Pfannkuchen, or, A Recipe Page

For quite some now I’ve been tossing around the idea of building a recipe website. Not one of those food blogs, where you find out about the latest and greatest in cookery trends, or where I pontificate about the most, ahem, righteous way to eat – just a simple page where I can share some of the skills and recipes I’ve gathered in my many years of feeding a family. Because cooking really isn’t hard, and there are a lot of things one can do with not very many or very fancy ingredients. But above all, because good food is just a very good thing.

I’ve been learning a bit (a tiny bit – no, make that a very, very tiny bit) about web design recently, and I thought I’d try out what a recipe page could look like. I already had this German Pancake recipe written out for another purpose, and as it was Shrove Tuesday (aka Pancake Tuesday) this past week, it seems apt. Don’t you think?

So here we go! (I’m especially proud of the “Jump to Recipe” button…)

Pfannkuchen (German Pancakes or Crepes)

Jump to Recipe

This was a common and popular dinner at our house when I was growing up. It usually started with soup, then pancakes and a side dish of fruit such as applesauce. I made them for my own kids who called them Petzi Pancakes, after a picture book series about a small world-travelling bear named Petzi who ends every one of his trips back at his mother’s house, eating a big stack of rolled up pancakes filled with jam.

Ingredients:

250 g (1 1/2 c) Flour
2 Eggs
1 tsp Salt
3/8 l (1 1/2 c) Milk
Oil for frying

(makes enough for 2 people as a meal, or 4 as a side dish)

Instructions:

With a wire whisk or beaters, beat flour, eggs, salt, and half the milk until smooth. Gradually add the remaining milk until you have a runny batter the consistency of thick cream or gravy.

Heat a not-too-heavy frying pan on medium-high heat. Add 1 tsp. oil to coat the bottom. When the oil is very hot (the surface shimmers and you can feel the heat rising from the pan), pick up the pan and pour in a small ladleful of batter; it should hiss. Tilt the pan to make the batter coat the whole bottom of the pan (that’s why it needs to be a not-too-heavy pan; it’s the only dish I don’t use my cast iron for).

Bake until the whole surface is dry, then flip over with a spatula. Or, if you want to show off your kitchen acrobatics, shake the pan until the pancake comes loose, and with a flick of your wrist flip it in the air (I’ve never managed to do that myself).

Bake until the bottom is brown (lift one edge with the spatula to check).

Stack them on a plate with a lid on top or put in the slightly heated oven to keep warm.

To serve, sprinkle with sugar, spread with jam, or drizzle with syrup, then roll up with your fingers and take a bite! Serve with applesauce or other fruit on the side.

Alternatively, since there is no sugar in the batter, these also work for savoury dishes, for example as a side dish for cooked vegetables, filled with creamed mushrooms, etc.

The batter is very similar to the dough for homemade noodles, so leftover Pfannkuchen can even be used in soup:

Flädle Suppe

1 l (4 c) hot broth – beef, chicken, vegetable, etc
2-3 cold leftover Pfannkuchen
Optional: 1 Tbsp of finely chopped chives

Roll up the pancakes, slice into very thin strips like fettucini. Bring the broth to a boil, dump in the pancake “noodles”, give it a stir, sprinkle on some chives and serve immediately.

Guten Appetit!

It’s a Newsletter!

I’ve finally taken the plunge and set up a newsletter, to keep my faithful followers updated with some semblance of regularity (no more than once every month or two) on what’s going on in the Clay and Words studio and study.

If you’re interested in being among the first to find out when there’s a new book coming out or an art show in the offing, or you’d like to be introduced to my writing and my ceramics one piece at a time, go over here (the “Newsletter” tab in the menu) and leave me your email address.

There’ll be an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every mail so you can bail out again; I promise I won’t take it amiss!

(Just to clarify, the blog has two places where you can leave your email address: one is in the sidebar of every page and is for subscribing to blog posts, the other under the “Newsletter” tab at the top. The newsletter will only be sent out by email, you can’t read it on the web. So if you’re interested, please subscribe!)

Life, the Universe, and a Newsletter. See you on the mailing list?

Happy Bloggiversary to us!

I just saw that today is our ninth bloggiversary on WordPress. After four years of blogging on Blogger, Steve and I moved house and came over to WordPress, in anticipation of publishing Seventh Son, which happened on Oct. 18th, 2014.

Steve posing on my library books. Yes, he’s still around, even if he hasn’t said much lately (to me at least).

So, Happy Bloggiversary to us! If you feel like wasting, umm, I mean spending some time on browsing the Archives, there’s a handy button on the right entitled, fittingly, “Archives” (if you’re getting this per email, you’ll need to click on the title to go to the post in your browser to see it). Or you could type a keyword into the “Search” bar and see what there is to see on the topic – for example, “Steve”. You could find all about him; he’s a bear with history.

In other news, our main website just underwent a major overhaul; check it out at www.amoffenwanger.com (or www.clayandwords.com, that should get you to the same page).

And that, to keep it short and pithy, is Life, the Universe, and a Bloggiversary. More to come soon!

On Cambridge and Friendship and a New Book

Anyone who says that online friendships aren’t real friendships has obviously never had one.

Louise Bates and I met a lot of years ago. If I remember rightly it was via the blog of another writer (Lee Strauss, to be precise, who had just published her first book). Both Louise and I were in our early days as bloggers and writers, and had yet to publish our first pieces. Her comment on Lee’s blog post caught my interest—who was this E.L. Bates person? She sounded like we might have a few things in common.

So I toddled over to her blog and checked it out. Would anyone be interested in beta reading a couple of short stories she’d written, she asked on the blog; umm, sure? I said. Not that I had much experience, I gave her to understand, but I could read the stories and tell her my opinion. Which I did. And then I sent her my fairly recently completed first novel to read (“I just want to know if it’s any good…”), and she gave me her opinion in return.

And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

We found that we loved each other’s work, and had very much the same approach and attitudes to writing and to literature. And then we started talking about everything under the sun. Homeschooling, life, religion, parenting, society, food, books, knitting—and always, always writing. The emails flew back and forth. Big changes happened in our lives, all of which we shared with each other as they happened. I went to grad school and got my Master’s degree; Louise and her family moved to England for her husband to study for his PhD at Cambridge, and then moved back to the States to take up their life there again. On the way, we published our first books. And then the second, and third, and fourth. We kept blogs, and changed blogs, and got our very own websites. And both of us went into business as professional editors.

Our friendship is as real as they come, even though we’ve always been separated by at least the width of a continent and for a while even an ocean as well. We always talked about how much we’d love to meet in real life, by preference in England where so many of our favourite stories are set. Just for fun, we’d sign our emails with “Some Day In Great Britain!”

And then one day that wish became reality. Planning a trip to Germany to visit family, I realized that it was cheaper to fly via London than to go to Germany directly. Well—it was the sensible thing to do then, wasn’t it? And while I was on English soil, I might as well make it a longer layover, and take in the sights. It was practically a duty. A day or two in London, and then—Cambridge!

A short 45-minute train ride from King’s Cross Station, I made my way to the Royal Cambridge Hotel, and Louise and her family came to meet me. I still remember going down to the lobby, and there she was, just as she looked in her photos. “There you are,” I said, “it’s you!” (or something equally profound and erudite), and about five minutes later it felt like we had known each other in person for years.

We proceeded to spend the most marvellous day and a half together. They took me to King’s College Chapel for Matins and to Jesus College for Evensong; we walked through the ancient streets of Cambridge and watched punts getting snarled on the River Cam by the Mathematical Bridge; we had a proper British cream tea in a café and supper in the pub where some famous scientists used to have a pint after making their famous discoveries (I can’t remember now what they were, but they were famous, yup).

Being in Cambridge with Louise was an experience I will never forget.

Not the most flattering picture of either of us, but we were so busy having a great time together we neglected to take any others.

And now (drumroll please!) she’s written a book about the place!

I got to read the very first version of this story. But that was before February of 2019, before I had seen Cambridge. It was a good story (all her stories are), but it didn’t resonate as much with me then. She put the manuscript aside for quite some time. But then not long ago she took it back out, and completely re-wrote the story. Now, it’s suffused with Cambridge. It’s her homage to the place, and it’s a wonderful, fun, profound story.

Death by Disguise came out today! It’s Book 3 in Louise’s “Whitney and Davies” 1920’s Magical Mystery series—like Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers with magic.
“The walls of Saint Dorothea’s College in Cambridge hide more secrets than simply the existence of magic …” Are you intrigued? Of course you are. So I’ll stop talking at you. Go get a copy of the book, and dive into the world of E.L. Bates’ Cambridge—it’s magical all in its own right.

Life, the Universe, Friendship and Cambridge and Books. You’re in for a treat.

#ThrowbackThursday: Olympic Hockey

Seeing as it’s the Winter Olympics again, I thought it might be time for this repeat blog post from February 2014, written during the Sochi Olympics:

Steve ready to cheer Canada in the Olympics

I don’t give a rip about hockey. Oops, did I say that out loud? I might have just jeopardised my chances of ever getting Canadian citizenship. Oh, wait! Wait! Before you send me hate mail, delete the link to my blog, unfriend me on Facebook and refuse to ever speak to me again, hear me out.

It’s true, I’m afraid – I don’t care about hockey, and I really know nothing about it. But one thing I do know, and that’s that Canadians care passionately about this game. I found out just how passionately four years ago, this very Sunday, during the Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010. The Man and I wanted to go for lunch, and we made the mistake of picking the local pub to get our eats. We got into the pub, and it was crowded – really crowded. Maple leaf motifs everywhere. And there was such a sense of excitement the air was practically crackling with it. We did get a seat, and then we realised that on the big TV screens there were guys on skates, and a big arena – that, in fact, they were winding up for the gold medal game, the final day, the BIG ONE – men’s hockey, Canada vs. the USA (which tells you right there where our heads were at; we didn’t even know it was on that day). I tell you, it was just a little scary. We were there early enough to be able to get our food and get out of there before the game started – slink out, rather. It would have been more than my life would have been worth to say out loud what I just said up top there; the crowd might have just torn me to pieces and fed me to the nearest coyotes. Besides, we knew our seats would get snapped up the minute we left. So we went home, and the Man and the offspring watched the game on TV – I went and had a nap, I’m afraid. But when I got up from my nap, I found out that Canada had, indeed, got the gold; at overtime, in a very dramatic play, no less.

And you know what? I was thrilled! I was so very, very excited. Not because the game means anything to me, but because the whole country erupted in celebration. All around me, people were ecstatic. The atmosphere of triumph, of victory, was fantastic. And it was EVERYWHERE. To have won the gold medal in Canada’s sport on Canadian home soil – there was nothing like it. Canada was one big party zone that day. It was wonderful.

The 2010 Olympic Flame coming through our little town

I might not care about the game, but I care about the people who care about the game – so I guess, in a sense, I do care about hockey, after all. I care because others care. I care because I live in Canada, and Canada cares about hockey. I’m actually quite nervous about the game that is being played as I write this, Canada vs. the US in the semi-finals. I’m not watching it, because, other than the fact that I really don’t know what’s going on on the ice, I find the tension hard to handle. There are too many people to whom this matters so very much. As for the men’s gold medal game on Sunday, I’ll be sure to stay out of the pub. I might just stay off the internet, too, until it’s over – just tell me who won afterwards, will you? If it’s gold for Canada, I’ll be very happy.

Canada is terribly passionate about hockey – my boys got to watch yesterday’s women’s gold medal game in school, one in math class, the other in the school theatre on the big screen while they were supposed to have gym class. I ask you, what other country would put their high school classes on hold so they could watch a sports game? Canucks have their priorities.

Life, the Universe, and Olympic Hockey. I guess I’m a hockey fan by proxy.

The Story of Steve

“These are the chronicles of a writer and her stuffed bear…” So begins a blog post, in a galaxy far, far… well, actually, no, not far away at all. Right here, in fact. The chronicles of a writer—that’s me—and her stuffed bear—that’s Steve.

If you’ve been with us on this blog for a while, you’ll have encountered Steve quite a lot over the years. But it occurred to me that lately, he’s not been much in evidence. So I thought we could re-introduce him to our esteemed readership, and while we’re at it, give you—Ta-daa!—THE STORY OF STEVE.

The Story of Steve starts with Christmas quite a number of years ago. Truth be told, I’m not sure how many—it might have been 2007? “Nobody ever gives me any stuffed animals for presents!” I lamented. The eldest Offspring took it to heart. Enter: a small brown teddybear.

He was a Gund, and his tag said his name was “Aiden”. As anyone knows, when you adopt an animal, you rename him to properly make him part of your family (Louis the Cat was called “Sugar” at the SPCA. Yeah, no). So what to call this little brown guy? “Call him Steve,” the Offspring suggested, “because Steve’s a nice name!” That’s a quote from the movie Over the Hedge, in which the woodland animals are frightened by the sudden appearance of a hedge in their forest, and they decide to name it Steve in order to be less scared of it. For some reason that line is eminently quotable. So I laughed, and Steve it was. (The incriminating “Aiden” tag got removed in a labelectomy some years later.)

Steve spent the next couple of years hanging out on my bedside table. But his real rise to prominence came with my first ever blog post, August 1, 2010. I’d taken a course on how to blog, and the instructor said to never publish a post without a picture. So, I took a quick photo of Steve and stuck it in the post. “That’s Steve,” I said. “He’s better-looking than me, not to mention more photogenic, so he gets to have his picture in the blog first.”

Steve got popular quite quickly, being the designated cover model for the blog. He came along on coffee dates, he shoved in his oar on poetry and fairy tale studies, he wrote a blog post or two, he even acquired a Facebook page. (He claims I don’t let him on that page much, but, come on, when he has gone on he’s hardly posted anything.) He underwent a fashion makeover—from stylish bow to cosy knitted sweater—and he got several new friends in stuffed-animal-land .

He also came along on pretty much every trip I’ve been on in the last dozen years (except for the one where he was forgotten). He’s very portable, being so small and squishable. He’s been to writer’s conferences, family visits, sightseeing trips, weekend getaways, and once even a cruise; he’s seen Munich, London, Vancouver Island, Cambridge, and Stuttgart (mostly from the inside of my bag). I sometimes wonder what hotel housekeeping staff make of that small bear sitting next to my bed, and I live in dread of forgetting him someplace one of these days.

Steve writes poetry, but he’s never deigned to share it with me in a publishable format. He also has definite opinions on what stories I should write (they’re supposed to have bears in ‘em). Other than that, he’s a very restful roommate. At the moment, he’s hanging out with Molly the Plot Bunny on the bookshelf behind me in my study, keeping the print copies of my published books warm (he’s useful that way).

Steve has been a wonderful companion over these last few years. If you’ve ever considered inviting a stuffed bear into your life, do. I can highly recommend it.

So this, for today, was Life, the Universe, and the Story of Steve the Stuffed Bear. Stick around, you’ll see more of him. He’s that kind of bear.

On Sleep and Having Nothing to Say

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

It’s what you say when you have nothing to say, as we all know. There, I’ve said it.

The problem with maintaining a blog is that one really ought to post something on said blog. Well, I haven’t been able to think of anything to say. Yes, I know it’s Wednesday and that calls for a Wordless Wednesday post, but I don’t have any particular picture I wanted to post today, either.

But then, it’s been two years, really, since I’ve been doing much of any posting, quite aside from the year I “officially” took off. And in those two years I’ve accumulated a lot of pictures. So, how about, for the next while you’ll get some retro-pieces? Retro-thoughts, retro-pictures. And the thing is, when I first started blogging, more than ten years ago now, I did warn my esteemed readership that this wasn’t going to be a blog “about” anything in particular. Hence the tag line: “Life, the Universe, and a Few-Odd Other Things”.

It’s been two years… And we all know what those two years entailed. It’s sapped so much of my energy, of my ability to think and to create.

I’ve just re-hung my Burne-Jones “Sleeping Beauty” (“The Rose Bower”) on my wall – a piece that I got to see in real life at the Tate Britain in 2019.

As you’ll know, if you’ve followed this blog for a while (or know me in real life), “Sleeping Beauty” is one of my favourite fairy tales. I keep thinking about why that is, and why this story holds such fascination for us as a society that it’s one of the perennial favourites. I mean, it’s kind of boring, isn’t it? It’s literally about a girl who… sleeps. But I don’t find it boring, and neither do any of the other millions of people who keep enjoying this story.

Just to get something out of the way, no, it’s not because the story is about the prince’s heroic journey to rescue the girl. That’s a Disney addition. In the Grimms’ version, which is the one I love, the prince does nothing more exciting than walk up to the thorn-covered castle, which lets him in because he unwittingly happened to show up at the right time. No dragons, no sword fights, no baddies to battle. Only sleep, so powerful it even knocks out the flies on the wall and the cook in the middle of smacking the scullery boy.

It’s the sleep that’s the real antagonist in this tale – and its solution, the way it is defeated, is to let it run its course. Once the hundred years are up, a prince shows up and the princess wakes. The prince is nothing special (apart from being a prince, but in fairy tales, those are a dime a dozen); he’s not “the chosen one”, he’s not “destined to fall in love with the princess”, let alone her previous lover who actively seeks her out to rescue her (most film versions of the story go with the latter, but, sorry, that’s not actually in the folktale). The only thing he does, and does right, is to listen to the story an old man tells him about the enchanted princess in the thorn-covered castle that nobody can get to, and let his curiosity get the better of him.

And suddenly there are roses on the thorns, and they part to let the prince in just in time for the princess to wake up.

Maybe that’s what we need to hear today: The sleep will run its course. There is nothing to do but wait it out, but once it’s done, there are roses and kisses and, unfortunately for the scullery boy, a smack upside the head.

Perhaps I had something to say today, after all.

Life, the Universe, and Sleeping Beauty. The sleep ends when it’s run its course.

New Beginnings

It’s a bit of a cliché, that. New Year’s Day, time for new beginnings! New goals, good intentions! If the calendar wasn’t already telling me that it’s that time of the year, a dead giveaway would be my social media feed, which is once again bristling with ads for exercise or weight loss programs (I ususally mark those ads as “inappropriate” or “offensive”). A friend of mine once stated that her goal for the new year was to stay fat and enjoy herself doing so – I can go with that, that sounds like an obtainable goal. (In other words, it’s a way of saying “My goal for the new year is to stop beating up on myself.” Alas, as with pretty much every other goal, it’s hard to stick to.)

However, having said that, I do have a liking for calendar markers. There’s something satisfying in having things happen at a specific day in the calendar. My nice DSLR camera decided yesterday, on New Year’s Eve, that its SD card had about as much as it could take – four years’ worth of photos filled it to the brim – and it quit just as I was trying to film a panorama shot of the last sun rays of 2021. So the next SD card and round of photos will start right at the beginning of 2022, and there’s something about it that tickles my fancy.

The sun going down on the Old Year — The last photo on the SD card

So all that to say, here we are, making a new start on the blog. I don’t think I need to say much about 2021 as a whole – it’s been pretty crazy all around the globe. Personally, I’d had all kinds of grand plans for what I was going to do during this year without blogging – finish books, publish books, build a big body of artwork for exhibitions, etc. Haha. Much like everything else during this year, that didn’t go according to plan.

But then, other things happened. I did a lot of knitting (aka thumb-twiddling with a purpose). I read a lot of books (most of them re-reads of old favourites – I’m almost finished with Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Alleyn series, and it’s been interesting reading them in order, front to back. I have things to say about them… but that’s a topic for another day). I took a lot of pottery classes and workshops, a not inconsiderable number of them online. In fact, that’s one of the advantages that Covid has brought to the world, the proliferation of online offerings. Clouds and silver linings and all that jazz.

But I’ll stop boring you with the non-saga of our lives. I didn’t actually have all that much to say for this first post back in the saddle, so I’ll stop saying it. Just this for now:

This is Life, the Universe, and a Rebooted Blog. See you again soon!

Sunrise on a midwinter’s morning. (You can pretend it’s rising on the New Year.)

A Quick Notice

Hello everyone!

Yes, we’re still here, even though we’ve been quiet in cyberspace for nearly a year. This isn’t the startup of the blog again quite yet, but just a quick notice that we’re doing some very inexpert internet magic in the background, specifically moving the blog to a self-hosted site (I think that’s what it’s called). I’m hoping to port the email subscriptions as well, so hopefully you won’t notice anything at all, and when the blog bursts back onto the scene in its full and renewed glory you’ll never know anything ever happened. But just in case something goes weird, you’ve been warned.

Meanwhile, this is Life, the Universe and an Ongoing Construction Project, and we’ll see you all again soon!

Steve and Molly discussing the finer points of Stuffed Animal Poetry

Merry Christmas To All, And To All a Good Night

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. And I’ve finally come to the conclusion that it’s time: I need to go dark for a while. No, it doesn’t mean I’m going to The Dark Side (even though they have cookies). It means I’m going to turn off the light switch on this blog.

Closed for renovations, remodelling, rethinking.

In the words of Tara Leaver, a lovely artist I’ve been following and taking inspiration from for some time: “I need to go dark. To be in the dark with my work – the winter dark, the dark of not knowing, the dark of not showing.” (Tara Leaver’s ArtNote newsletter, 16/11/2020)

So that’s what I’m going to do. You’re not going to see me around here for a while. Don’t worry, all the current posts will stay up, so you can re-read them at your leisure, and I’ll still be available via email if you want to talk to me. Also, Steve says that any bears or other stuffed animals who want to come by our house for a chat are more than welcome (it’s been established that they’re immune to Covid-19; social distancing is not an issue for them).

So I’ll sign off for now. Thank you, everyone, for being along for the ride with us, and Steve and I wish you a wonderful Christmas and New Year 2021!

That’s Life, the Universe, and Turning Off the Light Switch. Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night!