Fun with rouladen

I’ve posted more than a few times about our traditional German sauerbraten dinners.  (Mmmmmm, my mouth is watering just thinking about it!)

Yesterday, though, I decided to delve into uncharted cooking territory and attempt another dish that my mom made often (far more often than she made sauerbraten) during my childhood: rouladen.  Rouladen usually consist of bacon, onions, carrots, mustard and pickles, wrapped in thinly sliced beef which is then cooked.

When rouladen are all cooked and ready to be devoured, they look something like this:

You’ll notice that I stole this photo from Google images – specifically from “What a Dish.” (Thanks, “What a Dish”!)  You know why I had to resort to stealing photos from Google images?  Because we (“we” being all the kids plus SOs, along with Eva, the now-24-year-old ex-exchange student from Germany for whom I was an AFS liaison back in 2006, and who is currently student teaching at a local high school) were so busy having a good time and visiting that I simply forgot to take photos of our celebration and finished meal!  (Yes, I AM out of blogging practice, but I am doing my best to post more often this year.)

So I don’t have photos of everyone hanging out in the kitchen drinking good German beer or of us making the other dishes that we served with the rouladen… 

(Well, that’s not entirely true.  I do have this one photo of Tom making the spaetzle while Peter kept him company:)

…but I DO have photos of the process of making rouladen.  If you have a realio-trulio German along to help you, it’s even more fun!

Here’s the cast of characters:

Most importantly, you’ll need about two slices of thinly sliced top round per person, each piece about 3” x 7” x 1/4.”  Our butcher sliced these for us and they were gorgeous!

You’ll also need salt and pepper, German sweet mustard, bacon, onions (you can simply sauté them; I totally annihilated caramelized them), baby carrots or thin carrot slices, German pickles (“die Riesen” are unlike any American pickle, sort of a cross between sweet and dill.  These were given to us by my dear friend Christel, also aus Germany!) and, for the gravy, beef broth, corn starch, and some sour cream.

Here’s the fun (read: messy) part:

For each roulade, season the meat with salt and pepper, then spread some (that’s an official culinary term; it means “as much as you want) mustard onto the flat meat.

Next, lay a piece of uncooked bacon lengthwise smack-dab in the middle of the meat, like so:

Now spoon some onions at the end closest to you:

Add a small carrot or a thin carrot stick:

And lastly, add a thin strip of pickle. 

What?  You want a photo of the pickle added?  Hmmmm.  I don’t have one!  You know why?  Because either I totally forgot to add the pickle to this piece of meat or I totally forgot to take a photo when I did add the pickle!  Fortunately I have a photo of when I added the pickle but totally forgot to add the bacon!

Hey, just have fun with it!  Yes, that’s my excuse.

Speaking of fun, this is the fun part.  Start rolling!

If you’re lucky, you’ll have a friend from Germany to help you.  This is just how Eva and I roll.  (Sorry…)

In order to secure each roulade, you’ll need either toothpicks (which we used), string (which my mother used), or some of these things (thank you Google images!):

Reminder to self: get some rouladen clips when we go to Europe in May (yes, I will blog that trip – I promise!).

This must be when I started my second beer because I pretty much stopped taking pictures at this point.

Once all twenty of our rouladen were rolled, we cooked them on high heat in our large electric frying pan, turning the heat way up to braise them and then down again to cook them until all pink in the meat was gone. 

At that point, we transferred them to the crock pot…

…leaving the drippings in the frying pan.

We then made a roux from the drippings, slowly adding beef broth and a little corn starch until it was gravy consistency, and then we poured gravy that over the rouladen.

And then we just let those little guys cook on low heat for a few hours while we made the kasespaetzle – which I took next to no photos of… but here’s one from our sauerbraten dinner.  (Same idea, except that yesterday we made about a fifth of that amount!)

About 15 minutes before you plan to serve the rouladen, add about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of sour cream to the crock pot.  To make it easier, I removed all the rouladen, stirred the sour cream into the gravy, and then replaced the rouladen.

I wish I had taken photos of our plates filled with this deliciousness and of the whole “Mishpocheh” (look it up… in a Yiddish dictionary) enjoying each other’s company, but I am so out of blogging practice that I totally forgot! 

Which gives us reason to do this whole thing again sometime soon!

My bilateral prophylactic oophorectomy (Or… ten years after my mother died of ovarian cancer I take action to not follow in her footsteps)

My mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer on April 11, 2000.  On April 11, 2004, exactly four years later, she died. I still miss her every day.
In 1993 I had a hysterectomy due to large fibroids. I’d already had four children and my uterus had served me well, so I had no real issue with removing it.  The consent form that I’d been asked to sign included an oophorectomy (removal of ovaries) along with the hysterectomy. Rebel that I am, I crossed out that section and wrote that I was NOT consenting to the removal of my ovaries which, at the age of 36, had plenty of life and love (read: libido) left in them.  The nurse chewed me out and told me that I was not allowed to cross off sections of the consent form.  Seriously!?  It’s my body!
I was given another consent form to complete “correctly.”  On this one I wrote, “wake me up if you want to touch my ovaries.  No consent to oophorectomy given!” Needless to say, I kept my ovaries. And I’m glad I did.
Eleven years later, after Mom died of this deadly cancer that has no real symptoms nor any reliable screening method, I began to ponder the idea of having my ovaries removed.  At first, I just became highly vigilant about yearly CA-125 blood tests (the best screening available, but actually useless as a reliable screening tool) and trans-vaginal ultrasounds.  I felt that this was the best I could do and I wasn’t quite ready to give up my ovaries just yet.  My doctor and I had an on-going conversation, spread over the years, accompanied by blood tests to show where I was in menopause – just beginning, in the throes of it, or all the way through it.
This summer, the blood test showed that I was all the way through menopause and out on the other side. I pictured an old, shriveled lady on a cane when I heard that and I may or may not have had myself a little pity party in the car while I sat in the doctor’s parking lot.
At this point, my ovaries that had served me so well for so many years were deemed useless and I made the decision to have them removed prophylactically – maybe next summer.  As I discussed this with my family, the consensus was ‘why wait?’  So I set off to find the very best surgeon to do the job.  (Hey, we’re in Seattle!  The very best surgeon IS definitely here; I just had to identify who it is!)
After some research and conversations with those in the know, I decided on Dr. Pam Paley, whose is THE star in this field.  When I met with her, she said that my surgery would be the easiest of her whole week, as she normally deals with cancers that are already doing plenty of damage.
We set a date of January 7, 2014. 
Easy-peasy! Right?
Well, once I heard what the prep for surgery was to be like, it felt like more of an ordeal.  But that’s because I’m a wuss. My instructions were to stop eating at noon on Sunday (for a Tuesday surgery!). I could only have clear liquids on Sunday, to be followed on Monday morning with that vile GOLytely stuff. 

(Banana for scale.)  (Bad Reddit joke…)
That GALLON container comes with about a cup of salty chemicals at the bottom.  When water is added, it turns into a gallon of gooey, slimy, salty liquid. It comes with something the company calls a flavor packet but you should know that the flavor packet did exactly NOTHING!
Here’s my PSA for how to get through the prep phase of pre-surgery or pre-colonoscopy:

1. A few days before you are instructed to stop eating solids (in my experience, this has been about two days for pelvic surgery and one day for a colonoscopy), start eating lightly.  No red meat, no hard-to-digest foods.  I had chicken soup, applesauce, bananas, toast, etc.
2. Also a few days before the fast and colon clean-out, make sure you have or go out and buy the following:
1. LOW-SALT chicken broth (The one I bought had just 70 mg of salt. Right next to it on the store shelf were broths with up to 1000 mg of salt, so read those labels carefully!)
2. Jolly Rancher sour apple hard candies
3. Other gummy candies
4. Other clear juices.  (“Clear” means you can see through the juice when you hold it up to light.)  Vitamin water, Snapple, and ginger ale are also great.
5. Liquid or powdered flavor enhancers.  Go for the strongest they have!  I chose acai berry, but I was allowed red liquids.  If you’re having a colonoscopy, you will be asked to avoid red liquids, in which case maybe go for tart and tangy, like lemon-lime.
6. Clear minty mouthwash.
3. The night before you are to begin the GOlytely stuff, mix in the water and refrigerate it.  You can mix in the flavor packet if you want; it really won’t make a difference. 
4. When it’s time to drink the stuff, try some of the following hints (and remember, you’ll drink enough of it that you can try new things for each couple of glasses):
1. Fill a glass with ice.  Insert a WIDE straw.  Pour the GOlytely mixture over the ice.  Add a flavor enhancer if you like.  Mix well. Put the straw way at the back of your mouth and CHUG!
2. Immediately after you finish the liquid take a swig of mouthwash. It will take away the salty flavor of the mixture you just drank.
3. Then suck on a Jolly Rancher.
4. Don’t do this over the sink if you have ever puked into a sink!  The association might be more than you can bear!
5. My favorite way to drink the GoLytely was to heat it with an equal part chicken broth, microwave it to hot, but not so hot that you’d have to sip it daintily, and then CHUG that.  This felt great after all the icy cups of cold stuff and it tasted FAR better! In fact, it tasted just like salty-but-not-too-salty chicken broth!  Had I known how much better this was, I probably would have done this for the entire gallon.
5. Now you wait.  I waited for a few hours thinking that I’d done something wrong and I would never poop. And then, suddenly: (We got Cards Against Humanity for Christmas from Elisabeth’s boyfriend, Danny.  This is the one I pulled out first when the gift arrived on the day of my colon prep.  How’s THAT for serendipity?!)
6. I was told to buy baby wipes for use on this particular day. That worked fine until a few hours in and then it began to sting!  I suggest flushable Wet Ones without the stingy chemicals.
7. You’re through the worst of it now, but you can’t stop until you “run clear.”  I was still drinking boullion and pee-pooping (that’s what it feels like – peeing from your butt!) TWELVE hours after I’d taken the first swig!

Just when I was just about finished with the bowel cleanse ordeal, Elisabeth showed up with a gift pack for me!  Mmmmmm – bittersweet chocolate, raw almonds, a coxy-comfy shirt, slipper socks, and some Burts Bees facial wipes and lip balm. What a sweety!

Elisabeth, who is a neuro ICU nurse at Swedish Medical Center, had volunteered to spend the night at our house and get up at 4 AM to take me to the hospital, stay with me there as necessary, and take me home, hopefully on the same day – though a hospital bed had apparently been reserved for me “just in case.” 
I think Tom was just as grateful to Elisabeth as I was! Early in the morning on “chug day,” after a day of fasting, I was going through my normal morning routine of feeding dogs and hubby and making Tom’s lunch, when I got light-headed and collapsed onto the floor. I didn’t faint, I just had to lie down right then and there.  Tom left the room, but I wasn’t sure why.  Was he finding his phone to call 911? I called to him, “I’m OK…” so he would unnecessarily call 911.  He came back with… a PILLOW!  So sweet!  So compassionate. But so… well, not nurse-like. 
Elisabeth and I left for Evergreen Surgical Center very early in the morning. 
I have to say that I am SOOO impressed with Evergreen Hospital’s Surgery Center!  From the second we arrived, we were surrounded by kindness, compassion, knowledge, and professionalism. 
And creativity! Look at this passport that guided us through the process:


With the amazingly kind and compassionate staff and the surgery passport, we were off to a good start and I felt great.
Then came time for the IV insertion.  I have a history with IV insertion and hidden veins.  Remember this?  Knowing there would likely be an issue with finding a vein, I tried to prepare myself in a few ways.  I drank lots of water until exactly midnight before the morning of surgery, knowing that veins are easier to find if you’re well hydrated.  I also got a prescription for ONE Xanax tablet, to be taken upon arrival to the hospital, knowing that, based on my history, this part would be full of anxiety.  I took only half of the Xanax – which turned out to be a big mistake! 
The nurse tried to inset an IV first on my left hand.  Nope, no go.  I started to shake.  Then she went for the right hand, even numbing the site before poking around.  Again, no go.  In a tribute to what a great nurse she was, she then turned down the lights and asked everyone to be still and quiet for a bit.  That did help.  But what really helped is that she went out to find my anesthesiologist, asking him to do his magic – which he did on the first try.  Elisabeth was VERY impressed!  I didn’t look.
The anesthesiologist then gave me more “calming meds” in the IV and off we went to the operating room.  I remember looking at a HUGE machine in the corner of the room and asking if that was “my robot.”  “It sure is,” he said… and then I was out!   
I’ve had issues with waking from anesthesia before.  I’ve been incredibly nauseous, groggy, and just plain “yukky.” Thanks to the conversation I had with this anesthesiologist (before he gave me more “calming meds”), I wasn’t nauseous at all upon waking!  He gave me a patch to wear behind my ear (which is still there, the next day).  I woke up slowly and gently.  Thank goodness, because the anesthesia is what I was most scared of!
The surgery only took about an hour and a half, thank goodness.  I was wheeled back to Elisabeth and we slowly got ready to go home.  Everything ran completely smoothly and I can’t speak highly enough about Evergreen Hospital’s Surgical Center.
I also can’t speak highly enough about my daughter-nurse, who took such great care of me!  Tom came home to take over when Elisabeth had to leave for her shift as a *real* nurse, and he brought each of us a half-dozen roses!

Tom is staying home today to take care of me – and also to build a kitty condo for these three, who are keeping me company in bed today…

And now I’m ovary-less, but I have five rather pesky, painful holes in my belly.  But I have no regrets and I’m glad I decided to have these dried up eggs removed! I can’t say what I’ll die from someday, but it won’t be uterine or ovarian cancer, that’s for sure!

“Wind ‘95” becomes “WTF ‘13”

18 years ago, during a violent wind storm (nicknamed "Wind '95" because Windows '95 had just been released), a huge tree fell on our house from two properties away. 

All bedrooms on the upper level of our home were heavily damaged. Thank goodness no one was in them!  A good chunk of the tree went straight into what was then Aleks' and Peter's room and surely would have hurt them... or worse!

One car, which contained all the kids' Christmas presents in the trunk, was totalled and another was heavily damaged.

It took many months for us to have our home back -- mostly because the asbestos abatement work that had to be done due to what we were told was contaminated ceiling popcorn. The hardest part of all this for the kids (then just little kidlets) was watching their favorite toys, stuffed animals, books, and even bedding being disposed of by men wearing alien-looking protective garb from head to toe. It was not a fun time! 

Fast forward 18 years: we now have some fairly minor water damage caused by a leaky roof (which has since been replaced). 

Turns out insurance covers the damage. Yay, right?  Following procedure, they tested the popcorn ceiling for asbestos, in spite of my assurances that there is definitely asbestos there.  After all, we remember it well! 

Surprise: the lab report indicates NO ASBESTOS DETECTED. 

Huh?! 

This is Peter's career field.  He is a licensed Industrial Hygienist and certified "asbestos guy" (I don't recall the exact name of the certification). For both personal and professional reasons, he insisted on a second sampling, taken specifically by him and sent to a different lab. Those results came back today and guess what?  "NO ASBESTOS DETECTED"!! 

This means that the months of inconvenience, but even more, the real heartbreak the kids went through was for naught!!  I can’t even really wrap my head around how this feels.

But, on the plus side, no asbestos!

Here we go again!

Remember when I insisted that we’re finished with major projects around the house? 

Well, Tom made a liar out of me. 

Seems that now that the hot tub has been moved from its previous location at the end of the no-longer-existing “dry dock”…

…to be incorporated into our new deck…

…a slab of concrete was left all by itself with no purpose in life whatsoever and nothing leading to it.  This apparently bothered Tom no-end!

Admittedly, the nice little fire pit and seating area that Tom and Kat had made years earlier…

…had deteriorated badly and now we’re left with this:

According to Mr. Has-To-Have-A-Project Tom, something new was called for in the area.

So what’s he doing now, you ask?  (Don’t you? I do!) How is he spending every spare minute in his summer, you ask?  (Don’t you? I do!)

He’s making a big ol’ fancy backyard water feature!  This thing will have it all, from a gurgling spring to a cascade over a descending bed of river rocks, to a full-fledged waterfall that one can sit on and dangle one’s feet over, to a dry pond and creek bed.  Like most of Tom’s projects, what began as a quick what-if ponder has blossomed (careened?) into a major project.  And, like most of his major projects, this one will end up to be amazing and great and I will once again feel awful for all my belly-aching about the mess and the time and the lack of other activities that we should be doing in our old age.

Behold:

Those cinder block foundations will support big ol’ flat stepping stone rocks that will lead down from the deck, over a running river (OK, a babbling stream) with another stepping stone rock right in the middle of it, onto a big wide rock surface, and finally onto the patio that started this whole crazy project.

Allow me to walk you through the above photo.  If nothing else, it will show Tom that I actually have been listening!

A “spring” will start the whole business at the top of the the area surrounded with brick. Then there will be a patch of cascading river rocks. (The water running over it should sound great!) The stepping stone in the middle of the river will be where the white bag is in the photo, the main waterfall will be just beneath the white bag on top of those two big rounded cinderblocks, and the dry pond will be below the waterfall, where the deep hole is.

(Yes, it is a godawful mess. Thanks for pointing that out!)

There will even be a dry stream bed cascading down the hill from the dry pond.

That 3-foot-deep hole under the deck? That’s for the pump.  Apparently it needs to be at a lower depth than the bottom of the dry pond.

It’s been hot in Seattle lately and when Tom finished digging that hole yesterday he was covered heat-to-foot in sweat! Poor guy. I feel so sorry for him, forced to build this amazing water feature!

Oh, and that slab of concrete that started all this in the first place?  The destination of those big rock steps? That will be covered with flagstone and there will be a new fire pit on it, surrounded by stone seating.

I should wait until it’s all done and then post a neat, tidy little post about the glorious end result, but I’ve decided that if I have to put up with the process mess, then you do too. 

So there.

Honoring my mother’s family

In the years before she died in 2004, my mother became interested in tracing her family roots in Bavaria and was successful in tracing them back to the 1500s – and this was before the days of ancestry.com! 

I didn’t fully appreciate what Mom did then, but I have come to fully appreciate her efforts now, and I so wish that I could tell her so.  But I can’t.

Instead, I took the old original photos of her parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins (one board for her mother’s relatives and one for her father’s) that she had originally taped onto tag board and labeled herself…

and I turned them into these:

Most of the photos are originals – printed on very thick cardboard and ornately labeled on the back.

I love looking at similarities between our ancestors and current family members.  This, for example, is my mother’s mother, Mathilde:

…and this is my niece Niki:

They look so much alike!

I also love exploring the dress of the time.  Just imagine how much work it was to get dressed.

(Yes, that says that my mother’s paternal grandparents celebrated their 50th anniversary in 1897!)

How regal some of Mom’s relatives looked!

My favorite story to come from Mom’s photos is the story of her nephew Willy Merkl.  This is Willy:

If you google him, you’ll come up with this:

and this:

and this:

It’s easy to find information about Mom’s nephew.  The Wikipedia entry begins like this: “

Willy Merkl (6 October 1900 – 9/17 July 1934) was a German mountain climber who is most notable for his attempt to lead a German-American team up Nanga Parbat (the Naked Mountain) in the Pakistani Himalayas in 1932.

His team was known to be very experienced in Alpine and European mountain expeditions, but were unprepared for the trials of the Himalayas. Despite being forced to turn back, the team did make excellent progress and found a way through the Rakhiot Peak and the main ridge.^[1]

In 1934 he led another expedition up the same mountain that proved to be fatal.”

Could I make the claim that Peter’s earlier propensity for rock climbing…

Nah, guess not.

The beautiful original photos that I had custom framed only accounts for about 150 years of Mom’s family.  But this document (it’s taller than me!) shows Mom’s relatives all the way back to the 1500s!

And she documented the family lineage in a document, too:

And there’s the booklet that she found that describes her family’s 225 years in the hat making business!

I’ll soon be dedicating a few wall surfaces to family historical memorabilia like this.  I just hope that the kids will have an interest in preserving it for their kids… and their kids… and…