I know I have much more exciting things to write about, but I’m frustrated at how the simple task of cooking potatoes caused a bad mood, a burnt thumb and an argument. All I wanted to do was make a potato salad. All Veronika wanted to do was help. It was all downhill from there. Just as carrots and celery were a cause of difficulty in my parent’s relationship, so here we had a culture war over potatoes!!!
Cooking potatoes is easy, especially for potato salad. 1) peal the potatoes 2) cut them up 3) boil them in water 4) drain and let cool. What could be simpler? Veronika loves her pressure cooker. It seems like a complicated scary machine to me, but she cooks vegetables quickly in them and is quite an evangelist for it. Sometimes I feel stupid for not know the “simple” way of doing things, but sometimes I just like the way I’m familiar with. I’m almost always up for learning something new, so I decided to cook potatoes her way this time. Who knows, it could really be faster and better and easier and better for the environment like she says. Instead of pealing the potatoes and rinsing them we washed them and still had to peal them later. Instead of leaving the potatoes to do their thing on the stove while getting something else done we watched the pressure cooker so we could turn the heat down at the right time before blowing up the kitchen. Instead of using a vegetable peeler that takes off a clean slice at the skin of a cold potato, we used extra bowls, knives and forks to peal piping hot potatoes by hand. Once I was able to stab a potato with my fork I tried to peal away the skin with my knife pulling it toward my thumb. Either the skin shredded or a significant part of the potato came with the skin. In any case it all stuck to the knife making it a rather useless tool and also to my thumb, which caused a burn. As soon as we sat down to peal Veronika got a phone call so I mostly sad and pealed them by myself. Maybe it’s much faster and easier for Veronika to peal potatoes that way, but it sure took me a long time and made me tense. The ironic thing is that I don’t normally peal my potatoes for salad but I know Veronika doesn’t like potato skins. This was perfect ground to get in a bad mood about how a simple task turned into the morning’s work. It’s a good thing I found it ridiculous that pealing potatoes could put me in a bad mood and managed to laugh at myself. It surely illustrates how much attitude has to do with aptitude. If I wanted to prove that pealing warm potatoes is better I’m sure I could have done better, but because I was sure my way was better I didn’t put myself to the task with abandonment and sure enough I had a terrible time. It did bring up the discussion about being honest about our motives for making suggestions to the other. I often can’t tell if she suggests something because she thinks I’ll like it better or if she has some other reason. If it’s to make me feel better, then of course I want to tell her the way I actually prefer to do things. If it’s for another reason, then I don’t want to always insist on doing what’s best for me! It was a little hard to communicate this in German, but I think we understood each other. She believes firmly in her pressure cooker and saving the environment by using less electricity, but she doesn’t want to tell me I must do it a certain way. A moment after the whole potato disaster we had a similar misunderstanding about a trip into town. It seems logical to me to go shopping after the trip into town. On the way home I’ll buy stuff, put it away, make the potato salad then head off to my friend’s. It seemed logical to Veronika that I’d make the potato salad as much as I could, then drag it along with me while visiting her friend, then go to the store just for what I needed for the salad, then go directly to my friend’s and finish making the salad there instead of eating right away, then do the rest of the shopping some other time. Of course it took a long time to realize this sequence of events. At first it just sounded like many bazaar suggestions with some mysterious reasoning behind it. It turns out this complicated suggestion arose from the desire to save me a trip up our hill (which I’m not even sure it does). I’m getting stronger and can now always bike up the hill so it doesn’t bother me at all. I wish I’d known that was the reason from the beginning and I wish she’d understand that what’s uncomfortable for her is not necessarily for me. I’d rather get all my shopping done once than have to go again. She’d rather not bike up the hill. We’re both too nice to say so directly. In fact, we just baffle each other, but hey, we’re getting there, and it’s nice that we’re both nice even though it causes some complicated confusion.
This didn’t come out nearly as hilarious as I meant it to be, but I hope it’s clear that Veronika and I get along great and this was one more funny episode in the great adventure of discovering another culture. As I gain experience I’m more and more convinced that it’s really much simpler to be direct and honest so the heart of the issue can be addressed. It might make for a great story, but eating carrots when you like celery is no way to serve a carrot lover and you’ll never know until you speak up!
Real updates coming, but I'm too busy having adventures to write about them.
Watch me disappear for a while as my Christmas present has arrived. :) :) :) Well, most of it. Enough to keep me out of trouble for some time.
But I will take time to mention that we did have a pressure cooker when I was growing up. (My half-generation-later siblings may not remember it, though.) We never used it for cooking potatoes, as 15 minutes on the stove was fast enough and less work. We did use it for speeding up cooking times with dishes like stews and pot roasts. I found it a bit scary -- high-pressure steam can give you a dangerous burn. I understand pressure cookers have come back into vogue even in this country (as have crock pots), so maybe they're easier to use than the old ones.
Jon likes the pressure cooker, but it scares me, too. It really doesn't seem to me to save time with potatoes, and the whole exploding lid with steam thing is a great deterrent. Plus extra pieces parts to wash.
Just because I'm 12 years younger doesn't mean we didn't still have that ancient pressure cooker still inuse. Swiss steak was always made in the pressure cooker.
Your comment, combined with a new sensitivity to all things Swiss, made me wonder just was is "Swiss" about Swiss steak. Certainly we never had it when we were in Switzerland. Here's what Wikipedia has to say:
Swiss steak is a method of preparing meat, usually beef, by means of rolling or pounding, and then braising in a cooking pot, either on a stove (cooker) or in an oven.
The name does not refer to Switzerland, but instead to the process of "swissing", which refers to fabric or other materials being pounded or run through rollers in order to soften it. Swiss steak is typically made from relatively tough cuts of meat, such as the round, which have been pounded with a tenderizing hammer, or run through a set of bladed rollers to produce so-called "cube steak". The meat is typically coated with flour and other seasonings and served with a thick gravy.
The process of swissing meat is done to enable tougher and cheaper pieces of meat to be tenderized. Cube steak is the usual meat used in producing Swiss steak by most home cooks. Cube steak has had the connective fibers that make the meat tough physically broken by the butcher and the braising process further breaks down the connective tissue in the meat. Swiss steak should be tender enough to be eaten without a knife.
The ones I haven't figured out are the Swiss lathes (see here or here) and the Swiss rolls (here).
I don't know about the Swiss roll (though the chocolate variety sounds mighty tasty) but a clue to the Swiss lathe may be in this: "For work requiring extreme accuracy...a Swiss style lathe is often used."
As much as that rubs my tummy, in the interest of honesty I must admit that we're not the only nation capable of "extreme accuracy." My guess is that it may have been developed here for use in the watchmaking industry, but I remember asking an exhibitor at the Micronora fair in Besançon and him not knowing where the name came from.
Ah, we are all trying to maximize different things and can't understand why the dickens our neighbor is being so inefficient at a task that should be clearly done our way. Anyhow, I like potato skins (when I'm eating potatoes). I'm sorry for your mishaps. The meals of cheese and bread and apples were so much easier.
