Crisp and short: dinner with Sandra, Beate & Harald was very nice!!! Pre dinner aperitivo was great, sitting on a terrace above the lake with ducks and swans underneath was great, food and wine were very tasty! Life is good, “so schee scho”!!!
60 people live here in Muslone, Italy, high above the Lago di Garda, and all of them must be kind of short I guess…..
And here we are: hitting the jackpot with this incredible quaint Italian village above Lago di Garda: Muslone!
Getting up at 3am was not that much fun, but beating traffic and arriving 6 hours later made it worthwhile. It is even more beautiful than I had wished for! This village is a hidden gem, the alimentari store had everything we needed for lunch, and we sat down at 12pm to eat sunripe tomatoes, prosciutto di Parma, Gorgonzola, olives, oliveoil and bread. Deliciousness to its finest – life is good!
We are lucky so far, the predicted heatwave got only up to 32*C here in Ingolstadt, so we spend the day floating around the Oldtown, with a very nice lunch with my sister Petra, shopping, haircut, with stops in cafes and beergardens to keep hydrated. As an evening dessert Ted made a delicious peach cobbler!
Today we were invited to my nephew Daniel and his girlfriend Regina for dinner. We were blown away by their super delicious pizza, cooked in the barbecue! See for yourself…
Our plan of loosing a few Covid pounds just doesn’t work. We are spoiled left and right with good food, beer and wine, and saying „no thank you“ is not an option…..
Ted is cooking today and he decided to make those pancakes that our friend Leslie made for us at Lake Tahoe last fall. Ever since, those pancakes are our favorite breakfast special and Ted has mastered them – Leslie would be proud of him!
Serve these pancakes with butter and warm maple syrup.
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2 1/2 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup (1/8 lb.) butter or margarine, melted
1 cup fresh blueberries, rinsed and drained, or canned blueberries, drained (see notes)
Salad oil
In a bowl, mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In a small bowl, whisk eggs, buttermilk, and butter until blended. Stir egg mixture into flour mixture, then gently stir in blueberries.
Place a nonstick griddle or a 12-inch nonstick frying pan over medium heat (350°). When hot, coat griddle lightly with oil and adjust heat to maintain temperature. Spoon batter in 1/3-cup portions onto griddle and cook until pancakes are browned on the bottom and edges begin to look dry, about 2 minutes; turn with a wide spatula and brown other sides, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes longer. Coat pan with more oil as necessary to cook remaining pancakes.
Serve pancakes as cooked, or keep warm in a single layer on baking sheets in a 200° oven for up to 15 minutes
Beside several amazing museums (Bavarian Army Museum inside the castle, Museum of Modern Art inside the old city wall, Anatomie Museum where Dr. Frankenstein‘s lab used to be, etc), Ingolstadt has a few very interesting festivals. One of which, the „Stadtfest“ happened last weekend in order to celebrate the 550 year existence of the university. It was spread over the whole old town, which is an area of 10 acres, had 9 stages with 200 hours of program, 90 booths with food, drink, arts & crafts, along with all restaurants, retail, bars being open until the wee hours. We went Saturday and Sunday and had so much fun!
The artists with their bicycle-part costumes
Walking through Ingolstadt is like a lesson in history that I didn’t care much about as a child. Growing up with a castle in the background, with houses older than the USA, Ingolstadt is very fascinating to me now, as a visiting adult who appreciates the many unique features it has to offer.
First settlements in 5500 BCE, first written documents as a town in 809 CE, first university in Bavaria, the secret cult of the Illuminati was founded here and Frankenstein, a student from Geneva, who studied medicine here, got attention with his “experiments”. Mary Shelley heard about those and wrote her world famous book, based on those stories she was told.
Today Ingolstadt has an innovative university, the headquarter of Audi is located here, but the soccer team, 1st FC Ingolstadt, sucks 😬
Bitcoin ATM
This weekend is a big festival in town, the „Stadtfest“, which is an overload of music, culture and entertainment. And – not to forget – food! So we ate our way through a variety of calories which we always excuse with several miles of walking. Those calories still show up on the bathroom scale however, which we think doesn’t work properly anyway…..
And this was not the end. We were invited to my brothers house for dinner where we were treated to a very special, super tender meat dish: „Schichtfleisch“, cooked in a Dutch oven for 2 hours! 6 pounds of pork neck slices are layered with bacon and onions, then cooked to perfection! It ends up being super tender, you could eat it with a spoon!
