Serving...the City, Cake and Lo-Mein

This weekend was busy. And full of serving all sorts of things! On Saturday, we teamed up with some other organizations in the area to participate in "Serve the City Geneva". I tried to capture some of the day but you can see the official, high-resolution pictures from a real photographer here.

Our team split up to do a lot of different things, so David and I started off in the kitchen, making soup for homeless people.

I had to cut the middle out of the inside of garlic cloves. I had no idea that this was an important thing to do. Did you? Do you cut the middle out of your garlic? 

Then we set off on our own to find some more of the city to serve. We started off at a chocolate store, and let a nice man serve delicate Swiss chocolate to us. Check out their fabulous website here.

After a spin around the city, picking up trash and doing other service-y things, we met back up for lunch and to get ready for the last part of the day: Free hugs!

A lot of people on the street were creeped out by the idea of free hugs, but we didn't take no for an answer and hugged everyone and their brother. You're welcome, citizens of Geneva.

Back at the base, the baby cows were in the barn and just begging to be played with. Okay, no, they were scared of us but eventually they came around and one even put my whole hand in his mouth. Milking a cow is on my checklist of things to do in Switzerland, and this was kind of close.

Our friend, Carolyn, turned the big 2-4 on Saturday but Geneva wiped everyone out, so we had a little party for her on Sunday. Her husband, Dad, suggested oatmeal raisin cookies so I gave Paula Deen's Loaded Oatmeal Cookie recipe a try.

I omitted all of the nuts, and used all butter instead of shortening (which I don't think exists here...), but otherwise stuck to the recipe, and I think they were pretty good. A lot more "spicy" than your typical oatmeal raisin cookie but hey, it's fall and nothing says "fall" like a plethora of spices.

I was a little hesitant about the brown butter icing, especially after it burnt in the pan. The recipe calls for a couple tablespoons of water to thin it out, but I'm pretty sure I used at least half a cup. I had no idea if it would dry hard or soft and a taste test revealed that the icing was super sweet so I just drizzled the cookies, but I think next time I'd put a more generous layer on. And for the record, the icing hardens up when dry.

Carolyn's family makes the same Betty Crocker yellow cake (with pudding!) with chocolate icing for every single birthday, so Elaine went out to the American store just to buy the mix and make the cake. Sinking my teeth into the magical combination of yellow cake and chocolate frosting gave me a serious longing for America. And major sugar-belly.

We finished off the weekend with a 3 hour dinner at Mekong in Nyon with Filo, Sarah and Deborah. We were craving Chinese food and a trip out of the base and Mekong delivered. Sort of. Food here is just really expensive, and the service was mediocre. The company was awesome though, and I'm pretty sure that soy sauce is the answer to most of life's problems.

Hope your weekend was as eventful as ours!

“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs....

...When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence." - Ansel Adams
Things have been happening too fast for me to keep this thing up-to-date so I'm going to do my best to share the crazy past few weeks - through pictures.

First things first, though: We found out our outreach location! We will leave in mid-December for...

South Africa! 

Our team will meet over the next few months to get ready for the trip, so please keep us in your prayers as we start thinking about what we want to do there and how we want to focus our time.

In other big news, our little village had the first big snow of the season yesterday. We've been able to see snow on the mountaintops for a while but millions of giant fluffy flakes fell here yesterday afternoon. It turned into rain after dinner, so there's no real evidence today but I'm pretty sure there it won't be the last time we see snow.

I obviously don't have a lot of experience taking pictures of snow, but here are some attempts

We've also had a lot of parties lately....which means lots of baking! Cooking here is such a challenge, since everything is in French and uses the metric system (and I'm trying to use an out-of-date industrial kitchen) but I think that is part of what makes it so much fun.

Last night we celebrated Deborah's 20th birthday, so I made raspberry-filled vanilla cupcakes with a raspberry buttercream and "The Best Chocolate Sheet Cake. Ever." by Pioneer Woman. I've never made cupcakes, filling or buttercream from scratch but I think it turned out okay for my first attempt. The icing tip I used probably wasn't the best choice but we were late getting it out. Michelle, I know you are probably embaressed by my cake-decorating skills but don't judge - there is no Michael's here :) We were in a huge time crunch to get it all done after dinner while trying to keep Deborah in the dark, so I didn't get nearly as many pictures as I wanted.

I (basically) used the Vanilla Cupcake and Buttercream recipes from the Joy of Baking, and made the filling in a saucepan out of frozen raspberries, some kind of fruit preserve I found in the refrigerator (I think it was raspberry and maybe cherry?) and cornstarch until I had a gooey consistency. I left the lemon zest out of the cupcakes and substituted part of the regular white sugar with vanilla sugar. I think I may have used margarine instead of butter for the buttercream, and I mixed some of the filling into the buttercream to make it pink and fruity. Using the convection oven made my cupcake tops a weird shape, so I cut them flat and used the "cone method" to fill them - you can see some of the filling leaking out in the picture - oops!

The local English-speaking church had a meeting last week and needed help with snacks for their intermission, so David and I helped out with our friends Dan and Carolyn to bake and serve/clean up desserts. We had  amazing no-bake lemon cheesecake, apple cobbler, triple chocolate brownies, and peach/raspberry tarts.

Our DTS class got together a few weeks ago to bond and watch a movie, Bienvenu chez les Ch'tis (a French comedy with subtitles - you can read Time Magazine's summary/review of it here) so I made "Dad's Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies" from Vintage Victuals. This is hands-down my new favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe - they're big thick cookies and the dough isn't too sweet (the batter would be AWESOME in ice cream). The only change I made was to add more chocolate chips - we are in Switzerland, so there is no such thing as too much chocolate.

Since Halloween isn't really celebrated in Europe the same way it is in America, the entire base got together for a week of fun and ended it with "Burtigny's Got Talent" on Friday night. We had different "theme" days all week - one day we dressed up like someone else from the base, one was mustache day, and one was superhero day.

Melissa and me on Superhero Day- she is Cat Woman and I'm Super Mario

Everyone on Dress-Like-Someone-Else Day. David is dressed like Melissa (I think the picture speaks for itself - he even made hoop earrings) and I'm Nena, who is infamous for wearing shorts/leggings/socks/sandals together. 

For Burtigny's Got Talent, David, Carolyn and I supplied the snacks. We made homemade pretzels and buckeyes. I've never made pretzels before and we couldn't figure out how big to make them (or how much they would grow in the oven), so we went with sticks but probably should have made them smaller - we underestimated the amount of people in attendance and they went pretty fast. We covered half of them in salt and the other half in cinnamon/sugar. I promise that they tasted better than they look in the picture.

And buckeyes never fail. Apparently news of their amazingness hadn't reached Europe yet, so we had a lot of first-timers but everyone loves chocolate and peanut butter.

Besides baking, we've been doing a lot of exploring and walking - we are trying to get it all in before the major cold hits and we've had some beautiful days lately.

We also went to Geneva a long time ago to see Jet d'Eau, which is one of the largest fountains in the world. On a clear day, you can see it from the hill in Burtigny, even though Geneva is a good 30 minutes away by car. The fountain pumps 132 gallons of water 459 ft in the air per second.

If you don't feel like you are completely up-to-date with our lives after that, you're just going to have to come visit us :) 

                                                  

It's Officially...Still Unofficial

Today was a big day in the world of our Discipleship Training School. We have been waiting a long, long time to find out where we will be headed on outreach, and finally had the "big meeting" this morning.

Except we still don't really know anything.

When David and I began looking at locations for our DTS, one of the draws to the Burtigny base was the Africa outreach. We both had a heart for the continent (and sweet Thomas, our Compassion kid) and had previously looked at other mission opportunities there. Last fall, we set a goal to be in Africa by January of 2011, not having a clue how we'd get there. Through multiple trips to Haiti, we learned about YWAM and the Discipleship Training Schools, and before we knew it, we were accepted to Burtigny with the possibility of going to 4 different African countries for our outreach, which will be Dec. - March. The 4 original possibilities were Mali, Madagascar, S. Africa or Rwanda.

Today, the "official" announcement we got was that 3 of the 4 original locations are still on the table. Our 9-person DTS class (+ 4 staff) will be split among Madagascar, S. Africa and Rwanda, so the next step is to individually think and pray about where we want to spend the 3 month outreach portion of our class.

There are a ton of opportunities and challenges to each location, and any of them would be amazing but we need to let our school leaders know by this Friday where we are feeling led to go. Please keep us in your thoughts and join in praying with us this week as we try to determine where we should be!

Cinnamon Sugar Biscotti

It's starting to get way too cold to exercise here (the high for the past couple days has been in the 30s) so I've done a 180 in my new favorite way to pass the time - baking! Every Tuesday and Thursday, our coffee break features a baked goodie, so last night I jumped in the kitchen and tried out this incredible Cinnamon Sugar Biscotti recipe from Annie Eats (who got it from Joy the Baker). The cinnamon/sugar combination seemed just right for the cool fall weather and they were perfect dunked in coffee.

I started out with a major problem. The hand mixer doesn't work. Which means I had to mix by hand...and by the way, is that stuff butter? I have no idea but it's close enough.

Pretty sure Tony Horton (founder of P90x) would be proud of the arm workout I got from creaming and beating everything together. Voila - uncooked "logs"

After a whirl in the oven:

Annnddd a second time. "Biscotti" means twice-baked, of course!

I didn't get a chance to take a picture of them in all their serving-tray-glory but they looked adorable and tasted fabulous. Thanks Annie!

Annie's Cinnamon Sugar Biscotti
Yields: 20-24 cookies
Ingredients:
For the dough:
2 cups all-purpose flour (I think I used cake flour but it was all we had and I don't know French)
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
6 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 large egg, plus 1 large egg yolk
1 tsp. vanilla extract

For the topping:
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon (I may have used a little more. I LOVE cinnamon)
1 large egg, lightly beaten

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 325 F (165 C but I guestimated - our oven is not that exact). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, baking powder and salt; whisk to blend and set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer (...or just another bowl...), cream together the butter and sugar on medium-high speed (or give your arm a workout) until light and fluffy, 3-4 minutes, scraping down the bowl as needed. Blend in the egg and then the egg yolk, beating well (pain is beauty, baby, stir that thang!) after each addition. Blend in the vanilla until incorporated. With the mixer on low speed (trust me, your arm will be on LOW speed by this point), blend in the dry ingredients just until incorporated and a dough is formed.

Divide the dough into two halves. Shape each half into a log 9 inches long by 1 1/2 inches wide on the prepared baking sheet, spacing the logs at least 3-4 inches apart. In a small bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon for the topping and stir to blend well. Lightly brush the tops of the logs with the beaten egg, and sprinkle generously with some of the cinnamon sugar mixture.

Bake for 40-45 minutes, rotating halfway through baking, until the tops are golden brown and slightly firm to the touch. remove the pan from the oven but maintain the oven temperature. Once the logs are cool enough to handle, slice on the diagonal (this is easier said than done) into 1 1/2-inch slices (about 10-14 per log). Place biscotti cut side-down on the baking sheet and sprinkle with more of the cinnamon sugar mixture. Bake an additional 10-15 minutes, until crisp and golden.