This week I started a class in German
cooking. Wow! The instructor came in speaking German
and our recipes were in German.
This is a real challenge for me. Even though, my first language was
German. I haven’t used it since pre-grade school days.
I finished the first class with a headache,
feeling stressed and with a strong desire to quit the class thinking that I
didn’t have to put myself through this nonsense that this stage of my life.
The second class was actual cooking. Again, I wanted to quit. I had forgotten how bland and
unappealing German cooking is. Get
this, chopped cabbage, covered with hot water, with fried bacon bits and the
all time favorite, vinegar! Blah!
The roast pork was different because of the spices
- but edible. Since taking other
cooking classes, I have learned that I like a little more taste and accomplish
it with using stronger spices.
Went to a bookstore and found a German and English
dictionary along with a workbook on basic language skill building. Now, I have to discipline myself to
work through the lessons to see if they will assist me in understanding the
dialect of the German our instructor is using.
Back to the actual cooking…did find out that
whipped heavy cream doesn’t need a lot of sugar to be tasty. She used just a bit of sweet currant
jam that was folded into it and then used as a filling and topping on what she
called a cake. It was very
tasty. But the “cake” was labor
intensive and I would never make it unless I had a lot of time to devote to
it.
As with most cooking, everything is made from
scratch. The difficulty is
translating the recipes and thinking metric instead of the English system
(imperial). Now, I have to brush
up on my math skills too.
At this point, I am willing to go to class three…beyond
that…who knows. At least I am
working on building brain skills that experts say is needed to ward off Alzheimer’s
disease. I can see me now, 105
years young, chattering away in German that no one but me understands. Very gratifying.
No comments:
Post a Comment