summer vacation!

19 nights at hotels: booked!
1 teeny manual car: booked!
1 easyjet flight back from rome: booked!

let the summer fun begin!   wait... its only May 5th.

ok, maybe i'm a little too excited about our summer trip to italy but i finally finished booking all of our hotels, etc. so its been on my mind. other reasons to be excited:

1. i get to see howie for 3 weeks straight with NO school!

2. we have a pretty sweet itinerary that was developed with the gracious help of our "real-life" italian friends.

3. this is the biggest trip that i've planned entirely on my own. ok, with a little help, but mostly on my own!  usually howie is the trip planner but now that he is crazybusy, its my job. and

anyway, the exciting part:

Venice + Vicenza (Palladio!)
Agriturismo in Tuscany + Siena
Perugia + Umbria
Naples + Amalfi Coast
Rome!

and now that we know where we're going, its time to plan our agenda and balance food, architecture and fun :)  (of course any food or other recommendations are more than welcome!)

positano, amalfi coast, italy [source anonymous]

cooking adventures: moroccan beef pot roast with honey glaze.

in NO WAY is this a food blog. ha. but since we've moved to lausanne i've been cooking a lot. going out to eat is not really an option. this is huge for me, and why i started to keep track of the dishes in the side column there --->

except that i quickly lost track of what i've made. so i'm going to revise the list a bit, and include my favorites and try to either write the recipes or add links. maybe some of you know a couple of my favorite places to find recipes are smitten kitchen also the 'in the kitchen with' series at designsponge. also, my dear friend shweta has her own real food blog, the vegetarian way.

this recipe came from a surprise issue of 'Lunds and Byerly's: real food' sent to me in a care package from mom. it has been sitting in a pile of travel magazines by my bed for a couple months, but picked it up on friday when i was out of ideas for things to cook.

mine was not quite this beautiful
and we ate it too quick to take a photo!

i was lured by the photo of juicy meat and the word 'moroccan', so i decided to try this pot roast thingy. i had to adapt quite a bit since i don't own a dutch oven, only a tiny covered pyrex casserole dish. also meat is super expensive and speaking of meat... i really have no idea how to ask for a specific cut of meat in french. actually, i don't really know what these things are supposed to look like either- what makes chuck roast different from brisket?!

so, i just bought some "beef" and gave it a try. i'd say it was pretty successful- the beef dried out a tiny bit during the glazing process because i didn't have a 4-6 lb chunk of meat. (i only left it in for 7-8 min) but the dish tasted great with a little spice kick and lots of flavor.

Moroccan Beef Pot Roast with Honey Glaze:
[from Lunds and Byerly's spring 2011 issue of 'Real Food']

Pot roast

3 cups chopped onions

1 Tbsp chopped garlic

½ tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground ginger

½ tsp ground cumin

1 tsp turmeric

1 Tbsp sweet paprika

1 tsp cayenne

1 tsp dried mint

1 tsp black pepper

2 tsp kosher salt

¼ cup cilantro stems, finely chopped (save leaves for garnish)

4 cups water

1 cup canned tomatoes, chopped

2 Tbsp lemon juice (or more to taste)

1 boneless chuck roast or brisket (about 4-6 lbs.)

2 cups cooked chickpeas (freshly cooked or canned)

4 carrots, cut into 2-inch chunks

3 cups butternut squash, cut into 2-inch chunks

2 cups instant couscous

Honey glaze

¼ cup honey

3 Tbsp braising liquid, reserved

2 tsp fresh lemon juice

1 tsp dried mint

Garnish

reserved cilantro leaves

1. For the pot roast: Preheat oven to 350℉.
2. In a 6-quart Dutch oven, toss onions and garlic with spices, salt, and cilantro stems until well integrated. Pour in water and stir in tomatoes and lemon juice. Lay in meat, cover, and bake 1 hour.
3. Remove lid and bake 1 hour more. Ensure there are 2 to 3 inches of liquid in pot, adding more water as needed.
4. Cover and bake 30 minutes or until meat is just becoming tender. If not tender, continue to bake, checking every 15 minutes. When it is fork-tender, remove meat to a platter or pan. Add chickpeas, carrots, and squash and place pot over a medium-hot burner. Bring to a light boil and cook until vegetables are fork-tender, about 10 to 15 minutes. remove from heat and degrease the top.
5. Remove the solids and taste the liquid. If too watery, return to heat, bring to a boil, and reduce to concentrate the flavors. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Set aside or refrigerate overnight.
6. Preheat oven to 450℉.
7. For the glaze: in a small saucepan, combine honey, reserved braising liquid, lemon juice, and mint. Heat 1 to 2 minutes to form a light syrup. PLave roast in a roasting pan and brush on glaze. Place in oven and brush on more glaze every 5 minutes until the glaze has become bubbly and shiny, about 15 minutes total. Remove immediately.
8. While meat is roasting, prepare couscous as per directions
9. To serve, mound couscous in  a large, shallow serving bowl. Spoon on vegetables and plenty of braising sauce. Remove strings from meat. Slice or cut meat into chunks and place on top; scatter with cilantro. Pass additional vegetables and sauce.

Serves 8.

morning ride.

we're back to grind here in lausanne. howie back to classes and i to my computer. i think i should go to bed soon so that it doesn't burn a hole in my lap! i've been working on a couple of graphics projects and also started seriously planning our italy trip for july.

but this morning when i woke up i didn't quite know what to do. i thought about running, but my toes hurt from all the walking we did over the weekend. i looked at my bike and knew that even though i didn't feel like hauling it downstairs, it would be exactly the thing to start my week.

somehow i found myself all geared up and ready to go so i hit the road towards vevey. i didn't plan to ride the entire route, so turned around somewhere in the middle. the route is seemingly simple- ride along the lake. but occasionally there are small towns you can ride through or the road changes into a highway, or surprise roundabouts... just enough to make a simple ride a little confusing.

misty morning lake.

so my first mistake was riding up to the top of a steep hill after riding through a town, only to find myself arriving at a round about exactly at the same time as a car, who of course did not stop (maybe didn't even see me?) but luckily there was literally only enough room for the car, maybe about 6" clearance, me, and about 1" between my tires and the curb stones. somehow i managed to stay up and just rode right through it all with the passenger in the car looking amazed that i didn't stop. i'm just amazed that i didn't fall OR touch the car! later i realized that the car had come from a hidden side road and legally had the right of way, so i should have stopped, which also would have made me fall over :)  i think i'll just avoid this intersection in the future.

that's the road i was supposed to be on... 

second mistake was on the return trip as i meant to stay on the main road and avoid all small towns. i followed the biking route sign and ended up riding through a town. somehow i missed the signs back to the main road, and ended up following some signs which took me up into the vineyards. this turned out to be not such a bad mistake- but that path has many more hills, and the occasional car popping out from nowhere. also its actually a little scary as i felt like the wind would blow me right over the edge of the path. you can't really see whats below, so might as well be the lake! i wasn't on the vineyard path for very long, but i will have to try it again soon.

vineyards are finally green!

happy easter!

ok, well, it was almost one week of posts. it was a busy busy week for howie and therefore i felt busy too- staying up late with him and making sure he was fed properly. i also held another session of my quite famous chinese dumpling cooking class. i didn't realize it would be such a hit! my class was also featured on another partner's blog- Todd's 40x40 list. i might have to try getting creative with the dumplings, although you can never go wrong with the classics.

some other accomplishments of the week- i attended our weekly french lesson after having missed several weeks, and realized that i missed practicing french a bit. i need to figure out how to work it into my daily routine... (it would help if i had a daily routine!)

i also went to go see a doctor and got my prescriptions filled, finally!  it was quite difficult since the english speaking doctor who was recommended to me, also has an english speaking receptionist who is impossible to get on the phone. took a couple weeks of calling at different times of the day to finally reach her.

and we finished the crazy week with a picnic with a few IMD friends in the middle of the vineyards with an amazing view of the alps and good homemade food.

by the time you read this, we'll be relaxing in the Ticino sunshine!

ciao!

sketching in Romainmotier.

so it sounds a little sketchy, but i found some swiss sketchers on the internet and met up with them last weekend. i saw that they were heading to a town very close to lausanne to participate in the 31st worldwide sketchcrawl found through the urban sketchers website.

i hopped a local train from lausanne station and within 30 minutes was in the middle of farm fields and tiny towns. luckily nora came along for a few hours so i wasn't completely on my own. we walked 2km or so to the town of Romainmotier. a very tiny old town with a very beautiful abbey church. the main church that exists today was built in the 10th &11th centuries, and this nice plan diagram found here shows how the church developed from much earlier.

the church also had a traditional cloister which was removed during a period of religious reform. remnants of the old cloister still linger on the exterior walls and stones were laid to represent the original plan.

one of the most beautiful aspects of this church is the sandstone on the exterior- the color and aging of the stone is amazing. also, of course i love the way that there's still a taste of what used to be- ribs still sprouting from the exterior facade gives an idea of what used to be.

it was nice to escape into the countryside and listen to the music of cowbells for a few hours. it was also great to meet some lovely swiss sketchers who turned out to be just the kind of people i'd imagined.

Update: the sketchcrawl results from our group can be seen here!

escape to Zurich.

after howie's first round of exams he had the weekend off! of course i didn't really know about this until 2 days before, but somehow we managed to change a couple of plans and head to zurich for part of the weekend. it was so great to spend time together outside of lausanne. i think that even if we're out of our apartment its difficult to forget that we're here for one very big reason. so getting out of town really feels good!

we spent friday night wandering the city a bit. ate at Sprungli (scavenger hunt!), saw the largest clock in europe (scavenger hunt!) and also saw corbusier's last house along the lakefront. actually, the lakefront there is quite amazing. i'm still getting used to the byob aspect of life here, also the tolerance for pot smoking. so the lakefront on a sunny friday evening was packed with people having a beer, chatting with friends, lighting up and hanging out. we even saw two guys biking together- they looked like twins as well- one holding the hookah while the other was smoking (while riding bikes through the crowd!) amazing.

sprungli! 

this country is MAD about chocolate bunnies.

chocolate mousse & cappuccino. yum.

howie is free!

giant clock.

getting a little lost... true adventurers.

sunset orange

sunset pink

le corbusier 'heidi weber' house/museum

of course we found the famous bratwurst stand. i think i like the bun-less approach.

howie's head has not grown- his torso has shrunk :)

so many bratwurst! 

the evening was a lot more wandering. it was great to see people out, restaurants open late, and general liveliness.  we even stumbled on some sort of marching band bar hopping around town. then we saw a group of bagpipers playing as they walked through the streets. then all of a sudden we saw another and another. some were huge, like 50-60 people, then some were only 4 or 5 people. nobody told us it was 'battle of the marching bands'?!  we made up that name but either something was going on or zurich-ites really like drums, piccolos and bagpipes. made for an interesting evening!

saturday the plan was to stay as long as we could, then take the train home in the evening. lets just say we walked until our feet were about to fall off. we started with the design museum and saw an amazing exhibit about photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson who was a very influential photographer with quite an amazing life. he travelled to china at the turn of communism, one of the first western reporters in russia, and witnessed the death of ghandi. he also survived a concentration camp during ww2 and once he escaped he dug up his camera he'd buried in the woods and continued to shoot. his work was so amazing and insightful.

we stumbled upon this market built under an existing train bridge in this industrial/artsy neighborhood. we stopped to eat some fish and chips (minus the chips) at this great little seafood stand. they also let us taste their olive paste and pesto. yummmm.

zurich Markthalle im Viadukt 

interior- the bridge splits and this is the space between

reminds me of minneapolis!

little restaurant in big arch

the next stop was the famous freitag store of stacked shipping containers. freitag is a swiss company that makes bags from old truck tarpaulins and seatbelts. every freitag bag is different, but once you start noticing these bags you see them everywhere!  too bad we can't really afford them at the moment- even the ipad case is 100fr. boo. i guess we did get to climb up to the top of the tower for free.

freitag store

a 'skyscraper' built from shipping containers

the view from the top

on our way down

the view from between the stacked containers

we saw a few more sights but eventually we just piled ourselves onto a train and called it a day.  i'll leave you with a few more photos from the trip!

chalkboard dust.

a little video treat for you! in case you didn't see this, howie and a couple of classmates put together this video for a contest about how MBAs can 'change the world'. he had a great idea for the intro, but of course needed my help :) so i made my first hand drawn stop motion video. congrats to howie and team for finding the time to put this together amidst their crazy workload. glad i could help and be a part of the fun. enjoy!