Laufen, saufen & tortillas! - Hamburg style

David and I have really been jonesing for some Mexican food and Hamburg is short on Mexican ingredients, namely tortillas. I would also add red chile to that list, but our good friend Jeff took care of that on his last visit (shout out to Jeff). Refried beans are also atrociously expensive (try $6 a can) and dried pintos are a rarity. But we perservered and tracked down dried beans and cheddar cheese to make huevos rancheros. Eggs are a none issue here, as you might expect. Easy to come by and many are organic. Our only option for tortillas were these plastic looking things next to the $6 beans and as I picked up the sad bag, David said he would make tortillas. From scratch. With flour. So I laughed and David looked indignant and we put the crappy looking tortillas back on the shelf. Then Sunday came and we both felt pretty serious about the tortilla issue. David did some research on the web & scoured the Joy of Cooking for tips. We settled on a recipe and away we went.

As it turns out, the only challenging and time consuming part is rolling the damn things out. The dough is a cinch and and to cook them, it takes about 45 seconds a side in a dry skillet. Piece of cake. However, I gave up on achieving roundness after the first try. Instead I settled for 'round-like' or 'resembling a shape that has curves'. Here is a snapshot of one of the worst of the lot:

Once I got the thickness down and quit worrying about the shape, things went relatively smoothly and we managed somewhere around 15 really delicious tortillas (about half of which are waiting patiently in the freezer for the next round of huevos rancheros). David manned the skillet while I rolled - we made quite the tortilla factory here in Deutschland.

Here is a stack of way-better-than-the-crap-they-tried-to-sell-us-at-the-store tortillas:


Note the brown toasted marks that give our tortillas some serious authenticity.

And the finished product (so delicious):


Now that we have allayed our fears that we'll never have decent Mexican food so long as we live in Germany, I am ready to conquer corn tortillas. Any recommendations for a decent tortilla press?

What else? I started running with a club on Tuesdays - about 9 kilometers. It's a beautiful run through the Stadtpark and the people that run are really friendly and encouraging. Today, however, I was pretty sure I would die. It was so hard and I don't know why. Last week it was as hard as you would expect 9km to be but today was warm by Hamburg standards and I think I wore too much clothing. I really like the after-run time - I feel hungry like I actually should be hungry, not just because it's 7. And I am just bone tired. Kind of weird feelings to like, but hey, I don't criticize your idiosyncrasies. The group ends each run (laufen) with a little glass of champagne (saufen). Last week I participated in the laufen & saufen. This week, though, no saufen - the bubbles make my stomach feel awful after a run.

David started rock climbing at a gym close to our house. The husband of the lady who watches Stella is an avid climber and I think David has just been waiting to meet someone to belay him. We both feel kind of guilty because Matt (the climber) and Laurel (the dog watcher) are American. We sort of agreed that we would try to stick with German friends while we were here, but they are just so nice and our German friends are busy a lot. Or they don't feel like speaking English all the time while we speak no German. Or maybe we just smell. In any event, they are nice people and I imagine the guilt (and my last urges to learn German) will pass.

One last note. Even though most of my loyal readership are Rutkowskis or live with a Rutkowski, I want to let everyone know we are doing a Brady Christmas - all the Rutkowskis plus Carmen Borsa will be here on the 23rd. We are really looking forward to it and it should be lots of fun - Hamburg style. Although, I am committed to no all-nighters. J-Amy and the Fischmarkt at 5am nearly killed me.

Of course, I still love Hamburg.