A how-to: 100% make-ahead brunch menu

We entertained some friends this past Saturday morning at 11:30 in the morning.  Would you believe that I hardly lifted a finger that morning, instead enjoying a very calm and stress-free morning before they arrived?

I used to not like putting on brunches because it meant a frenetic weekend morning – and who wants that?!  But no more!  I found three recipes that can all be made ahead of time, making for a lovely, stress-free entertaining day.

Here’s the menu:

Fruit parfaits (assembled the evening before and refrigerated until ready to serve):

Veggie and with-meat stradas (also assembled the day before and refrigerated overnight until ready to bake):

Break-apart cinnamon yeast rolls (easily assembled the evening before and left to rise overnight, then baked in the morning):

Unfortunately, I haven’t been back in the blogging mindset long enough to have taken photos as I put everything together. A year or two ago I would have taken photos of the entire process and blogged it immediately.  Be patient with me; I’m hobbling back slowly!

I’ll cheat and use a few links – just this once.  Here you go, the “recipe” for each item – and I use the term “recipe” lightly here!

The fruit parfaits are made with:

• Assorted berries – fresh in the summer, frozen in the winter

  

• Fit and Light Yogurt (or any vanilla yogurt)
• Granola

  

As you can see, all you need to do is layer the ingredients in parfait (or any clear) glasses, beginning with the granola, then followed by the yogurt, and topped with the berries.  I had set aside a gorgeous raspberry to put on top of a “spritz of spritz” (a dollop of whipped cream) at the last minute, but I totally forgot to do that… since I was so relaxed perhaps?!

I assembled the parfaits at about 10 PM the evening before.  You don’t want them “brewing” for too long.

For the strada, I just followed the basics of any strada recipe (here’s one), altering the ingredients to include the veggies I wanted to use (mushrooms, spinach, onions, red peppers).  I added cooked breakfast sausage to one so I could offer both a vegetarian and a non-vegetarian version. This took me about 30 – 40 minutes to prepare the afternoon before our get-together.  In a nutshell, you layer bread in a casserole, add some sautéed veggies, pour an egg/milk mixture over everything, cover it, and set it in the fridge overnight.

After you bake it the next morning, it looks something like this:

I posted all about the pull-apart rolls here.

Ingredients:

About 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (actually, I "rollerpin" them in a sandwich bag)
About 15 frozen yeast dinner rolls
About 1/2 package (3.4 oz) butterscotch instant pudding mix
About 1/2 cup brown sugar
About 1/2 cup melted butter
About 2 t. cinnamon

For this, I have step-by-step pics!

"Chop" the nuts until they're just the right size for a coffee cake topping. As my mother would say, "Dass fuelt man." (One feels when it's right.)

Place the chopped nuts in the bottom of your greased bundt pan.

Place the frozen rolls over the nuts. I put down one row, then added a few more rolls on top of that.

Sprinkle the pudding mix evenly over the frozen rolls.

Melt the butter...

Add the brown sugar...

...and the cinnamon...

...and pour that gooey, luscious mixture over the rolls, trying to moisten the butterscotch powder.

Cover the whole thing with a towel and let sit overnight. (I put the pan in the bathroom. Why? I don't know; it's a tradition. Whenever we need yeast to rise, like on Thanksgiving, there's a towel-covered bundt pan in the bathroom. It just wouldn't be Thanksgiving around here without a towel-covered bundt pan in the bathroom.)
Get up in the morning and shuffle into the bathroom. You will be greeted by this:

Before you have coffee (but after you pee), stick the pan in a pre-heated 350 degree over and set the timer to 25 minutes.
When the timer goes off, you'll be greeted by this:

Let cool slightly, then turn upside-down onto a plate and observe with all your senses!

In the morning you’ll be greeted by stradas that are ready to bake, rolls that are ready to bake (you could probably bake them together, but I baked the rolls first and then the strada; budget about 1 1/2 to 2 hours for all the baking if you do it that way), and parfaits that are sitting in the fridge, ready to go.  I set the table outside in the morning…

…but if we had eaten inside I could have gotten that done in the morning, too.

Even the coffee can be pre-programmed to be ready in the morning! (Don’t forget to put out some Kahlua!)

The mimosas, though, will need to be made when you want them – and yes, before noon is acceptable!  Hey, a simple mixing of champagne and orange juice isn’t too much to do on the morning of your event, is it?

Have fun – and let me know how things turned out for you!

“Never forget”

My 84-year-old father is a German “Mischling” (a half-Jew) and product of what the Nazis called a “privileged mixed marriage.”
By the time Dad was the age of my twins, 23, he had experienced more tragedy, more near-death experiences, more hunger, and more trauma than most people will experience in their lifetimes. 
Dad’s father Carl was Jewish, but my father was brought up in a Christian household.  Carl considered himself a German.  Not a German Jew and not a Jew.  He was simply a German.  And he married another German, my grandmother, Irmgard.
As it turns out, Irmgard, by her sole existence as a Gentile, shielded her family from early persecution by the Nazis because the Nazis really hadn’t decided what to do about the “half-Jewish question,” those Jews who lived among Germans, married Germans, were part of the German communities, but were Jewish “by blood.”   (You can learn more about this topic in the excellent movie “Conspiracy.”)
Irmgard began to have excruciating headaches in the early 1940s.  She assumed it was the pressure of war.  Certainly she must have also felt intense personal pressure, knowing that the survival of her Jewish husband and half-Jewish children depended on her sheer existence.  In January of 1944, Irmgard died of what turned out to be a brain tumor.  At that point, all hell broke loose for my grandfather and his three children, my father and his brother Rainer and sister Ulli.
Ulli was sent to live with her cousin in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the mountains of Bavaria, while my father, only 15, and his older brother Rainer were left to fend for themselves.  My father was sent to a Nazi labor camp.
In March of 1945, just a short month before the end of the war, my father had been allowed to leave the camp by day to work at a warehouse.  As it turns out, the warehouse proprietor had been smuggling cigarettes, chocolate and liqueur and knew he was about to be caught. 
On March 5, 1945, my father’s hometown of Chemnitz was bombed.  Total chaos reigned during those last days and weeks of the war and my father was allowed by the kindly  (or maybe just apathetic) proprietor to head home to take care of matters.  (“Just be back on Tuesday,” he said.)  After days of traveling by any means possible (which meant mostly walking, as the German infrastructure at that point was in complete shambles), my father came upon his beloved childhood home.
What had once looked like this…

…now looked like this:

My father, then only 16-years-old, made his way through the rumble and found his beloved father’s body.
Now, in his 84th year, my father passes on two stories and two mementos (though that’s too trivial a word here) from that day to his two grandsons, Peter and Aleks.  I have already posted about his gift to Peter, bequeathed just a few weeks ago:

“Dear Peter,
I have decided to pass on to some of you grandchildren things that mean something to me, and that come with a story that must be told. As “Muttchen,” my pseudo-mother used to say: I want to do so “with warm hands.”
It was in March of 1945, just weeks before the end of the war.  I was 16.  My mother had already died.  I was put into a slave labor camp for “half-Jews,” as they called us.
Now Chemnitz, my home town, had just gotten the same kind of “terror attack,” as the Nazis called it, as Dresden had suffered weeks earlier.   My boss, where I had been assigned from the labor camp, was most understanding, if most secretive, about it.
“Go,” he said.  “Check out what happened.  Just be back by Tuesday at the latest.”  Of course there was no telephone, no other news, no transportation.  Only chaos everywhere.  One just had to make do, somehow.
Our house had been burned out, turned from a burned ruin into mostly rubble.  I found my father’s body in the boiler room, caught in the space between the floor and the furnace, one leg dangling, clearly broken.
My father’s body was the only one in the big ruin.  I was told later that when the house was on fire everyone got out, including him.  Then he had to crawl back into the basement to retrieve a small suitcase with Romanticist art that he was working on.  His whole life now had been his art collection; he just HAD to get those pieces.  In that moment an explosive bomb hit the house, ending his life, making the three of us orphans.
After escaping the Nazis for a dozen years, now, two short months before the final defeat of Nazi Germany, he was killed by an Allied bomb.  Just what the Nazis had always wanted.  But any war does that: produce tragic ironies like this, a thousand times over, everywhere.
My dad was wearing a suit, vest, and tie.  He was a very formal person and would not be seen in anything but “proper dress,” not even at night in the air raid shelter in his own basement.  When I found him, he still had his metal-rimmed glasses on, one side broken.  His fingers were apart, indicating that he had not suffered.
I knew there must be one thing he was forced by law to always have on him – his ID card, with the big letter “J” to identify him immediately as a Jew, with the forced name of “Israel” added.  I took it and I still have that infamous ID.
He was wearing his diamond tie pin so that his tie would be orderly and in place where it belonged.  I took it.  Years later, in Munich, in peace, I designed a ring for myself and had the diamond of my father’s tie pin mounted in it.
That ring is what I give to you today.  Today, when wearing it, I know that what had meaning to me was not my father’s dying as much as his death.  I knew then that his most romantic, often-quoted motto would somehow follow me: Goethe’s most utopian idea that “life, however it may be, is good.”  He, a Jew under the Nazis, persecuted, with two sons in Nazi slave labor camps, through all the chaos, kept this idealized faith.  And for years it gave me the strength I needed to shape the path of my own life, without parental guidance.
With love,  Opa”
And here is what Opa bequeathed upon Aleks, given to him this past weekend during our family reunion:

Aleks reading the letter from Opa which accompanied his–official papers as a Mischling German-Jew as well as his father’s Nazi-issued ID card, denoting him Carl Israel Heumann.

Opening the package…

This is what Opa wrote to Aleks:
Dear Alex –
I have decided to pass on to you grandchildren things that mean something to me, and that come with a story that must be told. As “Muttchen”, my vice mother, used to say: I want to do so “with warm hands.”
Of all my grandchildren, you have been the one with the greatest interest in history and historical events. Therefore, the papers I treasure most of my historical documents will be yours to keep and pass on, eventually. There is, first of all, my father’s “Kennkarte,” the identification everybody in Germany had to carry at all times. (I still do today, and not only my drivers license. out of habit.) In 1934, the Nazis issued the Nürnberger Gesetze which were really not laws at all, but party dictates. Among other edicts, they ruled that Jews from then on had to be identified by the middle (actually first) name “Israel” for men, “Sarah” for women. Jews were defined by race, not religion. By “law”, my father had to always identify himself, especially in official transactions, as “Israel Carl Heumann”, not as “Carl Heumann” or, as had been most common, as “Konsul Heumann.” That way, the official would know exactly what kind of degenerate he was dealing with. Not identifying oneself as such was a felony. In official papers, he was called “der Jude Heumann”. I took this ID from his body which I found in the basement of the ruin of our house in 1945. Don’t forget: the Nazis were most German, most bureaucratic. In 1938, Hermann Goering, in the second line of the Nazi hierarchy, decided on a classification of “privileged mixed marriages” between Jews and Gentiles whose offspring were not raised in the Hebrew religion. Those Jews were subject to the same mistreatments as other Jews, except they were not deportated into camps, until the end of the War. That’s why both my father and we kids were living ostensibly as Christians.
The “Party” was going to deal with the problems of “Half-Jews” after they “had won the war”. Meanwhile, they needed Half-Jews as workers. The document package you are getting also has a three-language paper, issued in June 1945, my most important ID right after the war, saying I was kept in the Slave Labor Camp until April 1945. Also included are documents showing my dismissal from High School in 1943, and an affidavit that I had been a very good guy all along before being kicked out, and also documentation of my freedom from tuition fees at the Technical University in Munich.
Fortunately life has returned to be more normal. Here are a couple of things that we were able to rescue after the war: a silver bowl belonging to my parents, and a set of ice cream server and spoons we used as children at home.
May times like my parents lived through never happen again!
With love, Opa
This is what now belongs to Aleks and will certainly be passed on to his children someday, who will pass it to their own children…
My grandfather’s Nazi ID card.  Note that he is identified as “Israel Carl Heumann.”  The name "Israel” was mandated by the Nazis.

Affidavit of “total destruction by bombing” of my father’s home:

Certificate of free tuition and monthly stipend because of Nazi persecution. 

Certificate regarding my father’s detention in a Nazi labor camp.  (In three languages… it reads “Herr Thomas Heumann, born on… was detained in the labor camp for Jewish relatives in-law of Munzig and set free on 27 April 1945. Chemnitz, 27.6.1945. Neues Rathaus.”)

Certificate of release from public school in March, 1943, as well as other education-oriented documents:

My father has been hesitant about allowing me to post about his past, not wanting to “draw attention” to himself  and his past.  But he has relented a bit recently.  Partially, I think, because he is now looking more at the historical importance of his experience, and partially because… well, I’ve been a pest about it, trying to convince him that the Internet will not “turn on him.”
And, sadly, I think that he is also resigning himself to the inevitability of his own passing and the importance of keeping the story of what happened in World War II alive and personalized to specific human experiences.

A day in San Francisco and a family reunion at the Marin Headlands

Last Thursday morning, Elisabeth, Aleks and I hopped on a plane bound for the Bay Area.  The purpose was two-fold: first we’d play in the City for a day and then we’d play with relatives at a family reunion at the Marin Headlands, a beautiful national recreation area just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. 

It would have been great if all six of us could have gone, but Peter had just used up all his vacation days on a trip to Ireland and Germany, Kat was at the tail-end of a month-long trip to Southeast Asia, and Tom… well, we unfortunately miscalculated when Kat would arrive home, thinking it’d be in the middle of our weekend away and we wanted someone to pick her up and be home with her on her first days back, and Tom volunteered to do that since he is also saving vacation days for our upcoming family trip to Europe (details on that to come!).  BUT, as it turns out, she arrived home on Monday morning so Tom stayed home and worked on the house bought a Ducati motorcycle.

I digress.  Already!

(Yes, he really did buy a new fancy-shmancy Ducati motorcycle… and no, I don’t want to talk about it just yet.)

Going on a trip with just Aleks and Elisabeth turned out to be great fun.  It’s not unusual that the twins are paired together, or kids are paired by gender, or even oldest two/youngest two.  But THIS pairing was one that had never really taken place for a big excursion.  Turns out it was a great pairing and we were all a great trio!

I had landed a great deal for a night at the Palace Hotel, a San Francisco luxury hotel that normally would have been out of our league.  Look at this dining room!

Aren’t  you just thinking, “How do you take your caviar, sir?”  Or “Jack, draw me like one of your French girls.”

The hotel -- built in 1875 and then renovated after two earthquakes, in 1909 and again in 1991 -- is stunning!

(The linens were absolutely decadent!)

On Friday morning, the three of us set off to do some exploring.  First we hit Chinatown.

At one point, Elisabeth insisted that we follow her down a slightly creep alley, saying she knew of something we might find interesting.

It’s a fortune cookie factory!  (The term “factory” is definitely used loosely.)

I paid the 50 cents, which allows me to show you this:

This is how a fortune cookie is made!

After that, we did some tea tasting and then looked for a place to eat, which we found in North Beach.  Funny thing -- on one side of the street you’re in China, then you cross the street and you’re suddenly in Italy!

A bit more walking…

… and then we boarded a ferry for Sausalito, where my aunt Ulli picked us up and brought us to the Marin Headlands where we met up with the rest of the whole fam-damily. 

I lived in the Bay Area for my first 25 years and would you believe that I had never done this boat trip?!  I had, however, spent many a day and weekend on a boat in the Bay, as my parents always owned a sailboat and most weekends we’d spend at least one day sailing on the Bay.  It was a love-hate relationship for me because I would have rather (at that time) spent the weekends with friends.

When we arrived in Sausalito, my aunt Ulli and her husband Michael picked us up and drove us westward over the hills.  This is what you see as you start to drive along the road from Sausalito to the Marin Headlands. 

And once you go through the tunnel and around that first curve, the view looks more like this:

Finally the Golden Gate comes into full view.  Amazing! (And I grew up there.  Still, amazing!)

Ten minutes later we arrived at the Marin Headlands Hostel, the site of our upcoming family reunion.  This entire area was once  an old army settlement. 

And then, the onslaught.  Heumanns everywhere!  Siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, in-laws…die ganze Mishpocheh!

 

And that big crowd around the table was only a partial clan! (All this from a couple of German immigrants!)  Quite a few cousins were missing – my brother’s two girls, Niki and Dawn, my Peter, Kat, and some others.  Imagine if we’d all been able to go!  (Stay tuned for Niki’s wedding in September.  We will ALL be there!)

On the first evening, my father (“Opa”) did something that will always put a lump in my throat and tug at my heart.  He continued to bequeath upon his family things that have been meaningful to him in his life – each one with a letter that begins “I have decided to pass on things that mean something to me and that come with a story that must be told (…) and I want to do so ‘with warm hands’.”

Each gift has significant personal meaning for him and was chosen specifically for the person to whom it was bequeathed.  First Dad gave my younger brother Chris an apron from the days when my parents owned and ran the Neil Creek House Bed & Breakfast in Ashland, Oregon.  That logo, and the picture on this apron, features the bridge over Neil Creek, which Chris had helped Dad build in the 80’s.

Next, Opa handed a box to Chris’ three daughters, Hannah, Abbi, and Olivia.  In it were many of Omi’s favorite textiles, mostly tablecloths and mostly Bavarian.

Then my older brother Stephan’s children, TJ (Opa’s only male Heumann hier) and Isabel, received the silverware, engraved with a German scripted “H” (), which my dad so carefully protected after the war and which he brought to America in 1953. 

And then this happened:

THIS one deserves its own post, which I’ll try to write tomorrow.  (Here it is.)  Suffice it to say that it’s intense and poignant and even historically significant.  Here’s a tease from the letter Aleks is reading: “In official papers, (my father) was called “Der Jude…”  I took this ID from his body which I found in the basement of the ruins of our house in March, 1945.”

(Deep breath.)

Later that evening, we were treated to this incredibleness from Hannah, Chris’ 16-year-old daughter (yes, you can say you knew someone who knew her when):

(Deep breath.)

10-year-old Isabel, Hannah was absolutely mesmerized by Hannah’s singing!  Hannah noticed and so sweetly spent at least half an hour working with Isabel to explore both the words and the music.

A few minutes later, Isabel was at the piano, playing and singing the same song!

Our two days at the hostel of the Marin Headlands were spent reconnecting, cooking, eating, and exploring.

The hostel’s large kitchen allowed our group to prepare delicious meals which we then ate in the hostel’s large dining room.

Even cleaning up was fun, and a total team effort!

The Marin Headlands are beautiful, and we explored the area fully. 

First we took a short walk along the lagoon, re-connecting with relatives we hadn’t seen in a while.  My dad and Lou live in Southern Oregon and my family lives in the Seattle area, but other than us, everyone lives in the Bay Area.

I loved watching Aleks and his Opa reconnect.  Those two really understand each other.

The kids (kids and “kids”) found a gorgeous tree to climb.  Much frivolity ensued!

After lunch, we all hiked to the Point Bonita Lighthouse.  I’d lived in the Bay Area for my entire childhood and had never been here!  Unforgiveable!  (Well, maybe forgivable, since this was military land during that time.)

The views along the way were stunning!  They would have been even more stunning had it not been such a hazy day.

…and of course there were lots of photo ops with people in front of the stunning views. 

Aleks and Elisabeth…

Opa and Lou…

Kids ‘n’ me…

My “little” brother Chris (fabulous organizer and project manager of this entire reunion escapade – thanks Chris!) and his beautiful wife, Amy…

…and various cousins, aunts, and uncles:

See that bridge?  That swinging, moving bridge way up high over treacherous ocean and rocks?  Yeah, that.

This girl was like a puppy dog – skipping back and forth across the swinging bridge.

“Ya coming, Mom?”

She might kill me for posting this adorable picture of her…

…but I’ll redeem myself by posting this one:

Chris and Amy’s girls brought bubbles.  It was delightful!

That evening, Chris called out, “I’m leaving to watch the sunset on the beach in 30 seconds.  Anyone who wants to go, pile into the car!”  Some of us did.  It was wonderful!

And then a bit of silliness took over.

Can you tell that I adore my “baby brother”?  (Yeah, my 50-something-year-old baby brother.  Ha!)

On our last morning, before heading our separate ways again, some of us took a last hike together.

Thanks Chris, for making this family reunion so wonderful!  Your organizational skills are second to none and I’ll bet that, had you not chosen to be a junior high school teacher (and we’re so glad you did because you ROCK at it!), you could have been a fabulous PM at Microsoft.  Er, I mean Google! 

Until we meet again (which will be this September at Niki’s wedding, the first of Omi and Opa’s grandchildren to marry!), I love you all!