An afternoon of Christmas baking.

On Sunday I hosted a little Christmas cookie baking fest. I feel like it's not the Christmas season unless I do some Christmas baking, so I set out to remedy that situation. I had a few co-workers over, and we made 7 different kinds of cookies between us!

Rebekka and Lilli hard at work.

Using every bit of counter space.

We had a fun afternoon, drinking mulled wine, listening to Christmas music and playing with little baby Jake in between all of the serious baking that was happening.

Paul playing with Jake in the turkey box.

In the end, I would say that it was quite a success. We had Russian Teacakes, fudge, peanut butter cups, peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, Mailänderli (with almonds, with lemon and with orange), Spitzbuben and Brunsli. I think that all of us were pretty surprised by the amount of cookies that we ended up with, but I'm sure that my flatmates won't mind.

Mailänderli (orange and lemon) and Spitzbuben.

Rebekka with peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, Mailänderli (almond), Spitzbuben and Russian teacakes.

Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, Mailänderli (almond), Spitzbuben and Russian teacakes

**Photo from Lilli. From top, clockwise: peanut butter cup, Spitzbuben, Mailänderli (citrus), Russian teacakes, fudge, Brunsli, Mailänderli (almond) and peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. Wow.

I can't wait to bake at home with my mom and sisters! Less than two weeks and I'll be home for Christmas!

In Switzerland, Christmas = cheese.

Last week the spirit of Christmas descended on Zürich in full force. True, the grocery stores have been featuring Christmas products at least since October, but now everyone is in the Christmas mood.

Christmas trees have appeared in virtually every plaza, and many evergreen trees have been decked out with lights. It is finally socially acceptable to listen to Christmas music! (Thankfully, since I've been listening to Christmas music secretly for a few weeks...) With the start of December, everyone has an advent calendar. I even got my first one from my flatmate, Georgie, so I get a little chocolate for every day in December until Christmas. And everyone is getting ready for the visit of Samichlaus, the Swiss version of St. Nikolaus, on December 6.

Since this is Switzerland, one of the things that comes along with the Christmas season and the cold weather is the cheese meal. While restaurants offer meals such as cheese fondue and raclette all year, only tourists eat such things in the summer. One gets so warm while eating these meals, between the warm, gooey cheese and the presence of a small heater on your table (fondue pot or raclette oven) and the wine and/or schnapps and/or hot tea that are consumed to aid in the digestion of all that cheese. Not to mention that these meals are pretty heavy and not totally summer appropriate.

I, being somewhere between a tourist and a non-tourist, flout the normal cheese meal timing rules and eat fondue and raclette all year, although often it has been when I am hosting visitors. Or when it is 55 F in July.

In general, everyone has a preference for either raclette or fondue. I am more of a raclette person, although fondue has been growing on me recently. I think I just like that you can personalize your raclette experience more than the fondue. Also, I like pickles.

I would say that real cheese season started around mid-October with our trip to Sion and raclette dinner. Followed by a fondue dinner with my small group on our weekend in Thun. Now the cheese season is in full swing, and I'm really in danger of being totally cheesed-out.

Last week my flatmates wanted to have a Christmas fondue meal for our last evening together before Christmas. However, I begged them to consider something else, as I had a fondue tasting the following evening. And a raclette Christmas party for work the evening after. Cheese is good, after all, but definitely in moderation. Luckily, Stef and Georgie agreed to forgo fondue, and we had a nice Christmas pasta meal.

The next evening, the research group that we share a lab with organized a joint fondue tasting evening, which featured 7 different kinds of fondue! I never knew that there were so many different kinds, but it seems that each region has their own speciality. My favorites are Vaudoise (100% Gruyere cheese) and chevre (goat cheese) fondues. It was fun to hang out with some people from other groups in our building, and, thankfully, since it was a tasting, there wasn't so much cheese involved.

The next evening was a Christmas dinner for our research group. We had a big raclette meal and white elephant gift exchange that was really fun. I even won the jackpot in the white elephant gift exchange- a huge poster map of Switzerland! I love maps, so I was pretty pleased.

Thankfully, since then I've had a break from cheese, although I am visiting my friend Aurore in Strasbourg this weekend, and fondue has been threatened. And Stef still wants a Christmas fondue.

Welcome to Christmas in Switzerland, I guess.

A Christmas-y Saturday around Zürich.

On Saturday afternoon my flatmates and I decided to check out the just-opened Christmas markets in Zürich, as well as to do some Christmas shopping. We started out at the Freitag store, which is a unique Zürich landmark built out of old freight containers. All of the items that Freitag sells are made out of recycled canvas from semi truck coverings, which means that they are all unique. You can climb up to the top of the store and get a view over part of Zürich, which is pretty interesting.

View from the top of the Freitag store.

Prime Tower.

Georgie and Stef.

The Freitag store.

After Freitag, we walked along the Viadukt, stopping in at the English cheese shop to get some cheddar. From there, we went to the Christmas market at the Hauptbahnhof, which features the famous Swarovski Christmas tree. (Only in Zürich, I think.)

We took advantage of the nice weather and walked along the river towards the lake, enjoying the Christmas decorations. Zürich is a really pretty city, I think.

There was another Christmas market at Bellvue in front of the Opernhaus, where we sampled gluhwine and watched the lights turn on.

We finished our tour by walking down the Bahnhofstrasse and enjoying the lights on the street. It was a really lovely day!

My first Swiss Thanksgiving.

I have been running really long experiments at work, so everything was really crazy in the week leading up to Thanksgiving. I had everything planned out on a timetable, so I was (pretty) sure that we'd be able to get everything done in time.

Thanksgiving Eve was the official start of massive cooking, clean and other preparations. One nice thing about doing Thanksgiving in a country where it isn't a holiday is that shopping is so much less stressful on the actual day of Thanksgiving, and the grocery stores don't tend to suddenly run out of the things that you need. My flatmates and I kicked off our preparations with a big trip to Coop to get all that we needed to make our contributions to Thanksgiving. Our fridge is really not that large, but thankfully it has been cold enough that our balcony doubles as a fridge these days.

Pies chilling on the balcony, since there was no room in the fridge.

We re-arranged and cleaned our flat on Wednesday evening, setting up our living/dining room such that we could seat 25 people. Paul also stopped by to drop off the extra chairs, some plates and a high chair for Jake.

Also on the docket for Thanksgiving Eve were making a pecan pie, blind baking a crust for the French silk pie and cutting up the dried bread for stuffing. Thanks to blind baking the crust before, it stayed right where it was supposed to and didn't migrate up above the filling!

Pecan pie!

I took most of the day off of work on Thursday, because there was just so much to do. I got up bright and early to start preparing the stuffing in eager anticipation of the arrival of the turkey, which Paul was going to pick up and drop off. Around 9.00, Paul showed up with some bad news: the turkeys were still frozen! Yikes!

After the initial freak-out, which may or may not have been exacerbated by the revelation that our combined 12.8 kg of turkey cost 180 CHF, I collected my wits and started a turkey defrosting attempt by bathing the turkey in warm water.

**Photo credit: Stef's iPhone.

After about 30 minutes of turkey bath, I just decided to throw the turkey in the oven and cook it for longer to hopefully get it to cook all of the way through. Our sink wasn't big enough for the turkey, so I had to continually rotate it, which meant that I couldn't really do much else at the same time, and I had other fish to fry.

With the turkey in the oven, I finished the stuffing, had a quick lunch and then dashed in to work to do a few important things that couldn't wait until the next day. Thankfully Stef and Georgie also took the day off, so they stayed at home, basting the turkey and starting on the cream of mushroom soup for the green bean hotdish.

I returned home around mid-afternoon, stopping in at Jess and Paul's flat to pick up some more plates, as well as a pumpkin pie.

Once back at the flat, we set the tables, which was no easy task, since the guest list was continually changing, up until 30 minutes before people were supposed to arrive. We had multiple cancellations and additions, but luckily it all worked out. We also finished the green bean hotdish. At this point we a) opened a bottle of champagne because the cooking was almost done and b) realized that there was no way that we could bake both the stuffing and the green bean hotdish before dinner. I made some quick calls, and we arranged for someone to stop by to pick up the stuffing on their way home, to bake it in their oven and then to bring it back!

Flat almost ready for dinner!

Our bar.

Stuffing sitting by the door (in the blue pot) waiting to be picked up.

Our last step was to make the French silk pie, which was quite simple. Then all we had to do was to put the finishing touches on the table. The turkey was done at this point, so we were able to start the baking of the green bean hotdish and make the gravy just before people started arriving. Such good timing! I even had time for a really quick phone call home.

Talking with Marie.

Opening the champagne.

Green bean hotdish!

Mr. Turkey.

I did it!

Georgie making the gravy.

Me and Jake- my favorite little man!

It was so much fun spending the day cooking and listing to (and singing along with) Christmas music with my flatmates. I knew that I was going to miss doing this with my mom and sisters, but Stef and Georgie were lovely!

People started arriving, bringing huge amounts of food with them. It was pretty incredible how quickly our flat filled up. It was a slightly chaotic, as people didn't having serving dishes or still needed oven time, etc., but we managed to get everything taken care of. As soon as the last person arrived, Paul and I started carving the turkeys, which were really so done that they were falling off the bones. I discovered the bag of giblets in my turkey, which I apparently missed when it was still frozen...

Paul and I carving turkies.

Finally, dinner was all set and we sat down at the table. I'm still so impressed that we managed to seat 25 people for a nice dinner. I gave a little introduction to Thanksgiving and encouraged everyone to think of what they were thankful for, but we didn't make everyone go around to say what they were thankful for. I sat at the head of the table, and it was so fun to look down the table and everyone having a good time together.

Our Thanksgiving table.

**Photo credit: Jon and Christy Remucal.



We were probably about half Americans and half not, and it was fun to see everyone embracing the holiday. We had a long, leisurely dinner, followed by a break for digesting and a little cleaning up. Dessert was round two, and everyone quite enjoyed the various pies. People stayed late chatting and helping us to clean up (which we were really thankful for!).

It truly was a perfect evening. Everyone had a lovely time, the company was fantastic and the food was amazing. (One of our Swiss colleagues even said that she thought she could get used to celebrating Thanksgiving, even if she didn't know any Americans...) I really feel blessed to have a little family here- my flatmates and people from work- who I can spend Thanksgiving with and whose company I truly enjoy. It was a magical evening, and I am very thankful. (Of course, it might have been such a success that now people are thinking that we should host big parties more often. But, hey, I'll take it!)

I was also able to Skype with my family the next day, and we got our traditional holiday family photos. Love!

Happy Thanksgiving!