Christine Celebrates Burns Night Supper

Robert Burns is a famous Scottish poet.  You know his work.  You just don't know you know it.  He wrote the famous poem (now song) that is sung on New Years Eve at midnight.

A Burns Night Supper, held in his honor, is traditionally on his birthday, January 25th.  This was my first experience with a Burns Night Supper.  The two main parts of the dinner:  Scottish whiskey and haggis.  I partook in both.  The chef went Iron Chef with the food, and the main ingredient consisted of haggis.  First, we ate haggis with mature cheese in pastry.  Then we enjoyed haggis spring rolls (probably my favorite dish, besides dessert, which always wins with me).  We readily finished the Cullen Skink soup (made with mashed potatoes and smoked haddock), another Scottish dish.  Finally, we listened to Robert Burns poem, complete with bag pipes, toasted the haggis with Scottish whiskey and then tried it.  The haggis is ceremoniously brought out during the poem.  You eat tatties (mashed potatoes) and neeps (mashed turnips) with the haggis.  We also had a potato casserole.  For dessert, I finished Cranachan.  This consists of whipped creme with honey and whiskey, raspberries, and oats, parfait layers.  To finish the evening we played Cards Against Humanity.  A great game.  That I did not lose.  But I didn't win either.  Oh well, next time.

Haggis 

Christine

Christine in Chamonix, France Take 2

Chamonix, France is wonderful.  It's around 6 or 6 1/2 hours away from Stuttgart, Germany.  You can travel over the mountain pass, save some time, or around Geneva, Switzerland.  On the way, we went over the mountain pass and the return trip took us through Geneva.

Brevent

There was 3 days of sunny weather and on the last day, a storm rolled in.  This trip, I skied Brevent (1st day), Flegere (3rd day), and Grands Montets (2nd and 4th days).  I love skiing in the sun.  It doesn't seem as cold.  Chamonix is nice because it actually has some harder runs, i.e. decent black runs.

I arrived at Flegere at 0900.  If you are a skier, this means first tracks.  These were some of my favorite runs of the trip.  You can fly down groomed slopes.  The snow was so soft, not the crunchy stuff.  You just go and go.  No reason to stop.  Except that others eventually started skiing the slopes.  And then there are no fresh tracks.  Cause everything is skied.  Not that I can actually blame anyone for this.

View from Grands Montets

Skiing on the glacier

Grands Montets has a glacier at the top of the mountain.  You have to take a 2nd gondola to get to the top.  A full of people, like 40 of your closest friends, gondola.  I skied the glacier on the last day.  You know, the day it was snowing and gray out.  So no amazing view pictures.  But I will try to go back for you all.  It's the least I can do.  It is 3275 m (10,700 feet) up to the glacier.  The snow was incredible up there.  Once you got to it.  You had to walk a million steps down from the gondola to the snow.  Or maybe it was 200 steel steps.  It was a lot.  And it's not like you can close your eyes and count backwards from 100, by 7, to pass the time.  You have to walk them all.  The hardest part.  After riding the gondola up.  The powder was over knee deep.  I only fell 3 or maybe 4 times.  The first time about 30 feet from the start of the run.  Not too bad, since I haven't had the opportunity to ski as much in powder.  I stayed on the marked trail.  The guy I was skiing with went out of bounds and seemed happy.  Yeah, he is braver than me.  It's ok though, cause there were other people skiing the glacier and I stayed near them.  It is 1300 m (4265 feet) to the lifts and 2500 m (8202 feet) to the bottom of the mountain, where the bus takes you back to town.  And it is a decent beginner intermediate run to the bottom.  I didn't ski the glacier to bus run all at once, but over the course of the day, I did go from top to bottom.

If you don't go for the skiing, go to France for the food.  And wine.  Well, I would have liked more scallops, delicious sauce, but I enjoyed the mushroom risotto, even if it is peasant food mom.

Christine

Christine at Burg Staufeneck

I had an extra 8 hours of leave because Christmas Eve was a holiday.  First world problems, I know. Therefore, I took today off because the water person came to check the meter.  This is actually a 50 percent decrease from last year in the number of people checking the meter.  He was pleasantly on-time, at the first part of the hour window.  That was my only plan for the day.  So I decided to do something I haven't done in a while.  Visit a Michelin restaurant.  [Note to self:  I need to visit them more often.  Maybe monthly.  We'll see how that goes.  For the belly and budget.]  I chose Burg Staufeneck for lunch, as it has a business lunch menu, though a bit pricey, better value than the dinner's go for.  But no chocolate.  How is that even possible?  All fancy meals should have chocolate.

The Amuse Bouche was decent.  The white cup had a delicious cheese herb spread.  And I liked everything in a spoon (though you can't see the bites in them).

The first course consisted of Atlantic fishwith artichokes (though I have never had artichokes taste like this before).  Not a great picture.  The fish was not burned.  And with any Michelin restaurant, you have foie gras.  Not my favorite, but I will eat it.  I prefer these little bites to other ones.

I opted for the vegetarian main course.  Pumpkin was the main ingredient.  Lunch included a pumpkin spring roll with pumpkin chutney.  The square thing was terrible.  The green thing was called a "sponge".  It's texture really was sponge like.  I touched it.  The gnocchi was amazing.  Loved it.  And the "soup" around it.  I could have eaten a huge bowl of those with the "soup".

Dessert was my second favorite option--ice cream.  In the shape of the fruit flavor.  These chefs are a creative bunch.

If it weren't a typical German weather January I believe the view would have been breathtaking.  But it was gloomy outside.  Maybe next time.

My favorite restaurant is still the Nuremberg place (you remember they gave me 6 chocolate bars for myself--still so hard to beat but I will continue to look for places to top it).

Christine