tim.jagenberg.info » Food

California, Arizona, Utah 2/2

Tim — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 07:22:51 +0000

After a number of interesting presentations on engineering design in at the IDETC09 conference in San Diego and a successful talk highlighting our paper, we ventured on towards our final destination, Las Vegas.
The first few days we rode along the back country roads of southern Arizona, where we saw the true “Heart of America”, small villages in vast beautiful landscapes offering simple lodging and typical healthy American food (the choice between sandwiches and burgers ).

The next days we used for some touristy locations such as the former Route 66, the obvious Grand Canyon (with some thunderstorms!) or the less overrun Antelope Canyon. Especially the latter was truely amazing, as one is crawling through a narrow rift with the sun shining in from above. In page we were pretty lucky: As this weekend is the famous Labor Day Weekend, where it seems all Americans explore their own country, all motels in Page, AZ were totally booked out. A friendly receptionist at one of these motels connected us to a local guy, renting out motel-style rooms for a reasonable price.

As I am writing we are on our way to the Zion National Park and are staying in Kanab, which is also dubbed “Little Hollywood”, as many Western movies where shot here.

So far for now, the last bits of information will be posten from home.
Cheers, Tim

Jazz at the Strawberry Festival

Tim — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:52:57 +0000

As a friend of mine was singing at the local Strawberry Festival, a whole group of us went there to check it out.
The festival was held at the farm of a farmer in Weiterstadt, close to Darmstadt. A sunday afternoon crowd of mostly elderly and kids gathered in a big marquee and enjoyed a variety of dishes based on asparagus or strawberries.The Jazzband “Focus on Jazz” performed many ever-greens and also some less well known tunes. Overall they were really good, very professional musicians. Because of this, I got the impression, that the band was quite a bit overqualified for the crowd.

After the band, an asparagus peeling competition between some local “celebrities” was set up and moderated by a very distinct entertainer from the area. While the contestants were peeling away, she was singing behind them in a very strong hessisch dialect.

The “grand finale” was reached, when a dancing group of some girls from a local school presented their very enthousiastic routine:

Overall it definately was a very interesting and diverse Sunday arvo!

Schupfnudeln mit Speckkraut

Tim — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 17:16:37 +0000

Well, the next swabian food project: Schupfnudeln, a handmade type of pasta from half flour half potatoes. The dough is THE stickiest I have ever seen. It really takes a lot of flour to keep it from sticking to your hands and any tools.The shape of the pasta (not perfect in my case) is created by rolling a small portion of the dough between your hands, forming a oval noodle with pointy tips. This process is called Schupfen, thus the name, and is really tedious as every single noodle is formed individually! After this process the Schupfnudeln are boiled in salty water till they re-surface. Schupfnudeln are used as a side dish in many recipes back home. I chose to make my favourite variation which is often served at local festivals, Schupfnudeln mit Speckkraut (Schupfnudeln with Sauerkraut and bacon). The Schupfnudeln, bacon and Sauerkraut are fried in a pan and mixed together. Again everything worked well and it really tasted like back home.

Cheers, Tim.

German Bierfest 2007

Tim — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 16:55:57 +0000

We arrived at the festival around 3pm with the sun burning down on us. Hoping for a nice big German stein of cold beer we were pretty disappointed by the tiny glasses. After we got to the front of the first queue (which spanned across the whole street), we really got angry because those tiny glasses were only filled half way, because of some “sampler” regulations.

After standing in the queues for a while, downing the small sips they would give us, the atmosphere got more relaxed and the queues dissolved into scattered groups of random people chatting. We even won a free t-shirt by spinning a wheel, which was really good at protecting our heads against a bad sunburn. The Americans were really interested in getting in contact with the many Germans gathering at the Bierfest, so in the end it all was a really nice afternoon chatting with many people and teaching Americans the interesting sides of the German language (swearing ).
The funniest thing happened when we were just standing in a queue: Someone accidentally dropped his beer glass (which was the ticket for free beer) and everybody in a range of about 50 yards started screaming and booing (watch the video).

The small glasses and the lack of authentic German food aside, this Fest was definitely a good experience.
Cheers, Tim.

Maultaschen

Tim — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 16:31:14 +0000

Really missing the local schwÃ¤bisches (swabian) Food, I decided to make some myself. The first project were “Maultaschen“, minced meat mixed with spinach and spices wrapped into a layer of pasta dough.
Though it was my very first try, the taste worked out very well, only the pasta layer was a little bit too thick, as we’re lacking a rolling pin.

The next food project will be “Schupfnudeln mit Speckkraut”!

Cheers, Tim.

German Bierfest 2007

Tim — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 23:18:28 +0000

Ha! Nice!

I’m sure this will be fun:

dessert!

Tim — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 16:10:45 +0000

nothing special … just a lousy pic of my dessert today.

After learning for nearly 2 1/2 months now, my mind goes on strike. Words start to become meaningless rows of letters after a while. There’s hardly any difference between my brain and my dessert anymore!
Little more than a week and I’m done for this semester, finally! Hopefully the weather will be more like spring by then.

I’ll try to wobble some more nondestructive testing into my jelly-brain.
Cheers, Tim.

Living in Sydney …

Tim — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 15:00:01 +0000

Visitor from Germany!
Last week Eric & Melli visited me, after 8 weeks of driving through Australia. I tried to show them what Sydney culture is about, so the first night we went to a jazzy, funky jam session at the Townhall in Newton.
After walking the city the whoe day, they where pretty tired the next evening, so I just went to the usual wednesday-evening-trivi-night at the pub around the corner.
Thursday night Tom (from Czech moved to Aussi in ‘91) invited us to a Czech restaurant of a friend. The meal was just awsome! Like at home, as the Czech and suthern German cuisine are pretty similar. Nice roasted Pork in lots of yummi fat with Sauerkraut and knedlÃky (dumplings) aside! Lots of good Czech beer and Vodka afterwards. A really nice international evening with people from Czech, Italy and Germany at our table.
Saturday we had a bbq with cangaroo and lots of aussi wine (out of these 4l cardboard boxes! ). Leaving on tuesday, Eric & Melli left on sunday for another short trip south of Sydney, returning monday evening after getting rid of their buy-back-car. Another nice evening hanging out in our backyard with some more friends of the house.
Leaving for Thailand, they catched their plane that tuesday afternoon. It’s been really nice to see some known faces again, after leaving Germany in october.
subculture in Sydney
Friday I went to a concert of my favorite local band Rastawookie. 9 people on stage, lots of different instruments (brass, big drums, flutes, …) playing an very interesting mix between reggae, ska, latin, and some eastern-european sounds.
The last weekend they had a nice concert in the pub “Empire of Anandale” with a nice afterparty in their hotelroom, where I took two films of slides the night.
This time things were somehow different. The location more central, bigger advertisement all around Sydney and probably as a result of this long queues in front of the pub. (The earlier gigs were smaller in a rather familiar athmosphere)
But even with lots of people not really connected to that scene (lots of overdressed girls!) the party lasted till two or three in the morning.
A view days ago, Seani, a friend of Madelaine, invited me for some weird funny movie at an really interesting venue. It looked like an old storage building, with a huge archive of movies and some chairs arranged like in a cinema. The movie was pretty weird, about some conspiracy in the american upperclass. Seemed more like a good laugh to me. But the people were really nice, and asked us if we wanted coffe or tea while watching the movie.
There are so many small nice things to discover in Sydney!