Elim Christian Center in Poland

For the spouses' club Trips & Tours in March, we visited Boleslawiec, Poland. The purpose of our trip was two-fold. One was to enjoy time together and shop for Polish pottery. But our second purpose, in light of the current situation with Ukraine, was to bring some much needed donations for Ukrainian refugees that are currently being housed in Poland. 

Our community donated a ton of items like bedding, clothing, toiletries and more. We packed as much as we could in our bus and headed off to the Elim Christian Center. 

Emily, our host at Elim, greeted us and gave us a tour of the property. The center is in an old Polish castle that has been restored for the Center's purposes. Emily is an American whose mother escaped Poland during the Communist era, so Emily has a passion for the Polish people. Through tears, she expressed how grateful she was for our visit and for all the donations we were able to collect for the 70+ refugees they are currently providing shelter for. 

When we arrived, this room was completely empty. We quickly got to work sorting all our bagged and boxed donations into this room. Emily told us the donations would only last a couple of days before they were all claimed by their residents. 

After we finished putting things away, we were treated to lunch at the Center and were able to see their Nativity Sets that the Center crafts and sells to raise money for their mission. They are sewn and are the most adorable sets that include the typical Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus but also camels, sheep, donkeys, wise men and more. I brought home a Mary, Joseph and Jesus set to remember my time at Elim. They sell them through area reps, so if you're interested in checking them out visit their website and send them an email! 

Guava Cream Cheese Pound Cake

One of my very favorite things on the planet is my cream cheese pound cake. I don't even remember where the original recipe came from, but I make it as often as I can justify. It is creamy and just has the best flavor. 

Recently I had ordered some guava paste online to make guava and cream cheese pastries. With the remaining guava paste packages, I was thinking about making a guava cake. I saw a recipe for guava pound cake where the author said she substituted one cup of sugar for guava paste in her original pound cake recipe. So I chose to do that with my cream cheese pound cake. It turned out so good! 

To top my guava pound cake, I attempted to make lime Swiss meringue buttercream. That was a fail. On my first attempt, it was both soupy and curdled. After fighting with it, I gave up and scooped it into a bowl to mess with the next day. The next day I played around with it again by heating it up and re-whipping. That fixed the curdled part, but it was still too loose. I tried cooling it in the fridge and then whipped it later after bringing to room temperature. It is thicker than it was, but more like a whipped cream thickness. That's ok! I have just been topping my pound cake slice with a dollop of my lime Swiss meringue cream and have been perfectly happy! 

 

Pineapple Teriyaki Chicken

I came home from a spouses' club event with a pineapple. It was one of the prizes from our Luau themed event. I love pineapple and have no problems eating it by itself, but I wanted to make something with it. I considered making a crockpot recipe, but my last batch of crockpot chicken came out super dry. Plus, the crockpot is a pain to clean in our tiny sink. 

After searching Pinterest, I decided to try my hand at making teriyaki sauce for chicken and throwing in the pineapple. 

I loosely followed a recipe from Build Your Bite for the sauce, but because I did not have all the ingredients I had to go off-book a little bit. I was a little nervous that it would come out gross, but I was pleasantly surprised by how tasty it was! 

Southern Sicily

As a belated birthday celebration, we jetted off to southern Sicily for several nights. My interest in Sicily was twofold: 1) ancestors on my Dad's side were from Sicily (although it was a different part of the island than we visited) and 2) I wanted to visit somewhere sunny and warmer than Germany. 

We flew into Catania which is on the eastern side of the island. After picking up our rental car, we drove down to Syracuse where we had booked an Airbnb that overlooked the harbor. 

On our first full day, we walked around Ortigia which is the island connected to Syracuse by bridges. The views of the waves crashing were just what my heart needed. The day was perfectly sunny and warm. 

One of my goals in visiting Sicily was to eat arancini and cannoli. Check and check. We had arancini almost every day, but I did not have nearly enough cannoli. I would return to Sicily just for the food!

On our second day, we headed inland a bit to Caltagirone. The town is known for their pottery and we booked a pottery class through Airbnb. A master potter, pictured above, demonstrated some of the things they do to make pottery and then we had a chance to play around with clay and make two pieces. 

We each could make a mug/vase/jug using the coiling method and then a face mask. I made a vase, of sorts. The face masks were the silly part of the class. Pictured below is Charles' mask. At a certain point while making mine I came to terms with the fact that it was crazy and a bit ugly and just embraced it. 

For a few extra Euros, the shop will fire and glaze our pieces and ship them to us. The first firing takes two days, so there was no chance that they would be ready in time for our departure. I am looking forward to seeing the finished pieces!

Caltagirone has this long staircase in the center of town with each step featuring beautifully decorated tiles. 

Mt Etna is a dominating part of the landscape in southern Sicily and here you can see it from a park in Caltagirone.

You cannot visit Italy and not have a cappuccino for breakfast at least once!

Another excursion we took was to a nearby town--Noto. Noto is known for its Baroque architecture. We visited during reposo, the Italian version of a siesta, so it was quiet and sleepy. 

On Ortigia, you can see the ruins of the temple of Apollo. When we walked by one evening we saw this group of kitties hanging out on one of the columns. We actually saw stray cats in several areas of Syracuse and Caltagirone. 

On our evening stroll the day before departing, we could see Mt Etna smoking in the distance. It is hard to see in the picture, but it was neat to see in person. In this picture you can also see the steeple of one of Syracuses' churches that was constructed in the 60's which explains the style. 

Walking along the coastline was one of my favorite things and I wish I could have done more of it!  

Heilbronn

Sometime shortly after our move to Germany, someone recommended that we read A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain. The person said Twain gave some interesting commentary on the German language which we would be able to better appreciate now that we lived in Germany. I downloaded the Kindle book (it was free!) and it had been sitting there waiting for me to read it for several months. I finally opened it up and started reading. I am still in the midst of finishing it as I had to take a break to read this month's book club read (The Alice Network), but from what I have read so far it's a delightful book. His writing reminds me of Bill Bryson's style.

Anyway, in the book so far he has talked about visiting Heidelberg and Heilbronn. Charles and I visited Heidelberg as one of the stops on our honeymoon river cruise. We will be visiting again at least once while we're stationed in Germany because it is pretty close, but we have yet to make it over that way. 

For one of our weekends this month, we were trying to find something to do. It has been a little more challenging with continued COVID restrictions, especially because of our incomplete vaccination status (incomplete with the new regulations here). I looked at the map and saw that Heilbronn was pretty close. We have driven by the Heilbronn exit many times, but I never really knew much about it. I suggested we take Suzie there for a walk and lucked out with a lovely sunny, albeit chilly, day. 

Heilbronn sits on the Neckar River which is something Twain talked about in the book. When we arrived in Heilbronn we parked at the Wertweisen Park. If you have ever lived in Europe, you'll appreciate this next bit. Parking was free and abundant! Charles routed our walk through the park and up along the river into Heilbronn's downtown area. As we got closer to the city center, we came upon a bridge that goes over the river from one side of the city to the other. It was LOADED with locks representing relationships. I have heard of this in Paris and have seen it in other cities. We spent a few minutes looking at the multitude of locks. I was impressed to see that many of them were professionally engraved. It gave it a better sense of purpose and intentionality. 

This tower was not far from the love lock bridge (that's what I am going to call it, at least). I read briefly about the towers in Heilbronn, but I am not going to attempt to give you their history because I don't remember it well enough. This tower had fun metalwork at the top so it looks like someone is walking a tight rope off the top of the tower. 

Twain mentioned the astronomical clock in the book. It was neat to see it in person and think about how many others have looked at it over the years. Right in front of the clock was a Saturday market, but we happened upon it as it was winding down. 

We spent some more time walking around the city center, doing some window shopping and watching Suzie scare pigeons into flight. We ended our stroll back through the park. It made for a great afternoon adventure.

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.