Wednesday Waffles

Waffles slathered in homemade apple sauce with dots of raspberry jam...yum!

Wednesday Morning

Wednesdays this semester are wonderful. It's the only day in the week that the alarm doesn't go off at some ungodly hour...we don't have class till the afternoon, and boy, do we love it!  This morning, Karl and I woke up and stumbled out of bed to the intoxicating smell of: waffles! My roommate Sophie had woken up earlier and there she was, all sleepy and pajama-clad, spooning batter into our trusty old waffle iron and producing these disks of bliss (okay, I may be exaggerating now, when when they're piling up and you're hungry, boy, do those puppies look good!) 
  

Homemade Apple Sauce

She and Pete (her BF, Hong Kong born, Florida raised) had even decked the table, including the homemade apple sauce and her mom's delicious homemade jams. Something about a lit candle at breakfast makes the occasion feel so festive! 

Needless to say, everything was delicious. We had just made some apple sauce the day before out of some no-longer-perfect apples we had lying around. There's no recipe for this: just peel and core and cover in some water. Boil until they're soft and mash mash mash. We don't add sugar (or cinnamon, or cloves, or anything) and it tastes perfect just the way it is!

This is our recipe for waffles:

Ingredients
100 g butter, softened (a little less than half a cup)
60g sugar (that's 1/3 cup or 4 Tablespoons)
300g flour (2 1/2 cups)
3 eggs
375ml milk (1 1/2 cup)
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt
a dash of vanilla

Instructions
Beat the butter with sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt and alternate adding milk and flour mixture to the batter, mix until smoothly combined.  Easy peasy!

Spoon a ladle-ful of batter into a pre-greased waffle iron and wait impatiently until each waffle turns golden brown. Yum!

Leftover "ich liebe dich" (I love you) cupcake!

And for dessert, the last of the valentine's day cupcakes (they froze surprisingly well!) Thank you, Karl, for dreaming up such a cute and long-lasting surprise.

Look up at the Sky!

-Zanna

PS. The last time we had waffles 

PPS. Who's who? The Boyfriend/Roommate situation explained.

Five Favorites: Ways to Save

Pete's Christmas gift currently graces our bathroom

This week's "five favorites" post stems from our very student-y budget constraints. Many of the things I love (great chocolate, fresh fruits and vegetables, organic meat, and most of all: trips) don't come cheap. Here are some tips Karl and I have gathered on how to make each Euro count!

1. DIY.  This is a "duh" suggestion that I never really took seriously until I started making my own bread (yum!) and realized how much dough we were saving (terrible pun intended). Now we're all about finding ways to add thoughtfulness and save pennies with DIY. We loved making  homemade holiday cards out of scraps and our low-key  Valentine's Day fit right in with this new philosophy.

2. Turn that thermostat down! Last winter, during the coldest week of the year, our heating broke down. We froze for seven days before it got fixed.  After some bitter complaining and several evenings spent exclusively in bed (the only warmish place in the apartment) we actually kind of...got used to it. To our surprise, we just sort of shifted from breakfast in PJs to breakfast in an Anorak. The couple seconds after a shower were hellish, but beyond that, we learned that when one is ensconced in fleece, cold is actually okay. Although we certainly cranked the heating up when it was finally fixed, we tend to keep the apartment about seven degrees colder than before...and now we save several hundred Euro a year, without minding at all!

3.Stay in! At the Sophie/Pete/Karl/Zanna house, we LOVE games. We've found an evening of poker or a snuggly movie night on the sofa is just as awesome as a fancy dinner out--for a fraction of the price!

4. Meatless Mondays...and Tuesdays...and Wednesdays.  My roommate Sophie is a vegetarian, and though the rest of us identify as carnivores, we only eat meat about once or twice a week. I tend to insist on organic, local, and free-range (for various ethical and health-related reasons) and that's about as expensive as it gets! So we have some morally righteous meat every now and then and enjoy eggs and other protein-laden, purse-friendly alternatives the rest of the week.

5. Car sharing.  It took me a while to warm up to this one, but Karl insisted, and now we use it for every car trip and have never looked back. When we travel as a couple, there are two empty seats in the back and it can cover the entire cost of gas to rent those out! We use the two most popular sites here in Germany, Mitfahrgelegenheit and Bla Bla Car, but we learned during our time in France and Switzerland that there are equivalent sites for most European countries. We're heading down south for some skiing this weekend, and the rides we have lined up will reimburse the whole car trip!

In addition to these tips, we also have a couple general rules, such as: no credit card debt, no bottled water, no magazine subscriptions, no take-out, no ATM-stops at non-affiliated banks, no brand-name products, ect.

One thing we NEVER agree on is handymen. Karl always thinks he can fix it, whatever "it" is, and I would rather just call an expert and not make it worse. We're still hashing that one out!

What about you? What are you favorite ways to save pennies and what's worth a splurge?

Look up at the Sky!

-Zanna
 

PS. Very first "Five Favorites" here!

Five Favorites: DIY Holiday Cards

I'm all done with exams and finally made it to the post office to drop off good wishes to friends and family near and far. Usually I send store bought cards with a photo or whip something up with an easy online template. But not this year! This year I sat down with Karl, my roommate Sophie and her boyfriend Pete and we just crafted our incompetent little hearts out. The good thing is, some very talented DIYers have posted wonderfully simple instructions online and with their help and a few ideas of our own, we were on our way. All our cards were super easy to make, just add the holiday greeting of your choice and drop it in the mail! Here are my favorite five:

Number One

Number Three

Number Two

Number Five

Number Four

Number Five was Pete's very ingenious solution to all the bits and pieces we had at the end of the evening. I actually think the leftover-scraps-card became my favorite one!

 Look up at the Sky!

--Zanna

Five Favorites

So often I get bogged down in all the rainy old busyness of life and start counting my have-nots and my I-wishes more than my many blessings! So I'm going to try a nice easy gratefulness remedy half-lifted from one of my childhood favorites, The Sound of Music: a simple list of, say, five favorite things every Friday. 

Five Activities to Get Out of a Dead-of-Winter Funk 

1.) Take a long walk in the woods, alone or with a somebody. We did this a few weeks ago while visiting Karl's family and even though it was cold and crunchy instead of wintery and wonderland-y, I could just feel it doing me good! There's a lovely quote in one of the Sissi movies that goes: "Wenn du einmal im Leben Kummer und Sorgen hast, dann geh mit offenen Augen durch den Wald." Which roughly translates as: When you have stress and suffering in life, take a walk through the forest with open eyes." And I must say, corny as it is (and corny is pretty much the calling card of all the Sissi Movies) it holds true for me. Something about nature just gets me back on the right track!

2.) Make holiday cards for friends and family! I am not anywhere near as crafty as those amazing DIYers out there but even with our very limited skill set, Karl, Sophie, Pete and I enjoyed sitting down together earlier this week and throwing some glitter and yarn at colored paper. Makes you feel like a kid again and I think recipients appreciate the extra personal touch. (Stay tuned, I may work up the courage to show off our amateur handiwork)

3.) Bake cookies. Duh! Then eat all the dough and have to make a new batch.

4.) Listen to Christmas music...from somewhere else! Whether you discover a new favorite advent tune or have fun hearing familiar songs in  foreign tongues, this is definitely one to try. I love introducing non-native English speakers to Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire. It's not well know outside the US but I think it perfectly captures the Christmas spirit everywhere! I recommend trying Es ist ein Ros Entsprungen, a beautiful Marian Hymn from 1609 and I think of all languages Silent Night is most transporting in french: Douce Nuit, Sainte Nuit.

5.) Write it down! Since I started this blog as a way to keep myself accountable to a diary of sorts, this one is big for me. Have you're family write a one page Christmas journal to be sealed up until next year. Then, you can all open them and see what 2014 felt like in the moment, and what you're hopes for 2015 were. Then rinse and repeat! In a few years you'll have lots of letters to read through and a festive chronicle of the years going by. 

Hopefully I'll get through these favorite five in time for Christmas, or at least start smelling the roses more while trying.

Look up at the Sky!

-Zanna

Introductions

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen: Let's meet the cast!

Bay Area Beach: The Family at Play!

Zanna (aka Me)
Twenty-something, trilingual, trying to be an adult and so grateful to be failing terribly!
Things I love: red peppers, frozen raspberries, dark chocolate, traveling, studying medicine, good books, evenings that end with the kitchen a mess and covered in vanilla sugar.
Things I hate: cheese.
(I know that makes me persona non grata with some people. Sorry, can't stand the stuff)

Karl (aka The Boyfriend)

Karl et Moi

Also studies medicine, started in the same year as me but now taking a semester off to do research on tuberculosis. We had not one but several meet-cutes as the universe kept pushing us together and pulling us apart like an accordion. Finally got together, survived half a year of long distance (me: Paris, him: Lausanne) and then we both called uncle and moved back to the same city. Much better. Just celebrated our two year anniversary and still going strong, due mostly to his inexhaustible patience for my many crazy schemes and idiosyncrasies.

The Roommates 

Sophie holds me up in the Bolivian salt flats

My roommate since we moved into this lovely apartment on the edge of the woods (and a sleep-in-friendly ten minute ride to uni) is the unshakable Sophie, fellow med student and port in any storm. She's a scheduled, orderly, and utterly endearing vegetarian who loves baking and "basteln" with her three nieces. Sorry, there are some words that just don't translate. Also crashing here on a semi-permanent basis is her Chinese-American boyfriend Pete, whom she met in Australia the summer after first year. He's a whiz with computers and card games, except Rommey with we girls always win. Home is cozy, there's usually something delicious in the kitchen, and with a revolving door of residents, spontaneous parties can happen anytime from breakfast to bedtime (and beyond. Pillow fights.)

The Family

Sunbathing in Chapada Diamantina, Brasil

Mama, Papa, and my sister Zelda: the fabulously funky foursome. Zelda is three years younger and studying something math-y and computer-y in Rotterdam (one of Europe's coolest cities. Believe it!). Parents live in Berlin, both academics, both work and travel like there's no tomorrow.
We interrupt each other, text constantly, and have been first on the dance floor at every family wedding in living memory.
I'm also close to my slightly more extended family, Paternal Grandparents and Paternal Aunt who live in sunny California and my cousin Brooks who lives in NYC with his girlfriend Deedee.


The Best Friend

Scottish sunset with Clara and Charlie

Clara is lovely, loony, and LDS--a great combination, by the way.  We've been friends for a billion gazillion years (aka since middle school). She's one of my few friends who isn't in medicine (med stu's tend to cluster, its not a good thing). She's originally South African, raised in Europe, studied anthropology and archaeology and now lives in Edinburgh with her amazing husband of one year, Charles. Charlie is the exactly the kind of guy you would wish for your best friend. Kind, calm with a sense of humor as dry as the Sahara and the perfect mix of responsible adult and take-it-as-it-comes. They are a fascinating couple to converse with on just about any topic and she's my one and only talk-about-absolutely-anything friend. Everyone should have one of those.

That's everyone! Well, not everyone of course, but the ones that count. We'll see who else pops up in this blog as time goes on.

Look up at the Sky!

--Zanna