How to make Chewy Chocolate Chip cookies in Germany

It's not my habit to blog about anything useful.  But today the weather sucks and my mind will not stop or shut up with the depressing self critical thoughts.  The best way not to fall into a black hole is to do something useful.  I'm going to make some cookies.  Cookies that can not be bought in the store in Germany.  Yes, you can buy chocolate chip cookies here but they will always be hard as rocks.  I probably blogged about cookies a few years ago but whatever.

You will need something from America: alcohol based pure vanilla extract.  I have not been able to find it in any German stores.  If you don't have it you can make some.   Also American measuring spoons and cups or a good head for conversions.

You will also need some special things from stores in Germany.  Real chewy chocolate chip cookies have to be made with brown sugar.  You can only buy raw sugar in Germany.  It's called 'brown sugar' which is confusing but it's not the same thing.  Since you can't buy brown sugar it has to be made.  This is easy, brown sugar is just white sugar mixed with molasses.  I found mine at a health food store in Eutin.

'Melasse' in German

I add about one table spoon of molasses for each cup of sugar.  Voilà, brown sugar.

I used this recipe from allrecipes.com.  It calls for baking soda.  Baking soda is sold at drug stores in Germany and looks like this.

And of course, chocolate chips.  I got mine from Sky for €.99 per bag.  This recipe calls for two cups of chocolate chips.  That equals about three bags.

Ok, so that covers all the ingredients!  Time to make cookies.  First I gave my little helper a spoon to play with.

 Follow recipe exactly.

 Blah blah blah...

Check on baby.

 Blah, blah, blah.

And now possibly the most important step.  DO NOT BAKE!  The cookie dough has to be refrigerated for several hours or the cookies will be flat and not very chewy. 

 

Into the fridge it goes for several hours.

 to be continued....

Country living vs. city living

Today I when I woke up I knew I had to get out of here.  I love Malente, I really do.  It's beautiful in the Summer but it's so small.  Only a little bigger than a village.  Sophie gets bored too.  Bored babies are cranky little bundles of trouble.  Before 10:00 a.m. she'd already gotten bored of the living room and moved to pulling books off the shelves and note cards off the desk in the extra room.  When that got boring she moved to the kitchen and started playing with the washing machine and taking all the pots out of the cupboard.  I'm not one to sit around while my apartment is destroyed and I lose my mind, not when there are friends to meet and Starbucks to drink.

We packed up the car and headed off to Hamburg.  Lovely beautiful blue sky Hamburg.  It was a great day.   We parked under the library and then headed downtown, stopping by Karstadt to get concealer and a pair of cheap sunglasses.  Then off to the Pflanzen und Blomen park to meet up with some friends, picking up a yummy frappuccino and blueberry muffin along the way.  Pflanzen und Blomen is my favorite park in Hamburg because they have the best flowers and an intricate fountains.  There is a little play ground especially for babies with baby sized slides and gyms.

After all our fun was over and I was walking back to our car I felt wonderful.  It was good to be in the city surrounded by people.  Seeing what people were wearing and doing and buying and eating.  I had an epiphany that I might not be the kind of person who really loves country living.  Not when there are great zoos and parks and bits of green all around like in Hamburg.  Sure the fresh air is nice and we have lakes and the beach.  I fully intend on making the most of everything this Summer.  But if someone told me I could move to the city?  I wouldn't think twice.  I need something more than a tiny village can give me.  And don't get me started on how much easier it is to make friends in the city.  After Malente no more rural areas for this woman.  I'm definitely an urban person. 

German words that will confuse you

Once when my mom was visiting way back when I was pregnant I wasn't feeling well.  Since she is a sweet caring mom she went to the restaurant next door and got me a salad.  Now my mom doesn't know any German so I told her to get a kleine Salat or small salad.  She must have forgotten and asked them for a garden salad instead.  Her reasoning being everyone in the world knows what a garden salad is.  Everyone except for people who don't speak English and live outside the US.  What she came home with was a Gurken Salat or cucumber salad, nothing like a garden salad.  The restaurant people were really nice and gave her a little garden salad when she took it back.  As English speakers it can be easy to be tricked by lots of German words that sound like English but have completely different meanings.  A lot of these words are false cognates, or False Friends as language teachers call them.  They seem friendly and familiar but really they are not.

So here we go, my favorite False Friends, German words that will confuse you. (With pictures!)  Credit- all images are borrowed from Google images.

Thunfisch Salat- sounds like tuna salad, right?  I saw this on the menu the first time I visited my now husband in Germany.  This is what the waiter actually brought me-

literally a salad with canned tuna on top

You can also get canned tuna pizza if that's your thing. 

Pepperoni- sounds like the greasy cured sausage from Italy but is really a spicy little florescent green pepper.  German translation- Salami.

It's good to know which one of these you want on your pizza.

Rezept- kind of sounds like receipt or recipe but is actually the German word for a prescription AND the word for recipe.  I guess that makes it a cognate and a false cognate.  In the North Germans say Kassenbon for receipt.

Credit- in German this means a loan, like you get from the bank.  This use to confuse my German students so much.

Chef- sounds like the guy who cooks your food but is actually the boss.  Also gets confused a lot with the English word chief.

That's a police chief, because using one of the other chiefs kind of felt like it might be a little bit racist.  When I'm unsure I err on the side of caution.

Bekommen- sounds like become but really mean 'to receive'.  'Ich bekomme eine Kaffee.' doesn't mean you turned into a cup of coffee but it will always sound funny to me.

 

Fabrik- sounds like fabric but really means factory.  The other stuff is called Stoff.

 Gift- means poison.  In German it's Geschenk but oh it's interesting when you mix them up.

  
Handy- is the English appropriated German word for mobile phone.  A lot of Germans really think English speakers call their mobiles handys.  To them it makes perfect sense because a mobile is handy!   But we would never do that because it sounds stupid.  

Hamburger- People who live in Hamburg and also hamburgers.

Pension- this is a small hotel or guest house.  We have them all over Malente.  The word for retirement in German is Rente which sounds like rent but the German word for that is Miete.

Rat- this means advice but little furry animal is a Ratte which sounds almost the same.  How many lawyer jokes can you get out of that?

just so you know I don't have a problem with rats or lawyers

Roman- the word for novel in German also used to mean the fiction section in a book store.

Bücher- this actually isn't a false cognate but I thought it meant butcher the first time I came to Germany.

See- der See means lake and die See means ocean or sea.  I think.  Or is it the other way around? 

Of course there are a whole bunch more but those are my personal favorites.  Did I miss any good ones?  Let me know.  No one spell checked my German so forgive me if I made any errors.  What can I say?  It was quite late in the day when I was inspired to write this.

Tschüss! (pronounced kind of like cheers with a 't' and means goodbye :) 

How to get a good haircut in Germany

I have long dark curly hair.  It's thick and frizzy and tends to turn brassy orange when highlighted.  I'm used to trying to tame it into something that's culturally acceptable with the least possible effort.  Now that I have Sophie I have about half the time I used to have to get ready in the morning. 

In December I got a great haircut in the States.  It costs an arm and a leg but whatever.  I went to the same stylists I had before moving to Germany.  She looked at my hair and asked me where I'd been getting it cut.  I told her Germany and she asked if I'd been going to the European version of Great Clips (ouch).  She worked her magic, took off two inches and fixed some serious problems with the way my hair had been cut.  When I got back to Germany I put off getting a trim.  I was haunted by her European Great Clips comment.  But I appreciated her honesty.  Obviously I was going to have to find a better stylists, but how?  Naturally I put it off for five months.  Five months is a long time to go without a haircut.  Especially if your hair is long and grows fast. 

How can you tell if your hair is too long?  Here are some helpful hints:

- your daughter does nothing but pull your hair day and night
- you accidentally dip your hair in your coffee in the morning
- you accidentally razor the tips off while shaving your legs
- your accidentally dip your hair in your ketchup while eating fries
- your ponytail looks exactly like a pony's tail
- you wear it up or pulled back all the time
- your roots have grown out some much you're ombre
- your hair poses a strangulation risk while co sleeping
- you dread washing, blow drying and styling days
- you shudder when looking at your ends in sunlight

Anyway, I go through cycles of growing my hair out really long, getting sick of it, cutting it and then growing it out super long again.  It was time for a cut.

I asked friends and got a recommendation for a salon with English speaking stylists.  I'd been going to only German speaking stylists for years.  Explaining what I want in German never seems to work out.  Maybe the layers are good but the cut is off or the cut is ok but the color is too warm.  I was excited to try a place where I could speak English.

Not only did I get a great cut and color but everyone at the salon was really nice and friendly.  My hair is a much more manageable length and the color is good.  Ok, the color is a teensie bit too warm but the stylist knew that and offered to fix it but I didn't really have time. Still, I will definitely go back.

Looks like May is my lucky month.