus a nautilus difting in an ocean.

luxury -> Schickeria Parties where only certain people are invited, most of them are just famous for being famous. I remember a benefit ball to honour sport stars who were winning olympics or world championships. The camera caught a schickeria person saying loud what a lame party only b-class people. The person who thought of himself being famous was soon only famous for his stupidity, the next bouncer at a schickeria party was a former olympic wrestler with a good memory and face recognition.

Simens -> Electric Victoria !00 years before Musk and his Tesla, Siemens sold 50 electric driven cars already.

Do -> 31 Before the Harrier and the Osprey the Dornier Do 31 was a vertical take off and landing combat zone transporter tested for the german army in late 60ties. No crashes and all prototypes are in museums. NASA and Neil Armstrong tested it and liked it. German army saw no use because the training was to defend till help arrived and not to attack. Civil versions were stopped when the oil prices exploded in earlier 70ties. A member of my glider club has a flying RC model.

golden -> Horde The mongole empire was called the Golden Horde after the death of Dschinghis Khan

teeny tiny -> alliteration Teenytiny is klitzeklein in German.

battlezone -> Elite The BBC Acorn was never a success un Germany. I bought one in a sales out because I knew how to code the 6502 processor. We had 6502 machines at school. It had good interfaces for attaching hardware: morse decoder, stitchery machine, washing machine, .... Still functional used with our knitting machine. It game with the game Elite.

company -> Quarkbällchen When I do Quarkbällchen the kids were swarming around me, each trying to get the first ones. So I do double the amount to have some left for the next day. It are small balls from yeast dough containing Quark (in our case self made, sort of creamy curd cheese) fried in hot fat. Our old family recipe did it with meadowsweet instead then very expensive real vanilla. The fat for frying was homemade clarified butter. The closest baker is selling them for 3€ per 10 pieces in a paper bag. He is very close to a elementary school

trust -> but I think 99% of all sentences containing 'trust' also contain a 'but'. I t hink Lenin said: 'Trust is good, but control is better' Reagon said 'Trust, but verify!' which is quite the opposite of trust, even for a politician With teenage daughters and being a math, I am with game theory 'tit for tat'. Trust till fooled and then react.

aunt -> village grewing up in a village we said Tante (aunt) to every female adult person who was close to the family in a way: real aunts, aunts second and third grate, neighbours, friends of the family, ... I had countless uncles and aunts, but not all gave birthday presents when I was a young kid, wonder why :)

marble -> bridge Lahnmarmor from the Lahn river area is a special type of marble. In Villmar is a bridge made from Lahnmarmor since they had more marble than other stones. My son in law is a bridge engineer so we did some canoo trips along the Lahn river to visit the bridge, often starting the day trip at my hometown Wetzlar at the Lahn. If the Lahnmarmor is polished it is very colorful, as in the Empire State Building:

delightful -> Loreley The Loreley rock was turned into a gun platform as a border fortress against France. Ruined many of the romatic look but the platform is now location for concerts with up to 100000 people. I am so old that I visited David Bowie Outside tour at the Lorelei while being at university 1996.

At least in Germany 'All quiet on the Western Front' is in cinemas since mid octobre. Our second watched it in a cinema with some friends. She talked about the movie and I said even I was at a naval air wing - first six weeks in general training we had to learn entrenching and using the foldable spade as a weapon in close combat. In the garnison museum were spades from WW1 soldiers made as sharp as razor blades for trench combat. The bayonetts on a rifle were usable in attack, but when fighting in a trench one at one shorter weapons were needed - and everyone had a spade. classics -> cinema Corona had a heavy impact on the classic entertainment: live concerts, cinema, theatres...

All quiet on the western front -> Der Funke Leben / Spark of Lide I still think that the movie from 1930 is the best, got an oscar as best movie. It is also a quiet good book. From Erich Maria Remarque we had to read 'All quiet on the western front' and 'Spark of Life' in history lessons when I was 14, most others in class 15. So my dad had to sign that he allowed to read the books. Spark of Life was recently adapted for theaters, but I found no spare weekend to visit the theatres which play it.

I am experimenting with marinading for big parts and adding pineapple pieces for the Saumagen. I can't like it to waste food, so with the wild boar at home - time to try something In towns you usually visit the supermarket and buy with a plan. At countryside you don't want to waste stuff you have, and you have to be creative to prevent repeating at a too good harvest or - this time - too many stupid car drivers who ignore warning signs.

Yes, german version had an income tax and ab extra tax field. tax -> Jungfernsteuer / not married women tax Unmarried women between 20 and 40 had to pay it in Prussia in the 18th century. The country was in need of soldiers and money...

exalt -> beer Auf Ex means drinking a beer in one go Altbier, short Alt, is a copper coloured beer whose name comes from it being top-fermented, an older method than the bottom fermentation of lagers. I never saw the reason in drinking a good tasting beer in one go, must be being young and stupid.

Wildschweinsaumagen (pig stomach from wild boar) ' Saumagen is a German dish popular in the Palatinate. The dish is similar to a sausage in that it consists of a stuffed casing; however, the stomach itself is integral to the dish. It is not as thin as a typical sausage casing (intestines or artificial casing). Rather it is meat-like, being a strong muscular organ, and when the dish is finished by being pan-fried or roasted in the oven, it becomes crisp. ' Had to kill a wild boar which had broken forelegs after being hit by a car. So the belly was intact and I decided to cut it in a way so we can have Saumagen from it. Because of the stronger taste of a wild boar compared to a normal pig I decided to will add some fruits to the filling. Picture is normal pig, boiled but not (yet) roasted. With cut not minced pork. I will do the filling for Bratwurst into the stomach and not cut pork. As I said wild boar has a stong taste

Last LP I bought in that direction was Iron Butterfly ;) Currently we have sunshine, clear sky and I am listening to the big chains of cranes flying south while doing some garden work.

Others have halloween, we have Dickwurzsuppe (fodder beets soup) 31th of octobre used to be reformation day in the state of Hesse. A silent day were people stayed at home, praying or spending time with family. After reunion of Germany each western state had to give up a celebration day to support the eastern states, end of Reformation day in Hesse. Halloween was not done in Germany till 30 years back because of reformation day. We never did it when we were kids. But we had a tradition of carving heads from Dickwurz and putting a candle inside when the Dickwurz were harvested at last of the crops, sometimes end of november. The leftover from carving was either fed to caddle (Dickwurz = fodder beets) if you had some, or put into a soup. Not as sweet as rutabega and a way stronger taste- each family had their own recipe. We used to do a soup from Dickwurz and not smoked sausages and pork from house butchering. The butchering was done when it started to be cold and no flies around anymore. So sunday we were carving the 'Gloinische Deuwel' (slang for glowing devils). We had Dickwurz parts and leaves, adding some bacon, some Wiener, leek, onions, ... Just being creative with the soup. While pumpkins always look like a ball and are softer - carving a fodder beet head starts with choosing an interesting looking beet. Sometimes the hair is the upside, sometimes it are the roots. What is cut away is put in the soup.

genetics -> epigenetics As a young child the growing body needs some trigger events to unlock certain genes. There is a study on dutch kids which had not enough food in the winter 1944/45. Certain genes were not triggered. Even worse - their kids who didn't grew up in hunger had these genes not triggered. German kids in 1917/18 showed similiar symptons, but there were not studies because genetics weren't researched. We were eating a wide spread sortiment of food when the kids were small, just in case.