A Gipfel a Day

While the enormous range of cheeses available in Switzerland was not too unexpected, the equal abundance of bread and pastries is pleasantly surprising. Todd's Internet-enabled office, i.e., the airport (pictured here), features no less than three fresh bread and pastry sources, the most prominent being a bakery called Steiner that could double as a Paris corner boulangerie. So to complement our other new Swiss lifestyle systems, I've created my own devilishly effective new System: days when I exercise, I get a pastry.

Of course with any new system, some initial bugs must be worked out such as, what constitutes exercise? Certainly running a few miles does. But what about the hills? Since I haven't run uphill even once in over 14 years in Chicago, does a hilly run count as TWO exercise sessions? What about 2+ hours of cumulative dog-walking in a day? Or what about vacuuming the apartment with a vacuum that has no upright rigid handle, instead requiring crawling all over the Pergo floor? Sure it builds a sweat, but is it exercise? Or biking 10 minutes round-trip to the grocery store? Anyway I'm still working on those details.

More critical is the list of pastries already sampled. Needless to say the list will continue growing and diversifying as our comfort level increases with ingredient translations and pronunciation (and/or we improve our pointing precision into glass cases). Yet we're off to a good start:

Pain au chocolat - classic French, a thin chocolate bar rolled in a croissant cylinder. Grade: A+

Kirschestange - a long thin mini-Danish with cherry preserves filling (pictured above). Grade: A+

Nussstange (no typo) - literally "nut bar" with a sweet nut paste filling in a pastry tube. Grade: A+

Rustic croissant - a fantastic wheaty version sprinkled with some minced nuts and seeds. Grade: A+

Schoggigipfel - Gipfel means "pinnacle," in this case a perfect croissant filled with dark chocolate frosting and topped with powdered sugar; this creation as purchased from the CO-OP gas station actually cured Stephanie's recent flu. Grade: A+++

Concerning Swiss pastries, you may note I've begun employing the discriminating "Golden Retriever rating scale" in which all food receives an identical high score (everything except plain Romaine lettuce which receives an 'F'). Another point of interest (at least it interests me) regarding the Schoggigipfel name is the prefix: exhaustive research uncovered that "Schoggi-Land" is a particular chocolate factory about 50 miles east of Zürich, bold enough to claim itself "Switzerland's most state-of-the-art" chocolate factory. To date, I'm inclined to agree that the Schoggigipfel is the most state-of-the-art pastry I've inhaled. Schoggi-Land lies near a Swiss town called St.Gallen which may earn its own blog entry some day, because anything fantastically delicious made from a pig also appears to come from St.Gallen.

Hopefully I'll update the pastry list soon. And the really fantastic news is that baked pretzels here are pretty darn good too, and they don't even require any exercise :)