Walnuts cinnamon bread-rolls for a breakfast oversea

This is being a year full of lovely friends and travels.
All started in April when I had the chance to meet sweet Pamela of My Man's Belly and hubby. Luckily enough they were in Düsseldorf for some business and that means below 1h of train of distance from me.

After convincing them in meeting up in Bonn instead of Cologne, we enjoyed a very lovely day coffee hopping and belly filling; usual routine for when foodies get together, right? You might say that only one thing might be missing from the foodie-madness picture and that is actually the picture taking itself; do not despair we did also that! You see, one of the reasons (or baits) I used to lure them into my German lair were the lovely Japanese cherry trees planted along my street that were in full bloom in that period.


The weather wasn't perfect, we actually escaped quite a few strong showers while prophetically sipping on some coffee but the sun pierced through the thick layer of clouds and we got some pretty nice shots of the pinkiness around us.

Better than bread and water: Bierbrezeln

German gastronomy is pretty a mystery to most of us, I have been living in Germany for the last 5 years and still eludes me. Walking around the streets of Bonn or Cologne, you rarely see restaurants specialized on German food. Mostly they are brewery offering rich creamy meat dishes, stews or schnitzel to have with their beers.

An intro on German food and my first cooking class

I did it, I finally started! No, not a diet but giving cooking lessons.
My first attempt at it took place the past weekend with a group of fellow Couch Surfers and we concentrated on German food. Being living in Bonn since more than 5 years now, I think I owe this country some gastronomic interest. I haven't been eating traditional German food very often in these years, mostly because there aren't many restaurants around here that serve this kind of food. German food is mostly a homey kind of food, mostly had for dinner with free flowing bier; the kind of food that Gordon Ramsay will push on a nearly failing restaurant in one of his rescue missions. The food around here is instead mostly Italianised, or Turkish at times; naturally we got our Japanese, Chinese, Thai and now also Tibetan joints but you know these places, they all end up having a shared menu across Europe.
Germany is mostly known for 3 ingredients that make up a typical meal: potatoes, pork and sauerkraut. If French cuisine is a majestic ode to eggs, I believe the German one is to potatoes. Mastering them means mastering two of the main ingredients in our pantry (wheat is mostly exploited in Italian cuisine I believe).