Thai Food And A Dirty Selfie

On Friday, my friend Maria and I sacrificed yet another perfectly good working day on the altar of freelance rebellion. We went AWOL in Madrid, which entailed some glorious food, a thought-provoking exhibition of photographs taken in 1960’s Barcelona by the legendary Eugeni Forcano, and a peruse of the latest scriptures laid out in The Temple (aka Casa Del Libro, a massive bookshop).

Let’s ogle the food. (I could eat it all over again right now…!) Maria chose a Thai restaurant called Thaidy, where we had a great three-course lunch for a mere €12.50 each.

The basil and chilli beef was seriously hot – but that’s what we asked for, and we loved it! The green curry had just a tad too much salt, but it was still enjoyable.

The starters – fresh and tasty 🙂

Those doors are in desperate need of a good clean! As are my own windows at home… erm…

Fürstenfeld Abbey… and more CAKE!

Fürstenfeldbruck, where I was born when bushy beards and flouncy flares were in fashion all at the same time, has its small town charms, but it’s definitely not a tourist town. There’s nothing to see. Except for this: Fürstenfeld Abbey.

The story, served up in twitterian brevity: In 1256, some Bavarian Duke executed his wife for adultery. Then it turned out she didn’t do it. Oooops. Too late to fix it with flowers, so he built a massive monastery instead.

Usually, the portals to the Abbey’s church are shut, or they only let you in as far as the iron-wrought interior gates, but, much to my delight, this time, the church was open to all. As you’ll see, it’s really quite… overwhelming. There’s not a square inch that hasn’t got stucco/gold leaf/a fat angel clinging to it.

The BEST thing about this place, though, is the restaurant. The food is (and always has been) absolutely fabulous, and it’s very reasonably priced.

And this was my lunch:

Delicious veal rissoles smothered in pepper sauce with spätzle (tiny flour ‘dumplings’ that are kind of like pasta). It was really quite picante, and I loved every bite!

Zwetschgendatschi – very traditional and seasonal. The plums are quartered and arranged on a yeast dough base, which isn’t actually sweet, and which really brings out the flavour of the fruit.

If you’d like to see a handful of pictures of my birth town, click here. There’s ice cream! 😉

 

 

 

Dachau Palace Gardens… and CAKE!

I’ve already prepared you in the last post that the objective of our family trip to Dachau a couple of weekends ago had less to do with enjoying the (unashamedly pretty) historic town, and everything to do with gluttony.

Dachau Palace, which overlooks the town, harbours a cracking café that attracts audiences from far and wide with the most delectable cakes imaginable.

First though, let’s take a quick stroll through the beautiful palace gardens, resplendent not only with magnificent flowers, but also laden with sumptuous fruit at this time of year.

This wedding cake was being wheeled about when we arrived at the café. Afterwards, as we strolled through the town centre, we spotted a wedding party emerging from the local church. For all appearances, the groom was a local boy, and the bride Chinese. The cake, which is quite obviously theirs, seems to confirm this 🙂

One of the ‘wedding tables’

Unfortunately, cakes never photograph well through the glass display counters, and these pics are the only ones that turned out (sort of) OK. There were so many more delicious creations… sigh.

Our Bavarian Town Quest Continues: Dachau

Dachau is a beautiful Bavarian town with cobbled streets and pretty houses. It’s only a 15 minute drive from my village along scenic country roads, and last Saturday afternoon, bro took me and our mum there for a little outing. I hadn’t been to Dachau in absolutely ages!

I love that window for being so typically Bavarian in a town that’s not particularly touristy. But the comma in that notice (“Free beer tomorrow”), which totally shouldn’t be there, irks me! I am a stickler…

“Beware of the CONSCIENTIOUS dog”.

 

The fair was in town 🙂

Now, the real reason for the Dachau trip was to get stuck into some good cake… more on that in the next post 🙂

Bavarian August Flowers

I have to admit it. Last year, I went a bit crazy with flower photos. This year, I tried really hard to contain myself. But now my resolve is crumbling… Bavaria is all lush and green and in full bloom this month, and now that I’m back in dry-as-a-crisp Toledo, I feel an overwhelming compulsion to drape some cheery blossoms over my blog…

OK… not technically flowers… but pretty and fluffy 🙂

 

 Phew, I feel a lot better already 🙂

Addictions, Great and Small

Let me present to you the vending machine facilities of my tiny Bavarian village:

A cigarette dispenser and a gumball machine

I was so surprised to still find them there, side by side, after almost four decades(!). I’m especially tickled by the gumball machine – it’s seemingly the very same one I cranked my plastic rings and other choking hazards out of in the 70’s. Oh, happy childhood memories… Luckily, I never graduated to its sinister big brother 😉

 

The Last Bavarian Breakfast…

I’ve left Bavaria’s green meadows and mossy woods behind and I’m back in the furnace that is Toledo. And it’s not a second too early to start reminiscing about the food… I won’t be having this for brekkie tomorrow, that much I know 😦

OK… technically, this was Monday’s breakfast (with my mum and aunt) in a lovely restaurant. It’s just that this morning’s bread and cheese affair before setting off to the airport wasn’t very exciting 😉

Monday afternoon, once breakfast had subsided a bit, I had this with my friend Martina…VOLCANO ICE CREAM!

Ooooooh, ice cream… Spain is crap at ice cream, did I mention that?! Sigh.

Rainy Regensburg. And Skewered Sausages.

Last Wednesday, mum and I took a trip to Regensburg, another very old and splendid Bavarian town. Things didn’t look very promising when we set off. According to the weather forecast, Regensburg would live up to its name: “Regen” means “rain” in German. (Regen is also the name of a river that flows through the town, which is how it got its name).

In the end, the weather wasn’t too bad, although you’ll notice a distinct lack of blue sky in the photos.

The flowers held up pretty well

Perfect weather for snails 🙂

…and man-eating fish

Time for a food break 🙂 Question: What do you do when you can’t decide which kind of sausage to have..?

Answer: You order them ALL! On a skewer, so they can’t get away.

 

“Sauerbraten” – Beef (which has been marinated overnight), potato dumplings and red cabbage. It’s a traditional Bavarian dish, and this incarnation was just PERFECT.

 

A pretty café

Love the daisies 🙂

 

Regensburg’s Gothic Cathedral is world famous. You can’t miss the spires poking out from behind the town houses. I didn’t like it much from the inside, far too dark and dingy, although the painted glass windows are amazing, admittedly.

These next few pictures are from the Church of St Emmeram, which looks fairly unassuming from the outside.

From the inside, however…!

Painted wooden ceiling, which came out very dark, so I lightened it and enhanced the colours slightly.

Acupuncture – already popular in the dark ages…

OK, that’s it.

Wait… something’s missing… what could that be…? Oh oh, I remember – CAKE!

Poppy seed strudel!!!
Actually, I scoffed that before we ever got to Regensburg. Due to a 5-minute delay in our train connection, we saw our train pull out of the station just as we arrived. So we consoled ourselves with coffee & cake while waiting for the next one 🙂

I Know I’m In Germany When It’s…VERBOTEN!

We were on another one of our Bavarian city tours yesterday (in Regensburg, more about that in a later post), when my Mum spotted this notice on a door:

“The depositing of free newspapers and advertising in front of the door or the letter boxes is forbidden.
Violations will be prosecuted! The administrator”

But…

Ha 😉

And no, the intrepid violators weren’t the two of us, in case you were wondering…

I’m linking this to travelwithintent’s Look Up, Look Down photo challenge, which, coincidentally, is all about signs this week 🙂

 

The Day Of The Six Cakes

After our hearty lunch yesterday (Chinese, if anyone’s interested), my brother and I were pondering where to go for dessert. I made a suggestion, but the place turned out to be closed. Just as my face reached its maximum disappointment crumple, bro remembered a café in a neighboring village, called “Die Tortenfee”, which would translate as “The (Cream) Cake Fairy”. As caff names go, this was highly promising!

We got there, it was open (HURRAAAH!), and we stood, mesmerised, in front of the display. For an eternity. Drooling. Deliberating. Almost having an argument. Until the lady behind the counter (she must have been the Cake Fairy herself!) told us that instead of choosing one slice each, we could choose a selection of three half-slices. The “half slices” turned out to be very generous, so we effectively ended up with six slices of cake between the two of us.

 

MINE, MINE and also MINE: Rhubarb crumble, cheese apple, poppy seed

Bro had: poppy seed, some sponge-chocolate-cream layered thing, and the most deliciously moist chocolate cake ever created

Although the “African” theme of the place was a bit puzzling (you’ve got to try to be “different”, I suppose), I loved the cheery colourfulness of it all.