Walks and Storms

I am guilty of blog-neglect again. It is in fact hard to find much free time at this point in a semester when I am working on grant proposals and the university is about to receive a review panel visit to determine whether it ranks among the "excellent" universities in Germany. It does, of course. We merely have to prove it convincingly.

On the Feast of Ascension, which is a holiday in Berlin, Joan and I took a walk through the Hansa Viertel where we live. Buildings from the architectural competition all lie south of the elevated train tracks, but the river Spree is the district's official boundary. We walked down Klopfstock Strasse, which has many of the low-rise winners from the competition, including the building by Walter Gropius, and the Giraffe restaurant (where we later had a pleasant dinner). We turned back at the Tiergarten train station and walked along its northern rim between the tracks and the river. We saw what looked like a minor embassy along Bachstr, but could not see the sign or the flag clearly enough to recognize it. The building is lovely, though. Then we crossed the river and walked along its northern edge.

Yesterday and today we had quite spectacular thunder storms and discovered that we have a small leak in the bedroom window that needs to be fixed. The storm pelted down hail as well as rain, which may have caused some disruption for the planned football (soccer) rally at the Brandenburger Tor. It also disrupted the efforts of our neighbors in the opposite building to pull something (we couldn't see what) up with ropes to the top floor. The building has an elevator. Presumably the object didn't fit.

French cooking

Last week (or perhaps the week before -- I lose track of time) Joan made a chicken dish from a French cookbook that we found in the kitchen. This week I adapted it to pork and made a few changes. It would work with veal too or as a vegetarian dish served on something crusty like toast.

Lime is the key ingredient. I used 3/4 of a fairly large lime, cut the flesh from the peel, and then took about one third of the peel and sliced it thin to put in the pot too. I also cut up a medium onion, and cleaned 6 or 8 ordinary mushrooms. I also cut about 200 grams of pork into four pieces.

I started cooking the onions in butter. When they were translucent I added the pork and let it cook long enough to seal in the juices. Then I added the lime (including cut up peel) and the mushrooms. The original recipe called for adding some chicken stock, but the mushrooms and lime produce enough juice to skip this unless you like a very soupy sauce.

I let the meat cook in this mix long enough to pick up some flavor from the lime, then took it out to keep it from overcooking. When the mushrooms were ready I added a modest amount of cream and let that cook together just another minute or two before putting the sauce decoratively over the meat. I had intended to take out the lime peel but in fact it added attractive extra flavor and was as soft as a mushroom after cooking.

I also used some the remaining lime peel to in the cooking water for Brussels sprouts. We ate a baguette with the meal.

Shelving

We tried to pick out shelving at Ikea this week and came away with nothing. While I liked the square, deep, backless shelves that could be used as a room divider with books on both sides, I wondered whether the construction would really stand up to the weight of double-loaded books. Joan had qualms about the immobility of the shelves. The model we saw looked as if it had rather a thin veneer too, which may account for the very attractive price.

We looked at two other bookshelf styles, both with backs. One was designed to allow additional shelves on the top, and had the option of a library ladder, which has its own charms. The other had a permanent middle divider in all of the shelves, which adds stability and almost eliminates the need for book-ends. The shelves were all adjustable too. It was twice as expensive as the other options, but maybe worthwhile.

Ikea is cheap in part because of the self-assembly. They do offer assembly services, but then the price becomes close to stores like Möbel-Hübner, where we may look again.