mix & match: cookies, parks and cats

American butter, not as good as Swiss butter, but it sure makes a delicious chocolate chip cookie. While you've been sitting there refreshing your house-to-haus page and bitting your nails as you anxiously wait for a new post (wishful thinking) I've been making and eating, chocolate chip cookies. Mmmm! Friday was my friend Kerry's birthday so I quickly baked a few batches of cookies before heading into the city to see her for a little birthday dinner complete with well salted margaritas and gooey enchiladas.

The dough is almost as good as the cookie. Actually, I think it might be better than the cooled, cripsy cookie, but it's definitely not as good as the fresh out of the oven cookie.

I found the recipe on epicurious after searching chocolate chip cookies and then sorting by ratings.

- 3 cups all purpose flour

- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda

- 1 1/2 tsp salt

- 2 sticks butter, melted and completely cooled (if not cooled it will melt the sugar resulting in a gooey mess and not a fluffy sugar/butter mixture)

- 1 1/2 cups light brown sugar

- 1 cup granulated sugar

- 3 large eggs

- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla

- 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 375 and line two baking sheets with parchment paper

Mix the flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl and set aside. In the bowl of a standing mixer beat together the sugars and butter at high speed until light and fluffy, roughly 3 minutes. Beat one of the eggs in a small bowl and add 1 3/4 tbsp of it plus the 2 whole eggs to the butter mixture. Mix until creamy in consistency. Add the vanilla. Reduce the speed to low and slowly add in the flour mixture, beating until blended. Once the flour has been mixed in, add the chips.

Use a teaspoon or tablespoon (depending on how big you want the cookies to be) to scoop the dough on to the baking sheet. Bake one sheet at a time for about 11-13 minutes or until cookies are golden in color.

After we each ate at least three cookies, Ker and I headed to the West side to check out the expansion of the Highline. It was certainly a popular place to be on a steamy afternoon in NYC. I'd say there were as many people with cameras as without them so at least I didn't feel uber touristy with mine hanging around my neck.
After cookies and margaritas on Friday, I headed up to Deerfield for my 10 year reunion. Unfortunately the weather was crummy and there wasn't much to do indoors, but it was great catching up with everyone. On Sunday I stopped in New Haven on my way to Greenwich and that is where I met Mr.Furs. The most amazing cat on the planet. If you have a cat and are currently thinking that your cat is the most amazing cat, you're wrong, it's Mr. Furs. He is the most personable cat I've ever met.
If Zach wasn't terribly allergic I would have already called the breeder and put my name on the waitlist, or I would have just stollen Furs from my friends.

I hope this little post has satiated your what-the-heck-is-talley-up-to questions. Ooo and I've been working my way through all of the wonderful book suggestions I received last week. I finished The Bucolic Plague last night and now I officially want a farm with goats and gardens. Now on to Swamplandia!

land of the free and home of the hamburger

Jetlag is no competition for a hamburger. I forced myself to stay up until almost 10pm (4am Zürich time) so that I could enjoy a hamburger, fresh off the grill and covered in good old Heinz ketchup. It was delicious. Granted in the face of severe sleepiness and the fact that it was my eighth meal of the day I could only eat about three bites, but those three bites were full of the flavors of an American summer. In truth the corn salad with red onion and avocado and the cherry-laced green salad were almost better than the burger. I love corn salad. I wonder if I'll see corn in the Swiss markets, for some reason I don't think so. 

One thing I hope I never see in Zürich are these crazy hot and humid days. It is 98 today. 98 freaking degrees and with 130% humidity. The minute I stepped off the plane yesterday, in my sweater and jeans, I was overwhelmed by the  heat. Absolutely miserable. Put me on the beach, next to the breaking waves, and I'd be happy, but it doesn't look like that is on the agenda this trip - some trips to the steamy hot city and lovely toasty New Haven yes, but the ocean, no. The ocean will have to wait for another trip, of which I might be making many this summer based on my current visa situation. I have used up 47 of the 90 days that I am allowed to be in Switzerland from April until September, so until my spouse visa comes through (application isn't even in yet and it takes 8-10 weeks to get) I will have to ration my time in Switzerland. 

That's Molly at the door. When she's outside she wants to come inside and when she's inside she want's to go out. She's always the one that rings the bell to go out and the one to scratch the door to come in. Ellie, sitting on the wall behind her just sits quietly and waits for us to answer Molly's calls. I wish we could have dogs in Zürich, but it would really limit our ability to travel on the weekends. 

My mom asked what she should put in the salad, and I think I said strawberries, but she heard cherries, or perhaps she is so enamored with my cherry pie that she has cherries on the mind, but anyway she bought cherries and so into the salad they went. "ooo ooo ooo a squirel!" thinks Molly...meanwhile I'm thinking "mmm mmm mmm bbq'd chicken"

Zach if you are reading this, I hope it inspires you to go out and buy a grill this weekend! Think of all the hamburgers we could make! If you buy a grill, I'll bring back cheddar cheese in my suitcase. 

I never think to grill shrimp, but once we have our grill (hint hint Zach) I'm going to grill shrimp a couple times a week. They were marinated with lemon juice and a cesar-ish dressing - scrumptious! Is it weird that I like shrimp, but hate lobster? I know, a New Englander who hates lobster! I just really don't like the texture. Shrimp are so little and bite size and I think it might be something about the scale of lobster that I don't like. Now that I type this I don't even know when the last time I tried lobster. Maybe when I'm at the beach later this summer I'll buy a lobster, smoother it in butter, and give it another try. Or perhaps I'll try a lobster roll, people seem to love those...

The party lights from our engagement party last september are still up! Last night was the inaugural lighting of the summer season. 

So I've had the good old American hamburger and now I have my eyes/stomach set on some Mexican and some sushi! 

bicicleta

Cheers to the bicicleta, my new favorite drink (that is the official name of my new favorite cocktail - campari and white wine)! This is just a simple little post to say adios for a few days. I'm heading back to the states bright and early tomorrow morning and I didn't quite have my wits about me today to cook, photograph, blog, and clean and organize and then cook some more. So today a pretty photo of a pretty cocktail will have to do! I'm looking forward to a few days at home to celebrate a bestie's birthday and to gather with my high school friends for our 10year (!!!) reunion. I'm not actually sure why I put exclamation points in there...high school definitely feels like it was 10 years ago, if not much much longer. Think of everything that has happened since high school - jeez. I feel like I've known my college girlfriends forever and to think it's only been ten years...and then there was the three year architecture school vacuum, which really felt like thirty years and then of course there is Zach, who I met in high school, but didn't start dating until Yale. Now I'm married, living in Zürich and chatting to you all, my imaginary friends.

cheers to change!

ps. any book recommendations for me to download for the 9 hr flight tomorrow? I've learned not to count on good movies. I mean that is a 4 movie flight. Any recommendations are very much appreciated - fiction preferred and don't be shy about sending beach reads...beach reads and flight reads are one in the same! there is no shame. Zach will tell you that I read the trashiest stuff (eclipse, shopaholic, nanny diaries....etc) when on the beach...or even in the dead of winter in my pjs.

cherry tree

We have basil and mint growing in a planter that is perched on the window ledge of our third floor apartment, and a bit of parsley struggling for sun on the terrace off of our bedroom, so aside from mint for mojitos and basil for salads we have to buy all of our produce. I dream of the day when we can get up from our farm style breakfast/lunch/dinner table, which is cluttered with newspapers and coffee cups, and wander out into the orchard of fruit trees and pick our own breakfast. Imagine. I'd like the table to be inside, but with enormous doors that open up on to the patio that is bursting with herbs and flowers. I'll put my New Yorker down or the memoir I'm reading (currently Blood, Bones & Butter) and meander, barefoot, among the apple, cherry, plum trees and reach for a cherry, eat the flesh and spit the seed on the grass. Perhaps there will be a little diaper clad red head wandering and wobbling behind me, with cherry juice dripping from her chin. Deep in fantasy land, Zach asked about a view of the beach, and I agreed that the ocean should be visible in the distance, past the fruit trees and the hayfields...ooo and the wine vineyards. A girl can dream...right?

Well how about a little garden shack, with a view of lake Zürich and the Alps beyond, with a cherry tree sagging with the weight of hundreds of bunches of peach and red colored cherries. It's not a dream, it's not fantasy land, that place exists! So remember when we went to the garden for a bbq, well that same garden has a cherry tree that is absolutely bursting with fruit. We must have stood under the tree for a good twenty minutes, reveling in the absolutely amazingness of a cherry tree in the city, and reaching up, pulling a few cherries at a time, eating the flesh and spitting out the seeds. We followed our cherry appetizer with sausage, corn salad and lemon tart, and of course a lot of white wine, all from the French part of Switzerland. I'm a lover of all things carbonated and I swear that the wine tastes like it has a touch of bubbles in it. It's heavenly. So heavenly that when Zach and I were in Lausanne last week for the day we bought an entire case!

So as you can see this post is about a cherry pie that I made this past weekend. Jacque, the owner of the cherry tree, invited me up to pick as many cherries as I could carry because he was heading out of town and they would soon be past their prime. I wandered up to his garden on Friday, hopped the locked fence (eek), and picked enough cherries to fill two large zip-lock bags. I contemplated all sorts of cherry desserts and even cherry flavored dinners, but Zach really wanted a cherry pie and how can a girl say no to a request for a simply sweet cherry pie?

I'm not a cherry expert, but I believe, based on taste and a bit of google-image research, that these are sour cherries. They taste slightly sweet and tart and didn't seem to have as much flesh as the cherries I'm use to, but that's probably because the cherries I'm use to are hyped up on pesticides and growth hormones.
We had a lazy, but wonderful, weekend at home this weekend. We have been jumping all over the place recently and it was nice just to settle in and enjoy a quite day. Saturday morning we wandered around town looking for a grill and then we had a light lunch out on the terrace and shortly after that I began my cherry pie prep. I've never made pie before so I didn't really know what to expect, but it was fun to make and with friends come over for dinner, a fun dessert for a summer dinner party. Maybe in my application for a garden I will send them this post and go on and on about Alice Waters and her farm-to-table principles. I will say that all of the food we grow will go towards dinners with friends, hosted on the weekends, at our apartment, with the stain glass windows flung open and an endless flow of my new favorite cocktail - campari and white wine with an orange wedge. Mmm sounds lovely....I should do that anyway...with food we buy at the grocery store, that is grown on a farm...somewhere...
To make cherry pie, you have to pit cherries. Thankfully I found a cherry pitter, otherwise I think I would have gone batty. That was a lot of cherries, almost two and half pounds.
I think Zach gets his love of pies from his dad. Dave, his dad, does not limit his pie intake to desert on a summer evening, no, he eats it for breakfast if it's available. I think Dave's ideal meal might be ginger cake and a slice of pie with perhaps some grilled salmon for dessert, if he has room. I've always been intimidated by pies, but it was actually quite easy to make.

cherry pie recipe from Bon Appétit, June 2008 www.epicurious.com

crust:

- 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

- 1 tbsp sugar

- 3/4 tsp salt

- 1 cup butter

- 5 tbsp ice water

filling:

- 1 cup + 1 tbsp sugar

- 3 tbsp corn starch (for thickening)

- 1/4 tsp salt

- 5 cups whole pitted cherries, about 2lbs with pit

- 1 tsp fresh lemon juice

- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

- 2 tbsp unsalted butter

- 1 tbsp milk

for crust:

whisk flour, sugar, salt in a large bowl. Add butter and rub with your fingers until small pea-sized clumps form. Add the 5 tbsp of water and mix with a fork until the dough holds together when pressed between fingers. If it is not holding then add a bit more water. Gather dough together, divide in half and form a ball and then flatten to a disk with each half. Place in a plastic bag and let rest in the refrigerator for at least 30 mins.

for filling:

Preheat oven to 425F. While dough is cooling, mix your sugar, cornstarch and salt in a medium bowl and add your cherries lemon juice and vanilla.

Roll out one of the dough balls on a well floured surface with a well floured rolling pin. Roll until it is roughly 12" in diameter. Place the dough into your 9" pie dish and trim the edges so that the dough only overhangs by 1/2". Pour your cherry mixture into the dough lined pie dish, mounding slightly in center. Dot the cherries with butter. Roll out the second dough ball into a 12" round. With a knife of a pastry wheel cut 3/4" strips. Arrange this strips on top of the cherries by simply overlapping or by weaving, trim to 1/2". Fold the dough from the bottom crust up and over the edges of the lattice, pressing with your finger tips to seal the dough. Brush the lattice, not the edges, with milk and sprinkle with sugar.

Place pie on a rimmed baking sheet (incase it gurgles and drips) and bake for 15 minutes. Lower the heat to 325 and bake until the filling is bubbling and the crust is golden brown. If the edges are burning to quickly you can cover them with foil. Should be about another 1hr of baking time. Remove pie and let it cool. Serve with vanilla ice cream!

I've gotten in the habit of opening as many windows as possible. The big stain glass windows that open by the dinning room table are the best. I love that there aren't any screens. It really makes the apartment feel open. Granted a bird could fly in at any minute, but that's party of the fun I guess.

The crazy thing about the above photo is that I took it at roughly 9 or 9:30 on Saturday night. It has been staying so light so late here, it's incredible. Our little dinner party was fun. I love when Zach's laughs. Thankfully he laughs a lot!
The dinner party was a huge success, thanks in part to the case of wine and the scrumptious pie. I'm often hesitant to have people over. I'm the type who stresses over the meal (we had chicken marbella, orange cous cous, green beans and salad) and worries about things too much, but this time I just went with the flow, had a campari-wine spritzer and cooked easy/quick food and enjoyed every minute of it. I am always so impressed by people who, generally on a whim, invite a slew of people together and throw together an amazing little food fest. I have to remember that guests are happy just to be out and socializing and aren't worried about the fact that you don't have cushions on half of your dinning room chairs (need to get on that) or that the green beans are slightly cold. Here's to having more dinner parties in the future!