Char: The Only Seasoning Added Through the bottom of the Pot

It's been a rough week in the kitchen. This is not meant to be a complaint, just a statement of fact. When we moved in here, roughly five weeks ago, we were told that the kitchen was brand new. Nice. But everything takes some getting used to.

The microwave takes about 30 seconds just to soften butter. In my experience, five or so seconds does it and that leaves me scrambling to shut it off before I have a pool of butter covering the carousel. It takes a good five minutes to boil a cup of water. I now just use the stove top. The stove top has opposite problem as the microwave. Put on full hot, I'm sure these burners could melt steel girders. I'm not often a very patient cook. If I must bring something to a boil I do so in as little time as possible. I fill the pot with water or whatever, put the burner on high and wait to turn it down after it has reached a boiling point. I did this with some soup last week. Within three or so minutes it just wasn't smelling right in the kitchen. I stirred the soup. Everything not liquid had been welded to the bottom of the pot. I quickly picked up the pot. A small flame appeared underneath said pot. I didn't exactly panic; nor did I think clearly. "New kitchen" I thought. "Don't put it on the counter." For that voice in my head, I blame my mother. Sorry, mom. Probably not your fault, but I don't want this to be my fault. Anyway, there sat the new cutting board. The new plastic cutting board. I sat the overheated pot on the plastic cutting board. It slid. "What the . . . ?" Oh . . . (Two plus two . . .)

So now we have this nice unusable soup pot that has a good chunk of the cutting board  stuck to its bottom.

Think, Laura, think! How can you get the plastic off so you can use the pot?

Something else that has taken some getting used to in this kitchen is the temperature of the hot water from the faucet. I don't have a thermometer, but I would not be surprised if it is on the verge of the boiling point. This thrills me. In Tashkent we had to wait a few minutes for very warm water to eventually emerge. I remember catching my housekeeper drinking out of one of our glasses and, instead of washing it, simply rinsing it and putting it back on the shelf. I told her that she needed to use hot water and soap and wash it before putting it back. She turned on the water then stood there looking at the ceiling as she waited (and waited) for hot water.

Here in Munich we have extremely hot water within seconds of turning it on. Nice. Maybe it's hot enough to melt off the plastic or, at least, soften it so I can scrape it off. Nope. And I have the blisters to prove it.

Back to the soup. The apartment stunk with the smell of charred potato leek soup. We opened up every window and the hall door to alleviate the stench. Thank God the neighbors didn't complain. I told Douglas that he didn't have to eat any of this soup. I would consider it my penance for not thinking more rationally. I threw in some very salty spices I got in Uzbekistan that pretty well masked the char flavor so I could get it down a bowl at a time. Why didn't I just throw it out? After all that work? And I'm too cheap.

Which brings me to the back story of this entire saga. The first round of potato leek soup I made, weeks earlier, turned out perfectly, though I had to cut everything by hand since we no longer had a food processor. After that, we went out and bought a food processor that works with European electric current. Great. First thing the morning of this kitchen saga, I couldn't figure out how to put the thing together. I read the instructions and followed them as best I could. The wand, which is supposed to attach to the shaft leading to the blade, was a different size and wouldn't attach. I looked at the pictures, read, looked at the pictures, looked at the wand, the shaft, but it wouldn't fit. I was ready to make soup and did not want to spend another hour cutting potatoes and leeks by hand when I had a brand new food processor sitting before me. I decided to wait for Douglas to come home for lunch and get him to help me figure it out. He put it together before he went back to work. Unbeknownst to me and unmentioned in the instructions is the fact that the wand comes apart. Okay. After he left, I went to work.

Now, there are two or three parts to this food processor that, in the sketches, look somewhat alike. I grabbed the wrong part - the ice shaver. It doesn't work with potatoes. Don't even try it.  The potatoes stuck to the blades. A few small pieces fell through, forced through in the poor processor's efforts to shave a potato. I realized it would be faster to cut them by hand. But I am stubborn sometimes. I refused. I waited for Douglas to get done with work and help me yet again. We were supposed to have the soup that night for dinner. I felt like the soup Nazi, "No soup for you!"

It was hard to eat anything with that stench in the air, but we both choked down a bowl that night just to get rid of the stuff. I know, we could have thrown it away. I know, I know . . .

A few days later was Doug's birthday. He turned 50! I wanted to make a Red Velvet cake for him. Finding some of the ingredients using German was difficult. "Shortening", "Non-stick spray" and "food coloring" are not in my German dictionary. Oh, the charades it took to get these items . . . Thank God for patient, easily amused grocers. The cake turned out okay, but there were some problems. What passes for red food coloring here does not turn food red. For some reason, the cream cheese icing liquefied and barely stuck to the cake. It would have worked well drizzled over a bundt cake, but this was a Waldorf Cake! It looked like an old man's head: thinner here, thicker there. (Not exactly what you want on a 50 year old man's birthday cake.)

Doug's birthday cake. The flowers in the background were one of his gifts. They dried beautifully and we still have them.