Thanksgiving Supplies

My friend, Jen, and I made a special trip to the American Store in Nyon last Friday. The town of Nyon is about 20 minutes away by train. The purpose of our trip was for Thanksgiving supplies that cannot be found in the typical Swiss grocery store. Here’s what I bought:

Pumpkin pie filling (29 oz can): 5.45 CHF (Swiss Franc)
Evaporated milk (3-5 fl oz cans at 1.90 each): 5.70 CHF
Stuffing (2 boxes at 3.90 each): 7.80 CHF – The Stove Top brand was double this price
Chicken gravy mix (I know I should make my own, but I’m lazy): 1.95 CHF
A&W root beer (1 can): 2.50 CHF – Not part of Thanksgiving dinner, just a craving I had

That’s a grand total of 23.40 CHF, which is about the same amount in US dollars. Jen saw a 10 lb turkey at the grocery store – they only had the one. It was 50 CHF. Fifty dollars for a 10 lb turkey! That’s insane! We’ll be having chicken for our dinner. I hope it all turns out. I can’t afford to keep making trips to the American Store at these prices.

Cooking Success

I had a success in the kitchen this week. My wild rice soup turned out perfect! It was the right color, the correct consistency and it tasted good. This is a huge improvement from last time when it turned out as a purple glop of a mess (See picture below). Purple because I had to use du riz noir (black rice). I searched high and low for wild rice in the grocery stores in Switzerland but had no luck. I brought back wild rice from the US and it did the trick this time around.

Last year I had a difficult time figuring out what they use here for cornstarch. I was unable to find it in the stores, so I made my own with milk and flour. I guess I didn’t do it quite right as the soup turned into a blob that was too thick to stir. I have since then figured out that ‘maizena’ is the Swiss version of cornstarch. It makes cooking a little easier knowing this. My soup last year went right into the garbage. Bon appétit this time around!

Too Much Reading?

I showed Matt the list of books I’ve read since moving to Switzerland. I keep track of them on Goodreads.com. He thinks I might have too much time on my hands as I’ve read 41 books in a little over a year. He did the math, and that’s about one book every nine days! I can’t help it. I love to read and I have the time and there are so many good books out there.

October

Where did the month of October go?! I’ve had a busy month with trips to Scotland and the US, so I’m behind on my blogging.

More Visitors

My dear friend, Anne, and her sister, Molly, were our next visitors. They started their trip with a long weekend in Germany for a family wedding. They had some crazy stories (and video) from that experience, most times involving beer. Then they took a train to see us in Switzerland. We had a great week with lots of sightseeing. We squeezed in a girls’ overnight to Aosta, Italy, too. I drove to Italy, which was a little scary because of the windy roads and border patrols, but it went okay with the exception of one screw up at the France border (I panicked and drove down a one way going the wrong direction – oops). It was a 2 ½ hour drive with beautiful views of the Alps. This was a good thing as the girls were unable to see the mountains from Morges because of a haze that hung over the lake all week. Mont Blanc provided a stunning background. Then I drove us through the Mont Blanc tunnel. Thirty-three Franc and 15 minutes later, we were in Italy!

We’d heard mixed things about Aosta as one of my guidebooks said that it was very touristy; however, some of our neighbors had been there and really enjoyed their stay. We decided to give it a try ourselves and we were not disappointed. Aosta is a beautiful, sleepy, little town with amazing Roman ruins dating back to the Middle Ages. The shopping was great. Cheap, too, but everything seems inexpensive after living in Switzerland. That can be a dangerous thing.

The highlight of Aosta was the food. We ate our way through town with stops for gelato and pizza. Then we ate a late dinner (we didn’t get back to the hotel until midnight from dinner). The food and wine lived up to our expectations of what Italian food would be. We found the following phrase in our guidebook to describe our meal: “It was so good I licked my mustache.” That had us laughing pretty hard – I think the bottle of wine and shot of limoncello may have made that more entertaining at the time.

Laura’s Visit

We accomplished a lot in Laura’s four day visit. The thing I enjoyed most was her desire to shop. Matt has no interest in shopping unless it’s at Hornbach (the Swiss version of Home Depot – same colors and everything – I’m very consistent, I don’t like Home Depot or Hornbach), so I took full advantage of Laura’s interest in shopping! The highlight for me was the market in Divonne, France. I’ve been to the market before but going with a girlfriend rather than my husband was a completely new experience. Laura and I made it through the entire market – usually I make it through half with Matt before he’s maxed out with the crowds. We stopped to look at jewelry, clothes, shoes and all that girl stuff that Matt doesn’t even notice. The only problem was that I couldn’t remember how much the Euro is worth compared to the US dollar, but it wasn’t a problem. We convinced ourselves we were getting some great bargains regardless of the conversion rate. I don’t have a picture of us shopping, so here’s a picture from a hike we took in Grindelwald.

Visitors

We have our next visitor coming tomorrow! My friend, Laura, from book club decided she needed a mini-vacation away, so she’ll be hanging out with us for a few days. We’re so glad she picked Switzerland to get her rest and relaxation (She deserves it – she has three boys under the age of 6!).