Hi Daddy

Today's soapbox/gratitude journal: The world could use a few more outstanding dad's. I happen to know a few, particularly in my family. Yesterday, I watched my Dad with three little ones around him playing a riveting game of Uno. There's nothing like a good game of Uno to make for a lively time.

Earlier, my brother repeatedly spend much time and energy trying to calm his poor weeping daughters in the frequent and not so far between moments of distress. He never was much of one for crying little girls back in the day, but they are awfully cute little ladies.

Then, as our child grows increasingly bigger, her father has taken to giving her fatherly advice more and more often. This morning, he shared with her his excitement in meeting her in a few months. She, in turn, shared her excitement with him by kicking him in the face. He's already a great dad.

Yep. Dads are one of the best inventions and I got some really good ones around me.

Pictionary

Welcome back to Europe! My 'laaste collega' (last mission companion) loved to play this endlessly entertaining game - and she played exceptionally well -  which game continued on my subsequent trips to Europe. Because so many languages are so closely crammed together (not to mention the high volume of dumb tourists), most of the signs on the street have few words, if any at all. That means it's up to you to figure them out. Don't hesitate to call out answers!

 

(This way to bike over rotten eggs?) (Sorry, no burger joints in here?)

The best one last. How do you figure?

Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

Nine, nein, neun! Germany is a beautiful country, at least the parts that we saw, full of history, culture, good food, and German speakers. Imagine!

My husband's parents graciously hosted us in their European size apartment and showed us places like Neuschwanstein, Linderhof, Dachau, the local ice cream shop, various bakeries (a must on any European trip!), the Glockenspiel in Munich, the mountains of Austria, more castles, cathedrals, and many other places along the way. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, if I just stop writing, you can figure out the rest, right?

Okay, maybe a few stories. We spent our last evening at dinner with a woman from church she is German born and raised, thankfully with an excellent handle on English, told us of her trips to the U.S. and how on multiple occasions she was asked if Jews are still persecuted and killed. She's not even 40 yet, so it wasn't too long ago, but someone wasn't paying attention in history class. The war is done. There is more to Germany than what happened 65 years ago. Stepping off the soap box.

The landscape and architecture are worth the 12+ hours of travel alone. Of course, most landscape and architecture give my lovely desert home pretty stiff competition when it comes to beauty. The snow only added to the Bavarian charm...and the treachery of the roads.

And the food...that would make a 30 hour travel day worth it. When your bowl of gnocchi comes out bubbling with cheese, yes it's all healthy, or you get a half a 'turkey' on your plate (turns out to be chicken, but who needs translation), or you end your meal with a fresh slice of apple strudel, it's all worth it. My one recommendation is to have plain old water available somewhere. Anywhere! No little bubbles and not in a 3 oz container. But the birds are taken care of at least.

One memorable part of the trip was watching the neighbor downstairs take apart the street organ he is building to show us the pipes. He built the entire thing himself, including carving the airways and constructing bellows. Unfortunately, it didn't work yet, but he has a few ideas on how to fix it. He showed us an organ he had purchased online and pulled out some music rolls to play. After a nice Austrian dance, and the Bare Necessities, he played Schnappi the crocodile, about a crocodile from Egypt that lives in the Nile. He spends his time schnapping things cause that's about all he can do at his young age. Of course the organ was not complete without a stuffed monkey to sit on top. Sadly of a few of his close neighbors don't appreciate all the noise, but we were glad he shared. Sorry there's no video to share with you.

But I hope  you enjoy the rest of the story in pictures.

Brats anyone?

Welcome to Bavaria, home of the blue and white checked flag, Germans, and hops fields. We saw the Glockenspiel in Munich (Purists, please forgive my lack of accents) and went to Dachau. It was the first concentration camp in Germany and considered heaven compared to others, as it was not ever an execution camp. Don't let that fool you, because 25% of the prisoners that came there died there. But that's a lot 'better' than the 95% in Auschwitz. And what is the Glockenspiel? It's a clock tower with giant dancing and celebrating figures that was created to commemorate the marriage of a Duke in 1600 something and the cooper dancers that entertained during the Plague in 1517 (?). (Coopers are barrel makers.)

We have visited a castle and a cathedral. We ate lots and lots of brats and wurst and potatoes. We have also slept a bit. Which is a nice change after staying awake for over 30 hours on our flight over.

At church we met lots of people and I tried my hardest to understand German. I thought I could, I thought I could, but it was one of the longest church meetings I ever attended. It's not that the speakers or lessons were sub par, but German is not Dutch.

Oh, we ate applestrudel too. And kabobs. And ice cream. I like ice cream. And German food. Maybe that's all the weight I'm gaining...

Hold the raisins

Good Morning! You open the cupboard and pull out a box of bran flake and sugar-crusted raisin mixture, claiming to have two full scoops of raisins in every box. For a college assignment, a group of students and I analyzed this product to establish the meaning of this claim. We discovered that, in fact, based on percent of raisin volume and weight per box, the amount of raisin varied greatly enough, even of the same package size, that there was no consistency at all. No two scoop sizes were alike. 

That aside, have you ever checked out the ingredient list on the various flakes of branny goodness? Ever notice that even the most basic version have fun chemicals like BHT and caramel coloring. Sounds delicious! Time to eat!

Unless, of course, you want to keep it natural. How? Make some of your own! Is it simple? Yes! Does it take some time? Also, yes. Is it worth it? Right now, for me, yes. I found a recipe here at 48 Homemade Breakfast Cereals > Willow Bird Baking.

She writes for a while about all kinds of cereals and has lovely pictures and when you get to the very bottom, you find this recipe (that I have taken the liberty to shorten and modify):

Bran Flakes

Recipe by: Adapted from Mr. Breakfast and now from Willow Bird Baking
Yields: about 3-4 servings (But doubling or quadrupling is a good idea,)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup bran
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/3 cup almond flour (or other finely ground nuts or ground flax)
Some honey (a Tablespoon is noticeably sweet, 3 T is really! sweet)
1/4 teaspoon baking soda (though I'm not convinced it lightens it at all)
1/4 teaspoon salt, if you want
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup water

Directions:
Mix dry ingredients well. then add the wet. Cut 2 sheets to fit a baking tray or cookie sheet and place half the mixture on each sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and roll until thin and evenish.

Remove the plastic and transfer paper to the baking sheet. Heat oven to 350 F. Cook for 5-10 minutes, checking for a flexible, lightly browned leather like flake, slightly browned on the edges. It can burn quickly, so pay attention. Allow it to cool and repeat until dough is used.

Reduce the heat to 275 and break each flake into smaller flakes, like bran flake size. Spread them out on a sheet and cook for about 20 mins, stirring occasionally. Cool and eat up, because they only last for 2 weeks, according to the original site. Chances are, you won't need to worry about them lasting that long.


She gives the nutrition info as follows:

Nutritional Info: Serving size: about 1/4 of total yield Calories: 146.3, Fat: 5g, Sodium: 185mg, Carbs: 24.5g, Fiber: 6g, Sugars: 8g, Protein: 5.5g

Fun variations: Add cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg, try different nuts, use juice in place of the milk and/or water. If your sweet tooth demands try it with chocolate chips (mix in the cereal bowl, probably not while cooking.) Also, combine with other cereals or add fruit to serve. It's tasty!

Am I extreme? Probably. Does my family like them? Yes.

Who can read what's in your wallet?

Since the mister and I are headed off to scary foreign places soon, we each invested in brand new passports, complete with RFID reading capacity, in order to prove our identity to those who may question it. RFID, or radio frequency identification, chips sends out a radio frequency, go figure, with information about the object or person with the chip. RFIDs are used all over to keep track of things, for example, in industry to track orders and shipments, in medicine to track samples, medications, and lost patients, and in agriculture to track live stock. Now they are also used in credit cards to offer a swipeless option. Some parents may want, or probably already have, to inject one into their kids. Great technology, right?

From my vast 10 minute search about these chips, I learned that card readers for such things range from a piddly $10 on up. What's the big deal? It means that Joe Nobody can buy a reader and, if your card has the chip, he can get close enough to you (as in 20 feet) and 'skim' your information. And you won't feel a thing. What a cozy world we live in! While not many cards use this technology just yet, some do and US passports do as well. How do you protect yourself? Don't carry one of those cards, or ask the bank to replace it with straight plastic, or buy an anti-RFID wallet. For passports, the US government was kind enough to slide and extra layer of metal into the book itself that is supposed to hinder, not prevent, would be thefts. How nice.

So, what type of shield works best? According to Consumer Reports, of the 10 products available on the market when the article was written, the homemade aluminum foil and duct tape sleeve worked better than 8 of them. Maybe I will make an aluminum foil helmet next to prevent someone reading my brain...though they may not find much useful information...

Any security people care to comment?