My good friend Jenny came over for a visit a few weeks ago. In between going sledding and catching up we made some pear walnut muffins that turned out very well. The recipe is incredibly loosely based off a banana blueberry oatmeal recipe I got out of a book at the library. I don’t remember what it was called, but many of the ingredients have changed since then, so it’s probably not important. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:
1 1/2 c rolled oats
1 1/2 c whole wheat flour
1/3 c sugar (or maple syrup)
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 c chopped walnuts

2/3 c mashed pears
1 c milk
1 large egg
2 Tbsp oil

Preheat the oven to 400F.
Grease a muffin tin. Mix all dry ingredients together in a biggish bowl. Mash the pears in a smaller bowl (>2c capacity). Add the egg and beat together. Mix the rest of the wet ingredients into the smaller bowl. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ones and mix until combined. Scoop the batter into the muffin tins. Bake 20-25 minutes.

If you’d like this in recipe card form, I made up a few to give to friends. You can find the pdf here. The photo is one taken by my friend Jenny which I modified using the Gimp. I made the pdf using Scribus, which is another wonderful program.

I made up a jar of dry ingredients and gave it with a jar of canned pears and a personalized recipe card to a friend who’s had a rough few weeks. I usually make just 12 muffins using this recipe, but my friend made 24 and it worked pretty nicely. It just depends on how big you want the muffins.

Hm, it’s gotten a bit dusty around here, hasn’t it. The whole copying stuff out of my travel diary got to be a bit much like homework, and unfortunately not the fun kind. I’m going to try to do a thing a week for the next few months. We’ll see how it goes. I’ve been creating a lot of stuff, but not much of it has been recorded.

Hopefully I’ll get back to transcribing some of my travel time at some point. Until then, you can see the photos I took at my picasaweb gallery. Come to think of it, I should probably post some photos from the past year. Heck, I should probably start taking pictures again…

Well, that’s the whole point of this exercise. The format of the “thing” I will do each week isn’t set. It could be an essay, a picture, a description of something I’ve made, or something else entirely. Let’s see how it goes.

November 7, 2007

After posting the photos of my visit to Les Machines de l’Ile de Nantes, I managed to forget to actually write a post about the visit… Here’s the post that should have gone between Angers and Berlin.

After passing a wonderful few days hanging around in Nantes, visiting the school I attended, taking the tram, and catching up with the Le Henaffs, I packed up my stuff and got ready to hop on the train back to Germany. Rosine and Bernard had told me that I had to see the elephant, and Rosine offered to take me to see it before my train left. Not quite knowing what to expect, we arrived at the old shipyards to see a four story tall hydraulic elephant carrying a crowd of people and spraying water high into the air.

I was like a kid in a candy store. This is, bar none, the coolest art exhibition I have ever been to. In addition to the elephant, which had blinking eyes, a swishing tail, moving head, and the aforementioned lifelike trunk, there was an indoor exhibition of Jules Verne inspired sea creatures. These creatures danced at the touch of 1-4 riders who could pull an assortment of lever, pump pedals, and throw switches that set chains and cables in motion. The motion was amazingly lifelike and beautiful.

These sculptures are built by a collective of artists with a background in theatre sets and special effects. Part of the exhibition includes a visit to the workshop. Guh. Please please please can I move in? I could have spent days, weeks, even years there. Definitely worth a visit.

Written Nov 1st

Last Saturday I visited Hannover with Anastasius, a Swiss WWOOFer who was also staying at La Chevrerie. We arrived in Hannover at around 10am and decided to do some wandering before meeting Marie & Ulf who had graciously agreed to let us stay at their house for the night. In the tourist office there were little business card sized pamphlets for various businesses in Hannover, including one for a comic book shop.

Of course, I had ot visit it. Following the tiny tourist map, we walked through the half empty streets, talking animatedly, until we’d walked right past the store. After asking a friendly Deutsche Post worker, we retraced our steps around the corner, into a regular bookstore, back out again, and finally into COMIX. I asked the people at the cash if they could provide some suggestions of good German comic books, which they graciously provided. I ended up buying Nase Ab, by Gernod Gayk, a Hannover artist, and an anthology celebrating Wilhelm Busch, one of the originators of the comic strip. I had an odd feeling that I’d heard of Nase Ab before, and as I read it, I became more sure that I’d read about it on the flight blog, or boltcity.com, however, google shows nothing, so who knows.

It’s really a fantastic book. The basic story is that there’s a man on the subway with no nose, and the people who walk past him each come up with a story about why. It’s an impressive book, since each story is told with a unique voice and unique artistic style.

I enjoyed it rather a lot, so since I was back in Hannover on Thursday with 12 hours to kill before my night train to Paris, I decided to go back to COMIX. After wandering about a bit and thanking the woman at the cash for her suggestions, I asked if there were any more comics by Gernod Gayk. She said, this is Gernod Gayk, you should ask him, and indicated the man standing next to her who she’d been teaching to use the price sticker machine a few minutes ago.

When I got over the “Buh, whaaaaaa?” stage, I otld him I’d really enjoyed his book, and asked him if he had any more. He told me that he’s working on another one, but it’s not finished yet. I shall definitely have to order it from my favourite canadian comic book store when it’s finished.

So now people will think I’m a big comic book nerd, having heard about an obscure German artist, then actually having met him. That’s a label I hope to be able to lay claim to in the future, but I don’t think I can yet.

I went on to spend 4 bloody long hours waiting in the cold for the train to Paris. Note for the future: 12 hours is more than needed to wait for a train. *sigh*

I’m not sure I can really tell the story of a “typical” day at La Chevrerie, since I’ve only been here for a few days, but I’ll do my best.

Around 7:30 Angela knocks on my door to tell me it’s time to get up. I make my way to the kitchen where Angela, her daughter Nina, and I drink strong french coffee and eat toast with jam. By 8 we’re dressed and in the barn. Nina lets the goats out in groups of 9 or 10 to climb up to the milking stand. The goats gladly run up the ramp and stick their heads into the trough at the edge of the platform where they find a sweet oatmeal like substance made of grain, sugar, and vitamins.

While the goats are being milked, I bring in fresh hay, two bales at a time, to put in the troughs in each stall. Each time I go to fetch new bales, Isis, Nina’s 14 month old dog, drops a stick at my feet, hoping that I’ll throw it for her, a request which is mostly ignored until I’m done with the work. The goats are much more domesticated than the sheep at Hof Schwarzes Moor. They like being petted, and don’t get scared when I come into the stall. One lamb in particular is especially friendly. Teuflichen (little devil, named after her mother, devil) is a little black goat who loves being petted and is very good at getting out of her stall. She can squeeze herself through astonishingly small holes… I tried to fix the hole she’d been squeezing through by nailing a piece of wood across it, but the next morning when we came in for the milking, she had managed to squeeze herself through again!

Once each stall has fresh hay and clean water, I sweep up the hay that’s fallen into the hallway between the stalls. Then I head inside to the living room to sit by the fire and study my German book for an hour or so. Some time between 9:30 and 11, if the weather is nice, I head back outside with Angela to walk with the goats through the forests and meadows in the area. As we walk, I feel as if I’m a kid again, tramping through the forest at scouts. Maybe I’m a charachter from Lord of the Rings, or a goatherd from Gont.

After about two hours of wandering, we lead the goats to the field where they’ll spend the rest of the afternoon, and head back to the house, where I read, eat bread and cheese, watch TV, or check my e-mail.

About an hour before dark, we head out to bring the goats back for milking and to the barn for the night. We wander through the forest and meadow for about half an hour, throwing the stick for the dog, and calling the goats on.

Since they’ve been out all day, eating grass and leaves, I don’t need to give them fresh hay, so once I’ve checked that they all have fresh water, I head back inside.

In the evening, Angela, Nina, Louise (Angela’s youngest daughter), and I may eat all together, unless people are off visiting friends, or Louise is at work. After supper, we often gather in the living room to watch a movie before bed.

I’m really enjoying my time here, and I can’t really believe that the week has flown by so quickly. In addition to what I’ve written above, I’ve had the chance to help put fresh cheese into jars, and make camembert. The time I’ve spend at Hof Schwarzes Moor and La Chevrerie has been wonderful. I hope that I can come back soon!