Just eat it!

Have you ever thought of how many of your groceries end up in the litter every day? Working as a waitress for the last two summer holidays showed me: We drop too much. People ordered food, but hardly touched it. I had to throw away whole dishes, just because my guest’s eyes were bigger than their stomach. I perfectly remember one Italian family. Their four kids wanted to have a Schnitzel with french fries. The Schnitzel in the restaurant I was working for is really big. I knew they already had a starter and would surely love to eat dessert after the main course. I offered them to share a plate, but they insisted on having one per person. Their parents told me to listen to them. You surely can imagine the end of the story: four Schnitzel found their way right into the garbage.

Some restaurant-chains try to stop this trend. One of them is Nando’s. If you eat there, you will see that dishes for one person are pretty expensive. As soon as you order a plate to share you eat very cheap. There is enough on your plate to get your stomach full, but you don’t overdo it. Unfortunately there is no Nando’s in Austria. Still, you have got enough possibilities to eat cheap and eco-friendly in Graz: The L’Osteria serves pizza way too big for one person to eat. You can take it with you if you want to order one for you alone, or share it.

Another problem of our throwing-away culture is the way we behave as customers of grocery-markets. We often xpect to be able to buy everything we want to at every time. We expect the vegetables to look as fresh and appealing in the evening as they did in the morning. This is why many groceries are thrown away, no matter if they are edible or not. It would take too much time to explain all aspects of this problem here, so I highly recommend watching this movie:

http://www.foodwastemovie.com/about/

This couple started an experiment called Just eat it. They had to survive for six months by eating discarded food. The only exception of this rule was if meals were served by family or friends. Their struggle and experiences with it is really worth watching.

I speak food- Easter edition!

Hi guys!  The Easter holidays turned out to be my inspiration for this blog post: I had to explain what we eat on Easter Sunday to a friend of mine, who is from the UK. Without knowing I killed two birds with one stone: I spoke food and had an idea for my blogpost.

My family loves self-introduced traditions, so our Easter rite starts a couple of days before Easter Sunday. We all get in our car and drive about an hour to visit my relatives in lower Carinthia. They produce and sell the very best pork at their little farm (covered advertising alarm!) and are our most valuable source when it comes to buying meat. Here’s what we bought this year for our delicious meal:

What we call “Osterschinken” is boiled ham or hammon. As you can see we buy it as a whole and store it in the basement. On Easter Sunday my grandmother slices it, which is not the easiest work to do. 

We also have Ox tongue, which we buy at a farmer near us. (My parents, my grandmother and my brother think it's tasty, me and my sister are perfectly happy without it)

Moreish, self-made bread is the greatest way to enjoy all this meat.

Horseradish with eggs, “’Eierkren” in German, is a mixture of freshly grated horseradish, vinegar, oil and boiled eggs that are cut in pieces.

This dish is very Carinthian. I guess most of you don’t really know it so I decided to give you some introductions on how “Reindling” is made. Try out this recipe - you won’t need much time, but be able to serve a tasty side dish at your Easter meal.

Ingredients:

500g flour

80g butter

¼ l milk

2 eggs

20g yeast

20g sugar

Filling:

100g raisins

100g sugar

50g nuts

80g butter

2 teaspoons cinnamon

Directions:

Make yeast dough out of the ingredients. Roll it out. Melt the butter. Butter the yeast dough. Put all ingredients that are listed under filling on it, coil it up. Put it in a greased baking pan.  Bake in the preheated oven at 180 degrees for 45 minutes.

After this we enjoy a delightful sweet: “Osterlamm”, easterlamb.  I don’t know if you know what this is, so I will share my recipe with you. You can use for simple cakes too, because it is easy, timesaving and very tasty.

Ingredients:

4 eggs

200g sugar

a packet Vanilla sugar

A pinch of salt

lacing of lemon flour

100 ml oil

100 ml water

350 g flour

a packet Baking powder

Instructions:

Beat eggs and sugar until fluffy. Add all the other ingredients and put in a greased baking pan, formed like a lamb. (If you use this recipe to make a cake base, put the batter in another baking pan.) Bake in the preheated oven at 180 degrees for 45 minutes.

You see, it is really simple. Because the Holy Week has just begun and Easter Sunday is still some days away at the moment, I couldn’t take photos of our Easter meal and had to take some pictures from the internet. We never took a picture of our meal- we think you eat with your eyes, but not with your camera, so there is no need to take some.

Writing about what I am going to eat on Sunday makes me both, peckish and curious: What do you eat on Easter Sunday? Do you have a decent meal? Leave a comment and tell me J

Enjoy the break! 

Who am I?

Hi you all! I am really looking forward to read through the posts and find out interesting things about your personality. But, who am I? Good question! My name is Laura Beatrice Theuermann, I’m nineteen years old. My friends often call me “walking quotation” because I love to read and often short passages of a text simply get stuck in my head. Of course, they are not staying there; every time I write a letter, postcard, small note for my roommate or similar there is going to be a quotation found on it. Therefor I decided to describe myself by using the following one:

The sky gave us three things against the troubles of life: the hope, the sleep and the laughter! (Immanuel Kant)

I hope to soon find time to play theatre again. I used to play in a theatre group since the age of twelve until I left high-school but haven’t had any time to find a new one yet.

I sleep well at night because I know my family and friends love me. I grew up with two siblings, one of my grandmothers living next door and my uncle and aunt living two houses next to ours. As you can imagine family is an important part of my life. I’m a very social person, who likes being around others, so my friends could be seen as my second family. Spending time with them in Austria is as important to me as travelling with them.

 

I laugh a lot. I’m a positive person who thinks the best of people rather than the worst, so I believe in the idea of a world that smiles back at you if you walk through it with a smile on your face. Anyway, I’m a realist. I know my life isn’t a walk on sunshine every day, but there is something Sam says to Frodo in The Lord of the Rings (three of my favourite books) that is absolutely true to me:

 

There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.                                                                              

(The Two Towers; The Lord of the Rings)

--> my siblings and me (I am the oldest, but, as you can see, the smallest one)

 

I’d also like to know a little bit more of you guys. I’m sure I won’t make it through all the posts, but I’m always open for coffee. J (Note for you: If you meet me the first time I may appear a little quiet to you, but this is because I like to listen to people first, to try to figure out what kind of person they are and then start telling them stories about me.)