Stollen bread pudding

I made this the other day after discovering some desiccated Christmas Stollen holiday cake purchased by my mother and Kevin at a Munich bakery. Maybe I've never had a proper Stollen, but I'm not completely sure what the fuss is about. Luckily, my years of scientific training have shown me that butterfat and eggs tend to improve everything!

2-3 cups abandoned (and preferably unloved) Stollen, chopped.

2 eggs
1.25 cup whole milk
1/2 cup minced dried cherries
salt
~1.5 tsp mixed nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom
~2 tsp vanilla extract.
~2 tsp sugar
grated rind of half an orange

One sliced pear (the creepy winter kind that never seem to ripen).

Melt a little bit of butter in an oven-proof pan (I used a cast-iron bread pan, but whatever) and toss in the Stollen; cook until sizzling. Add the cherries, mix, top with pears, press down firmly. Beat everything else together and pour over the Stollen/fruit combo. Bake until not runny in the center, approximately 30 minutes at 375 degrees F. Eat with whipped cream (naturally, I add cognac). I think we will make it again (okay, I admit, so we actually just bought a cheap Stollen for this very purpose), so maybe I will add a picture.

more trains...

In less than one hour, I will meet my sister in Rome, while Alex is in Israel at a conference…therefore, I’ve had another train experience, this time the night train from Munich. It’s really been quite comfortable for the past 11.5 hours, though I hope to make the trip during the day some time so that I don’t miss the scenery. The kindly Bavarian train attendant also told me “go to sleeper car NOW” when I asked him if one was free (versus my bargain reclining seat). This meant that I got to pass the first four hours of the journey in a first class bunk with sheets and blankets, before being informed that apparently my car was splitting off so it would a good idea for Die junge Dame to move JETZT before I ended up in Venice. I must have been very confused, because somehow a cabin pillow managed to accompany me back to the hoi palloi. Tragically, I discovered that the espresso bar was also jettisoned, which seems almost criminal.

I also had a bizarre but encouraging 6am experience with a fellow passenger who was also looking for the missing coffee car…she and I were actually able to have a conversation in German! Granted, I was not talking about evolving US foreign policy during the new administration, but it was an actual chatty conversation where somehow I could just understand what she was saying. I was pretty startled as this was happening, because normally my German language skills dissolve early on into a conversation. Definitely encouraging but also a little puzzling. Maybe it was residual Ambien from earlier in the evening.

winter travels

After some Seattle productivity which I won’t go into, I am back in Europe. I arrived on Thanksgiving and then made a Thanksgiving dinner for two on the following Friday…unbeknownst to me, what appeared to be a turkey breast was most certainly NOT a turkey breast. This could have been disturbing, given the array of exotic meat products found in Munich. It was likely a leg, and whatever it was, it was covered in cognac-thyme sauce with Scandinavian pseudo-cranberries on the side..The next two days, we had a brief and surreal (and frozen) trip to Leipzig. This trip mostly consisted of some matlab excursions with some of Alex’s data, Spanish food, and my inappropriate napping brought on by travel crankiness on an epic scale. We also discovered that Deutsche Bahn has encountered some difficulties with their newest trains, so some old relics have been pressed into service, with varying degrees of retro charm. Of course, I took this as an opportunity to make snide comments about the vaunted German train system—Alex pretended to be embarrassed for my benefit.