Cooking with the giggling citrus

On Wednesday night Scott and I went with Matt and Jill to a course at Laughing Lemon, an English-language cooking school and caterer in Zurich. The course was entitled What’s In Season, and covered just that – fruits and vegetables that are at their tastiest right now.

We were welcomed with a glass of wine and some chit chat with our hosts, Jack (the chef) and Silvia (the wine guru). The small group of students consisted of a variety of nationalities, even including a couple of that most elusive species, the Swiss.

Read moreCooking with the giggling citrus

Liechtensteiny blues

After not leaving the country in over a month, our wanderlust brought us to Liechtenstein on Saturday afternoon. It took about an hour and a half to get there from Zurich by train and then bus. We decided to head for the capital, Vaduz (who knew Liechtenstein was big enough for more than one town?), since it contained a few interesting-sounding museums and such.

We arrived around 1 pm and headed straight to a restaurant that promised Liechtensteinese (is there a real adjective form of this word? Anyone? Anyone?) specialties, which turned out to be strikingly similar to Swiss food: meat, potatoes, sausage, cheese, spatzle, beer. Actually a lot of things about Liechtenstein are strikingly similar to Switzerland: the Swiss Franc is the official currency, High German is the official written language, and an incomprehensible dialect is what they actually speak. Plus it’s generally clean, safe, and orderly, at least from what we saw.

Read moreLiechtensteiny blues

Mmmmmm…. chocolate

I’d like to introduce you to the new love of my life, Cru Sauvage chocolate truffles from Sprüngli, one of Zurich’s two most famous chocolatiers (Teuscher being the other, tackier one). I don’t actually know what Cru Sauvage means, but I’m imagining that it has something to do with the raw, wild, savage nature of … Read more

Sledding down the Alps

If there’s one thing the Swiss do right, it’s sledding. OK, they actually do several things right (melted cheese, dark chocolate, public transportation, yodeling…), but sledding is one of the most fun. It’s a completely different activity here than the sledding I grew up with in the US, which consisted of trudging up a small … Read more

Planning ahead gets you nowhere

So my first attempt at premeditated week-long skiing was not particularly successful. We’re back from Grindelwald, two days early. I’ll let this article in SwissInfo explain why: The month of January is set to be the warmest on record in Switzerland despite the cold snap at the end of the month, according to the national … Read more