The question of disappointment -- swiss quality (or taste?) never disappoints you

I like to think of myself as an adventurous person, who takes on the challenge, moves to different countries, builds her life from scratch several times and not lastly tries out local food.
In reality though although I do not mind being disappointed in places or taking on the challenge that comes with moving and building a life, I do mind being disappointed with food. And here we are again, at my favorite topic. 
While living in the Netherlands, I developed the custom of saying no to try out new cakes, cookies, or anything food related really. The truth is that most of the food in the Netherlands disappointed me and let me with a huge craving for a flavorful food. I could be happy with an ordinary street food that had actually had some taste. I love waffles but even those disappointed me as I hate the ones that comes with the sugar crumbs..instead I love the Belgian waffle that you cannot actually get in the Netherlands. There was one thing that left me a huge smile on my face every single time and I could rely on: olibollen of course....without sugar but with home made jam. The bad part was that you could only get it around Christmas. During the rest of the year, when I saw something I thought it might worth trying out, I mostly did not take the risk and just said that it would leave me disappointed me anyway, so why to risk it. And even with that, I did take the risk once in a while and guess what? I got disappointed.

But now I am in a different country, which is famous for its superior quality. No matter what you buy, food or something else, it supposed to be the best. Swiss people in general mostly buy Swiss products because they truly believe in the superiority of quality plus they think why would they give money to any foreign companies.

But back to food.Obviously, the selection of food is very different from the one you can get in the Netherlands. It has Swiss, German, French and Italian influence combined with Swiss quality. I love it! Not only the fact that until that point I was disappointed only once but the variety is huge and I need to eat my way through of it.
My rule when visiting a new country is try out a new small piece of food every time I go to the supermarket. When living in a new country it's a bit different obviously because you have more time to go through the selection of a supermarket.
My other rule what one should consider is when to relocate to a foreign country..I would say when one has bought/tried out basically all kinds of food available in a supermarket that's a sign of considering moving to another country.
I enjoy living here and I am hoping for having many years to achieve this.

Filled pumpkins

And what happened to the pumpkins we bought?

Well, we had an amazingly nice dinner.

There are hundreds of ways to prepare a filled pumpkin and most of the times I do not bother with filling them. I just peel them, slice them into wedges and cover them some kind of filling. This time however, since we got relatively small pumpkins instead of a huge one, I decided to take the center out and fill them individually. 

Now, there is no specific recipe for this since I just used up some left over vegetables.
For these three pumpkins I pre-cooked a quarter cup of rice with a pinch of salt, pepper and about a teaspoon of dill.
I cut a couple of carrots into small cubes and added it to the pre-cooked rice. To make it a little bit juicer, I added some creme fraiche to the mixture and to the top. After removing the centre, I just scooped the mixture in, placed them into a pan, cover it and baked them for about 1,5  hours. I also poured a little bit of water in the pan before covering just to make sure the pumpkins get cooked.

You can add different vegetables to the mixture such as zucchini, tomato, aubergine, broccoli and use different spices you like just to spice it up a little bit. In my case, I was completely happy with my simple flavours as this kind of pumpkin has a very nice chestnut flavor.

Cheers to the flavors of fall!

One of our first real Swiss experiences

Fall is already here and apparently it means pumpkins in Switzerland. I mean a LOT of pumpkins. Newspapers and magazines are full of articles about how/where to pick up pumpkins as well as a ton of recipes how to prepare them.
So last weekend we visited a Pumpkin Festival (Kürbis Festival) in Rothenburg close to Lucerne.
The farm is huge with a lot of animals, fruits and vegetables. Now it's the season of pumpkins and apples.
















You can not only check out the hundreds of different kind of pumpkins an buy whichever you want, but you can also taste the home made pumpkin cake and soup along with the sausages the family also prepares there. It was great!


















Kids (strictly with parents) can go around in a labyrinth and answer several questions about animals and veggies. We also got into the labyrinth mainly because this was the place where you could pick some apples but to be honest, after the 10th questions I lost my enthusiasm and just wanted to get out. Unfortunately though you have to go through the whole labyrinth of almost 2 km because you cannot just get out. Oh well, I guess I am not a kid anymore..

Kaiserschmarrn - pancake in the Austrian/German way

My diet seems to be changing since I moved to Switzerland, which means slightly more meat (still on the low side though), pastries (strictly on the weekends -- hence the name of the blog) and a huge variety of food that not only the country offers but the surrounding ones too. Being in Switzerland means that you have easy access to an authentic French baguette on the other side of the border as well as an Italian pasta or a German schnitzel (a certain kind of meat coated with flour, egg and breadcrumbs). That's simply Paradise.

The other day I was craving for something, well, not so proper dinner. Something like a dessert but still can be eaten as a dinner. And then, the German/Austrian influence kicked in so I made torn pancakes aka Kaiserschmarrn. 

Pour the milk in a pot, add the sugar and just before it boils add the semolina. Stir constantly until the mixture starts boiling again. Set it aside when it's done. 

Separate the egg yolks and egg whites and put them in medium bowls. Beat the egg whites with the salt until firm and set aside. Beat the egg yolks until it starts turning into light yellow.

Mix the beaten egg yolks in the semolina mixture and add the raisins/sultanas if you wish. Whisk the 1/3 firm egg whites into the mixture to lighten it up then fold in the rest. 

Heat a slightly greased frying pan and add the mixture. Stir occasionally until it turns light brownish. 

Pre-heat oven to 200C. Scoop the slightly baked mixture into a pan. Stir it occasionally with a wooden spoon until it is baked. 

Serve it with jam or fruit compote. 

Adaptad from here:

300 g semolina

4,5 dl milk

3 eggs

2 tablespoon cane sugar

pinch of salt

20 g butter for greasing

optional: raisins or sultanas

jam or fruit compote 

Wage for everyone even without working?

I had a schedule... a very well edited and sat up schedule for my next post, including adventures about our weekend and here I am changing it.
What's the reason? Well, millions of Rappens happened. To be precise 15 tonnes of Rappens. If you still do not get it, do not worry, it's hard to believe anyway.
So here is the story:
There is a group (not that small actually) that wants the government to introduce a wage for every single person. That's not the usual minimum wage initiative which would guarantee everyone a minimum amount to earn but rather getting a sum for 'just' living in Switzerland. Now, this group poured those coins onto the streets for raising attention to the initiative. If you are interested in the long version of the story, check this out

Personally, I think it's a bad idea. In fact, a very bad one. I do not mean the pouring coins onto the streets and picking some up part because hey, you can get lucky once in a while but paying people just because they live in a certain country? That's a very bad idea. I am not only talking about the direct effects that would drive an extra pressure on immigration, which is already a sensitive topic in the country but about the long term effects as well including the impact of raising purchasing power or prices of goods. And that's only the beginning.
Those who live in the Netherlands know what I am talking about. I do not think that's the way it should go. Especially because it does not only mean paying a certain sum of money to every single person (who is out of work) but it's bigger than that. It's about the shift in how a country sees itself and its future. I would rather work for the money than just getting it but again, I might be the crazy one here.

The initiative has been introduced, now it's up to the Swiss citizens to decide (more on the reason why it's up to them and not politicians, coming soon). Let's see what happens.

The view

Today has been rainy and cloudy but it seems the weather is clearing up slightly and the mountains are starting to show themselves.

And here is one about the countryside close to our home.

A month and a day

As I marked the one month anniversary of being in Switzerland yesterday, it made me think what has happened since I got here. Besides the constant furniture shopping and finding my way in my neighborhood, I have seen many exciting things actually and experiencing something new almost every day. This include experiencing the Swiss Air Force so called daily 'activity', realizing although I thought I know a lot about recycling there is room for improvement, getting familiar with shopping outside the country which includes memorizing the import tax & VAT regulations and rediscovering one guilty pleasure.

Hello there!

Welcome to my blog!

Today is exactly the 4th week of me being in Switzerland and I thought that starting a blog would be a good idea to mark the first month anniversary.
I have been thinking for a while what to call my blog (this version is the final hopefully) and what to blog about exactly. I had too many ideas and wanted to get everything under one blog which obviously would not work plus could not decide on how personal this one should be. As this is an open blog and will hit the internet allowing anyone and everyone to read it, I would prefer to keep it less personal but more informative.
So what you can expect here are stories, tricks & tips & info about living in Switzerland, places we visit, recipes I might test and the rest will be figured out on the way.
Enjoy!