chattius

McDonalds -> X-Mas Market There was a food truck selling Waffelpommes (translate as waffle pommes frites) with a sweet softcheese/strawberry dip to look like ketchup(majonaise. But it are sweet waffles made to look like fries:. Our waffle iron could be upgraded with these special waffle fries forms. Video looks so easy to make.

waffle fries -> Belgium What are waffle fries? Are they these longly waffles which are fried and look like french fries, or are they these potato cut to look like a waffle and then fried? But both, french fries and brussel waffles, are from Belgium.

food -> potato Potato harvest is kind of a family reunion in our case. We do potatoes for nearly the whole family, but at harvest they have to help at a weekend The dried plants are put on heaves and burned to prevent fungal potato plant diseases if having them on a nearby field the coming year. In the hot ash we place potatoes, kind of campfie potatoes. They have a nice strong potato taste and we cut them in halves and smear Quark on them. Wish mom will be back at the next.

steak -> deer I know that the americans are proud of their steaks. But the word is from nordic german and just means roasted (on a pole). So a lot of animals qualify for the word steak. My family does mainly steaks from deer, easier access for me than good cattle steaks. Often it has to be wrapped with bacon stripes if it is too dry. And then the old wild game rules: serve with what the game was eating: juniper, mushrooms, ...

paella -> pilaf I do a very regional spring variant: Grünkern (smoke dried unripe grain from spelt) instead rice, bear garlic instead garlic, dried mushrooms from late autumn, very thin slices of roasted deer, thistle oil, Quark,some berries from forest, a nomato (no tomatoes) sauce with local stuff to get the typical slightly red colour,... We got so used to Grünkern so we take it in nearly all recipes which have normally rice. Luckily I can buy it in 10 pound bags. Grünkern is way better than rice if a visitor has diabetes. A nearby farmer has spelt and I asked him to get some this year for trying to make our own village Grünkern in the remaining heat of the baking house. A 91 year old remembers how it was done. So we will have a Grünkern-day in our village. I did some vegs in our new indoor garden so I may experiment a bit.

Piranha -> The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The AMT Piranha was the car used in the TV series.

Close do the Döner the twins like to eat while waiting for the train home from school? Ever since our first I have an agreement with the döner restaurant that the kids can make their homework in the hour waiting for the train there and I pay him monthly. I played soccer with the owner when I was younger. Or the low carb variant more aas a salade:

friendly -> Broholmer The Broholmer is an old dog race from Denmark. It isn't much used outside central Europe. The twin sister of my wife has one as family dog. She lives near Marburg which has a bid hospital for eye surgery and several schools for blind people. The Broholmer is often used there as a guide dog. We have too many lakes and ponds so I prefer our Leonbergers which are great water rescue dog after some training. A Broholmer:

scale -> blind Caution!!! Scales seem to be dangerous devices. Most of the people using them use eyefolds to protect their eyes and a sword to protect the wonderful scale from being stolen.

sun -> weight The ancient 21inch monitors of the SUN workstations at university had a big warning sign: Be careful when lifting: 35 kilogramm. I was always called to lift them by the secretaries of the math department. Don't know if it was because of the weight or they considered me the most sexiest ma[n/th] alive...

intelligent -> son September: They did an anonymous IQ test at the school of the twins. One person managed to do 0!!! points. When returning the tests the teachr said to my son: ' I reported you to the university running the tests. They said that giving always the answer with the least points would be a sign of great intelligence!' Strangely his twin sister who answered every question with best possible points wasn't interviewed by the university.

Grey goose -> drafted When I was drafted into army we were often singing the wild geese song when marshing. A soldier in WW1 sees chains of wild geese flying north over his trench and compares the army of grey birds with the grey uniforms of his platoon. He wonders if they will be still alive when the birds will fly south again. Wild geese are rushing through the night With shrilling cry northbound their heading – Attention, take care! Unsteady flight! The world is full of murdering. Fly through the world engulfed by night, Gray yeomen-soldier squadron! Battle cry yelling, wan quivering light, Far heaves the quarrels cauldron. Gray-colored host, rush on, fly – flee! Rush on, fly on to the north! When you fly south across the sea – What will our fate have brought forth! We are like you a host in gray We fly on the emperors call, If sans return we fly away, Rush an amen for us in fall!

We did our traditional firefighters celebration with units from 5 surrounding villages. Big tents for our families and all trucks on top of the hill in case we would be called. My thoughts were at my mom however. Final surgery was on saturday. Hope all the best for everyone for 2023.

Not so happy x-mas. As I posted we signed for emergency duty on x-mas. My mom was at my younger sis. Mom was walking back with my sis from church and someone ran against her. Stumpled and with her osteoporosis: four very complicated fractures. My sis is a child doc and she called the ambulance right away because she didn't want to move mom unnecessary. Probably three surgeries, one done two waiting... 3 weeks at hospital, then 6 at a special senior home to recover and then 6 more in rehab to learn limb using again. Sis works in the hospital. We have a speical senior home just back of the hill 3 miles away and the rehab can be done at the place the mom of the boy friend of our third works. So she won't be that alone because with covid the hospital/rehab rules are one visitor per day for one hour and a daily negative covid test. Luckily we siblings made a special health insurance for mom once we knew she had bad osteo. So all costs are covered but we hever thought that the insurance would be needed.

camouflage -> tiger Deer, boar and many other prey of the tiger is colourblind. So they see orange as green. The colour is a left over from time tiges hunted in red stone areas. But with colourblind prey the orange was never changed, just bigger stripes. Camouflage is relative. The red plane of the red baron was harder to see when attacking out of the sun than normal camouflage which was to hide a plan from side when attacked from above. Camouflage is relative.

Just putting the play list for x-mas at firefighters together. Found this very interesting version of Silent Night as a gregorian chant. My wife is on emergency readiness, so I decided to do the same at firefighters, Oldest is at family of her husbandm second has readiness at hospital too, third is at her boyfriend and the twins are with me at firefighters with kids from other firefighters.

For the song: The Kinks 'Father Christmas' A shopping mall Santa is attacked by a mob of poor kids. They find only stuff for rich kids in his bag, but no jobs for their parents, or food, or money not even a useful real machine gun... And there is a bit truth in it. Some kids have to fight to survive at x-mas. For the movie: 'Rare Exports' from Finland

Putting up the x-mas tree and searching for some games Like Cataan, Cascadia, Monopoly, ... because they predicted to have lots of rain from x-mas to new year. I found also all the old pen and papers like AD&D, Das schwarze Auge, ... I was considering to put the pen and papers on the stable er could play at rain. But then I remembered this very old video and put them away ....

My wife was singing Janis' Mercedes Benz when reading the news special what happened in 2022. Luckily my name isn't Lord. 143 millions at an auction for a 1955 Mercedes Gullwing. My first Unimog is as old, perhaps I should try to sell it.

Queen -> Kinks

superman -> dwarf He is only 191cm. Even my daughter is taller ;)

The first filling was with seeds which were given with the 'Beast'. Baby violets were used by the restaurant for decorations. We ordered some seeds: my wife votes for vitamin bombs in winter and for vegs like chili where our normal garden is in the wrong climate for summer. Two trays are for my experiments for stuff like bear garlic where people have no experiments or at least aren't posting them. There are small systems like the Bosch, which allows wall mounting. But I would say these are too small with more than two persons. But the technic used is good explained: How the auto-watering and the adaptable light works. Many glasshouse vegs from supermarket have constant light and therefor less vitamins. This was the final argument my wife convinced ;)

Saturday the first harvest from my new garden: rosmarin, baby violets, forest strawberries, ... Just in time for my and the one and a half birthday of the twins. Two month back there was an auction at a restaurant which went into bankruptcy - covid and too special, too few guests. I always liked their fresh vegs. But I was the only one who gave the minimum offer for one of their indoor gardens: 1000€ ( I think new it was more than ten times). It sucks up lot of electric power for the water pumps and light. So the vegs wouldn't be cheaper than from the market. But in my case: we produce power in summer with solar cells and in winter with a block mini power plant: wood turned into wood gas, the gas drives a generator while cooling of the generator heats the house. And the wood is free, Lot of discussions with my wife because we have a very big garden and I went to the auction for some kitchen tools and not a garden. The beast looks like this and got its place at the mini powerplant. It has its own light afterall and it is just behind the backdoor of the kitchen. Our second and her fiancee now consider a mini indoor garden for their appartment in Frankfurt. Should be stylish, hip, cool, ..and USEFUL. These indoor garden ideas pop out like the mushrooms in my forest. This thing looks nice once the plants have a certain size. But I bet when they are harvested you could look as good at a washing machine. Probably it needs carefully planing in planting and harvesting that there are no ugly holes. Indoor gardening systems for home seem to spam from 50€ to 3000€+.

No school because of ice rain. Luckily I had my ice cleats put in place yesterday evening. No searching this morning. Also I mounted a spreader for granules at the front attachment of the unimog to reach the village yesterday. Had to use it because wife was called to a person who slipped heavily on blackice in neighbour village. If I would live in a town, I could have slept 4 more hours.

lard -> Griebenschmalzbrot In an area where no oil plants grew but wool pigs were fed in the forests with acorns - lard was the way to go. Schmalz is german for lard. Grieben are the crispy parts of porkskin which aren't filtered away. Smeared on bread you get Griebenschmalzbrot. I add pieces from sour apples and onions when doing it. English decription how to do Griebenschmalz: https://mybestgermanrecipes.com/german-griebenschmalz-recipe/