A Tale of Two Breweries

The Luxembourg Chastains recently returned home after spending a couple of weeks in the U.S. Whether you call it a furlough or a pilgrimage, it was our annual trip home. Since Cammy grew up in Escondido (just northeast of San Diego) and her family still lives there, that was where we set up camp. There were quite a few highlights--the beach, the zoo, the mall, watching baseball on television.

The biggest highlight, however, was reconnecting with loved ones. Seeing Cammy’s family (who lives there), and my family (who traveled from Denver and Los Angeles to meet us), was the greatest reward. Seeing friends from Santa Barbara and Seattle was also really wonderful. Third on the list of highlights was eating American food again.

When an American lives his whole life in America, he may take for granted all the food choices that abound in the Land of the Free. Something as simple as a juicy mushroom and swiss burger accompanied by a couple pints of handcrafted ale is exotic, heavenly and entirely absent from our present European lifestyle. Nonetheless, that simple lunch is the one that stood out among the many I had. Here’s how it went down.

One morning, the guys in the family (Chuck, Jim and Marc) were trying to pick a place for lunch. It was just us guys, and we had only two priorities: great beer (preferably brewed onsite) and good food to go with it. It wasn’t a difficult task--Escondido and neighboring San Marcos have a handful of good watering holes. Perhaps the most famous is the Stone Brewery of “Arrogant Bastard Ale” fame. I’ve been there several times, most memorably in the days soon after it opened. Back then, they had so many interesting kegs that you could get vertical years of certain beers, such as their Imperial Russian Stout. The selection is now more limited, about a dozen beers in total, though each is exceptionally tasty. 

We were about to go to Stone, until I had a flashback to the last time we had gone there, back in 2006....

I stared at the rest of my Grilled Buffalo Burger, the only burger on the menu. Here is how the menu described it: “a tamarind-glazed buffalo patty with pickled red onions, roasted garlic mayo and butter lettuce served on a Caramelized Onion Roll...with a choice of garlic mashed potatoes or Chile-Lime Chips. Sriracha [Asian hot sauce] pickled cucumbers on the side as well.”  After choking down three bites, here is how I described it: dry as hell and badly in need of a good soaking in the roasted garlic mayo and some ketchup. And as for sides, I love garlic mashed potatoes, but I was longing for some thickly-cut steak fries or onion rings, some garlicky cole slaw or something like that. Something that actually tastes good with beer. Something you would find at any Red Robin. 

As I flashed forward to the present, I pleaded with the others to find somewhere else. My argument was that beer and food should complement each other, which is why burgers and beer, ribs and beer, pizza and beer, work so well. Stone has great beer, but their menu is a baffling tragedy. Their menu choices are a puzzling mishmash of vegetarian, Asian, Mexican and British. Tasty Tofu Stir-Fry? Wild Mushrooms Over Penne Pasta? Spicy Almond Crusted Tilapia? Tempeh Shepherd’s Pie?! I love fish, and I grew up on tofu and the fermented soybean cakes called tempeh, but that doesn’t mean they belong in an American brewpub. 

I could list another dozen nonsensical dishes. What is even more baffling is that the menu hasn’t changed in years! Stone could use about three more beef burgers (with enough fat content to make them juicy), a classic reuben sandwich, grilled bratwurst in a soft roll, a hearty fish and chips dish, and maybe even a few wood-fired pizzas. 

I actually didn’t have to argue at all; I was preaching to the choir. The guys agreed and came up with a brilliant alternative, the San Marcos Brewery and Grill. You could call it Stone’s less pretentious little brother. They also brew their own beers, seven of them, one which was memorably called Pompous Ass Ale. (Which is worse, being arrogant or pompous?) The beer was delicious, but what sold me on the place was the beautifully prepared pub food that was obviously meant to accompany a pint of beer. 

For starters, we ordered fried calamari and a round of beers. The calamari was so tender and flavorful that I was sorely tempted to order another plate, but I knew a large mushroom and swiss burger was on its way. When it arrived, I concluded that if burgers had aspirations, they would all aspire to be like this. It was big, containing a half pound of fatty ground beef grilled until the inside was barely pink and the outside was dripping meat juices, with sauteed mushroom and melting swiss cheese and reposing inside a soft kaiser roll. There were five other tempting burgers I could have chosen, none of them from an anorexic buffalo. 

Everything that San Marcos offered was beer-friendly. The club sandwich, the reuben, a steak sandwich, a steak! They had a sausage sandwich that had bratwurst, knockwurst and linquisa all inside the same bun! There was a selection of pasta dishes. If you wanted to go light, there were half a dozen salads and a couple of soups. I was in brewpub heaven. 

Is there a moral--or even better, a point-- to this story? Why yes, there is. The point is to look at the whole picture when choosing a restaurant. It is too easy to choose a steakhouse because it reputedly has the best chunk of meat in town, without taking into account the side dishes, the wine list, the ambiance.

Sure, you could argue that Stone’s fame and craftsmanship make it the stronger candidate compared to the lesser-known San Marcos Brewery. But I just couldn’t face another eclectic, weird menu item at Stone, while San Marcos had excellent beers and a menu that I wanted to revisit. You could call it the lunch worth 6,000 air miles.  

Chipotle Beans

It was Kismet--meant to be. Saturday morning, after turning on the TV for the kids, I got a hankering for some spicy beans. Cammy and I are chilihounds; we love both the red and green iterations of spicy beans and meat. Breakfast had already been served and cleared up, and I was savoring the last cup of Starbucks coffee out of the thermos. I chopped some onions and garlic and tossed them into the Le Creuset cast iron dutch oven that already held the slowly-warming mogette beans and water.

I went to check on the kids in the other room, kind of curious what Saturday Morning Cartoons in Luxembourg looked like. I remember my cartoon watching days vividly: Bugs Bunny and Friends, Captain Caveman, Scoobie Doo and many more. What had just started up was in French, and was morbidly fascinating.

I didn’t catch the title, but here is the gist of the plot. The heroes are two high schoolers, boy and girl, who go to class and make good grades. But beneath at mild mannered exterior lurk two undercover superheroes. Fighting for truth, justice and the...French way, I guess. Not so much in the way of muscles and tights, though they do have cool costumes; more like science nerds gone heroic.

They go to school one day and and notice that everyone is walking around like dazed zombies. More importantly, everyone is farting. Constantly. That’s right--teachers, administrators, fellow students--all are unselfconsciously blasting forth with mighty flatulence. The puffs of gas coming out of their backsides are purply-brown in color, and for a long while there is almost more theatrical fart noise than dialogue.

Naturally, as a closet Three Stooges fan, I was immediately hooked. The crudest cartoon of my childhood might have had a burp. Maybe. I left the beans in the kitchen to talk among themselves and settled down to watch this horror show of indigestion.

The dynamic duo do a lot of clever sleuthing and discover that there is something strange about the new school cafeteria cook. First of all, he is not very good, just glopping things onto their serving trays. For French sleuths, this had to be the first giveaway. The yellow glop might be a lovingly prepared bearnaise sauce, but I doubt it, given his surly attitude, general slovenliness and cigarette (no doubt a Gauloise) hanging out of his mouth. Did I mention that this was a French cartoon? The second giveway was the large squirt of ketchup (or catsup, we can argue about that later) with which he decorates each dish. Not only would a French chef NOT top off his creations with ketchup, he would not serve a ketchup named “FLATSUP”. That’s right, flatulent ketchup! Oh, how the insidious villains of today have raised the bar on evil! In no time, the school corridors are enveloped in a stinking purple-brown haze because of Flatsup.

Well, more sleuthing uncovers the Flatsup manufacturing plant, where two things give our heroes pause. The first is the thousands of bottles of Flatsup being churned out almost automatically. The second is the guy managing production, who is...the school cafeteria cook! Wait, no. Dozens of cafeteria cooks, all identical, all with glowing red eyes. They’re apparently terminator robot cooks, and they’re after our heroes. (See how just watching a cartoon without understanding the language clears away the clutter of annoying banter, leaving just the crystal clear plot behind?)

The intrepid investigators escape. Whew! They proceed to find the evil mastermind’s lair. He is a purplish-brown, obese lumpy creature who flits around in a little domed hovercraft, much like the character Baron Harkonnen in the movie “Dune” (starring Kyle McClachlan and Sting!). He carries around his own purplish-brown fartmosphere with him. When confronted by the teen heroes, he tells the sad tale of how he used to be a normal kid growing up in suburban France. His older brother would constantly subject him to fart torture, such as the much loathed “dutch oven” (not the Le Creuset kind, but the fart under the blankets kind). In time, he couldn’t breathe normal atmosphere anymore. So he started to plot for the day he could, 1) turn the Earth’s atmosphere into a more breathable purplish-brown smelly murk that he could enjoy; and 2) how he could get revenge on his mean brother, now a balding executive in a downtown office building who had forgotten all about his little brother.

Well, to cut to the chase (thankfully), the teens foil this nefarious plot. They defeat the heinous hovering farty blob...man. They expose the hazards of Fartsup to the light of day, and to the administrative authorities at their high school. And they save the air of France for more healthful Gauloises.

After this intestinal masterpiece ended, I went back to the kitchen, newly inspired to make not just a pot of beans, but a pot of Great Beans. Beans of Substance. Beans that would clear the decks and arouse...whatever needs arousing. Beans that would warm your tummy until lunch and maybe all the way to dinner.

These are those beans. No Flatsup required. Enjoy.

Chipotle Beans

2 cups dried white beans (mogette, flageolet, or Navy)

4 cups water

4 cups chicken stock

1 cup diced bacon

4 cloves garlic, sliced

2 onions, sliced

1 cup small mushrooms, quartered
2 tablespoons canned chipotle pepper in adobo sauce

1 tablespoon sundried tomato paste

1 teaspoon oregano

1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste

12 teaspoon black pepper

1 bay leaf

First of all, these measurements are rough, as most batches of chili are. Some eyeballing is required. Add all ingredients into cast iron dutch oven. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Let simmer for about 6 hours, until beans are tender and liquid is reduced to a thick sauce. Add liquid or other above ingredients as needed for flavor and consistency.

Serve hot. Adjust spiciness as needed with Cholula Chipotle Hot Sauce (or Tabasco). 

Coffee Despondency

As you might have noticed, I took a break from this blog for a little while. It has been weeks since my last posting. Sorry I didn’t warn you. Travel was initially to blame, then laziness became the culprit. Eventually it resolved itself as a problem of subject matter.

My intent for this blog has been to entertain myself, and hopefully the few readers who encounter it. The focus from the beginning was on Luxembourg and food, and preferably where the two intersected. Luxembourg is where I live, and food is what I like to write about. Sounds easy. I have been pretty good about adhering to that framework. 

I would like to broaden that framework now. I found myself passing up story ideas that were very interesting to me, because they didn’t fit the food profile I had set for myself. Luxembourg is a fascinating place to live, and I would like to share what fascinates me about this place.

For instance, I have been watching a condo structure going up, just down our block, since we moved here. Construction has been going at a snail’s pace, compared to how a similar project in Seattle would have progressed. What became fascinating to me was watching the workers last week gluing rectangular blocks of polystyrene (yes, Styrofoam!) to the outside of the cinderblock walls that form the structure. Presumably, for insulation. Also presumably, they will stucco the outside and paint it to look like all the other houses on the block. We’ll see. Things like that aren’t food related, yet I’ve never seen them before and may never again. So brace yourself for the occasional Lake Wobegon angle on Luxembourg.

Which brings me to coffee, which I guess is still officially a food posting. Coffee is one of the main reasons I get up in the morning. (The other is the powerful forehand of my tennis-loving wife flailing me with a broom handle).  

After ten months of living here, I’ve been making more coffee at home and going out for it less. It was a tough decision, because I love going out for coffee. At home I have my beloved coffee press and my workaday electric drip machine. They do the job admirably. However, I regularly get a craving for a great cup of espresso. I love espresso, but I loathe bad espresso. And all I have found in town is pretty, bad espresso. (The exception was a decent cup from the Italian restaurant down the street, but I can’t hang out at the pizza joint at all hours of the day and night). 

The pretty part is the service. Every espresso comes in a cup and saucer, with a tiny espresso spoon on the side. On the saucer is a stylish serving of sugar and a complimentary chocolate square. Very civilized and cultured, no?

The bad part starts in watching them make it. For espresso afficionados, the default coffee is the “espresso longo”. You might say to yourself, “So what?” Well, an espresso longo brews the ideal ounce or two of thick, creamy espresso at first. When done well, that first part is creamy, roasty, caramelly sweet and deliciously bitter. It’s a grownup dessert. Unfortunately, another six ounces of hot water is pumped through the grounds until the espresso is the consistency of drip coffee and unpleasantly bitter. Dessert becomes insipid swill. And that is the state of coffee in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. At least so far, after ten months of searching and buying countless cups of pretty, bad coffee. You can find  regular espresso if you ask for it, but it also isn’t very good.

The other coffee problem is roasting. As a former roaster, I love coffee beans that are roasted to the perfect point of aroma and flavor, that glisten with a little bit of oil. I loved roasting, and I love experiencing it when somebody else does it well. The beans here are underdone. They’re light brown, wrinkled and dull in appearance. They are stuck in that awkward adolescent stage where voices crack and feet are clumsy, like Jessica Rabbit at the age of twelve, before her va-va-voom caught up with her and filled her out.   

The coffee I have found here generally comes from somewhere else, most commonly Germany or Holland. In theory, distance isn’t the problem. I could get to Holland in an hour of driving; Germany in half an hour. The problem is the preference in this part of Europe for very light roasted coffee. I finally found a small roaster in town, but they have low quality beans and a very light roast. And that’s the killer combination, because light roasting reveals more of the original green coffee’s flavor, for good or ill. If you have cheap coffee, all the defects in it are on display.

The best local alternative has been Illy Coffee from Italy. While not bad, Illy’s espresso beans are roasted too light for me, leaving a “green” taste in my mouth. I don’t know the origins of the actual beans they use in their blend, but they taste low-grown in their flavor profile, as opposed to the more elegant high-grown coffee used in most premium coffee blends. 

So what’s a boy to do? When I lived in Seattle, I could go to Starbucks, to Peets, to any of a number of great local roasters such as Zoka or Victrola. I could fret about blends and roast profiles to my heart’s content, and I wasn’t out of place doing so. Here, my choices are limited at best.

Surprisingly, I found the solution last Christmas. The week before, our family spent a week in Paris. We actually chose our hotel not only for its proximity to the Louvre Museum, but for its proximity to a Starbucks. That’s right: Louvre--three blocks away; Starbucks--two blocks away! There was a memorable moment for me when I went shopping for coffee beans. I walked into the Starbucks and picked out the freshest TWENTY bags of coffee.

What made this memorable was my tenure at Starbucks. At that time, one big concern the company had was the lack of bean sales in European stores. European customers were used to going in for an espresso or coffee, but seemed loathe to buy it and bring it home for brewing.

So when I walked up to the counter with my armload, the manager’s eyes got really big. I think he was trying not to go into his Happy Dance while he counted out the Euros I was laying in the palm of his hand. 

It is now summer and that coffee is gone. It was hard going back to the local choices. Starbucks was not only a taste of home, it was a taste of quality. Whatever people think of Starbucks and the many ways it intersects our lives, it has always turned out a superior bag of coffee beans.  

Right now, my closest Starbucks is either in Paris or Munich. Believe me, I would make the trip if I had to. Fortunately, we will be visiting California shortly for our annual trip home. No doubt I will stagger up the the counter with an armload of coffee bags. I’m not expecting a Happy Dance from a grateful store manager, but you never know. I know I’ll be doing my own Happy Dance after we get back here, that first morning when I tear open the bag of Sumatra. Yeah. It’ll have to be Sumatra, my favorite.  

Three Dinners In Amsterdam (Part 2)

Walking back to the hotel the next afternoon after a solo stroll around the Oude Zijde (Old City), my route happened to take me through the fringes of the infamous Red Light District. Actual red lamps hung over the bay windows where bored women lounged in lingerie. Unlike many of the hookers in Seattle I’ve seen, who try to make eye contact with a winsome smile, these girls apparently hadn’t been to Hooker U. Other than their lingerie, they weren’t using any marketing or sales skills. They could have been taking tolls on the New Jersey Turnpike. Instead of trying to look alluring, they stared at me with the unblinking eye of Sauron, as if to say, “I dare you to come inside, young hobbit!” This young hobbit kept his brisk pace through Mordor and made it back to the hotel fairly quickly. Unlike some of the braver tourists, I didn’t even stop to take a picture of them. I know theirs must have been a sad life, but it was hard to determine who were the predators and who were the prey. 

MEXICAN? 

The second meal is what I will call EuroMex. It’s like TexMex but more baffling. We chose Tio Pepe’s because it was a short saunter around the block from the Victoria Hotel. I still had a warm glow in my tummy from Puri Mas the night before, but Cammy was hungry. She has a continuous craving for Mexican food that cannot be assuaged by earthy means, so I had high hopes riding on Uncle Pepe. 

To riff on The Doors, “Tacos are strange when you’re a stranger....” It started with the basket of chips brought to the table. They were Doritos Taco Flavor tortilla chips, out of the bag. Accompanying them were a decent salsa fresca and an absolutely pulverized guacamole that looked like green pudding. It wasn’t great but we were hungry. Fortunately the lime margaritas were tasty. The combination of tequila and lime can cure a lot of ills.  

Things got more brutal when the menus arrived. I searched for about ten minutes looking for something, anything, that sounded appetizing. The burritos and tacos at nearby tables didn’t inspire me, and I wasn’t in a fajita mood. Fajitas can be good, but they’re basically Mexican stir-fry. I knew something authentically Mexican was too much to hope for, but I was craving anything with a complex, rich sauce.

I like to try unfamiliar dishes in Mexican restaurants. However, in case of menu emergencies, I have default order: enchiladas drenched in either a red rancho sauce or a green chili verde sauce. So with some trepidation, I finally ordered enchiladas. The problem was, they didn’t come with any sauce. Or meat. They were strangely vegetarian, featuring goat cheese and spinach. I had to beg our waitress to put some chicken into them. 

When the enchiladas, they were dry and crispy on the outside, having come straight out of the oven. They were also dry and crispy on the inside, with no redeeming sauce anywhere. Accompanying them on this highway to hell were plain boiled kidney beans and a lackluster Mexican rice.

Cammy ordered more intellegently. Her “Spidey Senses” started tingling an alarm in her head as soon as she glanced at the menu. She carefully backed away from the Mexican side of the menu and wisely chose Argentine steak, which turned out to be pretty good. 

Perhaps the most indelible image I have kept of Amsterdam are the bicycles. They are everywhere, both in motion and parked nearly everywhere. There is even a “Dutch bike” style. It is essentially an old style “girls” bike with a step-through steel frame, painted in black. It has a platform on back and either a basket, seat or platform on the front. It is almost always a three-speed, creatively rusty and usually emitting clanking noises. In short, it is the bike version of a beater. Massive cluttered bike racks are to be found everywhere one glances. And locking these functional castoffs to the racks are massive chains with huge padlocks. I would theorize that the locks are more valuable than the bikes they are protecting. How the Dutch find their one decrepit black utility bike among hundreds at each bike rack is a mystery.   

THAI

The third and final dinner we had was Thai. Bird Thai Restaurant on Zeedijk Street was reputedly the best Thai food in town. I can’t vouch for that, but I can vouch for the long line out the door, the half hour wait to get a table, and the absolutely delicious dishes presented to us.

Cammy went for her perennial favorite--green curry with eggplant and chicken. Although  Pad Thai Noodles have to be among the most addictive of foods--the culinary equivalent of heroin--I opted for a spicy squid and vegetable dish. I know I’ve had a memorable meal when I am absolutely full, yet I am still tring to find a way to eat the remaining tantalizing pieces of tender squid and curried chicken that I couldn’t finish. It was wonderful to end our Amsterdam experience with a great dinner.

We saw a lot of cool things in Amsterdam, such as the Anne Frank House and the Rijksmuseum, among many others. If there are any morals to this story, the first is when visiting a former colonial power, you can’t go wrong with the food of their colonized. The second is that Thai food is a safe bet almost anywhere in the world. And when so many American restaurants screw up Mexican food, despite America’s proximity to Mexico, don’t trust it farther afield. Finally, the Dutch do licorice better than anybody.

Three Dinners In Amsterdam (Part 1)

I just returned from a long weekend in Amsterdam and inadvertently celebrated the Queen’s birthday, along with half of Europe. The Dutch call the designated birthday of Queen Beatrix Koninginnedag, or Queen’s Day.

Although the holiday has been observed since 1885, setting it on April 30th only happened since 1949, when Beatrix’s mother,  Queen Juliana, ascended to the throne. Beatrix kept the date the same when she became Queen to honor her mother. So to celebrate, the festive folk of Holland (indeed, all of Europe) converge on Amsterdam for the big day.

Koninginnedag is like Mardi Gras, only orange instead of green, gold and purple. There are parades and trinkets are tossed to the crowds lining the sidewalks. Most of all, there is public drinking on a massive scale all over the city. It was this scene that met us as we walked out of Amsterdam Centraal train station into the sunshine Thursday afternoon after a six hour train ride from Luxembourg.

Everywhere I looked my eyes met bright orange. Feather boas, t-shirts, tube tops, cowboy hats, face paint, mohawk hairpieces, codpieces. All were in brilliant hunter orange. It was as if a Wembley Stadium Village People concert was stopped halfway through and everyone, performers and audience alike, suddenly decided to go deer hunting together. The aroma of marijuana filled the air. I later discovered that was normal (or NORML) and not a symptom of the Queen’s birthday.

Amsterdam has both hash bars and coffee shops, which can be distinguished (to my inexperienced eyes) by the fact the neither serve coffee and both serve marijuana. 

While the rest of the city sought their bacchanalian satiation, our family pursued more sedate activities like touring the Rijksmuseum, visiting the Anne Frank House and traipsing  through the Artis Zoo.

And more than anything, we ate. Here is a log of three memorable meals experienced during five days in Amsterdam.

Being the cultural capital of a former colonial power, Amsterdam is blessed with an abundance of Indonesian restaurants. I’m a big fan of the former Netherlands Indies. I lived there for a few years. My honeymoon happened there. I love the people, the culture and the food. So I was really looking forward to a plate of makanan Indonesia (Indonesian food). When asked, the concierge at the Victoria Hotel immediately recommended Puri Mas (Golden Temple) on Lange Leidsedwarsstraat Street.

A word about the Victoria Hotel. It was simply a wonderful place to stay. The place was clean. The staff was friendly and knowledgeable. And it couldn’t be more central to everything we wanted to do. The hotel is directly across a canal from the Amsterdam Centraal. Most bus and trolley lines, as well as canal boats, run right by it. And although it can be a little like Times Square, our room on the third floor was remarkably quiet. Our room (#308) was an Executive Room, with a balcony that overlooked Prins Hendrikkade Street. One of my favorite moments was on a sunny Sunday afternoon, when I picked up a couple of gin and tonics from the lobby bar. We threw open the French doors to let in the breeze and the sunlight and enjoyed our cocktail hour. 

INDONESIAN 

The menu at Puri Mas looked authentically Indonesian. Even the servers actually looked  like real Indonesians. I bring this up because a lot of Indonesian restaurants I’ve encountered are run by Chinese looking for a niche. This isn’t bad on the surface, but they’ll typically serve up a base of your average popular Chinese dishes, like kung pao anything, add some sate and an Indonesian curry or two and call it Indonesian.


Poring over the menu, I was deliriously happy without having even taken a bite. Call it the anticipation of fulfillment. I’ve experienced the same thing walking into a Harry Potter or Jason Bourne movie--I didn’t know what lay in store, but I knew it was bound to be entertaining.

Not being able to decide among many favorites, I opted for the rijstaffel (“rice table” in Dutch), a dish that came into being when Indonesia was a Dutch colony. To see a picture of it, check out www.purimas.nl. It is essentially a sampler platter that lets one try dozens of more dishes. Traditional Indonesians didn’t get to eat this way because it’s expensive and time consuming to prepare. Indonesian dishes, like Indian food, is complex both in its ingredients and its process. Most families would have a single dish, maybe two, to accompany their rice staple at meals.

Among my favorites were gado gado (cooked vegetable salad with peanut dressing), soto ayam (chicken stew) and daging rendang (dry curried beef). The rendang was my favorite, spicy and slightly sweet, with complex flavors of coconut, lemongrass, garlic, ginger and lime. I could have eaten it for every remaining meal in Amsterdam, but Cammy is as much a fiend about Mexican food as I am about Indonesian, and we had a date with Tio Pepe.

More about that in the next posting.    

Easter Eggs and Clay Birds

When I (and perhaps you) last tuned in, I was wondering what (if any) egg Cammy would be giving me on Easter Sunday morning. What with computer issues and general laziness, I guess I left everyone on tenterhooks about what happened. 

In our ten years together, we have tried to give each other romantic Easter baskets. It started on Easter weekend of 2000, when I proposed to her on a bluff overlooking a California beach. Present to witness the occasion were a big diamond, a picnic lunch and  Easter baskets. So we have this history around Easter beyond the solemn and joyful religious side.

Jumping to the present, what I discovered here was that Easter baskets don’t exist (as far as I know, after much searching) in Luxembourg. But there are hordes of chocolate eggs and bunnies, stuffed with treats.

So I was very happy to have handed to me on Easter morning, with a cup of Starbucks coffee, an extravagant dark chocolate egg. Yummy. Inside the egg were dark, milk and white chocolate eggs, chickens and bunnies, each with a ganache filling. Yummy indeed.

Easter in Luxembourg is quiet and fairly reverent, as it should be. Everything (besides a few gas stations) is closed. People stock up on Good Friday for the long weekend, because the morning after Easter is also a holiday in Luxembourg. If you want that local Luxembourgish leg of lamb, you’d better buy it on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday. 

On Easter Monday, although stores are still closed, the streets of downtown Ville de Luxembourg are flooded with people visiting the booths of the annual Easter street fair. 

In the past, only a few booths were set up behind the Grand Duke’s castle, on Marche aux Poissons (Fish Market Street). They would sell homemade clay bird whistles. Today, there are dozens of booths along Marche aux Poissons, and many dozens more all over the downtown area. For sale are bird whistles of numerous shapes and colors, other arts and crafts, personal odds and ends of a flea market nature. And that doesn’t even include the many food and drink booths.

Ingeniously, to make the whistles sound more birdlike, they are filled with water. The bubbly chirp that results is strikingly realistic. Walking down Fish Market Street is like walking into a particularly vociferous menagerie. It’s quite cacophonous and great fun. 

We spent a good half hour watching folk dancers, whose hoofing vaguely resembled a  polka. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know squat about the polka, even after years of sketchy ballroom dance classes at various community colleges and Elks Clubs. Sadly, my moves in the ballroom have always more resembled those of an inside linebacker than those of Fred Astaire, despite all the lessons. There’s more lurking and hulking than gliding going on. But their moves looked familiar. And kind of fun, even with the costumes. I don’t know why, but there is something irresistable about folk dancers, especially when they are visibly having so much fun. They were truly grinning and laughing to each other much of the time. I attribute that to the live band with accordions! Wouldn’t you grin a little if several thousand people were watching you dance to accordion accompaniment?  

Pretzel Sunday

Have you ever given any thought as to why pretzels exist?

Luxembourg and America do pretzels entirely differently. In America, pretzels are mostly crispy and sold in every grocery store. They inhabit bowls of questionable cleanliness in bars all across the country. Desperate airline passengers nibble on them. When people gather to watch football on TV, pretzels are the Vice Presidents of the snack world--ready just in case something happens to the chicken hot wings. Special pretzel stores in malls sell chewy ones dredged in yellow processed cheese; sometimes dipped into mustard. Other special pretzel stores in malls coat them in multiple layers of chocolate and colorful sprinkles.

Most of all, there’s no story or tradition around them. Pretzels are like pigeons. They are nothing special; they just ARE.

Well, in Luxembourg, pretzels are fraught with meaning. Sure, one can still find meaningless crispy pretzels in the grocery stores. It’s the seasonal pretzel--that comes around only once a year--that is so interesting.

To set the stage, Lent is a 40-day stretch of sadness and repentance before the rejoicing of Easter morning. It starts the day after Mardi Gras (literally “Fat Tuesday”), on Ash Wednesday (February 25th in 2009). During Lent, early Christians were not allowed to eat any rich foods, and particularly eggs, butter, milk, meat or cheese during this time. They could eat fish and bread made from flour and water, however. (Which is not so coincidentally the ingredients of a pretzel).

The Lenten pretzel tradition has Roman Catholic roots that date back over a thousand years. According to The History of Science and Technology, by Bryan Bunch and Alexander Hellemans, "...an Italian monk [in 610 A.D.] invents pretzels as a reward to children who learn their prayers. He calls the strips of baked dough, folded to resemble arms crossing the chest, 'pretiola' ("little rewards")". Another source maintains that they called it ‘Bracellae’, the Latin word for “little arms.” Over time the pronunciation turned into ‘bretzel’.

Are we to believe these stories? You make the call; I won’t. However, to stoke the fires of discussion a little more, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday I gave my wife Cammy a pretzel. It wasn’t any old pretzel. It was about a foot across, had the texture of a sweet roll and was topped generously with white frosting and sliced almonds. It was...a romantic pretzel.

What possessed me to do this? The fact that it was “Pretzel Sunday” in Luxembourg. Apparently a tradition that arose around suffering has morphed into a romantic tradition. According to accepted practice, the boy (Eric) gives the girl (Cammy) a pretzel on Pretzel Sunday. If she approves of my pretzel and my romantic attentions, then she is obliged to give me an egg on Easter Sunday. It could be a real egg or a chocolate one. It could be plain or richly decorated. It’s up to her. To add even more confusion, in leap years the girl and the boy switch roles! (Sort of a Sadie Hawkins arrangement, so the boys had better be on their toes).

As Easter approaches the pressure mounts. To make things more dramatic, I shall continue the discussion using Rumsfeldic Questioning (kind of like Socratic Questioning, but more recent and with goofy epithets included):

Will I get an egg? Good golly, I should hope so.
Will it be out of the carton? Perhaps.
Could it be hardboiled? Possibly, for gosh sakes.
Might it be dyed a pretty color? My stars, wouldn’t that just be dilly!
Could it be a fancy chocolate egg? You bet.
And what does it really mean either way? Heavens to Betsy, who on God’s green earth really knows?

All I know is that everybody knows that you’re supposed to do it, but nobody (I’ve talked to) knows why. It’s enough to drive a man to drink. Which is what a lot of Luxembourgish men do. Starting at about 9 o’clock in the morning, when the malls open. Packs of them cluster around the little circular bars in the main mall walkways, like gamblers around a particularly generous blackjack table. When they are in full swing, there is much jovial chitchat and hoisting of beer. I call them the “Bofferding Boys”, after the local brewery.

But I digress.

On the surface, Pretzel Sunday sounds silly, maybe even sacrilegious. However, I would argue that it is far less so than the Easter Bunny. Or the gifting of live ducklings and bunnies, soon to be abandoned (or eaten). Not to mention plastic Easter baskets lined with plastic grass filled with the sugary horror of Cadbury eggs and the marshmallowy monstrosities known as Peeps.

At least pretzel and egg drama has a Christian origin and celebrates love and romance, instead of just celebrating the dollar.