Thursday, September 22, 2011

Friday, June 3, 2011

LOVE: Can't get enough of Hanuta


I have a serious addiction to Hanuta. I can't imagine a more perfect tiny snack to go with my cappuccino & shame.

I just inhaled 2 in less than 10 minutes and I am super human now... caffeine & sugar high will lead to an inevitable grinding plummet in approximately 1.5 hours. Please don't be alarmed by my crankiness and insistence upon listening to Robyn really loud.

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Corn

What is up with corn on pizza? I get that corn is delicious and pizza is delicious, so together they would be great...right?

It just feels wrong. And the corn is so chewy and gets stuck in the tiny crevices of my teeth and hair (I have an eating disorder, it is called bad-eye-hand-coordination).

I saw today's Munich Groupon and saw an offer for a pizza place with a picture of CORN ON PIZZA.



I was in Austria and out of tired desperation ate CORN ON PIZZA. When I was in Delhi my little cousins convinced me that the "Ultimate Pizza" at Pizza Hut was a tasty treat, but it was mayo and CORN ON PIZZA.



My world feels upside down.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Love & Hate #4


It has been a while since we have listed some of our warm and fuzzy or angry and hostile thoughts about life...

LOVE
1) I am loving Spring in Munich. The weather is gorgeous, hovering around 15 - 20 degrees all the time means I don't need a jacket or coat. Maybe this point is really commentary about my hatred of outerwear.
2) New Organic Peanut Butter from Edeka. PB is not often found at a grocery store, usually there is only 1 or 2 brands. I have spent the last 7 months investigating which brands I should back up and I have fallen in love with some organic Erdnuss-Creme, it is surprisingly sweet.
3) New gym membership. Germans do not mess around with their work outs, it is exhausting. I can't wait to lose my Munich 10!
4) Newer, even skinnier, jeans. Oh Jeggings!

HATE (provided by Donkey)
1) "Trips to work lasting over 5 minutes". (The subway is under construction so his commute is a little longer than the usual 5 minutes.)
2) "People that don't cover their mouth while coughing". (SERIOUSLY, it is so gross..it is like they are coughing directly into our mouths!)
3) "Going to work while it's beautiful outside". (It is going to be 18 degrees today.)
4) "People that don't wait until everybody gets off the subway before shoving their way on." (It is pretty inefficient, come on Germany!)

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Friday, November 12, 2010

Taj - The Festive

This is for Courtney. Get ready for the holidays!

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Love & Hate #3

This is a London edition, I spend my weekdays in the land of cheese & onion pasties and Cadbury Flake while Donkey toughs it out with the Germans. He just started school this week, which sounds really excited and nerdy.... I now present:

Hate by Donkey
1) Neighbours upstairs that are raising baby elephants...crying, screaming, jumping elephants. I believe the phrase "drop kick a baby" was used several times.
2) The lack of affordable gyms.
3) Being bikeless.
4) Economics.

Love by Me
1) Not getting shanked at the scary as fuck basement flat my company put me in this week.
2) Marks & Spencers buckets of chocolate dipped cornflakes.... I really want to try the flapjacks flavour but I am scared.
3) Seeing John Lennon's image being used to advertise a £240 Mont Blanc pen... somehow I don't think this would jive with his philosophy.
4) Seeing benches that are older than the country I was born in.
5) Brick Lane curries, as a matter of fact, the casual integration of Indian food everywhere.
6) Coronation Street.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Love and Hate #2




Today the Love and Hate list will go through a little change since there are things that I actually hate. Say what?!?

HATE by the DuMonsters
1) Getting a work visa when no one seems to want to help me get a visa. I just want to start working and the more I think about it the more anxious I get. I just want to get the first 2 days under my belt. My visa is stalled because a form was not submitted 2 weeks ago. It has resulted in tears and nausea for the last day and a half.
2) Drunken Italians on the train almost had the Donkey in a fight on the train with a drunk Oktoberfester that kept asking me if I was from "Napoli"You might think it is racist that I singled out the Italians, but Italian men are the only ones bold enough to flirt with a married woman. Some might call that swagger charming....but definitely not Donkey.
3) Shoes are REALLY expensive. Even Adidas which are made here!
4) Cell phones are cool, but it is so complicated trying to get a phone to use in Germany AND in London. Each country might require a separate plan or paying a huge roaming plan. iPhones are in short supply, a 4 week waiting list. The guy at T-Mobile told us that Apple doesn't supply enough phones for Germany.

LOVE by the DuMonsters
1) Seeing the Glockenspiel again after 6 years. Memories. The only differences were that there were more fruit sellers this time and I couldn't see the huge vendor tent for schnitzel (some of the best I had the last time I was here!) and there weren't any firemen demonstrations like last time, I remembered them pretty clearly from the last visit.
2) Shopping for a new wardrobe technically should go on the hate list because it is stressful to replace things that I know I have at home in a box, but its shopping for fresh new things so I have to say this is lovely. (Also stressful is not knowing if I will have work, if this visa doesn't come through). H&M and Zara are always great for filling out my closet, I couldn't stomach dropping lots of Euros for things that I might have to ditch in a few years.
3) Donkey bought slimmer jeans, finally. I have been married to him for 2 years and have known him for 6 years. I have been nagging him for years to buy new jeans and it took exactly 20 minutes for a gay German at Zara to tell him "I love the sweater, it is perfect but the thing that is killing me are your jeans". (D bought another pair of slimmer jeans from H&M, should I be insulted OR should I use this as fodder for future arguments about why he should just listen to me?)
4) Pretzels here are sick.
5) Dogs are allowed EVERYWHERE! In department stores, on the train, restaurants (for the most part).
6) Public transportation is fast and incredibly clean.
7) On escalators everyone follows the rule of stand right, walk left.
8) The sound of wind through trees, I haven't heard that on a regular basis in 4 years. Donkey and I were having dinner with the window open and he asked me what the noise was... I forget the sound of traffic from the I90/I94 in Chicago.
9) Random beers have been consumed one by one everyday, I pick my beer the same way I pick my wine...the coolness of the label.
















Lots of love today! We shopped all day for drip coffeemakers (which is quite difficult because Germans love french press or coffee pod type coffee), alarm clocks, speakers for the kitchen so I can listen to "This American Life" when I cook.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Love and Hate

I joked with Donkey about creating a blog about all the things I love and all the things he hates about this new EU leg of our adventure. He is a bit of a Negative Nancy or a Cranky Craig, but that is a part of his charm. Here is the list and a brief description of our first 2 days in Munich/M¨nchen.

LOVE, by Me
1) cobblestone streets.
2) creme fraiche in tiny yogurt containers at the grocery store.
3) seeing so many slutty drindls.

HATE, by Donkey
1) old people tourist groups on the plane, the lack of circulation means they have to loiter in the aisles and they are constantly sick, he almost got attacked by projectile vomit. ew.
2) reading labels in grocery stores, we spent 2 hours guessing what most things mean.
3) facebook. 2 weeks later he is STILL trying to get an account.

We landed on Wed morning and our landlord picked us up from the airport. She is unbelieveably nice, the apartment was stocked with almost everything one would need to live except for food and shampoo etc. Every few minutes we find something new that she bought and left for us and we say a common mantra of "she is the nicest landlord ever". The last one was finding a milk frother for cappucinos in a utensil drawer. After passing out from the exhaustion of running errands for my brothers wedding we hit our little town and found a mini supermarket that makes pretzel bread which was pretty mindblowing. Yes, my mind was blown by doughy goodness. We went to the grocery store and it took us forever to understand what we were buying. Cereal, bread, shampoo, lotion and dog treats took the longest time to understand and buy and we were probably in the shop for 2 hours and only bought a handful of things. It was fun and there were so many things that I wanted to buy.... milk chocolate spread! tiramisu ice cream! creme fraiche! There are lots of mattress stores here, which is odd and lots of gyro/falafel shops, probably because of the high Turkish population.

Speaking of dog treats, Taj is slowly getting used to her surroundings but she is definitely depressed. It is a strange new place that smells funny and sometimes when we leave her at home and run errands we can hear her whimpering down the stairs. It makes me feel like a crummy dog owner. She did see a big sheep dog that played with her for a bit and the owner told us about a dog park nearby.

Today we opened up a bank account at DeutscheBank and we just got back from taking T for a walk and getting the best gelato I have had in a long time.... cookies and cream and white chocolate gelato for dessert. Giddy up!





Thursday, October 22, 2009

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Friday, July 17, 2009

Taj: The Shit Disturber

My first movie.

This is my first movie and the subject: Donkey's fucked up knee.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Slumdog

LiLee keeps calling me Slumdog at work and I think it is hilarious... Until the story about one of the child actors losing his slum last week came out. Eh..Who am I kidding? I am an insensitive cow and I STILL think it is a funny nickname.

This is an AWESOME parody! I have always been annoyed with having to dress as the Indian version of celebrities or fictional characters but next year I am going to dress as the Slumdog American Idol.