Esslingen

At the end of December, we visited Esslingen for the first time. Despite being so close to where we live, we had not visited yet. I had been hoping to visit for their Christmas market which is a favorite for most people I have talked to, but it was cancelled for 2021. 

Even without the Christmas magic and gluhwein, Esslingen proved to be an idyllic town to walk around. 

We started our visit by parking and walking up a hill. Luckily Charles planned our route so that the hill was first with the rest of the stroll being easy. He knows me so well! The top gave us some great views of the city and we walked past the vineyard. Esslingen is home to Germany's oldest type of sparkling wine. We did not take the opportunity to try any on this trip, but hopefully when we have visitors we can pop in for a tasting. 

This is Esslingen's Rathaus. Isn't it a fun color? By this time, Suzie was pretty much done with the city walking. But she had some fun scaring the pigeons away in the market square. 

Peanut Butter Pretzel Magic Cookie Bars

We are dessert people, if you did not know that already. Like one of the contestants on the most recent Great British Bake-Off said, I don't just have a sweet tooth. I have sweet TEETH. 

I had a can of sweetened condensed milk and a couple sleeves of graham crackers in the pantry and thought "let's make magic cookie bars!" But I did not have any coconut. I scoured Pinterest for a variation that included items I actually had on hand and then checked my Beale Officers' Spouses' Club cookbook. It's one I hardly ever use and so sometimes I open it up and look through to justify keeping it. I found a recipe for PMS Bars which had pretzels and peanut butter chips instead of coconut. I used that recipe as inspiration and went off-book a bit for this my creation. 

Introducing my Peanut Butter Pretzel Magic Cookie Bars! They are sweet, crunchy and delicious. If you love the sweet-salty combo, then these will be right up your alley. I have NO idea how many pretzels or how much peanut butter I used, so if you make these use your best judgement. In my opinion, you cannot really have too much of either ingredient. 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Baklava

We had a very non-traditional Thanksgiving this year. We ate zero turkey, no normal Thanksgiving sides and no pie. I actually did not mind it. I had some traditional Thanksgiving meals twice prior to Thanksgiving, so that was checked off for me and Charles did not seem to really care. Instead, we made reservations at a local "American" restaurant where I had a steak and Charles had salmon. It was very delicious and relaxing. No stress about cooking and no dishes to clean up afterward. Of course, it is a lot easier to eat out when not in the United States where everyone celebrates Thanksgiving. For Germans, it was just a normal Thursday. 

In lieu of pie, Charles requested one of his favorite desserts--chocolate peanut butter baklava. I found the recipe a few years ago on Pinterest. I do not make it very often. It's an easy recipe, but because of the phyllo dough it is a bit of a process to put together. But if you love baklava and the chocolate-peanut butter combination, then you will very much enjoy this one! 

As the recipe states, it is extremely helpful to have everything ready at your workstation before starting the phyllo dough process. I have made this recipe by myself, but it is 100% better if you have a buddy that helps out. The way we do it is I butter and layer the phyllo and Charles adds the peanut butter and chocolate chips. Plus it is just more fun to do it together. 

One piece of advice, do not make this while hungry. Because we had an old person dinner scheduled (our reservation was for 4:30pm) and I made this prior to that, I was pretty hungry while preparing this. I have a tendency to get a little grumpy when I am hungry and I snapped at Charles over who knows what when we were starting to make this. For the health of your relationship, avoid baking while hangry. 

Sorry no pictures. But trust me, it is yummy!

 

Seiffen, Germany

For Veteran's Day weekend we visited Seiffen, Germany. We were originally planning to  visit Bolesławiec, Poland but neither of us were really looking forward to the long drive. Seiffen was a couple hours closer. In addition, I had to miss the spouses' club trip to Seiffen so it made sense to switch our plans and go together. 

Seiffen is known as the place where traditional German Christmas decorations like Nutcrackers, arches (or Schwibbogen) and pyramids originated. The locals, back in the day, were miners but after the mines were closed they had to find new ways to make a living. Their skills translated well to woodworking and thus the wooden decor and toy industry flourished. 

I did not really know what to expect from the town. It's a pretty small town without a lot of tourist information available. I had seen some pictures from a couple of the spouses who went on the spouse club trip, so I had a little bit of an idea but experiencing it in person was totally different!

Throughout the town you can find these really beautiful lights showing popular designs. This one is showing the angel motif. I'll talk about that a little bit later. Whenever we travel, we like to pick up an ornament for our Christmas tree. Our ornament from Seiffen is a mini version of one of these lights. 

We brought Suzie along with us on the trip to avoid having to find a pet sitter on a weekend when a lot of the military community were also traveling. Because of Suzie, we ended up on some walks we might not have taken otherwise. Charles took this picture on one of his solo walks with Suzie. 

We stayed in one of the apartments at the Spielzeughof. The location was perfect as it was just up a hill from the main drag with all the shops and restaurants. It was so peaceful! This little nutcracker lives in the apartment and was a nice piece of Seiffen to admire during our stay. 

Every European city has a church and this is Seiffen's. We did not check out the interior, but walked around the outside a bit on one of our walks with Suzie. You can purchase arches, pyramids and more that feature this church. The arch I really wanted had it on there. Unfortunately, the store employees were not sure if it was compatible with 110v so we chose not to buy it. I'll have to do some research about that and maybe purchase it another time.

On the main drag in Seiffen we saw lots of little huts like these serving anything from gluhwein, snacks and wooden decor pieces. This grouping was outside of the the restaurant (Holzwurm) we had dinner on Saturday evening. It was especially cute in the evening with the stars and string lights on. Our dinner was delicious, so I highly recommend making a reservation for when you are in town. 

I finally experienced gluhwein while visiting Seiffen! Gluhwein is a hot, mulled wine drink and can come in a variety of flavors. The first day in town I had a white wine with Amaretto version that was my favorite! I didn't snap a picture because it was served in a Styrofoam cup (not Instagram worthy). I also had some from a local bakery to accompany a pastry. That one was my least favorite. Our third cup, pictured here, was from one of the stands in town. We thought about keeping the mugs, but unfortunately they were from the 2019 Seiffen Christmas market and we didn't think it would be worth it. We returned for our 3 Euros back. 

Nestled amongst the shops and restaurants in town were large examples of the many pieces you can buy in the stores. This one shows the angel and miner. These were popular back in the day and you can still find them in the windows of the local homes. They can be illuminated with regular candles, battery powered candles or electricity. In the background of this picture, you can also seeing a couple in the top left. They move so they get closer and closer until they kiss. There is even a kissing sound that accompanies it! 

We purchased quite a few things on our trip. Seiffen had all the things my heart was dreaming about when it comes to German decor, especially for Christmas. We spent our first day in town visiting lots of shops (and there are LOTS of shops); we took pictures of pieces we liked and made a list of our top priorities to make sure we did not blow our budget. The next day, we went back to the shops to make our purchases. When we were planning our trip, I was worried that a three day weekend was going to be too long, but it was perfect as we were not rushed to make our purchase decisions and had plenty of time to visit as many shops as our hearts desired. 

One thing I wasn't necessarily planning on getting were the angel and miner. We saw so many cute ones throughout town and this is the set we decided on. I especially like the miner from this set (pictured below) because of his fancy coat tails. 

We have a Nutcracker collection that is displayed all year long. We went into our trip desiring a taller Nutcracker since our others are roughly the same height. Well, as you can see, we ended up with one that is quite a bit taller than our others. Charles wanted one that had the miner symbol on his hat and there were a few to choose between. 

Smokers are also a popular item in the shops. We have a couple that Greg gifted us with from his time living in Germany and we have two small ones that we bring out for Christmas. When we saw the beekeeper, we had to have him! Charles also loved the toymaker so we brought him home, too. 

We purchased a couple other pieces that we will put out for Christmas including a pyramid and a pinecone that is decorated with tiny pieces like a shepherd and sheep. It was very unique!

Chocolate Peppermint Sugar Cookie Bars

During the holidays, I love chocolate and peppermint anything! Peppermint mocha...yes please! Peppermint hot chocolate...mmmm! Peppermint sprinkled on homemade brownies...double yes! So when I saw this recipe for chocolate peppermint sugar cookie bars I knew I had to give them a try! They turned out really delicious, but you have to eat them pretty quickly because the cookie base hardens quicker than other cookies. 

Gingersnap Cheesecake Bars

I have been working part time at the Thrift Shop on our base. It's not a dream job by any means, but it has given me something to do (not that I really needed one more thing to do between all my volunteer gigs) and some extra travel money. We had a potluck for lunch in honor of Veteran's Day and to celebrate one of our regular volunteers who is heading to the States for the winter. 

I scoured Pinterest for some ideas of something I could bring that did not require being warmed up since I was coming in to work in the morning and wanted to make sure my item was still going to be tasty a few hours later. I had this recipe for Gingersnap Cheesecake Bars saved and knew it was the perfect time to try it! Charles is not a huge fan of cheesecake, so he would not appreciate it as much as my co-workers and volunteers would. 

I received many rave reviews on the bars so the recipe is a keeper! The original recipe was for a 13x9 inch pan, so I halved it for this occasion, but seeing how quickly they were devoured I should have made the full recipe. The recipe card below is for half the recipe so if you want a full pan just double all the measurements. Enjoy!

 

Tamale Pie

I have posted about this recipe in the past, but it was just a link to the original recipe I found through Pinterest. This has become one of my go-to recipes and it is so delicious! It's warm, gooey and packed with flavor so it is great anytime of the year. It's fairly easy to put together, but if you choose to cook the chicken in advance like I do, it takes a little bit of prior planning. My suggestion is to cook extra chicken so you have some for tacos, too! For tamale pie, three chicken breasts is sufficient for the recipe. 

You could also try the recipe with shredded pork or beef, but chicken is my favorite.