I’m throwing a party on Saturday to celebrate my citizenship. Sarah baked these in preparation for the festivity. They are delicious, and probably in violation of Luxembourg’s flag code. Gahhhh cooooookie nom nom nom.
food
Sarah’s week in the mountains
Wanna see some great pictures of mountains, towns and food in France? Visit my girlfriend’s blog. Every picture looks like it was taken on the planet Naboo or snatched from a James Bond movie. Sadly, she hasn’t met Queen Amidala or Daniel Craig … at least to my knowledge.
Here’s the link: A week in the mountains.
More than nice: 3. Eating in Nice
I miss Sarah, but I think I’m more jealous that she’s gorging on all this fine French cuisine without me. Here’s the third entry in a series of blogs she’s written about her stay in Nice, France. Apparently the people there are pretty nice, if you know what I mean.
BA DUM CHING.
She writes about the food, too. Visit her WordPress blog:
More than nice: 3. Eating in Nice.
Meanwhile, I’m going on a bike ride with friends to eat Buffalo wings at Wings, Etc. in Crystal Lake, Ill. GOD BLESS AMURICA!
My Luxembourg Feast: A Meal Fit For Ron Swanson
Good news, errbody: Luxembourgers apparenly love putting bacon on their food.
Someone’s happy.
Actually, I would have to vet that with a true Luxembourger. But of the five recipes I chose for dinner, three required decent portions of bacon.
I changed the lineup of dishes to omit the potato with wine and cheese casserole and allow for a zucchini pasta.
To initiate the cultural stuffing-of-the-faces, dad played Luxembourg’s national anthem, which either sounds like a piece in the repertoire of the Nuremberg Rallies or an American university’s alma mater.
First on the menu: Bouneschlupp, or Green Bean Soup. (Recipe courtesy of Sasha Martin at Global Table Adventure)
Soup in summer isn’t the best idea, but this was an exception.
Bouneschlupp, or at least the version I made, is soup with onions, celery, green beans, leek and potatoes. To add a bit of protein and taste to the vegetables, the soup is topped with bits of bacon and slices of mettwurst or German sausage. I found neither type of sausage at Joe Caputo’s, so I substituted it with Polish sausage.
The celery was a substitute for something called celeriac. “What the f@#$,” I said as I read the recipe, “is that!?”
I don’t like eating things that look like Mandrake roots or that might’ve swum around the swamps of Dagobah.
I opted to stick with the familiar celery.
Numero duos on the Lux menu? Sauerkraut patties, which were probably my favorite.
Yum.
The Sauerkraut patties have all sorts of goodies inside, the best of which include bacon, Sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. For the full recipe, visit Yummly.com and checkout Chef Bluemoon Downunder’s page of ingredients.
After the soup and the potato, I thought incorporating a sweeter dish might keep the family’s taste buds enticed and arteries clogged. So I made fried bananas soaked in white wine and honey and sprinkled with raw almond slices.
These were a treat. The bananas softened to the texture of Gerber’s banana baby food. It was a nice mid-meal dessert dish, which I found on the website that helped me generate the list of Luxembourg dishes: worldcook.net. Here’s the fried banana recipe.
By this point in the food orgy, everyone’s guts were already bursting, and I hadn’t even introduced the next two dishes: pasta and, of course, dessert.
For the pasta, I made penne pasta with bacon, mushrooms, zucchini and a cream and Parmesan cheese sauce.
Let’s get a close up on that bacon.
Recipe also courtesy of worldcook.net
Much better.
Although this idea deviates from the original Luxembourg recipe, this pasta would be great with some non-bacon meat, such as chicken or crab. The sauce, though homemade, was super easy to create and better than anything out of a can. If I made it again, I would alter the recipe to thicken the sauce.
If my family wasn’t already feeling like a bunch of fatties, the last dish on the list would certainly require belt unbuckling and collective promises to drive to the gym later.
As a dessert, I made Pinot Noir Chocolate Cake, using Ghirardelli’s 70 percent extra bittersweet baking cacao and some cheap-ass Pinot Noir from CostCo’s.
Hello, diabetes! Thanks to Allison Inn & Spa JORY for the recipe.
My mom and I put the creamy cake mix into small, Pyrex-glass cups that could stand the 350-degree heat required to bake the dessert. The cake comes out like chocolate mousse, but the bittersweet chocolate made it taste dry at the same time it felt moist. With a scoop of vanilla ice cream, some raspberries, powdered sugar and a tall glass of milk, this dessert is the perfect way to end a Luxembourg meal and also gain 10 pounds.
To negate the Luxembourgish calories added to my waistline, I drove to the gym and walked on the treadmill for at least an hour while reading Do Not Ask What Good We Do, a book that details the plethora of reasons why the 112th Congress is a friggin’ mess.
Thanks to madre for expediting the vegetable-slicing, bacon-frying and Polish sausage-making processes.
Äddi!
Smokin’ a Dominican Churchill and preparin’ a Luxembourg feast
Did you know Mike Ditka has his own line of cigars? I didn’t until I purchased one of Da Coach’s stogies at Arlington Park Race Track in Arlington Heights, Ill. Examining the names of the cigars labeled on the the pull-out shelves in the fancy, glass-door cabinet of the race track’s gift ship, I had no friggin’ clue about which cigar I should choose. I saw “Churchill,” so I immediately decided that puffing smoke like my favorite brandy-imbibing prime minister and making World War II references would be a delightful way to spend my afternoon with friends.
“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender … for if we do, our future generations will not be able to enjoy great television shows such as Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Downton Abbey.” – Winston Churchill
The gift store gave me a complimentary pack of wood matches and a 2008 Kentucky Derby commemorative glass. Why? I’m not sure; there must have been a lot left over, and I guess the women at the counter felt like rewarding cigar-smoking track patrons. After the cashier handed me my bag of goodies, she managed to bang her head on the cash register. I don’t know how she managed to pull off that one, but she was rubbing her head as Mo and I walked out of the shop.
I only made one bet. I put down $2. I won nothing. Gambling is bad. Why? There is no guarantee that one will get a return on his or her investment. With cigars and $2 Miller Lites from the frugal person’s tent away from the expensive bars near the Grandstand, the return on investment is guaranteed: dizziness and some slurred words. I like those odds much better.
Oh, yes, I know … I’ve deviated again from the main topic of this blog. AND I HAVEN’T EVEN BEGUN WITH THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, which, by the way, everyone should see.
I will refrain. But I will shamelessly post a picture of Anne Hathaway.
Anne, you can break into my house and steal my mother’s pearls anytime.
Anyway, back to Luxembourgish business.
I keep procrastinating on my next stage in the process to obtain Luxembourg dual-citizenship. But I’m going to start filling out records-request forms so that I can compile a nice stack of papers to hand to those bastards at the Cook County office in Chicago.
“Don’t give me that smirk,” I’ll snap at those testy bureaucrats in their cushy government jobs. “I will become a state senator just to make sure your pensions are OBLITERATED.”
I have an unreasonable disdain for state and local bureaucracy. I think I need some therapy. (I don’t mean it. I worked for a federal bureaucracy one summer, and the employees actually ran things amazingly smoothly and had unyielding passion for their work.)
In the meantime, I’m planning a Sunday dinner with Luxembourgish dishes. I found a website, worldcook.net, that lists several delectable-sounding dishes. As part of my smorgasbord, I will prepare:
- Fried banana with almonds
- Sauerkraut patties
- Potatoes with wine and cheese
- Bouneschlupp
- Pinot Noir cake
- One big jug of Riesling to wash it all down
I will post pictures of each dish and link to the recipes. These recipes must be legit if all the measurements are in grams. However, this is a royal pain in the arse for an American. But if I’m to become a Luxembourger, I need to understand the metric system.
Luxembourgers of the WordPress world: do you suggest any other traditional dishes?
Äddi!
The Wannabe Luxembourger 
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