Last week my friend Daniela invited us to come to her home to bake Grittibanz in honor of St. Nicholas day. These are breads that you shape into boys and girls. They are traditionally made around the time that people are celebrating St. Nicholas day on December 6th.  Daniela patiently showed Jackson (and the rest of us) how to form his bread and he was thrilled with how they turned out.  It was a fun afternoon together with friends….oh yea, and the bread and hot chocolate were divine!!

Another St. Nicholas tradition is for the kids to put their boots out and when St. Nicholas passes by he puts oranges and peanuts in their boots. this may be a tradition we start next year along with the Grittibanz! Here in Switzerland they have a tradition of going out looking for St. Nick. They often take lanterns into the woods and look for him there at night. I am convinced Jackson would not have slept until at least next Dec 6th had we taken part in the woods hunt, so we passed!  That sounded a wee bit scary for us!

For those of you that want to try to make some Grittibanz here is the recipe Daniela used. It is actually the same you could use for Zopf bread. It is so soft and delicious!! After we made our little people we used the extra dough for Daniela to show us how to braid the Zopf loaves.

Bread Recipe for Zopf (as well as Grittibanz)

500g flour (4 1/2 cups)
1 tsp. salt
1 big spoon sugar
1 package of dried yeast. 7g. how much is that? maybe 1 tsp.
75g butter (1/3 cup)
300ml milk (1 1/4 cups)

mix all the dry ingredients. melt the butter, add the milk and warm it (not too hot, or it kills the yeast bacteria). mix it with the rest, pouring it in the middle and stirring, then kneading (the longer the better) until it is nice and smooth and shows bubbles if you cut it with a knife.

let rest for 1 hour or so in room temperature or warmer  (should raise to double size).

form the people. Take ball of dough and elongate it. Cut a slit in the bottom to make legs. Cut a slit on each side to form arms, cut out triangles above the arm to make the remaining dough into head.
mix an egg with some milk and brush it over the dough people.
bake them 20 min with 200 degrees Celsius.
enjoy!

if you want them (or a braided bread) fresh for breakfast, make the dough in the evening and let it rise through the night in the fridge.

Thanks, Daniela for teaching us something new and “Swissy” to take back with us!

Happy Belated Thanksgiving to all of you! We hope that you all found yourselves with family and friends, with plenty to eat and much to be thankful for! We truly are so blessed.  There is a lot more I could write on the topic of being blessed but for now I will leave you with some pictures.

For Thanksgiving we had 2 couples over, both American girls married to Swiss men. We were excited to introduce them because we knew they both might enjoy having friends in their same boat.  As I mentioned in the last post, my cousin Nathan was also able to join us, along with Nana! So it was a full table!    We had puh-lenty of food! (we had so much food that last night we had friends over for a leftovers dinner! and then sent leftovers home with them )

Menu

Appetizers

Stuffed Mushrooms

Brie Baked in puff pastry with raspeberry chipotle sauce

Prosecco with cranberry syrup

Apple punch

Dinner

Turkey

Cornbread stuffing

Green beans with shallots

Sweet Potato Casserole

Mashed Potatoes

Gravy

Cranberry sauce

Last but certainly not least…my mom’s Parker House rolls

Dessert

Apple Crumble Pie

Pumpkin Pie

Luckily our friends brought the mashed potatoes and the pies so I didn’t cook all of it!

PS- I find that when I am hosting a dinner or party I am terrible at taking pictures! Which I think means I am super busy enjoying it and that’s better than being distracted by the camera!

I am backtracking big time. Somehow I forgot to put up some pics of our 4th of July festivities. We had a VERY low key celebration this year. Seth had to work a fancy work party for the Swiss but when he got home we grilled and had a homemade cherry pie. We tried to make it as American as possible! It was kind of a homesick day. Since Swiss National Day is coming up Seth was able to find some mini fireworks. The only funny thing about the fireworks is that they were silent….I guess so as not to disturb your neighbors.

when I asked Jackson why he thought I was cutting a star in the top he replied with great enthusiasm “because Daddy is a rockstar?!” We have been out of the US way too long apparently when our child is this confused on the 4th. Not that Seth isn’t a rockstar, because he is but he doesn’t have a National holiday for being one…yet.

Owen held Jenny’s hand during our mini fireworks show. He wasn’t so sure.

Jackson of course loved it!

Looking forward to spending our next 4th in the US of A!

On Father’s Day we took a little day trip to Adelboden. The weather was iffy. It rained the whole time we drove, stopped while we were out and about and drizzled the whole way home. So, we got pretty lucky weather wise. We went up in a gondola and had some amazing views of the mountains and waterfalls in surrounding areas! Adelboden is about an hour and 20 mins from where we live so it was a perfect distance with the little men.

After Adelboden we stopped for a nice lunch on the way home. We had spotted a Steakhouse on our way to Adelboden and decided to give it a try. We pulled up hungry and may I say a bit cranky…when we got to the door they greeted us by telling us that they wouldn’t be serving until 2 pm. Ummm, okay. So we drove around the village and found a river to explore. We headed back to the restaurant and had a great lunch! They even had American BBQ sauce!

The boys have the best dad ever, I must say. He has what seems to be endless patience even on really tough days and invests SO much time and energy in them. They sure do love their dad!!!  Happy Father’s Day, Seth! I appreciate all you do for our boys! Glad we got to celebrate you!!

In addition to it being Father’s Day we also got to have Jenny along! We are enjoying her month with us! We are over halfway through and don’t know if we will let her go back!!

I promise I will get back into the swing of things with blogging again! Jenny and I took an Indian cooking class on Saturday night and the house has been smelling of peaches, strawberries and cherries so more on jamming and yummy stuff to come!! Oh, and a baby shower that I did! Lots of backlog to catch up on!