Friday, July 15, 2011

Introduction to the blog

Hi - Gruezi -

When I first moved to Switzerland, coming from Dallas, Texas, the thing I missed the most was Tex-Mex (and Target but that doesn't have anything to do with the food here...) My second day here I went to a Mexican restaurant in the Niederdorf...boy was I shocked! It tasted nothing like anything I had ever had before - strange cheeses were used and even stranger ingredients were added.

Now, 3 years later, I have learned to embrace the food available in Zurich . For the most part, local is cheaper than trying to buy all the 'comfort' items on the wonderful American shopping websites - not that these aren't great for special occasions like Thanksgiving ( trying to prepare that meal here takes some serious effort if you don't want to shell out 200 chf, but that's for later).

I have bought  Swiss cookbooks, some UK ones (Jamie Oliver has a line of food over here) and of course brought along all my favorite US ones. The US ones are slowly being phased out. And you know what? I don't really miss them so much anymore.  There are of course my favorites that I still make, but I have learned where to find the ingredients or how to change what I'm making slightly so that it still fits.

My goal is to show you the recipes I have found - both the good and the bad - and how easy (or not) they were to make.  A lot of the recipes I use now are in German - I still need to translate parts of them, but for the most part I can cook straight from the German recipes. I will include an English approximation of the German ones. Otherwise there's always www.google.com/translate. One of my most frequently used websites for a while. :-)  There is also a list of ethnic grocery stores that I have found invaluable along with some websites and the local grocery stores.

En guete!