More Routine

So now that I am no longer the bread winner in the household I am relegated to the world of house keeping and food preparation.  How do I feel about this?  Not too bad I guess although I reckon it is a pretty big incentive to find work.

Today was spent, blogging, applying for jobs, notifying the Dept of Foreign Affairs of our residence in Munich and planning our next trip somewhere in Europe.  I briefly ventured outside into the snow and the non English speaking world to buy ingredients for tonight's dinner.  It was all non eventful with the minor exception of my sparring with the bretzel rack at the local supermarket.  (I confess that I decided to have a beer and bretzel for lunch today.  After all 82 million Germans can't be wrong.)  Anyway the supermarket had a special rack for all the small bread products, inclusive of bretzel.  You know the sort.  Flip up polycarbonate lids and tongs on a chain. The problem with this one is that it had an extra wire flip down barrier to stop the bretzels from sliding over each other and ultimately landing on the floor.  Unlike so many things that I have seen in Germany this set up was not particularly well designed, unless the designer wanted to get as many bretzels on to floor as possible in the shortest amount of time.  I spent a few minutes wrestling with cascading bretzels armed only with a pair of tongs and a sound understanding of good engineering practices.

I digress.  I actually wanted to record what we had for dinner tonight.  I am recording this for nothing more than future reference.  I bought a nice piece of pork fillet, sliced it into medallions.  Marinated them in a dry mix of salt, ground black pepper, a little bit of chopped chilli and some dried apricots I found under the bed.  I left this for a few hours, mixing it all occasionally.  When it was game time I quartered some mushrooms and fried them in butter, lots of butter.  When they were browned I removed them and added the pork mix.  Once the pork was almost cooked I returned the mushrooms to the pan.  At the same time I boiled some julienne d carrots and green beans until they were just cooked.  Drained the liquid and tossed them in melted butter and fresh basil.  Washed  down with a French Merlot and it was a good, almost healthy meal.