Recipe: Cinnamon bun cookies

I have decided to no more limit this blog to more or less translating my German one ashouston.blogspot.com, but add a new category to this one only: recipes of my US-German kitchen. Or German-US kitchen - who knows.
Because of Christmas coming, I am starting with a Christmas cookies recipe for Cinnamon bun cookies. I found the original on the German site chefkoch.de and modified it a little for US needs. Making those will fill both your stomach and the air of your kitchen with cinnamon flavor and smell. Actually, I do inhale the smell of those fresh from the oven. That's how they looked then:

Want to give it a try? So here is what you need for about 30 cinnamon bun cookies: the ingredients for the dough:

• 2 oz softened butter
• 2 oz plain cream cheese
• 3 oz sugar and 1 pack vanilla flavored sugar or 3.5 oz sugar
• a pinch of salt
• 1 egg yolk
• 6.35 oz all purpose flour
• a (large) pinch of baking powder

For making the dough, I used the whiskers of my handheld mixer. First stir butter and cream cheese, then add sugar, salt and the egg yolk and mix well. Last add the (sifted) flour together with the baking powder.
Spread the dough between two layers of plastic wrap (by the way, I used a bottle of wine) to about letter size (8x12 in) and try to keep a rectangular shape. While recovering from that task, prepare the cinnamon spread

• 1 oz butter, melted
• 2 oz sugar
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon powder

Remove the upper layer of plastic wrap and cover the dough well with the melted butter. Then spread the mix of the sugar and cinnamon powder over it. Keep about one tablespoon for the outer layer.
With the help of the wrap, now roll the dough from the shorter side to a solid formed round bar, cover it in the remained cinnamon sugar. Wrapped in the plastic wrap, put it in the fridge for three hours (or in the freezer for half an hour).
Preheat the oven to 350°F, prepare one or two cookie sheets and unwrap the cookie bar. With a sharp knife, cut slices (.25 inch thick) from the bar, put them on the cookie sheets and bake for about 10-12 minutes until slightly browned.

Enjoy! (And leave a comment, if you tried them.)

My very own paperwork

Already December! How fast time has passed …

Living in the US on J visa as we do requires a lot of paperwork. Additionally, it really takes its time to arrive in “the US system” – and so far we haven’t. Especially the thing with building up some credit history and earning a good credit score is something completely out of our minds. We both were taught to buy only what we can afford and not live on credit … However, if there comes a time we need a good credit score, we should have one. But we still have to work on that.

Our status in the US is based on a form called DS-2019. It permits us to stay here in the country. We need the visa only for re-entry. Having moved from Houston to Rochester recently, we both got a new DS-2019 from Mayo. Therefore, we are allowed to re-enter the US until mid-February, but can stay in the US until November. For some reason, both institutions decided to limit the DS-2019 to one year. *sigh*

Therefore, I also have to re-apply for my work permission every single year and pay 380 bucks for that. Even if I don’t have an employer at the moment (though working on that) … however, who wants to hire a teacher who is only allowed to work until mid-February? Well, the German Saturday School in Houston did. And I really enjoyed working there, teaching German as a foreign language without having had any experience in language instruction before. Unfortunately, all similar schools here in the north are located in St Paul and I am not up to a 90 minute commute one way every day or at least once a week – especially not since the winter has finally arrived here.

Last week, I had my first job interview as a tutor, mostly for math. Math is on shortage in secondary schools here, too, but I think tutoring would be a good start for getting to know the US “math in school” system before seriously applying for a job in the private or public school system.

Anyway, before teaching in school, I need a Minnesota Teaching License. My brother has already called me “more than qualified” for that. Unluckily, he isn’t to one to decide. But here are the facts:

In Germany, licensed teaching at secondary school level usually requires:

-         five years of studying two subjects and educational sciences (including student teaching) at university level, ending with passing 1. Staatsexamen or “Master of Education”

-         one to two years (the time has recently been downsized due to more obligatory student teaching at university) attending some kind of “teacher’s college” (Studienseminar in German) with both supervised and self-reliant teaching – summing up to a part time teaching job (0.5)

In Minnesota (or maybe the US in general?), that is required – as far as I know –:

-         Bachelor’s degree from college in one subject

-         Granted teaching license after passing a test in reading, writing and math knowledge – a teacher’s college is optional!

Of course both countries require a background check and no criminal record. Germany (for teacher clerks or “Beamte”) also required a positive health check including a BMI lower than 30. (I failed at that point.)

However, I am currently in the process of foreign credential evaluation – by an organization charging me another 80 bucks. All I hope is I’ll receive the equivalent for a Minnesota teaching license. My alma mater wasn’t that helpful regarding confirming my study plan. That’s the weird thing about the German Staatsexamen. Being a federal exam by the state I studied in, at no point the (good to very good) grades I got in university classes were taken into account! Therefore, except for the written thesis, all grades are based on a one day performance … And that is not among my greatest skills.

However, ten more days until I head home (to Germany) for Christmas! I hope all paperwork will be done by then, including my evaluation ...

Thanksgiving and Black Friday

I am sorry it took me so long since my last posting. But relocating across this big country (from Texas to Minnesota) had taken its toll and – of course – a lot of paperwork was involved as well. Alex is a little fed up with that.

Yesterday was a special day. Thursday. But no ordinary Thursday – Thanksgiving Day, an official holiday. A lot of employees drive home visiting their family for a long weekend or have vice versa their family staying at their place. Lots of traffic on the highways and airports (and a horrible accident yesterday morning on I-10 east of Houston), in front of many houses in our neighborhood park more cars than usually. Our apartment complex seems to be a little emptier; for Alex and me, Thanksgiving feels like Sunday. Maybe not exactly alike because most stores are closed for this “family holiday”.

Thanksgiving is an opportunity for family meetings like Christmas is in Germany. Though it seems similar, Thanksgiving in the US  should not be messed up with the German “Erntedankfest” because it is not really connected to Christian traditions (the Canadian one is, according to the internet). Instead of being thankful for the harvest (only), it is a more general idea of being thankful for everything good that had happened in the last year. Its origin is being somehow related to the pilgrims of the Mayflower who would not have survived their first winter without the help of the Native Americans. They celebrated a big feast together (and later the pilgrims showed how thankful they were by treating the Native Americans the way they did …) and the traditional meal today still relates to what they had nearly 400 years ago: turkey, corn, sweet potatoes, carrots … and apple or pumpkin pie as a dessert.

We ate everything but traditional: rice, mixed greens and fried chicken bits in cream cheese gravy. By the way, it was completely “made from scratch”. I have heard this phrase a lot in the past days and it took me some time and the help of an online translator to get the meaning of it. I assumed right that this phrase is similar to “of good quality”, but the literal translation to German just made no sense. I am proud to say that nearly all of the stuff I serve is made from scratch. Like this:

... fresh from stove to table ...

... made from scratch ...

... no leftovers ...

 

I also found out that Thanksgiving Day is traditionally linked to “Wipe out Wednesday”, “Black Friday” and “Small Business Saturday”. All days are synonym to “Hey folks, Christmas business has started! *ka-ching*” At first I tried to give Black Friday a historic meaning, but except for the beginning of the worldwide economic crash in the 1920s, I found no references. And that one simply made no sense. Steph helped me out and taught me that Black Friday is the day when all businesses having operated red numbers earlier, are back in the black now. And according to the jammed parking lot of the local Apache Mall this afternoon, people up here in Minnesota are really into the “Black Friday super savings” offered by every store. Maybe because it’s that cold outside (tempatures dropped in the past 30 hours from the 50s to the 20s), who knows … And the competition of decorating your lawn with the most LED supported Christmas decoration has also begun. Not to forget the Christmas carols chaperoning every walk through shops …

Therefore let me end with a chearful: “Ho ho ho!”

Five hundred miles

Well, we were close to 500 miles on our way to San Antonio and back. Just a little tour to visit the – as we were told – most beautiful city in Texas and a little taste of the roadtrip we have to expect when transferring ourselves to Minnesota. However, heading straight west, we were driving into the sunset …

While Alex was driving all the way to San Antonio because I am used to be a little dizzy after torturing my adult pupils with German articles and plural forms, I was allowed to be the one behind the wheel on the quite empty highway I-10 on our way back. We allowed me to do so despite the lack of insurance with me driving (a German DL and twelve years of driving means nothing for our insurance company) – now heading east through the middle of nowhere and some German sounding towns and villages along the highway. We mostly passed trucks and surprisingly, the splendid speed limit was 75 mph = 120km/h, my favourite pace even on German highways.

In spite of being eight years old, our car has a feature called cruise control – which even works! But not being used to it, it was really an odd feeling when the car itself takes over controlling the speed, especially when accelerating. But I got used to it quite fast and would not want to miss it again – above all on our way to Minnesota! Well, you always have to be prepared for hitting the brakes, but being able to move or even cross your legs while driving is definitely a huge plus!

My first highway experience showed a lot of similarities to Germany. Some truck drivers being in a hurry and passing every other vehicle on the road. Or what we call “Elefantenrennen” (literally: elephants’ race) when two trucks are kind of dueling while one overtakes the other and you get stuck behind them for miles … Refreshingly, there was the big difference that no(!) car overtakes at high speed on the left lane. Really: no one! Nothing like in Germany as Tom Hanks reported his experience in an interview: “No matter how fast you go on the Autobahn, someone is always faster – and passing as a lightning!” On I-10 everybody seems content with chugging along at 70 to 75 mph – or is afraid of the fines …

However, the biggest and most confusing difference was that only orange signs of Road Work Ahead and „left lane closing“ were the only thing announcing – well: road work. In Germany, the speed limit would step by step have been put down to around 40 mph ahead of the lane closure – but nothing like that happened here. Nothing. Nada. I spend half an hour(!) after passing the roadwork making jokes about coming to terms with the – in my opinion – missing regulation of the speed limit. Well, the road work was about renewing the blacktop; one could see that easily for three reasons:

1. Our lane had already been beveled and driving was quite noisy;
2. The left lane was currently being fixed by mills and coned off – with single cones standing dangerously close or in our lane;
3. The shoulder on our right had already been renewed causing a two inch high edge on the lane.

I was driving through this continuously talking to myself how surreal the lack of a speed limit was in this situation. Imagine someone driving through this at the speed of 75 mph … But somehow in this case the US relies on common sense to drive carefully.

This leads me to the question if we Germans lack common sense …

I can see Germans!

My best male (and gay) friend told me more than once that I have a good sensor or radar for gay people. Today I noticed that I – living overseas – developed one for German tourists as well. Waiting for the MetroRail at Main Street Square in downtown Houston, I noticed three white people asking an elderly (white) woman for advice where to go to. Groups of white people going by MetroRail must be tourists when they are older than students. And they were. And using public transport made them European because – frankly spoken – every American would use his car to discover foreign cities.

Two middle-aged women and one man, foreigners, speaking as little as necessary caught my attention. I assumed they were German not because of the man wearing white socks in sandals what he did not do. I watched them answering with gestures when somebody excused for passing by too close. That felt kind of familiar to me because I did not know how to react with words when I first came here. And then I saw the man’s mustache, trimmed like most men from the German World Cup Team in 1990 and was sure about their origin: “Es gibt nur einen Rudi Voeller!” - "There is only one Rudi Voeller!", a German fan song for him:

Finally, I was sure they were German when they talked to each other on the train – I sat too far away to start a conversation with them. When they left the MetroRail at Museum District (I foresaw that, too), I thought about wishing them a nice time in Houston (in German, of course) just to see their surprised faces – but did not want to be “the woman yelling at the MetroRail in a foreign language no one understands”. Plus, the people behind me were talking too loud anyway.

To my surprise, I was again mistaken for being British today by the Vietnamese hairdresser I went to. Obviously, the lack of a mustache makes being German less obvious …

At the post office ...

Okay, let us not start with the old stuff, but with what happened to me today and was too weird not to post.

I went to the post office in order to pick up a package for Alex. While some post agencies in Germany are opened from 8:00am till 8:00pm, the ordinary post office over here stucks on opening hours from 9:00am till 5:00pm. And that is really great for those who have regular working hours … But Alex could send me as his agent – lucky guy, he is. After the temperatures have risen compared to yesterday, I changed my long-sleeved to a t-shirt, this one:

As a result, the guy after whom I lined up, greeted me by pointing at me saying “Matroshka!!!” – and I was too startled to answer anything else but “Yeah!” While the guy was already served, another woman lined up behind me, staring at the only application on my back and finally asking: “What kind of application is that?” – “Those are Russian dolls, so called Matroshkas.“ I replied. „Oh, they are pretty!“ the woman continued enthusingly and I explained the nested system of those dolls: “like an onion, you know”. And while it was my turn to be served know, the woman kept a look on her face like she now had something to seriously think about ...

However, I kept on talking with the mailwoman behind the counter because I bought two sheets of each 10ct and 5ct-stamps. Together with two “forever”-stamps it equals the postage for overseas – and a lot of different stamps on the envelope to look at. "But we have 105ct-stamps as well" the mailwoman nearly screamed - "but they start being boring while there is a wide variety of forever-stamps" I replied. "I had no idea our stamps are so much fun to look at" the mailwoman resigned.

Conclusion of today: Someone labeled me “talkative” unseen. And I dressed far too foreign or European – I might go back to what Steph has called “You look really Texan!” recently …