The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
Katy summed it up perfectly
The tulips are coming up nicely, but there are still lots of closed blooms still left to open up.
The lake has been really hazy the last few times I’ve been out, but still really peaceful to listen to.
So a couple of days ago, we had great success in our snowshoeing/sledding outing. This Sunday, Ben wanted to go sledding again, when we didn’t have the not-my-dog. We headed back out to the same spot, but as we were driving along, we noticed a significant decrease in the snow on the ground. We checked the St-George webcam and realized that we were wasting our time driving up there because there was no longer any snow at all!!
It seems that we might have gotten very lucky that first day, according to the 14-day webcam history…
We went to Marchairuz for a walk with the child and the dog. It was lovely. We were (mostly) alone. Dog went completely mental in the snow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her run as much or as fast.
It was loud, chaotic, funny, foodie, boozy. It was lovely. We were 30 people and a dog, which is probably about the maximum amount that will fit in the flat.
Our friends and neighbours:
Paul and Lam
Colin, Karen, Meg and Davey
Jennifer, Jonathan, Milla and James
Mary-Jane
Mira, Emmanuel and Eliza
My co-workers:
Damian and Gillian
Roko, Rudger and Suttipong
Katy’s clients:
Ewalina
Melody
Christina, Mark and Zoe
Guillaume, Françoise, Raphael and Lily
It kind of went by in a blur! You try and see and talk to everyone. You hope everyone has a good time, and enough to eat and drink. On that last note, I think it was a frank success, as we were actively pushing people to take food with them because there was no way we’d be able to eat everything.
What’s really cool is that people knew each other without us knowing. Emmanuel goes to the same school as Davey. Eliza does ballet with Milla. Paul and Colin both teach at the EPFL. Melody and Mira both work for PMI. What’s also very comforting is the fact that we feel… integrated. We have a community of friends, colleagues, parents, clients that we’re happy to share food, drink and time with – to invite into our home and to invite to get to know each other. It’s a good feeling.
And there was a dog. And the cats were actually around (and being social and not hiding).
You remember the recent post where I said I’d found a local source of cheese crack curds?
Behold, 2kg of cheesy goodness, made fresh and posted yesterday, delivered this morning by the post.
Ok, so the bulk of the raclette cheese and the pickles comes from Aldi and the potatoes are leftovers from the roast I cooked yesterday, but the rest – venison sausage, honey roast ham and honey roasted belly pork and truffle raclette – were just bought from the Morges Christmas market and I made the bagels this morning.
The mulled wine isn’t bad and the cannons are very festively decked.
I’m Canadian. This means that I have a fondness for poutine. It goes with the territory. Unfortunately, getting cheddar cheese curd outside of western Canada has, in the 15 years I’ve lived overseas, proven impossible.
Until now.
I recently came across this little gem of a news article:
Walter Grob, the current owner of the Engelberg cheese dairy, moved from Unterland to Engelberg. After years of hiking in Switzerland and Canada, the young man from eastern Swiss took over the business in 2015 at the age of 24. He produces traditional products in outstanding quality – but always tinkers with something new. Thanks to his innovative strength, he has already launched several new products, such as the Cheddar, and won prizes at the Swiss Cheese Award.
From there, auntie Google provided this information:
Walter Grob
Klosterhof 1, CH-6390 Engelberg
Telefon: +41 (0)41 638 08 88
info@schaukaeserei-engelberg.ch
So I reached out by email.
But got no answer.
Then I reached out by phone.
And got in touch directly with the man himself. And found out that the email reply was written but never actually sent, and since they make cheddar 3 or 4 times a month, I could have as many curds as I wanted. He’s been trying to get the product in stores, but with little success.
But I will get 2kg of freshly made cheddar cheese curds by post next week.
This makes me stupidly happy.
Done!
Swiss wine, elaborated according to a method called “governo”, traditionally used for the Ripasso in Veneto. It consists in reincorporating a wine, in this case Gamay, on already fermented marc, in this case of Gamaret and Garanoir. The wine is light bodied, very fruity, not quite dry, and highly enjoyable served lightly chilled.
It involved way too much drama behind the scenes (that fscking Marshmellow mask!!!!) but the building’s annual Halloween party went off without a hitch, thanks to the combined efforts of Katy, Jen and MJ (and Ben will be very vocal in saying that he helped – even though his help was more autocratic micromanagement).
It was the biggest one yet, with a bunch of people coming from other buildings, friends of friends and random people I didn’t know. The kids seemed to get a good haul. The adults were congregating under the gazebo, happily socialising over a drink or keeping warm around the fire in the chimenea.
We ran out of mulled wine (but there were several bottles that were there to take up the slack). There was a ton of food – the guys at work tomorrow will be happy with the leftovers. After the fact, I’m happy we did it. People really seem to appreciate it. I just wish it didn’t involve as much drama as it seems to involve as part of the planning.
