The Mice Eat Horse

The shoe belongs on the other foot these days concerning work travel, as the past several years' pattern saw Steph traveling a mere handful of times per year and Todd departing for short trips nearly every week. Last week Steph took her second overnight work trip since our European arrival, first to Milan and now to Berlin. Funny how she gets around...after all, she just spent the previous weekend drinking spiked wine in central Germany. She traveled professionally last Thursday, though, via airplane since Berlin requires 8 hours on the train.

So what occupies us boys (blonde and less-blonde) while the cat is away? Hmm, well, trouble of some sort. That Thursday actually provided the first sunshine in over a week--we'd been slowly and consistently drenched (sometimes not so slowly) by intermittent drizzle and rain. So the Mud Magnet and I toured Kloten for nearly two hours Thursday AM, enjoying the clear cold skies and the nearby Schluefweg forest trails.

After returning home for our usual brief game of, "I bet you can't dry my stomach," my conversation partner passed out from exhaustion leaving me totally alone. So I biked to "downtown" Kloten to hang out at the local bakery/café (sporting a larger-than-life outside croissant display) to enjoy a double espresso and study some German vocabulary. Eventually tiring of memorizing the same 75 words, I proceeded to the ever-popular Migros grocery for foodstuffs. How here to capitalize on Steph's absence?

Of course I would never normally consider my subsequent idea but to rewind a bit...we ate dinner with a small group of Stephanie's coworkers the prior week, some of whom lived in Swiss-France for years but aren't truly Swiss. And we were discussing Swiss food and cuisine. And the Swiss happen to eat one animal that we NEVER touch in the U.S. These particular coworkers had tasted this animal and proclaimed it pretty good, similar to beef but leaner with more flavor, not unlike ostrich or buffalo. And Migros dedicates a small section to this animal but of course Steph would never entertain it...so I purchased some lettuce for a salad, some potatoes (for making a hash browns side dish that the Swiss call Rösti), a six-pack of Swiss beer and a small Pferde-Knaublach steak (Pferde is the animal; Knaublach is garlic, in this case a marinade).

What next? As you can imagine upon returning home, the boys cracked open a few beers, grated and fried up some potatoes and onions, and popped the ol' Pferde steak under the broiler. Unfortunately I overcooked it slightly, as one is wont to do with unfamiliar meats. What to say about it? No jockey marks. Fairly tasty, in the realm of ostrich or buffalo or kangaroo (I ate it in Australia). Tastes better than parboiled possum (I ate it in Chicago, that's a tricky story). I wouldn't rush to Switzerland just to try it. On the other hand, the Rösti hash browns are definitely worth a trip.

Steph returned from Berlin on Friday with common sense in tow, as we ate a reasonable Japanese meal of raw fish later that night. Swiss sushi was delicious and (!) priced quite reasonably. And the sharp yellow ginger finally washed away that nagging flavor of Knaublach marinade.