Happy 7th Anniversary to Us!!

Today is our 7th wedding anniversary!!

We met 9 years ago for the first time at a party in SoHo, NYC, organized by Swiss DJ duo called A Touch of Class. Although it took me 1 year to get Peter’s attention after this party, it was worth trying, calling and waiting for such a long time.

Here are some pictures from our past 9 years:

Deam Toys from Your Childhood

While reading the latest issue of Switzerland’s only fashion magazine (self-claimed) Annabelle, Peter exclaimed in delight “My god! This was my favorite toy!!” and pointed out to the Fischerprice’s garage with an elevator (photo above). Apparently there is an online collector’s shop called YoungFolks.ch that specializes in vintage toys. (*website address in Switzerland ends with “.ch“ like “.co.jp” for Japanese website. Don’t confuse it with “.com”….)

Nido – a New Magazine for Young Families

“NIDO” a new type of magazine (language: German) for young families was recently published by a major German publisher called Gruner + Jahr Medien in Hamburg. The editor is the same one from NEON, a popular culture magazine for 20 to 30 year-old singles. I think they saw the market aging and felt the need to follow the baby boomers who are now young couples with kids.

Onigiri (Rice Ball)

The temperature in Zürich has gone over 30 degrees. That’s very rare for May in Zürich, and I am afraid this summer is going to be very very hot. Under sweltering heat, I lost all the energy and motivation to cook, so I started making mini Onigiri (rice ball) for snacking all day long. As soon as I started making triangle shapes, Peter came into the kitchen and helped me make them. I was surprised he made well shaped Onigiris (pictured above) for the first time. The way he put seaweed is a bit like Jil Sander S/S 2009, but that’s OK. Inside Onigiri are various ingredients such as:

33℃ – This is My 200th Blog Post!!

昨日に続き、今日の気温も３３℃。暑い〜！！暑くて何もする気になりません。乾燥した空気と熱風で洗濯物が一瞬にして乾くのが唯一の助け。あまりにも暑いのでピーさんは河へ泳ぎに行きました。川の水温は１８℃だったそうで、、、まだ冷たい！

Biggi’s Visit

While Momo and Jake reunited with our cousin Nana and her hubby Alex in NYC, Peter’s sister Biggi came down to visit us from Ulm, Germany, and kept us company. As usual, here is “all our guests cook for us” snapshot. It’s not that we cannot cook, but I love to learn new recipes from our guests from all over the world. Biggi is famous for her Italian food, so I wanted to assist her and watch how she makes her tomato sauce.

Poll: Peter’s Glasses

Sunday Papers in Zürich

In Zürich, two major newspapers Tages Anzeiger and NZZ (Neuer Zürich Zeitung) are competing against each other. When I was taking the “Living in Zürich” course provided by the city, my teacher told her students that NZZ is considered slightly right and traditional. Their sponsors are mainly financial institutes and car manufacturers. That means, due to the financial turmoil and less budget for advertisement, they are struggling to survive and just had to let people go. Tages Anzeiger also had to lay off 80 employees last week.

Flying Vegetarian with Swiss

This is a great news for Momo and Jake!!

From May 27th, all Swiss flights will serve vegetarian in-flight meals in all classes from the Hiltl recipes. Hiltl is a popular vegetarian eatery in Switzerland, and we always take our vegetarian family members Bigi, Momo and Jake to this restaurant on their visits.

Banana Maple Bread

I feel bad taking photographs of the food I made and talking about it as if I have nothing else to do. Yep, but it’s true. On Sunday Peter had to work, so I baked a banana bread to kill my boredom. This time I tried a new recipe from banana-bread.biz. Banana or apple bread has been one of my favorite sweets from US, and I’ve been trying to perfect it but so far without success. I liked the fact that this recipe did not use any sugar (just a little amount to sprinkle on top as a decoration) and used maple syrup instead. Unfortunately it turned out to be non-sweet, and I decided to go back to my regular recipe from allrecipes.com.