IrishOboe

So I’ve decided to stop being so scared about cooking and just do it.  I didn’t do anything too adventurous for Easter, but I did bake a Poor Man’s Cake (my favorite growing up) and make Mom’s Cytopathology dip fudging for missing ingredients.  Seemed fine to me and went over well at the Stuecklin’s, who had kindly invited me for Easter dinner after church.  I think I made a new record for playing with the least preparation.

About 6:30 the night before Easter I got out my oboe and fixed up some old reeds.  10:25am Sunday morning I looked over the hymns before the services started at 10:30.  I have to admit it feels great to be able to do that when it takes so long to work things up on harp and fiddle.  It was a nice service and I had fun being a bit more adventurous with improvising on the hymns and praise songs.  It wasn’t bad if I can say so myself.  I don’t care if I’m delusional and my standards are slipping; it’s rather nice to be satisfied with my playing for a change.

But back to cooking.  I also made half whole-wheat biscuits, but my food paled in comparison to the feast that Stephan’s mom prepared.  We had a lovely Easter dinner and enjoyed a good time of fellowship.  We played an American card game in German (Fluxx), which had instructions on every card so I got my exercise in German comprehension.  A word to the wise: the word “zug” has many more meanings than “train.”  Kreuzzug does not mean crossing trains, but crusade and some variation of zug which I can’t remember means a player’s turn.  Some days I realize just how much I have to learn and I feel like giving up.

But I’m writing about my cooking experiences.  Today Veronika and I played to have lunch together.  She asked me to buy and do the meat.  I’ve never done meat before other than in a recipe, but I mostly ate vegetarian and fish in Japan when I first experimented with cooking (other than baking).  Well, I decided to give meat a shot as I didn’t have time to find a recipe.  I looked online briefly in the morning to see if my idea for a marinade was anything like what is normal, then during breakfast I quickly threw some oil, vinegar, onion, garlic, Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce over the meat and let it sit while I went to rehearsal.  I threw it in the pan with the sauce and ended up boiling the meat, which I’m not sure is the way to do it, but the meat had flavor and was cooked so I suppose I can call my first try a success.  I tried to make a sauce with the rest of the marinade, but all I did was add flour and it turned thick but the oil separated out and though it tasted alright it sure didn’t look appetizing.  I do find it more fun to cook when you don’t have time to worry about making something nice . . .