We found one bad and two good new foods:)

Today, the girls and I ventured off to the grocery store…we were craving Rice Krispy bars (we had seen some other children eating some at our play group on Wednesday).  I thought, “I can make those using German ingredients.”  We could not locate any cereal resembling our well-known “Snap, Crackle and Pop” cereal but did find jumbo marshmellows and stick butter.   As I was looking for stick butter, I found what resembled a good ole’ overprocessed individually sliced packaged cheese.  We tried some when we got home and it was delicious; I am sure I will be the highest consumer of this food product:)!!  Grilled cheeses tomorrow night!

Also, while trying to search for Rice Krispy Cereal, at a store we usually do not visit, we found microwave popcorn for our Friday night family movie night!  We have found that the Germans must not like popcorn because 1) it is not in the grocery stores and 2) we cannot even locate an old-fashioned popcorn maker!  But, we finally found some…now, I just need to go back tomorrow and buy all of it…now that we know it tastes delicious (we had to try some already tonight). 

On the way out of the grocery store, I thought we would try some of the food from the VERY COMMON food vendor stands.  I see these stands at various locations, on various dates, throughout different towns.  This particular stand is often outside our most visited grocery store.  I “THOUGHT” I ordered spare ribs and rotisserie chicken… when we got home, I realized my super-duper German language skills ordered us spare ribs and ham.  The ribs were very, very dry and the ham was very, very fatty and disgusting…Elle said, “let us never get food from that place again Mom;” I could not agree with her more!!  But, now, we can make grilled cheese and have microwave popcorn for movie night, so our trip was successful.  Oh yeah…and about our Rice Krispy bars…after not being able to locate Rice Krispy cereal (or anything similar), overcooking the marshmellows and using way too much butter I indeed cannot make “German” Rice Krispy bars…our bars could have been mistaken for a dark cement block once they cooled.  We will try again…

Lastly, this morning Kim came over for a short to watch the girls while I took my walk/jog, did laundry and got us packed for our upcoming weekend trip to Luxembourg City, Luxembourg.   Elle had her German books laid out so Kim could read them to her.  Matt has been “trying” to read these books in the evenings, so that the girls hear more German, but his German is not quite like Kim’s German—LOL.  Also, Kim created this cute little chart with common items and their German names (see below).  Elle was very pleased with the chart and had to show it to me when I returned from my walk.  Kim speaks very good English (has a lot of family in California) but her first language is German of course.  It is so cute to hear Elle speak German…she of course makes up a lot of words, but at least she is intrigued by new languages and is not afraid to begin tackling learning German (she is less intimidated than I am!!).  Sometimes though, she counts to 15 in Spanish and tells me she is counting in German.  I have to remind her that she is talking Spanish; I do not think when I was 3 I was reciting any numbers besides the ones in English:)!!

So, as I mentioned before, this weekend we are traving to a new country- Luxembourg.  We plan to visit:

-the Jardin des Papillons (exotic butterfly garden).  In this area there are attractions from fairy-tale tableaux and exotic birds, to children’s games.

-the Casemates du Bock.  The great cliffs of the Petrusse and Alzette valles are honeycombed with tunnels, stairways and chambers called the Casemates, hollowewed out of rock during the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

-the Cathedrale Notre-Dame

-the Palais Grand-Ducal

We are hoping for some nice summer weather (by this I mean in the mid-70s and not in the 60s like it always is) for our travels.  I will Blog again Sunday evening and will have some pictures of our trip to share.  Have a safe and happy weekend!

Good night…with lots of love from my side of the world to yours...